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Welcome to Turning the Table.

This is episode 1 29, emotional Intelligence and Why You Need It.

My name is Adam Lamb and I'm joined by my co-host Jim Taylor.

Hey, Jim.

Adam, we are dedicated to bringing you solutions to the hospitality

industry's most persistent challenges.

We ask that you share the show with someone you care about who can find

this information useful and leave a.

As always, links to the videos and other things discussed in the show can be

found in the comments and the show notes.

Today we're very blessed to be able to bring in lead consultant for work culture

co consultant llc the Queen of Culture.

Britney Lenhart, she guides company executives to elevate

psychological safety for employees through the highly customized

emotional intelligence coaching.

Welcome, Brittany.

Hi, Brittany.

More

palatable.

Yeah.

There's, there are a lot of keywords jammed into that yeah.

First off Jim and I wanted to congratulate you on breaking

the 40,000 follower plateau.

That's a big deal.

Thank you.

That is a big deal and your content is always engaging and somewhat triggering.

I dig that.

I like anybody who's gonna shake the trees for someone else.

And before we get into the meat of the matter, we're going to we're

gonna do a little emotional check-in.

This gauge temperature gauge is courtesy for our friends@chowdocco.org.

And so Brittany, what they do is they use like meat temperatures as a way of

figuring out where we're at emotionally.

And of course, the question always is how are you really?

I'll let you kick it off.

Where am I

at?

I do like to.

Usually normally have my cows mowing while I'm eating.

Right now probably a nice medium

rare.

That's fantastic.

Jim?

Yeah I'm I'm pretty medium rare today too.

I'm pretty looking, we always talk about Brittany, we always

talk about some of the words that kind of go into those, right?

And content and proud and relaxed and all that kinda stuff.

I'm feeling pretty relaxed today.

I'm hopefully that we're gonna have some good discussion for

the next half an hour.

Yeah, feeling pretty good.

How about you, Adam?

I don't doubt that.

I'd say between medium rare and rare.

If you talked to me 90 minutes ago, I would've probably said medium well

to but there's something, but there's something about preparing for this show

that always energizes me and gets me back emotionally to where I'd like to be.

So welcome, Brittany.

We really appreciate this.

And just curious, let's kick it off.

How would you.

Can you give me a di some type of understanding of what you mean when you

mean, when you say emotional intelligence?

What does that actually refer to?

How does someone react to someone else?

Is it a quick way of are we automatically offended or are

we automatically looking at this from, are we deflecting.

Are we self-aware enough to know that most likely someone's projecting onto me.

And this is nothing to do with me.

Got it.

Interesting.

And you've got one great carousel on your site under the features portion

where it says How EQ changed my life.

Can you gimme an idea of what you were like before eq and

then EQ just shows up for you?

What was that journey?

Because we share common bond air force.

Yes.

10th.

10th services of RF Berry back in the day, oh, nice.

Yeah, I was a flight attendant, so I was cooking as well

for the sec death on the jet.

A little bit different, but I definitely can speak

to the culture of a kitchen.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

During Covid and the shutdown most of us as operators and

lost control of the narrative.

So everything that was coming out was God, how toxic does it, is it

for people working in the industry?

And I like to say that it stripped away the veneer of respectability for

the industry cuz it showed what was up and what was possible to change.

Jim and I I think were agreed that's the great reset instead

of the great resignation.

Yeah, I like that narrative's been to answer your question

please what I was like before.

Yeah.

I was defensive.

I was very defensive before.

I wasn't necessarily offended, I was offensive because I always

felt like I needed to be on guard.

Because.

Prior to doing the flight attend thing, I was in aircraft

maintenance, which is male dominated.

And I always felt like I had to overcompensate.

And and I was someone who was a very hard worker and I have many witnesses

that will attest to that, but I was exhausted from always feeling I need

to overcompensate, even though I could run circles around a lot of these

dudes when it came to being a mechanic.

But, So a, anytime anyone questioned me, I was like, are

you questioning my work ethic?

Are you questioning how good I am?

Like, it was always like that when it was just years worth of frankly

sometimes being questioned just because I was a female and I'm

not even a feminist, but just.

That's where I was there.

It also changed my life in like personal stuff.

Because I'd get defensive or offended with a partner because of like how they

said something or what they were saying.

And instead of taking everything as an attack, now I step back and I'm like,

maybe you just had a crap day coming.

You had a crap day at work.

And you're coming home and projecting that to me has nothing to do with me.

So we can unpack that now so it's helped me a lot personally and on the work front.

And where

did EQ come into your life?

Exactly?

Was it a course, a class that you had to attend?

I'm interested Yeah,

it's actually more spiritual.

Please.

Yeah.

I'm not like religious, but I'm spiritual and I just started

to learn a lot more about.

Through, you're gonna people laugh, but like astrology and things like that, the

deeper versions of it, and it's more, and you can use anything, whether it's Tony

Robbins, astrology, religion, whatever.

As long as you're using something as a self-development tool, it doesn't matter.

And with certain things in astrology or spiritual space, I learned like

I had these weak points within myself that I didn't just go, oh

I'm an asparagus and deal with me.

It's more I am this way and I don't have to be, I need to change that.

And somehow emotional intelligence.

I've read some books I didn't take any chords or anything, but I just

realized that self-awareness in the spiritual space is important.

I have to realize that I can't use past traumas in my life to hold me stagnant.

So

well said.

You're singing our song, sisters.

Yeah.

Really.

How did Brittany, you and I haven't had really a chance to connect much

before, and I've already learned.

Cool stuff from you for one, I did not know that you were an airplane mechanic.

Yeah.

So how can we just stop there for a second?

How did you get from Airplane mechanic Air Force that type of stuff to

helping corporate culture improve?

It is a segue but like all of my like degrees are organizational management.

I started my PhD but then I dropped it so I could focus on my

business because No thank you.

I don't wanna do my PhD.

But it was just always a passion for me.

Even when I was in the Air Force.

There's always these leadership development classes, things like that, and

it always got the people going for me.

And since I've seen such toxic environments and such, But

I've also had great leaders.

I have had blue collar experience and white collar experience enough

to be like, I know what works.

Even if I was on the front lines, I know what works and what doesn't.

And then as I've grown in my career and advanced, like I've seen it from so many

different levels and so many different industries, like the, it's the same theme.

If you have great leadership, you're gonna have high productivity and just like that.

But if you have management.

It's not gonna go well.

So it's, it doesn't matter the industry at all.

And it's when you were talking about your experience in being a mechanic and

having to be tougher than all the rest of the men, I'm reminded of so many women.

Who I've worked with in the hospitality industry that

basically said the same thing.

Yeah, we can't take days off.

We can't do we can't work any less than because everybody's ready to

jump on us and and bring us down.

And like my very first chef was a fe, was a woman.

My very first sous chef when I became a chef was a woman.

So I've had up close and intimate experiences with how difficult our

industries made it on them which always sensitized me to make sure that that they

had space to grow, that they were seen and heard and valued and things of that sort.

So when a company hires you, Are you specifically only working

with, say, management level?

So your

execs C-suite?

Yeah, because at the end of the day culture comes from, sorry,

think I just run over my dog.

Culture comes, don't do that, right?

Sorry, baby.

Culture comes from the top and it can be influenced a bit from the bottom, but at

the end of the day, if the top doesn't buy into the culture especially if

it needs changed, nothing is changing.

Like you are not managing up to a narcissistic person, then

they're doing that long T-shirt.

Okay.

It's not gonna happen.

But from a positive place like you, if you want a good culture, the top needs to

want it and it needs to be trickled down.

Sure.

And so that's why I focus on C-Suite because they have the power

to make or break their own company and I can't work here and make

resolutions to culture fixes or

So what's the biggest, what's the biggest holdback that you see?

What's the biggest sort of roadblock that companies run into when it

comes to EQ and culture and what's their challenge that you find?

It's common?

It, even if the top does buy in their middle management doesn't have the

training needed to it's like right people in the right seats, you can't just throw

people into supervision managing people jobs without some type of training.

Like this is there's management and that you manage things, but you lead people.

And if you suck at people in, you're probably not the best

person to be leading people.

So you have give them the tools they.

To be good leaders or else they're just thrown to the wall.

Some people are innately more just leader type people, but there

are people that can be, at least some, can be trained to be better.

I know you don't want to give away all your secrets, and we

wanna make sure we protect some of that for you, but thank you.

I'm curious how do you impact change there?

Because that's what you said about leadership at the top is

obviously that needs to be the first thing and then there's this

opportunity in the middle level.

How do you impact that change?

And I met less.

I guess change and more about building a foundation in which you can grow upon.

So like when I work with startups, I build out their mission and

vision and values with them, so that's like their starting point.

Cause if you don't have values to live to, you can't make the mission,

which is the battles to which is the vision, which is the war.

Like you have this.

You have to have those, but they have to mean something.

They can't just be BS on a.

They need to mean something, then you can hold people accountable to all

these things, these values, are you upholding these values and being good

at your job because you need to be good at both or you're out like, and

this is also gaining, helps gain and retain people because if per people's

personal values align with what you.

Have as a business value, like most likely you're gonna be able to retain

those people cuz they're gonna be happy and you're gonna weed out people

that are like, oh, this is I don't know a brand new startup restaurant.

I don't know if I have that in me.

There's you sure There's certain people with certain personalities, like you're

gonna want to detract people who are not your vibe for a lack of better term.

So there's that.

And then there's the people who businesses that are already established.

And I usually go from good to great.

I already I got my clients are all people who already understand

that culture's important.

They just want to be the best in their industry so that they're

feeling their competition's talent because the culture here is better.

So I do employee surveys to that are like actually effective, not just people like.

Not even taking them because they're scared of retaliation, things like that.

And I get these candid answers so that we can make an action plan that

is actually communicated and then that helps with the culture too.

So you're actually starting with the associates first

with the employee surveys.

Correct.

And then get that, then do an executive debrief.

And now that I've given you the swot, Of what your people have said, cuz

your people are your best consultants.

They're gonna, they're the ones in the thick of it.

So once we get that, now we have to make the game plan.

And you actually have to follow through with it.

And that's the biggest thing with culture is the follow through.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

And so do you spend your time mostly with, Like, where's the

biggest opportunity with culture?

Is it in startup?

Is it in bigger companies?

Is it in 5,000 employees or more?

Is it in a certain industry?

I'm curious where's the biggest gap you think in?

I would say in the us but for us up here in Canada too it's

probably close to the same.

I mean my people are startups and in mid-size, you.

Hundred to 500.

And then anything past that's when it start.

I feel like the gaps, like once you get, start to get in, these really

big companies, executives get further away from their frontline, right?

And that's the biggest gap.

Now when you were talking about vision, mission, and state vision,

mission and values you referred to them as something else.

What was that?

He said the mission's, this, the vision's that values,

so the the values are what you li live by.

Correct.

And then the mission is the battles that you're winning, and

then that's the mission is the

war.

So that's an interesting win.

The vision is the war, the mission is the battles and the values are

what everybody, like the common values that everybody can cling.

All right, cool.

When you're in the thick of it, it's always going back to what are our values?

And what is our why?

And it, these are, this, the mvs I call it are will incentivize people.

And it's what always come back to you.

Like you never, if you're in this funky business situation where you

gotta make a call on something, right?

All right, go back to this.

And if it's not aligning with any of those, like there, there's your.

I've heard people say things like vision, sorry.

Values are what you hire and fire people based on.

Would you agree with that?

To a point, a fairly extreme way to, to word it.

But that's, I've heard lots of people say that before.

Again, it's if they're, Good enough.

If they were done well enough in the beginning, you absolutely

can hire and fire off those.

Yeah.

Because say you have a great, and they always say salesperson, unfortunately

when they talk about someone, like they're pulling in all these numbers

and they're great, but say teamwork was something that was like essential

for your business and that's a value.

But they're complete dog due with communication.

And they're actually they have terrible eq.

They communi, they yell at people.

They, they just bring everyone down.

We're gonna fire them because if you can't be a good teammate and do, you

know you need to go because you're, you might have good numbers here,

but now all of our numbers here, because everyone can't stand you.

And there's all these issues is faltering.

So in the long run we're gonna be better off.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

And did you correlate the why with the values?

I definitely think they should all like interlink, right?

The why the why comes down to like, why did that founder,

like why did you do this?

Why did you get into this?

Let's talk about the you, this is personal because it's going to be what

keeps you afloat when ish gets real,

right?

And do you see Not quite sure what would be more frustrating to go in

and do the work with the C level suite folks and see that it's not followed

through on or to, so far has everybody that you've worked with basically

taken what you've given them and run with it and become successful with eq?

There was this one, and they also tried not paying me, so we can already see the

type of people we're working with here.

They, there was an executive who knew that I was like, what I did was needed, right?

She saw it.

But her other partners did not think that there was any value.

They didn't think they had a problem.

They had a huge problem.

Huge.

But That happened and she got fired and then everything I did, they

didn't do anything with what I did.

So that place is still a hot mess.

A r i p, best of luck, whatever.

We eventually settled, but there's, it just, that's again, ideal clients

are important for any business.

But also that was like a telltale sign of like how that went down.

Look at how your executives are.

To other professionals so what I saw when I was at that place, doing a deep

dive cultural assessment over a week, seeing, talking to hundreds, like 300

people there was a lot going on there.

But again, if the top end in alignment, best of

luck.

So I don't wanna oversimplify it, but would you say the basis

of IQ is basically immature?

An immature person becoming mature in their professionalism.

Yeah.

Emotional intelligence isn't definitely ma mature, it's just maturity just maturity.

You have to realize that not everything is about you.

How are we regulating our emotions when, like, when we are being, for a

lack of better terms, triggered that there could be something even that

you're dealing with at work that stems back from your childhood of you.

Sure.

Something.

And if you don't unpack all that and do some self work,

you're not going to improve.

So these things have to happen also on your own time, your growth, but

knowing how to regulate that and having the tools to regulate so that you can

first be like I can tell I'm being triggered instead of acting upon that.

And normally coming out of pocket like I used to, I'm gonna

do something different now.

Yeah.

And then it kinda, it grows from there.

And it's not overnight.

You gotta it's like practice name thing.

You gotta.

It reminds me a lot of my own journey.

When I finally sta started taking on my own work back in 2011 and unpacking

everything, it took me there's moments now where I still get triggered, but

now instead of being like, checked out for a week or a day or now, it's e

the best parts is being able to be triggered in the moment and not react.

And then just shift into, okay, this is not about me.

How else can I start relating to this situation?

And it's an, like you said, it's an ongoing process.

So

How do you, stupid question, but how do you gra take an immature

manager and make him mature?

They, sadly they have to have.

The will, ah, be better if they're ego.

Cause you have to have some type of ego death in this entire process.

You have to know that you're not perfect.

You have to know that you have room to grow and.

I've dealt with maybe like when the executive coaching space with this EQ

stuff, like if you don't feel like you have any room to grow and you can't be

better, we have nothing to say here.

And I don't even waste my time and my energy because someone

else wants to be better.

So that's a big step is that you have to understand that

everyone has room for growth.

We're never done learning, we're never done growing.

But if you think that you're all done, best of luck with your

relationships.

So you would actively walk away from a proposal if they're not

actually willing to do the work.

100%.

Because at this point, I'm all about energies and then the universe is

going to give me, there's gonna be tests out there, there's whatever.

And if I take on.

People who don't wanna be fixed.

I'm wasting my time and energy and money where I could be putting it somewhere

that my, in the influence that I'm trying to do with like my philanthropy

side of my business is mental health.

Q helps mental health and it, when your people are in a better mental place,

the productivity is going to be higher.

So everybody wins.

And and like culture is how do you feel on Sunday?

Do you want to, are you just oh my God, ugh, I don't wanna go in tomorrow.

Is that, how is your vibe?

Or are you like, I, whatever.

I gotta sleep and I get to see homies tomorrow.

Cool.

There's a difference,

right?

So in, in wanting to make sure that we, that people who are listening to us today

and down the road have really good idea of exactly how you can make an impact

and have some good, strong takeaways.

What's the first thing that you always recommended a company?

And like you said, a lot of your clients, they already know that they

need to improve their culture or they already have good culture, they

just want to be a really ramp it up.

What's the first thing you recommend that they consider?

For my besides call you.

Oh, besides me.

Besides me I would say that they need to ensure that their mission,

vision, and values are something that they can uphold a standard to.

Is it something that incentivizes people?

What your all y'all's, why is it good enough?

Because if.

You guys gotta do something and then hopefully call me.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I got

it.

You definitely you definitely stand out in terms of AB and I were talking

about this before you knocked on with us.

You definitely stand out in the space I hope people are calling

you.

I appreciate it.

Thankfully LinkedIn has been great.

That's how I get my inbound.

I'm starting to actually my goal is to get into.

Merger and acquisition spaces as well.

Because 90% of mergers and acquisitions fail.

That's a huge number and there's billions of dollars.

And guess what?

A lot of the case studies, it's, they didn't merge the people good enough.

Sure.

Yeah.

Those are unfortunate situations when half the company gets pink slips, right?

Because they're merging together and they're not doing it in a way

that's actually lifting people up.

What's one other, so we're all about solutions.

We'll talk about the problem, but this shows all about the solutions.

So if there was somebody listening to this, what's one thing that

they could probably take away and at least try if they were walking

back into their organization?

Self-awareness.

If you're having, if there's certain employee issues that you're having

personnel issues and they're very, oh, why are we still dealing with this?

Alright, time to have some self like reflect, go in, is it me?

And that's a big thing with leaders.

They're the first ones to go inward.

Is this me?

Am I.

Could I be communicating better?

Could I be doing this better to give them the tools that they need?

Do we need more mentoring?

Do I need more touchpoints?

Like it's, you gotta go inward first.

And that's my first thing is you gotta go inward to fix outward.

And that's just being an in self-inquiry.

Okay.

Cool.

Cool.

Sounds it's easier said than done and it's like we all think we know that.

Absolutely do it.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it also helps to have a guide along the way, right?

Because I know for myself, I can get in my head so many times and just

be running around, like running in a circle, trying to find where the

corner is and and just keep running around with the same thoughts.

And it helps to have an outside perspective to be able to shift

a lot of that conversation.

I

think to add to that, like always go and think about the worst manager you've ever.

And make sure you're not doing anything like that, right?

Like you wanna emulate these great things, and that's

usually what people think about.

But some of our best leadership, less lessons are what the e not to be like.

And make sure you're not doing that, because then there might be things

you're like, oh my gosh, I am doing that, and so micromanaging or whatever, so

That's usually one that kind of sneaks up on people.

Like they don't even real realize that they're doing it until

they're like in the thick of it.

I was guilty of some of that stuff in my career and I think I can

actually firsthand experience attest to that process of look at the manager.

You don't want to be, because I remember going through that think.

Am I doing some of those things and maybe I should change some

behavior and that kind of thing.

So yeah, that's good advice.

Yeah.

That speaks to you.

Hopefully by the end of my career I wasn't doing that stuff anymore, but Yeah.

Speaks to you like you had the ability to reflect and try, you want to change

or insanity doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.

Something's gotta give and it might.

Yeah.

Yeah, without a doubt.

And Brittany if someone wanted to get ahold of you in

order to learn more about you

Best way to find me is on LinkedIn because my website is old.

I need to fix it.

That's my goal this year, I swear.

But yeah, LinkedIn, Brittany Leonhardt, and you will find me.

Fantastic.

Any, Jim, any last words?

I just, I think the work that you're doing is great and it's required and

it's I think it's keep going because I was talking to somebody the other

day about the whole Gen Z thing.

And gen Z's not crazy.

They just look at things differently.

And if company culture doesn't adapt to what the generation of the workforce

wants now companies who aren't willing to adapt are in trouble.

Okay.

No matter what industry.

I think the stuff that you're doing is very, Thank you.

It's

a Dr.

Dyer.

They're gonna be the next Blockbuster.

True.

Or Kodak for sure.

What was, who's that?

Dunno nothing about that.

Thank you very much Brittany Lenhart.

Jim, as always, it's been a pleasure.

This has been another episode of turning the table