The People Currency: Practicing Emotional Intelligence | Jason Bridges | TEDxWabashCollege

[Music] so I'm a big movie buff I love me some sci-fi there's a great scene from a sci-fi movie with ten Robbins's in the movie title and the story the plot does it doesn't really matter for this this example there's a great scene where he has to go in to interrogate somebody so is he right before he goes in to question them he takes an empathy pill this heightens his senses and when he questions the person it doesn't only takes a couple minutes he knows everything they're going to do he knows what their next move is what they're thinking if they're lying or not I love this scene for a lot of reasons I watched a lot because I'm a sci-fi geek i watch my movies over and over again every time I see it it makes me think we can do this right now we don't need an empathy pill we can connect with people at a higher level to where maybe we don't need to interrogate them but we know where they're coming from empathy reading their body language all the things that encompass emotional intelligence we're in a people economy our currency is people the relationships we build at our schools how to work our community their churches at home that's what's important so I'm here today to talk to you about my story how I found emotional intelligence my journey of using it kind of teach it to myself how I structure it use it in my businesses and then hopefully give you something that you can walk away with and start applying the second the speeches over with this all started when I was 16 now I didn't take an empty pill but I know what you're thinking I have an aged in the day twenty four years ago that was me a 16 good old prom picture got to keep those around so in October of 1991 buddy mine picked me up on the way to school and another friend and we took the same route we always took it had just got done raining so it's a little slick we were late we're late for school so we're going a little quicker than usual there's just one curve on this country road on the way to school that'd be taken a hundred times before but we lost control of the car we hit a telephone pole it takes two seconds to fasten her seat belt that morning I chose not to we were all rushed to the hospital I had five skull fractures which is what they call it an eighth shell fracture in my brain was hemorrhaging now what happens when your brain hemorrhaging is swells and that's when brain damage can happen so my family arrived to the hospital they told them to expect the worst that it might not make it there's nothing they can really do luckily the pressure released I was out of the ICU in a couple weeks into a regular bed out on a month out of the hospital and I walked out it was kind of we all felt it was a miracle there's the headline that day but I had lost some IQ I had lost my brain power I had had a little bit of brain damage I couldn't think very well I couldn't remember very well and everything was slower I was a straight-a student before the accident everything came quick everything was fast I had a great memory I was a great test taker just straight it stood it came quick now I was struggling for DS and everything was hard luckily I had faculty and friends and family who helped me through high school and it got me to college a really good college but I really struggled there the game is higher in college and that was tough but I got through it but as I was over you know through high school in college I had started to develop a little bit EQ because you know I couldn't play basketball for a while I couldn't move very fast I started watching more it was kind of forced to so by by this accident EQ kind of started to sink in as I needed it IQ what you get to you know high school age it's pretty much it's what you got now I never heard of EQ never heard of emotional intelligence but it was starting to kind of sink in by default so let's go back into a more educational area sits around a school and talk about what is emotional intelligence just give you a little background I like to refer to emotional intelligence as EQ I know it's confusing emotional quotient EQ that works to say EQ for the sake of this this speech so emotional intelligence if it's an umbrella it encompasses self-awareness understanding your emotions in real time if you want to regulate them not eliminate them but regulate them you'll understand them social awareness you want to interact in groups and reading reading body language reading those cues empathy understanding what somebody what it feels like to be in their shoes and then relationship building all these encompass and overlap emotional intelligence now you don't need to memorize this we're going to come back to it later ok so EQ was coined by this guy Daniel Goleman he in the 90s coined emotional intelligence as the single most important trait or intelligence to have it was twice as important as any other thing for leadership so the academic world coined it in the 90s 60 years earlier this guy who didn't call it emotional telogen s-- 1936 came out with how to win friends and influence people it's a blueprint each chapter is wide remember names how many people feel important why you shouldn't never try to win an argument to lose in the situation all these little things well this book was handed to me that was 23 and it wasn't epiphany for me I saw it as my golden ticket I didn't have the IQ I could never out test anybody I could never outsmart anybody but I could do this so I put everything in to emotional intelligence to this book and any other thing I could get into so I was in a service industry in hospitality definitely worked in restaurants I grew up in a restaurant and so I tried to apply this through my 20s and I started to get better and better at it the more I practiced it so in my 30s my wife and I started a bike tour company was really excited about this bike too we got to ride around the island people going to pay us to talk sounds a pretty good idea but I saw this as an opportunity to be able to teach emotional televisions or could I could I teach most intelligence in a business setting to one help my business succeed but to give the skills to the staff where they can go on have a higher purpose they can go on and be better at connecting with people so our mantra for our bike tours is be interested not interesting now it doesn't mean you shouldn't try to be an interesting person but it means to focus on those around you to not just look at body cues but ask questions be genuinely interested in those around you so we use that mantra for our bike tour company and how we interact with our community and our customers one quick example when a client walks up we don't wait for them to come to us we go to them you don't let them come to the shop say hey it's just those the bike tours but we walk to them we don't have our hands in our pocket so we're closed up we're out lied right hands out wide we're open right you want them to trust us we shake their hands and we smile we use their names and we ask questions that's the first two or three minutes of our interaction with our clients if that goes well liked or goes goes great but be interested not interesting we call it beanie it's just easier sounds fun beanie you can't beanie with sunglasses on you can't connect to people with sunglasses on so we incorporate all these little things into into beanie so after three years of the bike tours I was starting to feel more confident that I could teach this but this program that I had that I worked with my alma mater was with two interns would come and live with my wife and I and we would pretty much give him a 10-week boot camp of EQ and we use the business as the vehicle to teach this so after three years like all right we could teach this these guys are going in from from one week in ten weeks and they were they had learned the value of practicing this so at three years in we had an opportunity to start a coffee shop now I love coffee I like I love to be in coffee shops it's just a cool thing it's community but I saw an opportunity to try to teach EQ or use it and apply it put it into my business into my structure of our everyday life our daily operations to one connect with customers right which is going to help sales and all that but give our staff skills and this understanding of how they can learn EQ and apply it after they leave just they're not going to not going to work at our shop for for 30 years so one of the things we do is the name game so when bill comes in and orders a coffee he says his name we write it on the cup and we say his name out loud the bill we hand it over to make the drink when it's ready we don't yell out vanilla soy latte we yell out bill what does this do we only have 30 seconds to maybe three minutes with a customer in a coffee shop right it's not three hours on the bike tour we have very little time to connect so by hearing his name twice he's connected with us we've heard it we've written it down we've seen it we connected with them so if the coffee is good which I think it is he's going to feel connected he's going to feel good and we live in a touristy Iowan so I mean I'd receive bill again at least we made him feel good he connected with them so we use those things in our business to to connect to people make our business better better than they get to learn these skills so that's a small business example the bike tours right not everybody can can leave their life and come live with my wife and I for 10 weeks and learn this or come and work in my coffee shop so I wanna give you another example how another a bigger business uses this Google maybe you've heard of them Google all right so Google is really good at capturing data right and analyzing data they're pretty good at it and they're they were really really interested in what makes the best team it was usually get the best people makes the best team but it wasn't really working they couldn't figure it out as soon as they would see one team doing well another team would come up that's exact opposite and do just as well so they start a project Aristotle and they took their 51 thousand employees and they study them in all this data it was because they ate lunch together was it because where they were from was it because their background diversity everything they looked at and it came down to one thing psychological safety that's what made the most effective groups the people felt safe and trustworthy inside of a group they performed better what is that it's high EQ the group had a higher EQ right they can read body cues they understand each other they trust each other their patient empathy listening that's all EQ so when I read this all this research just like the movie scene it was like this it's EQ this is it so that's me in the smile challenge this is something that you're going to be able to do the second you walk out of here smile challenge goes like this you can start I like to start off on a Monday you have to make five people smile that you don't know the rules are this you make five people smile different people you can't say anything to them you can't touch them you can't dance form you just have to make them smile with your smile when they're not smiling make somebody smile with your smile when they're not smiling right this is a great way to practice emotional intelligence but some days you're going to try it it's going to look like that all right when you're feeling really good smiling making people smile is easy but when your energy is low it's hard good or it could look like that and that's scary you might scare some people it's okay you got to keep trying everybody really quick turn to anybody to your left your right and just smile don't say a word just smile that's it just smile okay thank you so the brain activity that just shot through your noggin was equivalent to eating 2,000 bars of chocolate so you're welcome well no calories no sugar low so and that's that's been proven 2,000 bars chocolate so going back to the smile challenge why do this I want to break it down back to the emotional telogen umbrella you're walking down the street in the days you don't feel like smiling that's starting to create self-awareness and you'll start thinking about why I don't know how hard it is social awareness kind of obvious you're looking for people not smiling you're connecting with them you're looking at their their cues right oh by the way we call this smile bombing relationship-building it's the very beginning of building a relationship with someone you never know when you're going to see them again right so you're looking for it in an empathy I feel my empathy growing when I do the smell challenge when I smile somebody and they don't smile back I get to the point now I think what happened in their life that I couldn't make them smile I don't think about me anymore so starting to create empathy so a smile challenge is just a really good way to get it started to get you going with practicing your cue I want to give you my favorite parable the guy in the hole guys walking down the street he falls into a hole the sides are so high you can't get out she has to wait for help soon doctor walks up doc doc can you help me out stuck in this hole no problem I just want to do write a prescription throw it down he walks on guys still stuck in the hole so he waits priest walks by father father can help me out definite just what to do prays and your walks on the guy still stuck in the hole so he waits and a friend friend walks up Shelley Shelley can help me out I'm stuck in this hole no problem I know just what to do she jumps in the hole said what are you doing now we're both stuck in this hole so he looks at him and smiles and says I've been down here before and I know the way out the connections we make with people will help us no matter what hole we stumble down we need medications right we need technology we need religion they're very important in our society but they're nothing without strong relationships and connecting with people the people currency I know you can all do this I know you can practice this and get better really really quick because I did if I can do it I know you can I want to leave you with this people are more important than the coffee we brew or the bikes we ride thank you [Applause] [Music] you [Music]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 295,062

Rating: 4.8431373 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Life, Intelligence, Social Interaction

Id: 7z0asInbu24

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 22 2017