What are the Benefits of Cultivating Emotional Intelligence with Phil Johnson

Hey, welcome back to the show. I’m here today with. Bill Johnson. Phil, how are you doing? 

Great Travis, it’s great to meet you and it’s an honor to be on your show. 

Honor is all mine today. Bill earned his Master of Business Leadership in a small town just outside of Toronto, ON, and has previously worked in this field. 20-plus years. Bill, why don’t you give us a little bit of background on what the Master of Business Leadership is? 

The vascular business leadership program is a program that I developed to help folks develop their emotional intelligence, become more inspirational leaders, and raise their level of consciousness. I’ve been working with executives and organizations all over the world. for the last 21 years, helping them to achieve better results.

We were talking before the show started and I was furiously scribbling notes, and I was saying, “We have to hit record.” I’ve got to capture some of this stuff, sure. From what you said before, we hit record. It sounds like a lot of people are going to not understand what it is that we’re going to talk about today, and that’s fine if you’re listening and you’re one of the people that don’t, we understand, but we must know for sure that there are things out there that are not yet explained that are not yet understood. and not adopted by the masses yet. 

It’s very interesting working through some of these concepts with you. I understand it all and I know what you’re talking about. It just has me excited as we all get out to talk to him. you today, but what are the three outputs: What do people get from taking this amble? 

• The outcomes are, that you develop your emotional intelligence.
• You get a higher level of emotional intelligence, which is It’s very important and I’ll discuss why shortly.
• You raise your level of consciousness about what’s going on in you and around you.

Only about 3 to 4% of the time are you conscious. The rest of the time, we’re relying on our habits to drive our behavior and our results, so it helps raise our level of consciousness. And the third outcome is that you become more inspirational. leader, meaning that your actions inspire others to want to follow your example. 

There’s been a lot of talk about intelligence quotient and emotional intelligence. There are all sorts of others like AI. There’s a whole big list of these, but what is Emotional intelligence? 

Emotional intelligence incorporates everything, but a very simple explanation is that it’s the ability to feel the fear and anxiety that change in innovation always creates in us. When we leave our comfort zone and cave through that fear and anxiety towards the vision of our desired results, as opposed to allowing that fear to keep us trapped in our comfort zones. It doesn’t eliminate fear, doesn’t eliminate anxiety, but the development of our emotional intelligence allows us to coexist with it so that it doesn’t become a barrier. Who is moving forward with our growth?

I like that.

I think more people do work on their emotional intelligence and work their way out of their comfort zone. If you’ve been a long-time listener to the show, you know that we talk about your comfort zone on a semi-regular basis and everything that you haven’t done yet is outside your comfort zone. But every time you do that new thing, your comfort zone gets a little bit bigger and a little bit bigger. What are some of the benefits of really stretching your comfort zone? 

The journey guarantees career and personal success. It fixes everything. I’ve helped organizations generate over a billion and a half dollars in revenue while also advancing their careers both professionally and personally. By going through this process, the ROI is never-ending. And it represents the development of our emotional intelligence and has become a critical part of what we require but never have. 

The educational system has failed us, and our employment system has failed to prepare us for the future, we’re facing. We’re facing a tsunami of change. With a 500-million-year-old brain that doesn’t like change. Some scientists estimate that in this century we could experience the equivalent of 20,000 years’ worth of change, or 200 centuries’ worth of change. So, change is increasing at an exponential rate. We’re not built for change. There are three primary sources of resistance. We must change. Let me just go through them just briefly. 

The first one is that there’s a part of our old lizard brain called the amygdala that’s been trying to keep us safe and alive by making sure we never leave our comfort zone. So, if we do It creates a hormone in our bloodstream called cortisol. And that causes the executive center of our brain to shut off and we go into what psychologists call a fight, flight, or freeze mode. Some people lash out; some people run away. Some people freeze like deer in the headlights. When that happens in conflict situations, people die. And when it happens in business or personal situations, relationships die. “We burn trust.” So as an analogy, if you think of your amygdala as a very frightened 4-year-old child, The development of our emotional intelligence acts like a big brother or a big sister. They make little responses and better enable us to feel the fear and anxiety that change in innovation always creates in us and move through it towards the vision of our desired results as opposed to allowing that anxiety to control us. So that’s one of the biological sources of resistance to change. 

The second biological source of resistance we have is our existing habits. Once we develop a habit, it’s there forever. It’s a neural network pathway that gets graded in our brain from our actions, and although we can develop new habits at any age, it’s called brain plasticity or neurogenesis. Those new habits are always going to be weaker than the old habits, even if the new habits are better than the old habits, so there’s that. It’s going to be an ongoing battle for control internally between our old habits and new habits. So that’s the second source of resistance we had to change. 

The third is sociological. If we change, if we start getting better results, they may have to change as well, which scares them to death. And the best way to ensure they don’t have to change is to make sure we fail, so they can say, “Look, I told you so.” Now keep your head down and emotions at bay. I can get back into the room with the rest of us. 

So those are all three. very challenging sources of resistance to change, even though the results are phenomenal. So, there are only two things that will cause us. There are only two things to go on this change journey. There are only two sources of motivation. One is moving outside of our comfort zone. One is a source of pain, the other one is passion. Few people relate to their passion, so for that with a group of people who are willing to challenge themselves and move outside of their comfort zone. And does the emotional labor that it requires? It’s usually driven by pain. It’s driven by an urgent desire for better results than they’re currently getting. 

Another thing you could think of is emotional intelligence training. It’s almost like Navy SEAL training for emotions. A big part of Navy SEAL training is to be able to stay conscious and alert. In the presence of fear So it’s rather than them simply reacting unconsciously. Going into the unconscious mode, losing our creativity, losing our presence in the moment. Emotional intelligence allows us to feel that fear. 

And stay conscious. In a moment That makes sense. 

Oh absolutely. There’s a lot to unpack there. For those in the self-help realm that have been listening to all the talking heads over the last 20 or 30 years, when we talk about resistance, have it, as well as your social launch culture.

That’s what everyone else has been talking about. Jim Rohn calls it, “You’re the average of your five closest friends that you hang around with.” There are all these books on habits. Take 21 days, and there are 17 cycles of 21 days within a year, and then people talk about the fight, flight, or freeze response all the time. But what do you have to do to work through these resistance factors?

The first thing you must do is You have to develop a strong emotional connection to the desired result that motivates you to leave your comfort zone. So, you must develop a vision for the desired result. You must develop an emotional connection. Not just an intellectual connection, but an emotional connection to something you want to achieve. That catapults you out of your comfort zone regularly through the fear and anxiety that will be created. 

The division of your desired result has stronger than your fear. And your ego-based fear. And if it’s not, you will not be willing to do the emotional labor that change in innovation requires of us. You are all saying if somebody could talk you out of doing something, let them. because it wasn’t that important to you anyhow. If you don’t have that emotional connection, Nothing else matters. So that’s step one.

Yeah, you hear this in the sales right. People don’t buy for need; they buy for want they buy for that desire. 

Well, not only that but they are all purchases made in the limbic part of our brain. They’re all purchases that are our emotional decisions. So first, we make the decision emotionally. Do I like this guy? Do I trust this guy? 

And then, after we’ve already made the decision, we look for features and benefits intellectually to justify it. The decision we’ve already made emotionally So, by increasing your emotional intelligence, you can Get ready for this. 

By developing your emotional intelligence, you can out-compete the competition. You’re able to develop deeper, trusted advisor relationships with the people you seek to serve than your competitors. There’s a part of our brain that brain scientists call ” We have these specialized brain cells in our prefrontal cortex that we’ve had to develop because we’ve evolved to live in society, living in tribes, living in herds. We’ve had to develop the ability to sense whether somebody is trying to help us or eat us. And scientists call them They call them mirror neurons. That’s why you can walk into a room and get a sense of the energy in the room. You can have a conversation with somebody and get a sense of whether they’re trying to help you or control and manipulate you. 

Those are the mirror neurons. I call them “Bull Shit Meters,” so you can’t fake being authentic. You can’t fake being real. See if somebody trusts you. They’ll find a way to work with you even if you don’t have the best technology or the best pricing. Conversely, if they don’t trust you, they’ll find a way not to work with you even if you have the best technology or the best pricing. There’s something called a trust economy that’s growing much faster than the traditional economy. It’s currently estimated at over $10 trillion a year, because of the accelerating rate of global change. We can’t keep up with all these changes, so we’re relying more and more on the network of people around us that we trust to make decisions.

You know, what did you do? How did you handle this? Your network of trusted advisors as an individual or organization is the most asset you have. Your ability to demonstrate trust and ability and earn that trust is a direct reflection of your level of emotional intelligence.

Let me give you an example of a company. It’s doing over a trillion dollars a year in revenue. Almost their entire hiring process is focused on the search for people with above-average levels of emotional intelligence. That company is Apple. That’s why when you walk into an Apple store, that energy you feel is an example of a more emotional, intelligent environment. They’re not trying to sell you anything; they’re trying to understand your pain, and if possible, provide a solution to your pain. They want you to have a great experience. And maybe you’ll go tell your friends, and they’ll tell you. Their friends So that’s an example. of an emotionally intelligent environment. And more and more companies. Apple, Google, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, Infosys, Whole Foods, FedEx, Costco, and others are hiring, promoting, and developing emotional intelligence. 

The set of facts that you just ran us through emotional intelligence and the trust economy is more important than technology and prices. 

See, I think we’re at a tipping point as a species on the planet. And we need to dramatically change our trajectory to survive. There isn’t a single other species on the planet. It wouldn’t be better if we didn’t exist. In relative terms, we’ve been on the planet for about 1/2 of a second.

And we’re facing it. Irreversible climate change. Or facing things like dealing with things like CRISPR, CAS 9, gene-editing technology, or a grade 10 science student in their basement could create a gene strain that could wipe out the planet with another pandemic. We’re walking through a minefield. 

We lack wisdom and emotional intelligence in the face of challenges. make the choices. I need it. A long time ago, Mark Twain once said, “If the only way mankind can learn some experience, I see no hope for mankind.” So, in other words, if the only way we can learn is by putting our hand on the stove, that assumes that we’re going to be around the world for that experience. And a lot of the challenges we’re facing going forward in this century you don’t get. A do-over You must do it correctly the first time. You’ve got to know not to put your hand on the stove before putting your hand on the stove. And that requires a higher level of emotional intelligence.

The development of our emotional intelligence is a critical part of our education that we never got. Schools and businesses focus on our ability to do intellectual labor and did little or nothing to develop our emotional intelligence. And quite frankly, we’re leaving a dead cat on the doorstep of future generations because they’re unprepared for the tsunami of change they’re facing.

Here’s the thing: here’s a comparison. I want to compare intellectual intelligence with emotional intelligence. Think of intellectual intelligence. Is somebody giving you $10,000 a day for 31 days? So, at the end of 31 days, you’ve got $310,000. And think of emotional intelligence. Like getting a penny that doubles in value every day for 31 days. So, at the end of the 31 days, you’ve got $10.7 million. At the end of 40 days, you’ve got over $5 billion. At the end of 50 days, you’ve got over $5 trillion. 

So not everybody can have a 160 IQ. Intellectually, if you have a high IQ, your parents had high IQs, and you inherited that. But anybody can develop their emotional intelligence. By doing the emotional labor that it requires. And the ROI is far greater than any other way we can get from our ability to do intellectual labor. 

It’s very interesting. I love the analogy of getting paid 10 grand a day versus that penny that doubles over time. When looking at the educational system teaches us to be compliant workers and taxpayers. They don’t teach us to think outside the box. They do nothing about emotions, actual health, mental health, or physical health and none of it occurs. 

We’re seeing gym time and playtime go down exponentially. Creativity time is getting cut out, of course killing the teachers, largely. I can’t say all because that would be just gross over characterization, but teachers, don’t have the experience or the time or the bandwidth or the capacity to help their students as they need to be helped, even if they want to help that student. That’s completely struggling when you have so much to do as just through your regular school day, your ability to help that person that you wanted to help. From the beginning

Travis, think about this for a minute. Let me just give Let’s go to the 30,000-foot view. Let’s assume the model we live in is incorrect. The model we live in views power as external. You’re not enough. You need to be bigger, taller, faster, and smarter. You need something more than you already are. It’s a zero-sum game. For me to win, somebody must lose. Doesn’t it stand to reason? 

But the people that would be, by definition, successful within that model. would be the best at stealing other people’s energy and would be the best way to use position-based power to control and manipulate others. The current level of employee engagement worldwide, according to Gallup, is around 13%. So that means people are working in toxic environments where they don’t feel safe taking risks to step outside of their comfort zone.

And that level of Employee disengagement costs the US economy more than a trillion dollars per year. And Gallup also determined that there’s almost a one-to-one correlation between the level of employee engagement and the level of customer engagement. If your employees don’t feel engaged, neither do your customers. Your employees don’t feel safe. 

If you need a title, Leadership’s not a title. If you need a title, to get people. If I follow you, you’re not a leader. If your actions, if your behavior doesn’t inspire people to follow your example, you’re not a leader. Leadership’s not a position. It’s a choice that each one of us needs to make. Whether we’re folding boxes in the warehouse or signing checks in the C-Suite Some better leaders. We all need to take back agency. over our lives. And stop giving away our energy to others. That’s the key that will reduce the drama, chaos, and conflict we see everywhere. We’ve been unconsciously giving our energy to others to run our lives. 

Let me give you an example. One of the NBL’s habits in the program is called “authentic listening.” And the key to authentic listening is not to take anything personally. How somebody feels about you, whether they like you or whether they hate you, has nothing to do with you. 

It has to do with what’s going on inside of them. But if how you feel about yourself, whether you like yourself or whether you don’t, it’s based on how anybody else feels about you who’s running your life, you or them. 

Depends on how aware you are, I would imagine. 

Well, right but. I mean, if you’re unconsciously giving away your energy or giving away your energy to other people to determine how you should feel about yourself. 

Oh, then everyone else is running your life. Good luck getting everyone else to go to counseling to fix your problems. 

So, when you think about it, people fall all over themselves on social media to try and get people to like them. They’re giving away their energy left, right, and center to determine how they should feel about themselves. And that’s just one example of how we’re unconsciously becoming more resistive, judgmental, and detached in the long run by giving away our energy. 

I can’t choose what the outcome of certain events is going to be. All I can set is my intention for how I show up in that space. I can show up here expecting a world-class interview and expecting a million people to like this thing. And then watch it. I can’t control any of that stuff, but I can intend to show up. With a good attitude, ready to listen, ready to be engaged, share energy, and just see what happens, I can set that intention. I just can’t set the expectations. Most of our problems are created by all the expectations that we set.

One example is driving. How do you feel when you’re driving most of the time?

Yeah, yeah. Unconscious.

I think most people do. I know a lot of people get angry when they drive. Oh, right, and I’m saying, “Why are you angry?” Well, everyone else should. I think it’s a cuss word. They should be doing better. They should be doing it. This should accomplish that. It’s saying, well, have you ever made a mistake while you’re driving and they’re saying, “Well, yeah, you know that happens.” It’s saying, well, you’re willing to give yourself grace. But not the grace, and they’re saying, OK, OK, tell me more. I was saying, “When I go driving, I expect everyone to cut me off, stop short, and move in without signaling to be complete chaos.” So, and that doesn’t. I have a lot of driving experience.

What you’re describing is ego. Control how we allow our ego to control us. See our ego? It wants us to feel less than or greater than, but it never wants us to feel equal. 

Our ego never wants us to be in the present. moment or ego wants to think about the future, which will never exist, or the past, which no longer exists. But it doesn’t want us to. Be fully conscious in this mode. Because it is when we’re not in the present moment when we’re not focused on the present moment, it becomes that much easier for our fears to control us. So, we become enslaved by our fear. And as you go through the process of developing your emotional intelligence, it creates a distance between who you are and who you think you are, so it creates a distance that separates you. From your ego. So, you’re not going to change your ego. But you become the observer of your ego, so that’s my ego. Let’s not, you know, ignore that. That’s just that’s not who I am. 

We are not the thoughts that we have in our heads. That is not you as aspects of you having a conversation. right? It’s so interesting that when we actually and truly observe how, as you said, it changes everything in an instant. 

If someone walked up to you and slapped you in the face, what might you do? I wonder why that happened? That’s one result. Some people would say I’d hit him right back, or some people would say I would run away scared because as soon as someone put their hands on me, they’ve got to get out of there. 

Some people would freeze, right? The amygdala responds to all of it. We can create the consciousness at that moment to have and make the choice to choose different outcomes. And most people don’t follow it. 

Let me just let me jump in here. And build on that. Somebody slaps you in the face. That person slapped you in the face. Is he expecting you to respond? OK, they need you to respond for them to keep their walls up. But if you don’t respond, if you keep your walls down They have nothing for them. They have nothing to fight against. 

They need you to raise your walls so they can keep their walls up. And if you don’t have the emotional intelligence to lower your walls. It creates mutually assured destruction. You can fire your IKBS I launch my IKBS with mutually assured destruction. We must defuse the situation. Is it that somebody needs to lower their walls first? And that is the person with the higher level of emotional intelligence. The higher the level of consciousness, the more inspirational the leader is. That creates a feeling of safety within the organization, which builds trust. 

You see, when people attack you, the solution is not to fight back. Let me read you something. From an article, I just published some time ago, this kind of talks to the next time somebody criticizes or blames you. 

Instead of defending your ego, do nothing. Let the remarks simply wash over you. Allow the false image your ego has created to remain diminished. Become aware of the uncomfortable feeling this is creating. You are now. Begin the process of separating yourself from your ego. You have stopped feeding your ego. The truth is you have not been diminished. You are becoming more conscious. You’re beginning to realize that there are fewer rotations. You’ve become more by becoming vulnerable, you are discovering your invulnerability. The false image of Your ego, the creator of who you think you are, is gradually being replaced by who you are. A leader who is emotionally intelligent and inspiring.

It does. So, you’ve been running this program for master’s business leadership. You’ve had all levels of executives go through this. This resulted in $1.5 billion worth of revenue. What would our world look saying if everyone went through your program? 

Heaven on earth. Heaven on earth.   

It would eliminate war. It would eliminate drama and chaos. It would create a win-win-win. It would enable us to deal with things like climate change more effectively. 

It would be amazing.  

You mentioned that drama, chaos, and conflict all come. As a result of the same concept. What can you dive into that a little bit deeper? 

Before we started recording this program, we were talking about. The underlying root cause. Of all dramas, chaos, and conflict you want me to want. To go through that.  

Yeah, please. 

When we’re born, we’re not born with a conscious mind. Our conscious mind does not come in until we’re about a year or so old, but we are born with an unconscious mind. And we immediately start creating the habits, wiring up our brain and creating the neural network pathways in our brain to survive, get food, fit in that kind of stuff. and a lot of those habits. 

Unconsciously, this causes us to give away our energy. And we do it in a myriad of ways. How we communicate, listen, take responsibility, and make decisions in all sorts of ways. But when we, when we’re unconsciously giving away our energy, it creates an energy deficit in us. So, at the same time, we’re giving away our energy over here, we need to replace that energy. By trying to steal the energy from other people over here. And that dynamic is going on inside of everybody in the world all the time. And that is because of the drama, chaos, and conflict we experience. Drama, chaos, and conflict are a result. 

This process of unconsciously giving away our energy creates an environment that makes it easier for us to try and steal the energy of other people. But drama, chaos, and conflict. It triggers other people to raise their walls and give away their energy more easily. Then if there is no drama, chaos, or conflict. That makes sense. 

So how do we stop giving away our energy? 

By developing habits that Stop using that current and how we communicate. It’s the NBL program. I show people how they’re giving away their energy in their communications and I give them better habits to practice stopping doing that. So, it’s kind of like you’re plugging up the leaks in the damp. And when you do that, as you do that, your results go through the roof. You become more emotionally intelligent. You become more conscious of what’s going on in you and around you, and you become a more inspirational leader. And that leads to remarkable results.

Which is exactly what we’re hoping for. What we’re striving for every day in this world. 

Yeah, it’s the challenge. It is hoped, not a strategy. The truth is, this process works like hell. It’ll work for anybody at any age, doing anything anywhere in the world. But it’s hard. It’s hard because I mentioned it. The resistance we must change So it comes back to the initial question. You must develop an emotional driver an emotional attachment to the outcome That’s stronger than your fear. Because without it? You’re dead in the water. 

But you will not be willing to do the work. That this requires. You describe before we started recording that there’s a group of people that have this desire. Put above all their fear. 

Who’s that group of People or their company I was talking about. 

I think you said, entrepreneurs. 

Oh yeah, yeah, sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Entrepreneurs are folks that have that emotional drive. That desired result, that emotional connection to the desired result, catapults them out of their comfort zone and through the fear that creates two common examples. Tommy Edison invented the light bulb. It took him over 1800 experiments with that light bulb and somebody said, “Jesus Tommy, that’s a lot of fail failures in the world did you ever manage to put up with all that failure? He says, “What do you mean?” he says. I just learned there are 17,199 ways not to make a light bulb. It was always about making the light bulb. I had no idea how my experiments would end. 

It was going to take the same is true for Walt Disney. He got turned down by over 2000 banks trying to raise the funds for the construction of Disney World. Eventually, he was able to get that funding and start construction, but he died before Disney World was completed. And somebody at his funeral just said that you know, is it too bad that Wall never got a chance to see his dream come true? Yeah, I said, well, yeah, he did because He saw before any of us. Because that’s what created the motivation for him to keep moving forward. To bring that into reality for all of us, that emotional connection to the desired result must be there. 

To begin the journey, that’s the starting point, and that’s the thing that all entrepreneurs have in common because, without it, they wouldn’t be willing to. To put up with all of Obtaining their desired outcome necessitates fear, anxiety, and failure.

Yeah, we see it every day. We see it on social media, we see it in our networks or with friends. People say I want to start this. A business might be social media marketing, correct? It might be Avon or Amway, or any of these things, and they want to. Get the money, get the funds, helped people in their network, or the Tupperware parties. This, that, and the other. And then you see him try, and you try again, and so on. I didn’t have that strong emotional desire and you see the last couple of months, it fell away. 

Yeah, and that’s the difference between I’m sure they wanted it intellectually, and I’m sure they had very good reasons intellectually for starting their business. But what is it they didn’t understand? It is emotion, not intellect, that drives the business. So, they didn’t have a strong enough emotional connection to the desired result that they wanted to achieve intellectually. So, they failed. Because the real barriers to change are emotional, not intellectual. 

That’s just so mind-blowing, I can’t even think.

Better if you prefer to wrap this thing up, then you’ve got to have that desire and it’s got to be emotional over in the intellectual bill. We’ve talked about an amazing amount of stuff today. We talked about your program, Master of Business Leadership. That gives you the emotional intelligence to create a higher consciousness. To create inspirational leadership, we talked about sources of resistance being in your amygdala habits and sociological barriers. To change what we talked about the solution to drama, chaos, and conflict is energy physics. 

Stop giving away your energy. So, you can raise your level of awareness. This has been phenomenal. Phil, I appreciate you being my guest on the show today. What parting words would you have for anyone listening, and where would you like them to connect with you? 

I would implore people to bet on themselves by developing their emotional intelligence. It will guarantee your success both in your career and in your personal life. And if they want to connect with me, if they want to meet on a Zoom chat, they can do so through my LinkedIn profile. I’ve got a link to my calendar on there, so they can just

Fantastic, we’ll have that link in the show notes. And if you love this type of discussion we have today, or nonprofitarchitect.org/resources, check out our ultimate and complete podcast guide. And Phil’s not the only one with a curriculum. We’ve got our college course, the Ultimate Complete Podcast Course, available on Forbes School of Business and Technology. There’s a link for you to take it right there at nonprofitarchitect.org/resources. Thanks again, Phil. 

Travis, my pleasure, thanks for the work you’re doing.