012-Emotional Intelligence as the Backbone of Organizations

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Katie Trotter 0:02
It’s really important that we treat emotional intelligence as core infrastructure, not just a soft add on.

Adam Salgat 0:11
Welcome to Beyond the class from knowledge to action, the audio cast that helps Chapman foundation alumni turn skills into practical, intentional actions for everyday life. I’m your host. Adam Salgat, today we’re talking about a leadership differentiator that keeps showing up in the data and in real life. Emotional Intelligence, not as a personality trait, but as an operating system for how teams make decisions, move through pressure and recover from missteps. I’ve got a few quick data points to help frame this conversation. From Career Builder, 71% of employers say they value EQ over IQ. Research from talent smart, published by the World Economic Forum shows that 90% of top performers have high emotional intelligence, and globally emotional intelligence scores have declined by nearly 6% from 2019 to 2024 a trend researchers describe as an emotional recession, reflecting a global drop in emotional and relational capacity, with clear implications for burnout, resilience and retention. So the stakes are real and rising to unpack this and to show us what leaders can do about it, I’m joined by Katie Trotter, Chief program officer at the Chapman foundation for caring communities. Katie, welcome back.

Katie Trotter 1:47
Thanks, Adam. I’m happy to be here. And as you talked about in your opening and as those stats represented, it’s really important that we treat emotional intelligence as core infrastructure, not just a soft add on. In my experience, most leadership failures don’t come from bad strategy. They come from ignoring the emotional load required to carry that strategy. And when we can start to treat ei as the operating system, then we can stop relying on individual heroics and start really building some consistent, repeatable ways to handle tough moments

Adam Salgat 2:21
before we go any further, I want you to touch on something you noted there that most leadership failures don’t come from bad strategy. They come from ignoring the emotional load required to carry it. Tell me more what you mean by emotional load.

Katie Trotter 2:33
Yeah, it’s a lot of the things that you’ve probably seen firsthand. Sometimes it’s a decision that a team will technically agree to but no one really takes ownership of it just because they have hesitations that aren’t spoken, or sometimes those tense meetings where everyone knows that people are frustrated, but nobody ever addresses it. All of those things can really work against the strategy we’re

Adam Salgat 2:54
trying to do. Thank you so much for defining that a bit more for the audience. So I think many of us look at emotional intelligence as something that either someone has or doesn’t, but let’s get right into your big idea that emotional intelligence is not a personality trait, it can be a system. What do you mean by that?

Katie Trotter 3:14
Emotional Intelligence definitely can be developed. It might come more naturally to some, but even if we are people who don’t naturally have it, it doesn’t mean we’re off the hook, right? There are things that we can do. And emotional intelligence isn’t just this concept of being nice or being good with people. Don’t get me wrong. I think those things are incredibly important and even helpful in the workplace. But at its core, when we talk about Ei, it’s simply intelligence about emotions. It’s our ability to recognize what’s happening in myself, what’s my emotional reaction to this, and then also how those emotions play into relationships with people that we’re working with. It’s the ability to regulate under pressure, understand what other people are going through, to be able to communicate clearly and use that emotional data in order to make better decisions. And these are not abstract ideas. These are skills that leaders use, especially when the stakes are high and people disagree, which can happen pretty often.

Adam Salgat 4:15
Do you have an example of a time where you felt like ei came into play during a disagreement when maybe it was used in a productive way.

Katie Trotter 4:23
Absolutely. I remember many years back in a different role, that I was in doing a community convening where we had multiple different stakeholders at the table with a limited amount of resources. And so, as you can imagine, emotions were pretty high, and I remember a moment where an idea was proposed at the table that would very negatively impact a program I had a lot of a lot of buy in for a lot of hopes around. And so that emotional intelligence piece, when it’s not there, can look like me, maybe interrupting yelling over top, really getting into that argument space. This ei step. When we think about the ability for me to pause and recognize I am having a strong emotional reaction right now, and I know why, right this program is really important to me. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy around it, whatever that might look like, and then being able to better understand where the emotions are coming from for the other person, all of those things allow us just a better understanding and can bring the temperature in the room down enough that people could still work together and come up with a good next step. I love that.

Adam Salgat 5:29
It’s a great story and a good reminder that we are going to be having these emotional catalysts sometimes, and how this emotional intelligence will help us through those situations. And we’ve got even more discussion here coming up on how that works for organization and how we can help instill it in a culture. So what if an organization, though, just offers individual emotional intelligence training? Is that good enough for the entire organization and good enough for its culture on the whole Well, not really.

Katie Trotter 5:57
I don’t want to discourage anyone from doing it, because I still think there’s a lot of benefits for individuals receiving that type of training, but when you’re looking at an organizational impact, it doesn’t really cut it. It doesn’t meet the need. It’s a great first step. But when ei lives only within individual people, the culture becomes really mood dependent, or really dependent on who happens to be in the room around that work group. So you get a lot of inconsistency. And what we often see is that in spaces like that, a few people who are really emotionally skilled end up trying to carry that load for the whole organization.

Adam Salgat 6:33
I’m guessing that becomes pretty daunting on those individuals like I can imagine that it could lead to a lot of their over extensions of like their disc personalities showing up more often, and, you know, in worst case scenarios, major burnout, and they might even leave an organization

Katie Trotter 6:48
absolutely Adam. It can lead to a whole lot of over extensions that we see on teams.

Adam Salgat 6:52
So as an organization, helping individuals with EI is a great step in the right direction. But how can they make it sustainable?

Katie Trotter 7:00
In order to make ei reliable, you really need to have an intentional structure. This is things like having a common language, organizational rituals and systems that make emotionally intelligent behavior standard, supported and expected. And in those moments, that’s when we can start to see ei shift from Oh, helpful people skills to an operating system for the whole organization.

Adam Salgat 7:25
Okay, so let’s get into the meat of what you just mentioned there, and this is where we start breaking down information for the audience. Let’s talk about those three places emotionally intelligent operating systems show up in an organization, shared language, shared rituals and shared systems. Let’s begin with shared language.

Katie Trotter 7:45
Yeah, you can’t work with emotions that you don’t have words for. So when a team doesn’t have a shared language, people can end up circling around problems, starting to make a lot of assumptions, or just really avoiding the hard parts of the conversation. When we do have a shared language, right? Language around accountability, or language around impact versus intent, words for feedback or repair, suddenly those conversations that used to feel really heavy or confusing start to become really workable. Shared language is what really allows people to name what’s happening without blaming people or defensiveness, right? The shared language can take something that might turn into an argument otherwise into this is just something we know how to talk about.

Adam Salgat 8:29
And I am going to ask you to give kind of a shameless plug here. Tell me about our second foundational class.

Katie Trotter 8:36
Yes, this is exactly where our community serves become so incredibly powerful. Serves gives teams this common emotional vocabulary, gives words and frameworks to be able to recognize what’s happening internally and relationally, so that team members have an opportunity to kind of right, take that pause, slow down those initial reactions, and make a really intentional choice about how you want to respond, and when everyone on your team is using that same language, you don’t have to start to guess what somebody means, or guess what emotion they might be feeling. You don’t have to wonder whether naming something is going to make it worse. It just starts to become normal and predictable and safe, and that’s really the point. Shared language starts to create this common understanding, and that shared understanding is the first building block of having an emotionally intelligent operating system.

Adam Salgat 9:29
I love that idea of the building block creating that foundation. I know that over my years of interviewing organizations that we’ve worked with, common language is often mentioned as a significant benefit. Let’s move on to shared rituals. What can you tell me about their importance?

Katie Trotter 9:44
Rituals are really about turning all of these great intentions that we have and turning them into consistency. You as a team can have all the right language, but if you don’t have patterned behaviors, right we mean predictable ways that the team will begin. Conversations typical ways that we navigate tension or revisit decisions after they’ve been made. If we don’t have that, then emotional intelligence just stays in this theoretical space. Rituals is where we really start to make it real. When we start to put these rituals in place, what it does is it gives our teams a reliable path through discomfort, not by avoiding the emotion or smoothing things over, but by creating a way to move through the tough moments together. When we talk about emotionally intelligent organizations or teams, it’s not that they are pretending like challenging things don’t happen. It doesn’t mean, because you’re emotionally intelligent that nobody’s ever going to disagree or argue. What it does mean is that these teams and organizations have found a practiced way of responding when those inevitable, tough moments come up.

Adam Salgat 10:53
And again, I think our community serves is a great tool that we provide that touches on those rituals also

Katie Trotter 11:00
absolutely and what I love so much about serves is that it shows up in such a practical way, right? It’s intentionally designed around, how do we actually apply this in real life situations? The skills aren’t learned once and just left on a shelf. Instead, we really have opportunities to practice through those different skills apply them to real life situations that people are experiencing. It’s these really key steps and Adam, I don’t want to be redundant, because I’ve said it before, but this pause of learning how to regulate before we respond, being able to give words around the difference between what I intended versus what my actual impact was, and then that great opportunity to revisit decisions after emotions settle like those concepts are so critically important for the health of organizations, and those repeated practices is where we really start to see people experience a sense of predictability, which leads to psychological safety. Your team just starts to know. We just talk about things here when they’re tough and when something doesn’t go right, we repair, and when everybody’s emotions are out of balance or on the rise, we slow down and make sure that we’re making an intentional choice. And that’s really what I think emotional intelligence looks like in action. It’s not perfect behavior, it’s repeatable behavior that people all have a common language around. Awesome.

Adam Salgat 12:20
All right, so shared language sets the foundation. Helps us talk about what matters. Shared rituals help us practice it, put it into action. But there’s another piece that really determines whether emotional intelligence becomes part of a team’s culture or just something that we talk about in training, and that’s the systems we build around people Katie help us understand what shared systems looks like when ei really becomes part of an organization’s

Katie Trotter 12:48
operating model. Shared systems are where emotional intelligence becomes a part of the organization’s backbone. The systems are that subtle force that really alert people or teach them about what actually matters in this organization, it’s paying attention to what gets rewarded, what gets reinforced, and also what gets measured. And when ei starts to get woven into systems like hiring and onboarding, leadership development, feedback loops in those spaces, it starts to send a really clear message, and that is that regulation, empathy, accountability and intentional communication matter here. And the beautiful thing is that leaders don’t have to guess whether emotionally intelligent behaviors are valued, because the system is already reflecting it. For example, imagine an onboarding process that teaches new hires how to name emotional context before problem solving, or maybe that in your performance review, it’s included not just the outcomes, but also how someone is contributing to the team’s emotional health. Or a hiring process that looks for self awareness and curiosity and not just a technical skill. That’s when ei starts to go from this thing that we just talk about to a capability that we’re intentionally developing within people. That’s how emotional intelligent operating systems and emotionally intelligent organizations sustain themselves. They have to have all three. You need the shared language so people know how to talk about it, the rituals where it becomes an expected thing to talk about, and a system in place to really make sure that it’s integrated throughout the entire organization.

Adam Salgat 14:30
Katie, thank you so much for walking us through the three ways organizations take emotional intelligence from the burden of individuals and bring it into the backbone of organizations. And if we’re working toward emotional intelligence as a system, then like any system, it can be upgraded. We don’t have to overhaul everything at once, though small, intentional shifts can strengthen the way a team operates. So let’s walk through what you call the five upgrades for an emotionally intelligent culture practical. Actions leaders can start using this week. So number one, name the emotional context before big decisions. What does this look like in real meetings?

Katie Trotter 15:11
First of all, Adam. I just want to say I so appreciate this part because there’s a lot of theory around emotional intelligence, but I love the quick takeaways of what do I actually say or do to make this happen, and one of the very approachable ones is this idea of naming emotional context. So let’s just give a couple examples of what that might sound like. So you could start the meeting with just kind of a quick feelings, check a check in on where people are at. And that might look like, Hey, before we move forward with making this decision, just want to check in. What are you noticing? Sometimes, if there are people on your team who are not as comfortable with the emotion language I can sometimes do, I just want to do a quick gut check. Or what is your initial reaction? You’re just trying to surface some of those things in a very normalized way. If people aren’t bringing it forward in a meeting, you might reflect back emotion themes that you’re hearing as people are having discussion. You might say something like, I’m starting to hear kind of a sense of urgency that people are feeling, or it sounds like some fatigue is set in on this project. And then the third one would just be normalizing emotions as data, so letting people know that bringing their emotion into the room isn’t going to drive the organization’s decisions, but it’s helpful information, right? So something as simple as, all right, we’re not voting with the feelings, but we want to account for them, because we want to be aware of what they might be noticing.

Adam Salgat 16:33
Okay, let’s step into number two. You’ve mentioned this a couple times, and power of the pause always comes to mind, but we’re calling this number two, pause and regulate before you respond. What are some practical ways that you can do that? All right,

Katie Trotter 16:46
there are a few different ways that I see this done really well in meetings or in an effective way. Sometimes, when those voices start to rise, it can be a great opportunity for a quick two minute reset. So sometimes you might prompt people to say, All right, I can tell we’re at a point where it might benefit us to just kind of think through where we’re at with this. You could even have a two minutes of jot down your thoughts, and then we’re going to bring it back together. Sometimes it’s about pausing in a way that’s directing people’s attention. So you could use a what matters most here prompt in order to kind of reduce some of the noise, right? It’s not that everything else in the room that’s happening isn’t important, but how do we redirect the attention and focus back to the topic at hand? And sometimes, when those emotions spike really high, the whole decision might just need to take a break. We might need to table it for a minute. I think it goes over really well and builds trust in teams. When a leader might say, hey, I can tell that people have a lot invested in this decision. Let’s take the rest of the day to think through all the different dynamics, and we’ll come back together tomorrow.

Adam Salgat 17:49
I like that last one, the regulation break and and it’s something that I don’t think happens maybe enough in certain situations. But what I’m hearing you say is it’s okay to say it all out. Don’t be afraid to

Katie Trotter 18:01
call it out absolutely I think sometimes as leaders, we default to this idea that we should be able to make a decision right away, or that when emotions get high, we need to tell people the next clear step. And sometimes that can actually erode trust on teams, because we start to make decisions that aren’t as well thought through as what we need to so if we start modeling that to be a very normal, accepted, appreciated step within teams, you can often find a better path forward. Okay?

Adam Salgat 18:28
So let’s move into number three, build repair into accountability. Tell me a little bit more about this one, and share actions that we might see inside of it.

Katie Trotter 18:37
Yeah, Adam, we could talk about accountability all day long, right? We have separate standalone trainings around it, because it’s such a critical topic. The element that we’re focusing on here is this idea of within accountability, right? We’ve not done something that we committed to doing, or maybe what we did didn’t land the way that we had hoped. There’s the accountability piece, but within that, we have an opportunity to build in repair work. So adding this repair review is a great opportunity where we caused this unintended impact, and then we have an opportunity to build trust and to find a path forward. And this can be done using some really concise language, right? I’m sorry for X, the impact was y. And then here’s the concrete way that I’m going to change and these three elements, Adam, I just want to say them again, because they’re so important. The I’m sorry for x is the owning of the behavior that you did. By saying this is the impact it has, what you’re modeling is that I’m understanding what that did to you, or to your workflow or to your project, so you have that connection building. And then that third element, here’s how I will change, is showing that commitment of here’s what you can expect from me the next time we’re back in this situation.

Adam Salgat 19:56
This reminds me of our tips around repairing trust, right? And there’s. Whole audio cast

Katie Trotter 20:01
around that, yes, because a lot of times our default when we’ve messed up is just to say, Oh, I’m sorry, and then we move on, and then we’re missing out this huge opportunity to continue building a great culture.

Adam Salgat 20:12
Let’s move on to number four, separate impact from intent every time. What are some quick action items for this one? And can we script it? Is that something like, can we prepare ourselves and really script this out?

Katie Trotter 20:26
Yeah, we do not need to just dance around it. You can say, Hey, your intent was to help, but the impact landed as dismissive. So let’s just give a quick example Adam of of how that might apply if you have someone who really just wanted to be helpful so they jump into your project, they’re moving really fast. They take a bunch off your plate, and it it actually results in the project falling behind. When we have the conversation, I can acknowledge, hey, I know that your intent was to be really supportive, and for you know, for me to decrease my workload in this really busy time, the impact, though, that it had was that it actually created additional work on the back end, right, right? And what that can do for people is to allow them to see like, I see your intent, I see your heart, I see your good, positive, wonderful goal. And you still need to have this awareness built around how it’s actually landing with the team. So it’s a

Adam Salgat 21:20
concept of just separating impact from intent. It gives the opportunity to acknowledge someone’s effort make them feel seen and valued. Yeah. And one other

Katie Trotter 21:29
thing I love about that tool is it can also be an internal process that you do when your emotions get really high or you’re really frustrated with someone on the team, to really go through that mental exercise of all right, I am probably frustrated on the impact, like, what is the impact that is really bothering me? And then can you try to imagine, what do we think that person’s intent was, right? Where might that have come from? And sometimes that can even help regulate the emotions a little bit.

Adam Salgat 21:55
Okay, so let’s step into our fifth tip, our last tip, reflect together, not just individually. So I know you mentioned that individual reflection, but it is that opportunity then to bring that to the person, right? So reflect together, not just individually. Tell me a couple tips on how that looks, too.

Katie Trotter 22:12
Yep, these can be really simple and straightforward. Adam, sometimes it’s just at the end of the meeting, we’ve got two prompts, all right, what worked and how we worked together, and maybe, what will we try next time you also might be under a really high pressure moment or a really big project that’s getting wrapped up, take the time to run a quick 10 Minute debrief, really focused on the process and learning moments and opportunities, as opposed to trying to place blame on different people.

Adam Salgat 22:41
We have two upcoming virtual roundtables available for Chapman foundation alumni. April 16 is mastering nonverbals self awareness when emotions are heightened. Did you know that up to 90% of communication is nonverbal when emotions run high? This roundtable explores how to recognize and align your nonverbals so your intended message is one that actually lands on May 13, we have decoding emotions a guide to understanding your and others’ feelings, struggling to name emotions in yourself or others. This session helps you identify and label feelings so you can manage them more effectively in your relationships. By the end of each round table, you’ll gain strategies and practical tips from Chapman foundation facilitators, so you can start flexing your listening skills in new ways. Links to register for both of these round tables are in the description of this audio cast. Katie, let’s do a quick recap of how to make emotional intelligence an operating system and not just an individual’s responsibility. Yes, and

Katie Trotter 23:51
we covered three different things in that area. Adam, we talked about, number one, build a shared language so people can actually name what’s happening without blame. Number two, establish shared rituals so that good intentions can become repeatable even when there’s a lot of pressure. And then the third one was embed shared systems so that regulation, empathy and accountability are measured and reinforced and not just left to chance. Awesome.

Adam Salgat 24:20
Thank you for going through those three pieces that we talked about. Let’s also do a quick recap of the five upgrades for an emotionally intelligent culture. Number one, name the emotional context before big decisions. And number two, pause and regulate before you respond. And then for

Katie Trotter 24:39
number three, we talked about building repair into accountability. Number four, separate impact from intent every time. And five, take time to reflect together and not just individually.

Adam Salgat 24:52
Okay, Katie, time for your favorite part of every audio cast that we’ve done together for a handful of years. What’s the one level? Up opportunity for listeners this week.

Katie Trotter 25:02
I love this part Adam, because I think it’s where it all really starts to get applied out in the quote, unquote, real world. First, I would just say, level up by practicing naming the emotional context right, asking yourself and others like, what’s coming up for them? What’s their gut reaction? Where are they at with it? I think that just starting to get that comfort level with a conversation is great, and then I’m doing a twofer, because I also think it’s a great chance for people to challenge themselves, to pause for regulation. Can we get to that point where we can recognize my emotions are high right now, and instead of responding, I’m going to pause and make a really intentional choice.

Adam Salgat 25:44
Thank you so much for those tips and trying to get people to take action with these steps in a very concise way. This week, if you enjoyed today’s conversation I resonated with you, share it with a colleague or a friend. If you’re interested in learning more about the lessons in our community serves you can find out more with a link in our audiocast description. Katie, thanks again for bringing clarity and a clear path of action. So happy to have you on the audiocast again. Thank you for being here Always a pleasure. Adam, until next time, we’re inviting you to walk your path with intention, because you are the message, Take care, my friends. You.