Innovating Leadership:
Co-Creating Our Future

Resources:

Learn more about Joshua’s work at https://6seconds.org. His many books are available on Amazon.

Our host Maureen Metcalf posts a newsletter every week on LinkedIn. You can subscribe here.

Maureen’s latest book is Innovative Leadership & Followership in the Age of AI. You’ll find details about it at https://bit.ly/LeaderInAI, or check out the Kindle version at https://amzn.to/44buVz8. The audiobook version is now available at  https://amzn.to/4dTCleZ.

Her other 10 books are available on Amazon here.

Other episodes you’ll enjoy:

– The Human Energy Crisis at Work with Joshua Freedman

– What’s the Point: Why Your Leadership Needs Purpose with Ryan Gottfredson

– To Stop a Tyrant: The Power of Followers with Ira Chaleff

Guest(s):

Guest(s) Bio:

A staggering finding emerged from over a million emotional intelligence assessments: the world is in an emotional recession. Burnout, falling empathy, and disengagement are draining performance and well-being. Joshua Freedman, CEO and cofounder of Six Seconds, is on a mission to reverse the trend. For 25+ years, he has led the world’s largest EQ study (State of the Heart), advised global brands like FedEx, Shell, and the UN, and developed practical tools used in 150+ countries. A bestselling author; his 8th book, Emotion Rules (2026) equips leaders to transform emotions into actionable data that fuels trust, resilience, and results.

Transcript
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Maureen: [00:00:00] Welcome to Innovating Leadership Co-Creating Our Future. I’m your host, Maureen Metcalf, founder and CEO of the Innovative Leadership Institute. Today I am joined by Josh Friedman, a returning guest and one of the world’s leading experts on emotional intelligence. Josh is the CEO. Co-founder of Six Seconds and his work has helped millions of people and organizations navigate, change, build resilience, and lead with purpose.

Josh, welcome back. I am delighted to have you with us.

Joshua: I am thrilled to be here. Uh, I wish it was a more sunny and optimistic time in the world.

Maureen: I do as well and I will trust that you will bring us sunshine. How’s that for a high bar? Okay.[00:01:00]

Joshua: Sounds good.

Maureen: So let’s start with the, let’s start with the emotional elephant in the room. the recent uptick of political violence, according to the Economist, people are left feeling shocked, an anxious, and emotionally raw. From your perspective, what does this moment reveal about our collective emotional state?

Joshua: Well, our research shows that we’re pretty deep into an emotional recession, and I think that the political violence, the polarization, the increased, uh, loneliness, increased stress levels are all part of that emotional recession. And in this state, people are paying a hidden tax. On every interaction, every communication, uh, and the political violence, I [00:02:00] think is an outgrowth of the instability that we’re experiencing in the world more broadly and in our businesses.

Maureen: And so you say an emotional tax. Can you build on that a little bit? I have a sense of what that means to me with my clients, but the researcher and the expert in the room, what does that mean?

Joshua: Well, if you think about every interaction, uh, there’s some emotional work in that interaction. Uh, are we aligned? Do we agree? Uh, have you committed, did you RSVP to that meeting? Um, I just did an event. Uh. Recently at Climate Week, and we had, uh, 92 people confirmed. Committed, yes, RSVP and 40 of them didn’t show up, so

Maureen: Wow.

Joshua: that means I had to work harder to build that engagement.

I had to [00:03:00] follow up with people more often. I had to interact, I had to do more interaction than I normally would. This is true with every employee I interact with, every customer I interact with, every investor, every ally, every friend, every my own children, um, everywhere in my day, uh, I’m having to do a little more emotional work statistically than I did five years ago.

And that is draining. That’s work. And our organizational leaders. Are not necessarily equipped to to do that work, and we’re feeling it. We’re feeling the heaviness of it.

Maureen: So let’s you talk about in your State of the Heart report showing a multi-year decline in emotional intelligence globally, and I assume this is connected to the tax. What are the implications of this for business leaders? [00:04:00] Trying to maintain productivity and wellbeing.

Joshua: Yeah, it means if you are putting out X level of energy towards having a positive trust-based connected workforce, if you’re putting out the same X that you put out in 2019, your results are lower today. So if we think about emotional interaction, like building an aligned trust-based connected team that takes emotional work.

And today on average, you have to do more to get the same level of out output that that compared to five years ago. And so that means that in every space and place, every communication, every meeting, every. Event that you’re doing, uh, every sales pitch, it’s gonna be a little harder [00:05:00] to close the deal. It’s gonna be a little harder to get the commitment.

It’s gonna be a little harder to build that agreement. It’s gonna be a little harder to solve that, that disagreement. And that means that in, in our organizations, it’s, it’s, it’s both harder and more urgent to do the emotional intelligence work.

Maureen: Harder more urgent

Joshua: Okay, sorry.

Maureen: Do leaders have the capacity to do that work?

Joshua: I mean, what I’ve seen in our surveys and what I’ve seen anecdotally and what I’ve seen for myself is the answer is not really. Right, because we are also depleted. And I can tell you, I mean, even as somebody who has quite a lot of training in kind of the emotional [00:06:00] part of leadership, uh, I find, you know, I’m talking to employees doing more kind of firefighting, doing more.

Um, not counseling, but um, counseling. More, more, more, more challenging conversations than, than five years ago. And I did a little just poll about this and, uh, found something like 8% of people in my, in my poll said they had sufficient skills and training for the emotional challenges that they were facing at work.

Maureen: And aside from your assessment and going through your program, where do people get that training? It, it sounds like it’s, they’re not getting it from they’re not getting it from their schools, or We would have a higher percentage of people who have it.[00:07:00]

Joshua: Yeah. Uh, I mean, I think this is really the heart of the issue, Maureen, is there’s a deficit and we can see in many different research, uh, papers kind of showing these gaps between what we need in our workplaces and what we have. Um, I think a lot of people are, are, are turning to ai, which. I, I recently gave, uh, a bunch of AI tools, our emotional intelligence assessment to see what happened.

And AI is not very emotionally intelligent. Uh, it’s smart about a lot of things, but it, it’s not good with emotions. Um, I, and I think part of the, the challenge is that, you know. Most of us, uh, kind of look around and go, wow, you know, there’s a lot of emotional challenge, but there’s not a lot of emotional superstars out there.[00:08:00]

Uh, so I would say, you know, the answer is often coaching, um, going through training, reading, um, talking to your wife. You know, find somebody who sees things that you don’t see and say like, tell, like, help me understand what’s going on. Paying attention. Uh, my experience with senior leaders is they’re really good at solving problems.

Um,

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Joshua: a question of saying, okay, this is a problem I’m gonna work on solving.

Maureen: Yeah. My assumption is, and in my work I, I will often say, because I’m working with engineers or physicians or senior executives, often with technical backgrounds, you can learn to be a physician, you can learn emotional intelligence. It is a learnable [00:09:00] It’s some people may be born with a lot more of it or raised with a lot more of it, Just because you’re an engineer doesn’t give you a pass or a technologist that that it. There is a choice. I was just looking my laptop and I don’t have the file open, but there is a recent Harvard Business Review article, so either 2024 or 2025 most common uses of AI right now, and they are. Uh, many of them, um, human interaction type replacements, they’re not synthesis of data. Uh, and so your point that people are looking to AI as a companion or a coach, if it is not emotionally intelligent. does not bode well [00:10:00] because another one of your data points is that, um, with emotional intelligence are seven times more likely to be high performers. If I am, if that’s valuable and I’m going, I would certainly want my coach to be at least that effective If I’m going to an AI coach that doesn’t have emotional intelligence, I am likely not getting the support that I need to be as effective as I should be.

Joshua: Yeah, and I think that like all tools, right? Like we don’t, if, if you try to pound nails in with a screwdriver. It’s just not that effective.

Maureen: I,

Joshua: Uh, we need to make sure we’re using the right tool for any job. And ai, its strength is not in emotions, its strength [00:11:00] is not in wisdom. And insight beyond what’s obvious, its strength is in organizing data, in synthesizing, in simplifying, in seeing patterns.

And most of the ais that we’re using, these LLMs, I mean, they work through, uh, predictive tokens where they’re, they’re kind of making this average, like frequently. This phrase comes after this phrase. The AI doesn’t even, it doesn’t have meaning to the ai, it’s a pattern. Um, emotions are tremendously complex and we have, you know, millions of years of practice as a species to kind of tune in and connect with these emotions.

So what I would say is this, this rise in AI is probably a, a, a great opportunity for EI to say, look, we are gonna put certain tasks in this, in this AI bucket. We’re gonna make sure that the human things that humans [00:12:00] really do well and and do better than ai, that we make sure that we’re getting good at that.

Maureen: It completely makes sense that we use the tools to do what they’re best at and

Joshua: Yeah. Alice allocation.

Maureen: that they are ineffective at.

Joshua: Right allocation of resources, right? Whether those are human resources or AI resources or you know, whatever, use the right tool for the job.

Maureen: So let’s go back to the business case for emotional intelligence. ’cause I think Regrounding, we started with violence, um, in my, my sense of this. Is people, are people I interact with are [00:13:00] often, I think the example you gave, we are expending more energy to get the same output so they are more tired, not always burned out and exhausted, but more tired than they used to be, which leads to a little more overwhelm, a little less clarity. As a leader who is feeling that A And I think we’re both making the hypothesis that that is a general statement. It’s not my life or your life, it’s many people which could be driving productivity, it could be driving social unrest. Employee disengagement. I was reading about job hugging instead of job hopping, while people are hugging their jobs, they’re also more disengaged and less productive. [00:14:00] So I don’t want someone to hug my job if they’re gonna be disengaged, disruptive, unproductive or productive. And, and yet they still wanna raise at raise time. So it. I believe you’re making the assertion that for our leaders, being more emotionally intelligent will maybe not solve the whole problem, but help drive that solution.

Joshua: Yeah, in simple terms, uh, your, um, way of people connecting and engaging, which we could call the organizational culture and climate is shaped by your leaders. It’s something that you can intentionally build and this context, what it’s like to come to work and the way we, our norms and the way we we interact with each other affects the way [00:15:00] people get results.

And just like we can tune up, I dunno, a manufacturing process and use, you know, lean and go, okay, let’s measure these places where we’re wasting and we’re out of tolerance and we’re, we’re kind of leading to the wrong results in our manufacturing. We can do the same thing in our. Emotional context. The the human experience of work.

What’s it like on Sunday night? When you think about coming to work, what happens on Monday morning? Where are we squandering emotional capital? Where are we optimizing? Where are we introducing drag into this system? Where are we making it harder for people to come together and solve problems and make decisions?

Where are we making it harder to build trust with our customers? And let’s, let’s get the skills in place to be able to notice those things and fix those things. And because we’re talking about [00:16:00] this sort of emotional equations, the skills are emotional intelligence. So basically the more complex, the emotional challenge, the more emotional intelligence we need.

If you’re in a more relational business, if you’re in a business that’s got rapid change and transformation, if you’re dealing with a lot of, of human interaction points, if you’re, if customer experience is really important to you, if innovation is really important to you or if you’re trying to hold onto your workforce or you’re, you know, like you’re, like you’re facing these sort of human challenges that tells you the antidote is gonna be growing.

Emotional intelligence in the organization.

Maureen: So you’ve talked about coaching. I you offer a brilliant assessment that is much more complex than of the, the rudimentary things. I, I realize in some cases rudimentary. [00:17:00] Works. Uh, we start with the basics and then we go into more, nuanced when we’re talking about leaders and helping leaders evolve. Can you share maybe a few examples of things that have worked more through the lens of case study so that our listeners can hear? Um, beyond what we hear of the, the four buckets for emotional intelligence, um, might a listener really benefit from at this moment?

Joshua: Yeah, there’s a case study that we just published with, uh, one of the world’s biggest logistics companies, um, Kon Ngel, and. One of the things that we found, 81,000 people worldwide, 1300 offices. And one of the things that we found [00:18:00] is that when they embedded emotional intelligence, uh, across the leadership teams, that started to change organizational dynamics.

And that started to lead to employees reporting that they observed differences in the way that managers responded. At that same timeframe, operational effectiveness improved 66%. So what we’re seeing is there’s a link between managers growing these capabilities that transmits into the organization that creates more operational efficiency.

And it, it totally makes sense, right? Like if you think across this organization, we’re gonna have managers who are better with people. People feel that and they notice it, and then that leads to a smoother workflow. I, I, I kind of equate it to putting oil in your engine, right? And you’ve got [00:19:00] this, you’ve got this machine, whether it’s in your car or your manufacturing plant, right?

You’ve got this machine and the little red light is blinking and there’s smoke coming out, and nobody who knows anything about machines is gonna go, oh, I’m just gonna ignore that. Right. You’re like, no, I got, let me add oil. Let me do something. Let’s get the temperature down. Let’s get this thing working smoothly.

And so the same thing is happening on the people side. We’re seeing the smoke, you know, it’s coming outta people’s ears. And, um, the complexity is just, it feels really complex for people right now. So we need to, we need to add, add oil to the system. And, and in this case, the oil is the skills that every leader can develop.

To be better with the emotional side. I’ll tell you one more tiny case study. Uh, UCB Pharma, um, pharmaceutical company, um, did EQ training for their managers, [00:20:00] their field reps. They didn’t train the field reps. The field reps started interacting differently with customers. So what I love about that case is that it reinforces our, uh, theory of change, which is that when people start developing these skills themselves, that changes the way they interact with others, and that ripples out into the system.

And in this UCB Pharma case, just training the sales managers led them to interact differently with their employees, which led those field reps to build stronger relationships with customers. And I think that this, this is one of the reasons why growing emotional intelligence has a very high ROI.

Maureen: Yeah, I’m working with a manufacturing firm and we’re, doing leadership work culture work system work, and [00:21:00] I would say I’ve seen something very similar when we embed a different way of working with our teams. It’s not just. The leaders who change it is the entire organization. It, it is contagious. And in some ways I, in this organization, they went from traditional or legacy behavior to a, a much more engaged employee engagement. Um. Collaborative involved and away from kind of a command and control. Do what I tell you and like it or don’t like it, but just show up. Um,

Joshua: Yeah.

Maureen: and they’re a very good company, so I’m not criticizing, but it was a shift in, A lot of retirements, but a very deliberate shift in [00:22:00] how the new leadership team engages with their workforce. That

Joshua: Yeah.

Maureen: also allowing the psychological safety of bubbling up issues. So if I see a safety issue, I’m gonna raise it rather than. Um, saying nothing because I, I don’t want to, I don’t feel safe to raise issues. So, and the leaders who create the greatest psychological safety unfortunately become the problem, um, the complaint department and right now is as the organization evolves, what a blessing to have someone. Who is leading the charge in creating that psychological safety?

Joshua: Yeah, I, the research on psychological safety is profound, and I look at it from the lens of trust. [00:23:00] So trust is the emotion. That’s connected to safety, uh, psychological and physical safety, right? So when I feel trust, it means I’m perceiving their safety. And we can measure, as you know, we can measure trust, we can measure trust in a team, we can measure trust in an organization, and we can measure a leader’s capacity to engender trust.

And I would say kind of the new mm. Definition that I, I would suggest is that a leader’s job is trust. And if you,

Maureen: I,

Joshua: yeah, go ahead.

Maureen: I. Oh no. I was gonna ask, um, there are lots of trust equations.

Joshua: Mm-hmm.

Maureen: done the research. What engenders trust [00:24:00] from employees to leaders?

Joshua: Mm-hmm.

Um, we have developed a set of what we call pulse points that are kind of indicators of key aspects of, of performance, and so we have three pulse points for trust. Transparency, I think is. Pretty straightforward, right? Like, uh, we’re gonna share the information. We’re gonna maybe not share everything but what, you know, we’re gonna share a little more and we’re gonna not try to kind of play our cards quite so close to our vest.

An example of this is you have a, um, a company that’s going through economic difficulty. Everyone knows it. You see this group of senior managers walking [00:25:00] through the office and they’ve just been in a meeting planning a reduction of force, and you can see it on their faces and everyone sees it. And then you go up to those people and you say, Hey, is everything okay?

Uh, yeah, I, yeah, everything’s fine. Right? And you know, it’s not fine. Trust just went dropped. So that’s transparency, coherence. Is a maybe more unusual concept. Uh, it’s about walking the talk. And is there a match between what you do in this room and what you do in that room? Are they coherent? Is there a match between what you say on Tuesday and what you say on Wednesday?

And this kind of predictability? And interestingly, it doesn’t, you don’t have to be like the most warm. Empathic caring person to build trust. But if you’re consistent, if you’re, if you’re like Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, [00:26:00] right? People are like, well, which version of Josh am I gonna get today? That really diminishes trust.

But if you’re like, yeah, you know, Josh is kind of a little task focused and sometimes over analytical, and he bushes, but you know, that’s, he’s like that with everyone. Don’t take it personally. Um, people will still trust you. If you have the other two. So, and the third one is care. And I think this is the place where, you know, which is hard for a lot of organizations, but fundamentally trust is about, do you have my back?

And there’s an emotional experience that’s, that’s part of trust. And I mean, we could use the word love. Uh, I think care is a little more comfortable in workplaces, but do you actually care about the people who work for you? Do you actually care about this work? Do you actually care about your colleagues?

And again, it’s one of these things where [00:27:00] everyone knows it. It’s so deep in our DNA to to assess this because we are pack animals. This is a matter of survival. So even if you’re not consciously using your emotional intelligence, this is happening in the background and you are assessing every interaction through this lens of trust and care.

Is part of it? Does this person have my back? Do I matter as a person? And one of the things that I found wonderful about working with leaders all over the world is most leaders genuinely care about their people and they genuinely care about the work and they genuinely care about their customers.

Sometimes we forget to kind of bring that forward, but I’ve seen it there over and over and over.

Maureen: So how, because I see the same thing. I, I have the distinct pleasure of working with some really lovely senior [00:28:00] leaders and they care deeply, but they don’t. Voice that care, or find ways to the amount of care they’re feeling. I was talking to someone today who’s been out for a week and a half, hasn’t been home. He just got a message that one of his people had a seizure. He’s, instead of going home to spend time with his family, he’s going to the hospital in another state. To sit by someone’s bedside, and he, and he would do that with any of his employees. Fortunately, they’re not all having seizures, so, and, and he doesn’t have a. He’s not currently wired to behave in a way that shows care.

Joshua: Mm-hmm.

Maureen: and, and I assume many of our leaders are that way. What would [00:29:00] a leader do who’s very results oriented?

That they’ve, they’ve been rewarded for that and they haven’t yet developed the, the behaviors that demonstrate care. What? What would you advise those leaders?

Joshua: Well, what I always start with is, do you actually care? Like, is there something about this person? Is there something about this team? Is there something about this work that you actually care about? And what I, I can hardly think of a time in the last 20, 28 years where somebody said, no, I just really don’t care.

There, there have been a couple, but, um, sometimes it’s like, well, you know, I don’t like this about this person. I don’t like this about this. Okay, but is there anything you like? Yes, there is. Right. And so like, like we get beneath that surface stuff. And yes, I actually do, like, there is something I genuinely [00:30:00] like about this person.

So starting by tapping into that. And, um, there’s a little exercise that I, I do sometimes with, uh, in coaching, which I call, uh, authentic appreciation, which is, um, when you’re annoyed with somebody. You don’t, don’t have to say anything. You don’t have to do anything with anybody else, but just by yourself.

Just sit there and list the things you appreciate about the person and, and just go through it and just like keep circling back through things you appreciate about the person for two minutes. Uh, even if it’s just like, just there’re three. There are only three things I can think of, but you know, just keep kind of looping through those.

And what happens is you’ll feel this physical shift and it’s like the barking dogs of your annoyance will get quieter. And it’s fascinating how appreciation and gratitude create this physiological shift in us.[00:31:00]

Maureen: You know, I, again, I’m, this is just front of mind from today. I was talking to someone who was preparing for a difficult conversation and he was going through all the scenarios of. When this goes wrong, I’ll do this. When this goes wrong, I’ll do that. he hadn’t considered that there would be a positive scenario, like, what do you do when they do this?

Well, what do you do when you say this wasn’t working well? And they say, yeah, you’re right. That’s been worrying me too. Thank you for bringing it up. Instead of saying, shut up, you idiot. Which. The, I know the person he was talking to. He, he will acknowledge the issue. He also genuinely cares. He cares about the, the colleague and he cares about the workplace. And, and

Joshua: Yeah.[00:32:00]

Maureen: to your point, just getting ourselves physiologically, so we’re not walking in with fists up, we’re walking in. With a sense of resonance with the precious human being sitting across from us who is also trying to make it through the day.

Joshua: Yeah. And I mean, nobody steps out. Like nobody’s starting out their day saying, you know what? I wanna ruin Marines day to day. Right? Like, that’s not, that’s not how people are wired. Uh, so

Maureen: That’s good news.

Joshua: yeah, it’s good news, right? And like there is something this person cares about. There is alignment. It just, it’s like there’s just, there’s some friction, but underneath that there’s a lot of common ground.

And so I, I think we can lean into that common ground. We can lean into what we both care about. We can lean in defining, you know, that sort of shared space and then great things [00:33:00] can happen.

Maureen: So as a takeaway, and I realize we still have a little bit more time, but going back even to the political violence and, and, and a world that seems incredibly fractured, It. Now, I don’t live in the world of politics. I live in the world of business, so I’m not moving the needle there, but I do move the needle with the people I interact with and finding, to your point, even when I’m meeting with someone with whom I a bumpy interaction, or my last interaction was bumpy, even though I, I really appreciate them finding a path to be grateful. About who they are. What was the, what was the, they’re in my life for a reason typically because I appreciate a lot of things about [00:34:00] them. I’m fortunate not to work with people I think are are bad human beings. So for myself and for all of all of our listeners, how do I remember to be my best self when I walk into those interactions? And be grateful for the opportunity to interact with someone who’s genuinely a good person, even if they’re having a tough time.

Joshua: Yeah. Well, one thing is I, the, the president of Six Seconds, Annabel Jensen, um, points out that we leave emotional traces in every interaction. There’s a little ripple effect that we create in every interaction. So one of the questions that I encourage people to think about is, what is the trace you wanna leave?

You’re gonna go into this meeting, meeting’s gonna be over, and after this meeting, this person is gonna be [00:35:00] affected by you. What is the result you’re looking for? Uh, is it, you know that they wanna crawl under their desk and cry? Probably not. You know, probably you want some, you probably wanna lift something up.

Now you may want them to change, you may want them to stop doing some behavior. You may want them to start doing more of some other behavior, but probably you’re trying to, you’re trying to improve their results and you’re shared results. You’re probably trying to help them. So as you just think strategically and you say, okay, I, I want the, you know, I want the green ball to go into that corner pocket.

And so I’m gonna hit the white ball. I’m gonna interact with this person, right? I’m gonna interact with this person in a way that’s gonna lead to that ripple. So I, I’m a terrible pool player, but I, I like this metaphor of like, okay, all you do in cool is hit the white ball, right? That’s the only thing you do.[00:36:00]

You hit the white ball and something happens, right? But you have to be thinking, what do I wanna have happen next? What do you wanna have happen next? You know what? This person goes home. Because at the end of the day, how do you want them to be talking about this conversation? This a person comes into work tomorrow, how do you want them to be showing up?

You get to influence that. And the cool thing, Maureen, is we have a million chances every day to practice this. And we get to watch in real time and we go, oh, that didn’t land right. Oh, that person is kind of, ugh. Gotten, like it’s gotten heavier and I wanted it to get lighter and it got heavier. I’m gonna try again and just look at this opportunity of leadership as an opportunity that to have the ripple effect that you want and try it out and try it out and try it out until you get good at it.

Maureen: one of the phrases I use and it, and your comment sparks. [00:37:00] This in me is, I’ll say something and often I think I’m funny or I think I’m uplifting and I, I see the slump and I’ll say, real time, like your reaction did not match what I thought I was saying in my head. So. Let’s you know, reel it back. Let’s try over again.

What did you hear me say? Because I thought I was being funny and uplifting, clearly that was a fail. So being in genuine relationship and able to say, oh, your expression not matched with what I was trying to do. Or I’m giving constructive feedback and someone looks. Distraught,

Joshua: Yeah.

Maureen: willing to open the door to a deeper [00:38:00] conversation.

Like I want you to hear the tough feedback, but I want you also to come back tomorrow

Joshua: Yeah.

Maureen: work

Joshua: And,

Maureen: together.

Joshua: and in the context that we’re in, I think this is where this becomes so crucial, is that people’s barometer is set to, uh, more. Uh, threat, a higher threat level, right? So this, like

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Joshua: you deliver a message that you thought was kind of mild criticism, and they’re like, whoa, I’m devastated by that.

Partly that’s the relationship that you have. Partly that’s you. Partly, maybe you didn’t do that great a job, but partly it’s that the world that we’re in is leaving them discombobulated. You know, they’re in this place of disequilibrium and you just look, I’m in New York right now, and so like walking down the street, like you see thousands of people, a [00:39:00] lot of them are dysregulated, right?

On average, they’re less regulated than five years ago, and that means that this, this careful attention to the impact that we’re having and saying, oh, okay. I, it might not be, my intention might be X, but that might not be the impact that I’m having and I need to calibrate in this circumstance. In this context, I need to calibrate and probably I need to dial back a little bit of the intensity of my communic.

Maureen: You know, as you’re speaking, I’m thinking back to AI and what’s different between five years ago,

Joshua: Mm-hmm.

Maureen: we do have these tools that help us do some things, uh, research, data synthesis, and. [00:40:00] How I interact with humans has become more important. My skill in having a general genuine conversation in showing care. You talked about transparency and knowing what I can share. All of these things have become more important and, when I. Run into most people who are slightly showing slightly more disequilibrium than they did. If I want to be a good leader, I need to up my skills. I,

Joshua: Yeah, I, I think a lot of us feel stuck and a little helpless in this. It’s like, why can’t people just get it together?

Maureen: mm-hmm.

Joshua: And you know what?

Maureen: Yeah. Why can’t they, Josh?

Joshua: Well, [00:41:00] and, and if they could, they would have. Right? If they could, they would have, because they, they don’t wanna be in this place either. So I think it, it is incumbent on all of us to say, okay, we need to work a little bit harder. And, you know, it doesn’t mean you need to be a therapist, but just need to lean in a little bit more to being a decent human being.

And just put a little bit more energy into this relational domain, knowing that, you know, people have more rocks in their backpack, they’re gonna need a little bit more help getting up the mountain.

Maureen: It does raise the bar for me to be. A better human being

Joshua: Yeah.

Maureen: and working with each of my clients. need to model the better human being part before I can coach anyone else to do that.[00:42:00]

Joshua: So one of the things that this is,

Maureen: talked about that go.

Joshua: well, one of the things this has brought up for me is, uh, a decision to write a new book. I was really hesitant. To, to, to write another book. It’s my eighth book, and I’m like, I don’t know if I wanna get into this whole thing again. Um, and you know what it’s like. Um, but I made the decision to write this book

Maureen: Yeah. ’cause I have another one in process too.

Joshua: and I’ve writing about things I’ve never written about before. I’m writing a lot more about my own. Um. Struggle with emotions and, um, how I’ve used spiritual traditions from all around the world to help me become more grounded, to help me become more present, uh, to help me be a [00:43:00]little bit more of a, a person who I want to be.

And um, so the book really kind of digs deep into how do we meet the moment. How do we equip ourselves to not be blown by these winds? How do we kind of s stand strong in our values and principles and caring? And part of that is doing more self-regulation, doing more work on ourselves, deepening our self-awareness.

And uh, one of the things I talk a lot about in the book is. This idea of being more present, being more fully here. And I think in this context that we’re talking about, there’s just, there’s so much tumultuousness, it’s easy to withdraw, it’s easy to just be [00:44:00] overwhelmed by what’s going on. And um, and yet if we’re gonna show up as leaders, it’s incumbent on us to step forward.

That’s what leaders do.

Maureen: I love that you’re connecting with values and spiritual traditions. I, I think anyone who listens regularly knows that I have become about yoga it’s. is because it’s a thing for me that allows me to, I can walk into the studio feeling any kind of way, angry, hurt, whatever. And typically I walk out feeling better and in some cases much better. And, and there is a spiritual underpinning to yoga. [00:45:00] And, and I appreciate that you’re sharing. I, I know you haven’t shared your specific faith tradition, but sharing the idea that having a faith tradition is really important.

Joshua: Uh, when we’re in this place of overwhelm and when we’re buffeted by the storm, right? We need to find a place we can stand and we need allies and we need to be allies and we need to be leaders worth following. And I think connecting to what’s most important to us as human beings. Connecting to these thousands of years of tradition, of how do you show up as a better human being?

Uh, whatever your, whatever your faith is, whatever your spiritual journey is, whatever your [00:46:00] values are, leaning into those, living into those, making that more a part of your day to day, that’s gonna help you be more trustworthy, that’s gonna help you be more authentic, that’s gonna help you be more stable.

In this chaos and earlier I said, you know, maybe our new definition of leadership is leadership is a process of trust building, maybe implicit in that in this tumultuous time, part of trust building is more stability. Part of what people are looking to you for is to say, I need. I need somebody to lean on.

’cause things are feeling really chaotic right now. And you know what? If every person listening, we and, and you and me, like we each show up tomorrow being a little bit more of that [00:47:00] rock in the river,

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Joshua: that little stabilizing force, that little. Little bit more trustworthy. And then that the ripple effect of that little bit more trustworthiness

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Joshua: builds more safety, builds more alignment, builds a, it’s a breath. People can take a breath when they’re in our presence.

Maureen: I love that. Would you share, I know we’re moving to wrap up. Would you share one. Anecdote that, that inspired you to write the book. ’cause I know that writing books is a labor of love, hundreds or thousands of hours, uh, and sharing personal stories. So why this, why now?

Joshua: I [00:48:00] was recently in, uh, Myorca, uh, with a group of EQ practitioners from all around the world, and we were talking about our clients and what’s going on and what people need. And I was thinking about writing a book about coaching and, and I said to one of my colleagues, uh, Maria Elena, who’s a, a master coach, um.

Um, you know, I kind of wanna write this book about coaching, but I, I’m feeling this sense of the fragility in the world, and I don’t think it’s like, it’s like practical to write a book about coaching. But this other book is calling me and she said, why are you saying it’s not practical? Like what every single client that I talk to is struggling with is the emotional part of their work.

If people could

Maureen: Mm-hmm.

Joshua: have a little bit, a little [00:49:00] bit more clarity about emotions, so much would change. And um, that little spark really helped me go, okay, well what if, what if this book is what people need? And I do this, Maureen, when I go into, when I do a keynote or whatever, I, I kind of look around the room and I go, okay, I just need one person to need this.

If I can just help one person in this room, I can get through this, this, like, I, I am a little introverted, so like going out and speaking and doing, you know, putting myself out there. But like, if I can help one person just connect a little bit more. And so that, uh, that conversation with Maria Elena just kind of opened up that door for me to say, yeah, people need this right now.

Maureen: And that takes us full circle to what’s kind of the collective [00:50:00] consciousness. We’ve got the political violence and all that stuff, but we’ve also got the. The collective group of people who are I, and I love that you’re creating something. This is why you’re the sunshine, Josh. This is our that, that you’re looking across the horizon at the collective challenge and finding. The way to amplify the ripple you’re already making.

Joshua: Thank you. Yeah. I mean, looking at a million assessments and seeing this startling decline across the world, across generations, across gender, across age, across roles, and saying, wow, we have to do something. [00:51:00] We have to dig deeper and, and find solutions. Uh, and I am optimistic that we can. We can do this.

And the great thing is just a little improvement makes a tremendous difference in people’s lives and it makes a tremendous difference in your business. So again, the ROI is there. These are learnable, measurable skills that have value for your business. They value for you as a human being. They have value for the people around you.

So this, to me, it’s a slam dunk, right? Like this is the moment. To lean into, to growing and practicing our emotional intelligence skills.

Maureen: Beautiful. I, I’m not even gonna try to do another wrap up because what you just said is perfect. So how would people learn more about the six second group? Um, how would they learn more about you and when is your book coming out?

Joshua: [00:52:00] Um, March 10th, and it’s called Emotion Rules. And it’s about the rules of emotions. How do they make sense? How? Like what are the guide, the guiding principles that make emotions work? So emotion rules will be out mark.

Maureen: I dropped out. I Okay. Okay. Oops. Let’s see if he jumps back on. I’ve got five minutes before I need to exit.

Joshua: Am I back?

Maureen: Oh, no. Okay. Yeah. ’cause it was really glitchy. [00:53:00] Uh. Um, or we redo the recording. Um, it probably shouldn’t be tonight ’cause his location was not great. Um, but it, it felt like we got much more to the heart of the topic at the end. [00:54:00] Yeah. Yeah. I, I would actually, oh, just thinking I would edit some of the early stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Um, let’s see if he comes

Joshua: Am I back?

Maureen: We’ve got

Joshua: The timer started again.

Maureen: Oh, [00:55:00] but since we took out the Brian Kirk reference, let’s do it the following week. Yeah. Next week I’m out the, okay. Okay, because am I am out until Monday the sixth. Because that’s gonna be, to get it turned around from Monday to airing on Tuesday is gonna be tough the following week. [00:56:00] What was airing on the 14th? So maybe we put it on the 14th and we record on that. That week is really tough for me, but let’s see if, Josh has a time that would work. Yeah.

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