March 12, 2025 • 59 mins
During this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are in conversation with Dr Marc Brackett. As the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Marc is professor in the Child Study Center at Yale, and author of the best-selling book 'Permission to Feel'. Marc’s next book ‘Dealing With Feeling – Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want’ is due for release in September 2025.
An award-winning researcher for 25 years, Marc has published 175 scholarly articles on the role of Emotional Intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, physical and mental health, and workplace performance. He is also the lead developer of RULER, an evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning (SEL) that has been adopted by over 5,000 schools across the globe, improving the lives of millions of children and adults.
In addition to being featured frequently across media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Good Morning America and more, Marc is also in demand as a keynote speaker and is co-founder of Oji Life Lab, a corporate learning firm that develops innovative digital learning systems for emotional intelligence.
Referenced during this episode:
‘How We Feel’ app: https://howwefeel.org/
‘Dealing With Feelings’ webcast: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRM-kVGeBRqdXAf7q7ut91HZQlfZSx_VX&si=oLRQ11SXM1GqTEgC
‘Permission to Feel: Unlock the power of emotions to help yourself and your children thrive’ (Quercus, 2019) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Permission-Feel-emotions-yourself-children/dp/1787478815/
Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)
The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)
Social:
Instagram @evolvingleader
LinkedIn The Evolving Leader Podcast
Twitter @Evolving_Leader
Bluesky @evolvingleader.bsky.social
YouTube @evolvingleader
The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jean Gomes (00:03):
Think about this for a second. Emotional Intelligence
has been a mainstream conceptfor over 30 years. It's been
studied, measured and championedas a critical leadership skill.
We know that leaders who excelin emotional intelligence build
stronger teams, make betterdecisions and drive higher
performance, and yet, here weare, decades of research, best
(00:26):
selling books, training programsand executive coaching later,
and the emotional intelligencegap in organizations remains as
wide as ever. Let's look at thedata.
A 22 study from the WorldEconomic Forum still ranks
emotional intelligence as one ofthe top skills for leadership
and workforce success. Yetresearch by Gallup shows that
(00:47):
only one in three employeesworldwide strongly agree that
they work in an environmentwhere they feel valued, heard
and emotionally safe. Even moretelling, studies by McKinsey and
Deloitte reveal that while 90%of executives say emotional
intelligence is critical toleadership. Only 30% of
organizations actively train forit. In other words, we
(01:08):
acknowledge its importance, butwe fail to embed it into our
cultures. So the question isn'twhether emotional intelligence
matters. We know it does. Thereal question is, why aren't
organizations taking itseriously. Why do companies
still prioritize technicalskills over emotional agility?
Why is emotional literacy stillseen as soft when it's at the
(01:31):
heart of high performance, trustand resilience? Today, we're
joined by one of the world'sleading voices on emotions,
Professor Marc Brackett. Hespent his career, proving that
how we feel shapes how we think,how we lead and how we perform.
If business continues to ignorethe Power of Emotions, what are
they losing and moreimportantly, how do we finally
(01:51):
make emotional intelligencestick tune in for an important
conversation on the evolvingleader. I
Scott Allender (02:16):
Hey, friends, welcome to The Evolving Leader,
the show born from the beliefthat we need deeper, more
accountable and more humanleadership to confront the
world's biggest challenges. I'mScott Allender
Jean Gomes (02:27):
and I'm Jean Gomes.
Scott Allender (02:28):
Hello, Mr.
Gomes. How are you feelingtoday?
Jean Gomes (02:31):
That is a big question Given our guest, so I'm
gonna tread carefully here andsay. I'm gonna say, actually,
I'm feeling pretty good. I had agreat morning with with a client
who was very expansive and opento the thinking that we were we
were up to. So I felt, you know,I felt very valued and made a
(02:53):
good contribution in thatconversation. So I'm feeling
great, and I'm really lookingforward to this conversation.
It's been, it's been a whilecoming. So, yeah, how are you
feeling, Scott?
Scott Allender (03:02):
I'm feeling grateful. I'm feeling settled.
I'm feeling just a lot ofpositive emotions this week,
because it's very positive froma work perspective. And I, like
you, Jean, have been filled withanticipation for the
conversation we're about tohave, because our guest is
someone we've long wanted on theshow someone who's inspired each
(03:23):
of our work. And I know Jean youfeatured his research in your
latest book, and are a greatadmirer. Today, we're joined by
Dr Marc Brackett, the foundingdirector of the Yale Center for
emotional intelligence, is theprofessor in the Child Study
Center at Yale and author of thebest selling book. Permission to
feel he's an award winningresearcher, having raised over
100 million in grant funding andpublished 175
(03:46):
scholarly articles on the roleof emotional intelligence and
(04:06):
learning, decision making,creativity, relationships,
physical and mental health, aswell as workplace performance.
(04:45):
Over 5000 schools across theworld have adopted ruler RULER,
(05:05):
an evidence based approach tosocial and emotional learning
(05:25):
that Marc led the development ofand has been shown to improve
(05:47):
academic performance anddecrease school problems like
bullying and teacher stress andburnout, and we could go on and
(06:26):
on, because His accomplishmentsare driven by a huge passion for
(06:48):
the work, which I know you'reabout to hear, and everything he
(07:09):
has to say. So Marc, thank youfor being here, and welcome to
(07:30):
The Evolving Leader.
Marc Brackett (07:37):
Thank you for the invitation. Glad to be here.
Jean Gomes (07:44):
Welcome to the show.
How are you feeling today?
Marc Brackett (07:52):
How am I feeling?
I'm feelingwe we're an investment
management company. Like,emotions, we're lawyers.
Emotions, like, Give me a break.
Marc, that's fluffy stuff.
(08:15):
And of course, you know,oftentimes I say I just
interviewed the people whoreport to you, Mr. CEO. And like
everybody hates their job, butI'm kinder than that, but you
get what I'm talking about. Theother reason is that emotions
drive decision making. I mean,I've done research which shows
that ethical behavior in certaincompanies is directly related to
(08:40):
the emotional intelligence ofthe leader. I know, if you
really get to it, if you workwith someone who's emotionally
dysregulated, like you start notreally caring about your work.
The third is relationships.
That's all related. Emotions aresignals, right? They tell us to
approach or avoid So, facialexpressions, body language,
(09:00):
vocal tone, approach, avoid,approach. Avoid respect,
disrespect, power over powerwith the fourth is mental
health. They are the obviousthere and then the last one is
the one that's the big one,which is performance. And
whether it's academicperformance or workplace
performance. You know what I'veshown in my research is that,
yes, of course, academic skillsmatter. It's always better to
(09:22):
have high cognitive abilities.
Why, of course, but it's not theanswer to all of life's
challenges. There are otherskills, like emotional
intelligence, that arecritically important. For
example, in dealing withfeedback, inspiring a team,
managing the anxiety,frustration and disappointment,
(09:44):
achieving our goals, and sothat's my big five.
Scott Allender (09:48):
Let's pull some of that apart, if we could,
because Jean and I agree sowholeheartedly, and we've
written about, you know, this,this topic in our own books as
well. I'm.
Want to hone in on on the sortof leadership approach and
companies sort of resistance tothis topic. It seems to me that
(10:10):
you know, where there is even anappetite for tolerating this
conversation around emotionalintelligence. Really, it's
about, well, I want my people tobe regulated enough to like
behave the way I want them tobehave, but not really space for
being able to articulate whatthey're actually feeling in real
time. Could you tell us a littlebit more about what you're
experiencing there, and anyshifts you've been able to help
(10:32):
achieve for organizations inthat space?
Marc Brackett (10:35):
Yeah, I think that's a big one, because the
mindset for some people is, youknow, when we're regulated, you
know, it's compliance. It'slike, it means I want you to
regulate, because I don't wantyou to bother me, right, right?
I don't want you to be adisrupter. I don't want you to
give I don't want you to give mefeedback. It's like, you know,
(10:56):
deal with your frustration withme, you know. And it's a
misunderstanding of what emotionregulation is, right? It's not
about like locking yourself inthe bathroom and crying and
screaming. It's about using youremotions wisely to have good
relationships to achieve goals.
And so I think that's a bigdeal. You know what you're
(11:16):
bringing up here?
Jean Gomes (11:22):
You you make a point early on in the book about the
importance of recognizingemotions as a form of
information, and how you'vealready said this in there how
crucial that is to makingdecisions. So it's kind of
ironic that leaders are tryingto suppress one of the very
things that would improve theirdecision making. How have you
seen because we know we did,like, 30 years into this
(11:44):
conversation about emotionalintelligence and some things are
just not changing at all. Whatis it you see the resistance in
this? What is it? The core ofit? Do you think,
Marc Brackett (11:53):
I think there are a few things the one is this
mindset. You know that emotionsare feminine. You know that
feelings are feminine, that whenwe experience strong emotions,
that makes us irrational, andthat's just a misunderstanding
of what emotional intelligenceis. Because, you know, I've
(12:16):
lived with anxiety for 55 years,and I've been pretty successful.
And, you know, it took a whilefor me to have a new
relationship with anxiety. It'slike, oh, today is one of those
days you have anxiety. Let'sobserve that and and welcome it
and recognize that you'reanxious because you care so much
about your work. And you know,there's uncertainty about that,
(12:39):
and so let's problem solve aboutit. It's a very different way of
approaching emotion than I'm amess. This is never going to
change. I was born this way,unhelpful, and it's wrong
anyway. You know, doesn't makesense from the principle of
emotion science. So I think thatweakness piece, the idea that,
(13:03):
you know, emotions are kind oflike we're pre wired and
programmed to be this way, andyou can't change it, is another
big issue. I'll just say the bigone also is the effort that has
to get put into it. I wish itwas easy, you know, I wish it
was easy to deal with myemotions every day, you know.
(13:25):
And I'm just, you know, theanxiety is the one that lingers
with me. But you know, how manyof us have got irritated with a
colleague, how many of us haveever looked at someone's work
and be like, this is terrible,you know? And you want to just
say, like, throw it at theperson and say, like, you know,
like, what do you do? You'rekidding me with this crap. But
you know, you have to thinkabout that in terms of, oh,
(13:46):
well, since emotions drivejudgment, decision making,
relationships, performance, youknow, my expression of emotion
is going to have a direct impacton their willingness to work
harder, their willingness tochange, their willingness to
accept my feedback. So, if youunderstand the power that
emotions have to create good inthe world. In an organization,
(14:07):
you'll be more strategic abouthow you use those emotions to
achieve those outcomes. So
Jean Gomes (14:11):
you've had countless conversations with leaders
around this, and I'm sure peoplehave come to you and said, Look,
I really struggle with whatyou're talking about. I struggle
to not react. I struggle to notbe cross and angry and enact
out. Where do you help them onthe journey towards managing
that?
Marc Brackett (14:32):
Yeah, I mean, I feel like, sometimes I want to
just be my father and be like,get over it. You know, move on.
But that doesn't usually workvery well, or more like rolling
my eyes and but you got to bekidding me, like, really? But
the you know, a friend of mine,Stuart Avalon, who's a
psychologist, he says it's, youknow, it's skill, not will, and
(14:57):
most people want if they knewthe value.
Of the skill and what it woulddo for them. Like the CEO of the
big company was like, you know,I don't need to. I never forget,
I was in this big, famouscompany here in New York City,
big corner office on the HudsonRiver. The guy looks at me, he's
like, I don't what do I need?
Emotional Intelligence for Marc,like, look at my office, you
know? And I was like, yeah,maybe your company is
(15:20):
successful, but how much moresuccessful could it be if
actually had a more positiveemotional climate? People had
strategies to deal with theirdifficult emotions.
So I think, you know, the firstis the value proposition. You
really have to I'm a data guy,and so like, I can tell a
(15:42):
million stories, as you can seealso, but the and I have to get
to know your audience. And sosome people, you know, I come in
with the anecdote, and they getit. Some people like, you know,
Marc tells too many stories. Youknow, I want the science, and
I've got researchers supporteverything that I say. One thing
I always tell people is like,maybe you want my opinion, but
(16:04):
don't look for my opinion. I'mgoing to go with the research
which supports the hypothesis.
And so with that in mind, itgoes back to what do we know
about how the emotion systemoperates? And so some of us are
more easily tricker than otherpeople, just the way we're born,
(16:25):
that is biological. I happen tobe one of those people who is
very easily startled. I have afifth degree black belt, you
know, I used to be a martialarts instructor, and I'm still,
like, afraid of my own shadow. Ican defend myself, but my
initial reaction is like, just,here's what it is. I recover
(16:47):
more quickly, and I canstrategize last year because I
developed a skill, and then it'sfilling that space. You know?
I'll just give you one moreexample. So, you know, big piece
of our work is teaching people,you know, the stimulus, response
kind of format, right? And thenknow the things that get under
(17:08):
our skin, you know, and we haveto know what our typical, mostly
maladaptive, unhelpfulresponses. And I know, I mean, I
could go through all thedifferent emotions, you know,
when I'm anxious, I tend toruminate. When I'm angry, I tend
to want to retaliate. Unhelpful,unhelpful. Okay, so what can I
(17:32):
fill that space with? And that'swhere all the magic happens with
healthy strategies, whether itbe just breathing. I know people
roll their eyes when we say,take a deep breath, but it
biologically, makes a differencein our nervous system. It works.
The second is, you know,sometimes just stepping back,
(17:52):
give me, give me some space. Ineed to like, I need time. I
can't respond without somecognition. Well, I can't have
the problem solving when I'mactivated, just can't do it
biologically difficult. Sogiving yourself that space and
then learning, you know, dozensof research based strategies.
Scott Allender (18:14):
I'm really curious to hear more about how
you sort of de program some ofthe less helpful responses you
said something so important thatI don't want to like move past
yet. A while back, you said younow when anxiety surfaces, you
sort of go, oh, anxiety is here,right? Like you almost can kind
of welcome it. That's that's nota inconsequential place to be
(18:35):
like that. That's a reallyemotionally evolved place to be.
And I'd love to hear more about,how did you get there? Because
I'm sure there's listeners rightnow going, Yeah, anxiety
surfaces for me, but it causesme to do X, Y and Z, right? So
how do we, how do people startto make that shift? I'd love to
hear more about the practices.
Marc Brackett (18:53):
Well, one thing importantly, it doesn't cause
you to do anything. You causeyourself to do it. I think
that's an important that's wekind of we like to blame our
emotions for our behavior, butour responses to our emotions
are learned, and so we have tolearn how to unlearn our
unhelpful ways of dealing withour feelings, and that subtlety
(19:14):
and language is important tohelp us kind of sit back and
take ownership of our behaviorlike you made me feel that way,
though I didn't make you feelthat way. So this bring this
goes back to my newest research,actually, which I'm very excited
(19:35):
about, and it's going to be mybook after my next book that I'm
working on already. Sopermission to feel was this
treatise that I wrote about whyemotions matter. And you know,
it stems from the story, youknow, of my relationship with my
uncle, who was the first personto give me that permission to
(19:58):
feel when I was feeling. Selfhatred and anger and fear. He
didn't say, like my father wouldsay, Son, you know, gotta
toughen up. Or what my motherwould say, which is, oh, my God,
we can't handle this. I'm gonnahave a nervous breakdown. I had
very stereotypical kind ofparents, which was like, I can't
handle this. You know, you're onyour own, kiddo. I'm gonna have
(20:18):
a breakdown knowing that you'rebeing bullied. To my father
being like, I don't know what tosay or do, so you better just
tough on up kid. Neitherapproach was very helpful. It's
like, okay, I'm not going totell anybody about my
experiences because, like,there's nowhere to go. There's
no There's both of those areclosed doors. Yeah, so
(20:43):
permission to feel uncle Marvincomes into my life, asks me how
I'm feeling, says we're going toget through this together. Now,
what I didn't do for that book,because I didn't have the idea
of doing it, was the research onthe uncle Marvin's in the world.
So now I've launched thisinternational study. I've got
(21:03):
about 25,000 people who've doneit looking at the
characteristics of those peoplein our lives. Now the first is,
what's the percentage so acrossthe world, whether in the UK or
you're in Connecticut, where Ilive, or you're in Hong Kong,
Australia, Spain, wherever, onlyabout a third of people say they
(21:28):
grew up with someone that theyfeel safe and comfortable with
around emotion. It's ubiquitous.
It's the same. No matter where Igo, it's a third, a third, two
thirds say no. That'sunfortunate that two thirds of
us are running around feelinglike we were never seen or
heard, that we didn't have aplace to go with our emotions.
The second is, what are thecharacteristics of these people?
(21:50):
There are three characteristicsyou want to guess. What they
are. Think about the person ifyou had one, who you believe
gave you permission to feel, whocreated the condition for that,
or if you didn't have someone,imagine what they might be like.
What do you think are thecharacteristics of those on
those people?
Scott Allender (22:13):
Non judgmental?
Marc Brackett (22:15):
Okay, that's one, listening,
Jean Gomes (22:19):
good listening, capacity to listen.
Marc Brackett (22:22):
All right. Well, you're both geniuses, because
those are the top two. Butthere's one more
Scott Allender (22:28):
empathetic. You
Marc Brackett (22:29):
got it? Gosh, you guys are getting the A in my
class. So top three, it's thoseare actually the three that show
up everywhere. The top three.
The first is non judgmental. Thesecond is good listening, and
the third is empathy andcompassion. Now take a think
about those three things, nonjudgmental, good listener,
(22:50):
empathic, compassionate. None ofthose are saying fixer, problem
solver. It's all about the it'sall about helping to create the
conditions for the person to seetheir situation and come up with
solutions. Which is the beautyof the work. It's fine, like I
(23:14):
love what I do in schools,because the teacher, oh, I'm not
skilled at this. I'm not, youknow, I don't have my PhD in
psychology, and it's like,that's okay. I'm not asking you
to actually solve the kidsproblems. What I'm asking you to
do is create the conditions forkids to feel safe, comfortable,
non judged, when they knowyou're listening, whether they
know you care. And then you givethem the opportunities to think
(23:35):
about the solutions, and youhelp them evaluate those
solutions, try them out and thenrefine them as they grow. That's
what the work is about. And so Ishare that with you, because you
going back to your question nowis what I find in my research is
of all of the emotion regulationstrategies that help people have
(23:59):
greater well being and purposeand life and life satisfaction.
Of all of them, the top one ispermission to feel. It's not a
strategy in of itself. It's anattitude. It's a mindset. I am
allowing myself to have thisfeeling because I know this
(24:20):
feeling is probably impermanentand I'm okay with it. I can be
anxious and productive, I can besad and still go to work, and I
think that's empowering andreally important. So the radical
acceptance of your emotions isthe top strategy.
Jean Gomes (24:46):
And you listed out a couple of emotions earlier on,
and it's quite helpful forpeople to understand how to
think about each of thosethings. Somebody yesterday who I
was talking about, the fact thatwe were talking. And he said,
Tell me about resentment, afeeling of resentment. What?
What? What is going on there?
How would you what's the theregulation strategy around when
(25:08):
you feel resentment towardsothers? It's
Marc Brackett (25:12):
funny you say that because I did this podcast
with Brene Brown, and we talkedabout this exact thing, same
thing. And she was like, itbecame her like thing everywhere
she went. I had this epiphanytalking with Marc about
resentment,and so let's think about let's
just unpack it for a minute. Sowhen we are resentful, it's some
(25:36):
combination, most likely ofanger and envy. You know, envy,
in its purest form is, you know,I'm envious of, you know, your
bookshelves, your Gosh, you'veread more than I've read, or I'm
envious of your gorgeous home,or your fancy watch. It doesn't
(25:58):
mean I hate you. It means maybe,you know, I actually envy has
been a motivator for me, becauseI watch other people give
presentation like that. Tommywas freaking great. I'm going to
figure out how to incorporatethat into my presentations. My
envy of one of my philanthropistfunders homes. I'm like, I'm
(26:19):
going to work harder. I wantthat pool, and so it's not such
a bad thing. However, when we'reresentful, we hate the person
for having what they have,right? We're angry that we don't
(26:39):
have it, and we feel it's aninjustice that we don't have it,
and we also feel envious. Soit's a combination, which I
think is is more dangerous, youknow, and oftentimes I think it
comes from deep insecurity. Sowhat's
Jean Gomes (27:01):
the move? What's the move that you when you recognize
that's the awareness piece. Whatdo you do there to kind of try
and counter that?
Marc Brackett (27:09):
If I do sometimes feel I don't feel that way as
much anymore, because I feellike, you know, maybe because I
feel like I've made it, but Ithink a it's got to go back to
kind of really unpacking whereis this coming from. Like, why
(27:31):
is this about me, or is thisabout the other person? You
know, what's really going onhere? Marc, is this, is this my
insecurity? You know? Why am Iso insecure about this? Am I not
actually working hard towardsthat goal? And I just feel angry
that the other person has gottenit, Marc, you
(27:58):
a pretty good life. You know,you're not going to get
everything, and so why don't Ijust take a moment and realize,
like, compared to many people inthe world, you're living a
freaking fantastic life. And somaybe take a moment for some
gratitude. I think the gratitudepiece is way overlooked, and
people think of it as cliche,and I think it's the antidote to
(28:21):
much of our anger in society.
Scott Allender (28:25):
I agree. I'm curious about the role of meta
emotion in this. So, you know,thinking about permission to
feel and welcoming emotions,right? Like I know when I've had
anxiety surface in the past, Ialmost feel shame about feeling
anxious, right? So is is a metaemotion?
Marc Brackett (28:47):
You're a dude.
Scott Allender (28:50):
I tell them that all the time. Anybody? Yeah, I
didn't feel shame until Jean gotto hold me
me no. But is that an in? Isthat indicative of like, if can
we pay attention to our metaemotions as an indicator of how
much we're allowing ourselves tojust welcome the primary emotion
and accept it for what it is?
Does that play a role? It
Marc Brackett (29:12):
does huge and sometimes it's some of the self
unconscious, you know, that weneed to really sit with and ask
ourselves the question is, youknow, is the feeling driving,
you know, my behavior right now,or is it the feeling about the
feeling? And I think oftentimesit is the meta emotion, you
know. So going back to the youknow, very related to your
(29:36):
story. You know, as a kid, I wasreally badly bullied in school,
like terrible stuff, likeextortion, beaten up and spit on
it was terrible, but because ofmy parents and my father in
particular, and I wasembarrassed. I was being
bullied. I was feeling hatredand fear and all the other
(29:56):
emotions too, but it was myshame and embarrassing.
Embarrassment that I was feelingafraid because my father
wouldn't like my father wouldn'tbe afraid. He would just punch
back. Well, that's not in myDNA, and so that, I think was
what prevented me from talkingabout the feeling, you know, or
(30:19):
the experience with my family, Ijust kept it inside, because the
shame and the embarrassment kindof took over. And so being aware
of that is critically important.
Obviously, we need strategies.
And I wanted to say something,you know, as we're talking about
this, one of the things that Ithink is so important is that,
(30:41):
especially, you know, withyounger people, is that we have
to the onus should not be on theindividual, especially a younger
person who's being bullied, tofigure it out right. The the
onus is on the adults who areraising and teaching kids to be
aware of what the hell ishappening and be supportive. You
(31:05):
know, I think that's and that'sthe same thing, by the way, the
workplace, right? And when, ifsomeone is feeling that way at
work, they're feeling like theirboss, you know, is
unappreciative, or it's the jobof the boss just to check in and
say, Hey, how much gratitude doI show the people you know in my
office and or how am I speakingto people you know that they
(31:27):
don't feel seen or heard?
Jean Gomes (31:31):
Can we talk about the work you've done with how
memory and emotions worktogether? What have you learned
about that particular aspect ofyour work,
Marc Brackett (31:42):
yeah, I mean, that's, I don't do so much
research in that space anymore,but just the basics of it, you
know, is that there's somethingcalled mood congruent memory,
and it's an interestingPhenomenon. And so, you know, if
you our memories are are tied toour emotions. So, the example I
(32:06):
have of that, I did this projectwith the with the singer Lady
Gaga, about 10 years ago. Youknow, it was a big deal like
it's, you know,Marc Brackett, psychology
professor, doing with some popstar, you know, at Yale doing a
presentation. And, you know, itwas interesting to think about,
(32:27):
like, I just talked about itright now, and, boom, go back to
the experience, right? I could,it's amazing how, you know how
memory works, but it's tied tothe elation, you know, and the
fun and all that that I washaving, you know, in that
moment, I think giving a moreextreme example would be maybe
(32:49):
helpful for some people around atraumatic experience. And so the
way our brain operates withtrauma is that when we have a
very strong, intense, scarything happen, certain neuro
(33:09):
chemicals get released thatimprint the experience in our
memory system, In ourhippocampus. And that's
intentional, because it's it'spreparing you for future
instances where you might needto prepare better for those
situations. And so it's a reallygood example to me of the
(33:31):
adaptive value for emotion andmemory. However, it also can be
very maladaptive if you don'thave the strategies to deal with
it. And so that's how trauma,you know, if you don't have the
skills to identify, you know,the thing that's activating you
around the traumatic experience,it's just going to, you know,
(33:52):
it's going to keep you in thattrauma cycle. So it's both
adaptive and maladaptive,depending on the skills.
Scott Allender (34:01):
Can we come back to the role of emotions and
decisions? I'd like to, I'd liketo get into a little bit more in
terms of our leaders listeningright now and sort of thinking
about how they can pay moreattention to the role of
emotions in facing some of thebiggest challenges. You know, as
the world feels more uncertainthan ever and more polarized,
(34:24):
and people are bringing a wholelot with them to the table every
day. And as you said earlier,there's still this sort of
stigma around leaving emotionsat the door and how that's going
to leak out sideways and causeall sorts of harm. So there's a
lot in there. But I mean as aspeople themselves, as leaders,
need to pay attention to howthey're feeling because of the
(34:45):
state of the world and how theymight be feeling in it. They've
got team members who areexperiencing a vast array of
different opinions and emotions.
Feels like there's a lot comingto each coming with people to
each boardroom table, etc. Sohow do leaders think about all
of that?
Marc Brackett (35:04):
I mean, a lot.
There's a lot to think about,but I don't want to make it
complicated either, you know,because that's not helpful. I
think the first thing is thatevery leader should ask
themselves, are they an uncleMarvin or not? And you know that
made me people think, Oh, this.
Roll their eyes at me right now,but I didn't get to my other
(35:29):
research, which is that peopleare much more successful, much
more productive, have muchbetter skills at regulating
their emotions have betterpurpose in life, or higher
purpose in life, much greaterlife satisfaction. Are better,
healthier, happier. The listgoes on. When they see either
(35:51):
their parent or their leader ashaving those three
characteristics, it's actuallyin my own like, humility here,
I'm blown away by how much I'vereplicated this. And like,
literally, I've done 60 studiesin the last three years, six
zero. I have not run a study onthe characteristics of those
(36:14):
uncle Marvin's in terms of, didyou have one, did you not have
one, or do you have one at work,or don't have one at work? And
found that it predicts lifesatisfaction, job satisfaction,
etc, etc, etc. It is a big deal.
People are sick of feelingjudged. They want to be seen,
they want to be heard, and theywant to know that they're a
leader or their teacher orparent cares about them. It's
(36:38):
really just that much. It's thatstraightforward. Now, I think
the problem is that people getreally like parents. For
example, one example, I givethis speech,
and this mom, she's like, youknow, I've had an epiphany, and
(36:59):
I have two kids, and I know myson has the uncle Marvin, but my
daughter definitely doesn't. AndMarc, I am leaving here today,
and I'm gonna find my daughterher uncle Marvin. And I'm like,
lady, it could be you
Jean Gomes (37:14):
don't out source the deal.
Marc Brackett (37:17):
And you know, the same thing applies in the
workplace. It's like, Fine, youknow, go see your therapist.
This is not about therapy.
Remember, it's not about problemsolving. It's not about fixing,
it's about being present. It'sabout creating the conditions
where people feel like you care.
And so what's the barrier? Well,the number one barrier, people
(37:40):
say is time. I don't have time,like you don't have time to be
non judgmental. Give me a giveme let's talk about that one.
Give me a break. I mean, if youreally get into the nuances of
the brain, it's moremetabolically demanding to be
judgmental, it's more draining,right? Because you're just
(38:03):
constantly thinking, Oh, they'renot good enough. I'm smarter
than they are. You know, theyare, like, that's effortful.
It's not effortful to just benon judgmental. Like, I mean,
listening does take effort. Youknow that showing compassion is
deliberate. The second barrier,however, which is the big one to
(38:26):
me, is fear. People are afraidbecause they think they be
stepped all over if they'reactually non judgmental,
compassionate and empathic, orthey fear that they're not going
to be to handle what comes atthem like it's, I'm not a
therapist. I'm not you know, whyam I going to be give someone
(38:49):
permission to feel because thenthey're going to just want to,
like, tell me all theirproblems, and they're going to
think I have to fix them, and Ihave to constantly remind people
that nobody wants to be fixed.
Nobody wants you to solve alltheir problems for them.
Sara Deschamps (39:05):
If the conversations we've been having
on the evolving leader havehelped you in any way, please
head over to Apple podcasts andleave us a rating and a review.
Thank you for listening. Nowlet's get back to the
conversation.
Jean Gomes (39:18):
Can we can we talk about one of the hot topics in
emotions, which is triggerspeople. You throw this word
around all over the place, and alot of the time, as you said,
they use it as you're triggeringme, as opposed to the fact that
this is something that'shappening within me. Can we talk
about what you've learned inthis area? I
Marc Brackett (39:39):
mean, I think you know, if you take a
constructivist view of emotion,you know, if I went like this to
you right, or if I say Fu,right, the same tone, the same
energy, the language of fu wasmore think he is the middle of.
(40:00):
Like Marx a lunatic, and so it'sall appraisal. And I just think
we have to understand that it'sthe appraisal process that
causes us to have feelings.
Nobody makes us feel anything.
It's our interpretation. If Ihave is someone on the street
(40:21):
who I don't know at this on thesubway here in New York, says to
me, you know, like you're blank,blank, okay, like whatever, if
my father, if my husband, if mywife, if my whoever says that,
it has a different meaning,because it's an interpretation.
So what that means is that wecan have a different
(40:44):
relationship with our triggersif we take a step back and kind
of go back to that appraisalprocess. So I think that's key.
Number two is that our responsesor reactions to those triggers
are learned, which means we canunlearn if we learned it, that
(41:07):
means we could learn new things.
And so if your automatichabitual response is to
retaliate, I'll give you one. IThis is like a simple one, but
when I got overwhelmed, mymother had this. She just always
said, I'm having a breakdown.
Like that was just her way of,like, escaping anything that was
going wrong in the family. Andshe just, like, lock herself in
(41:28):
a room and, like, knock him outfor a few hours. And I would be
like, I remember thinking tomyself, I'm the one being
bullied. Why are you having abreakdown? Wrong model here. But
anyway, shouldn't have anemotional education. So I have
empathy for that. The I haveempathy for it as an adult, not
(41:49):
as a kid. Now, my point here is,I was on a business trip, I
don't know, five years ago, I'mon this flight. Everything's
going wrong. It's canceled. It'sweather. Then we got in the
flight, it was turbulence. I hadto prepare my presentation. The
internet didn't work on theflight. And I was with a
(42:13):
colleague, and she was, are youdoing right? I'm like, I'm
having a breakdown. You know?
I'm like, shit. I became mymother, and it was like,
automatic, like I just my, youknow, you know. And I learned
that I started having these goto strategies for myself when I
was either irritable, not in themood, or overwhelmed. So at
work, I would always have thisthing, I'm tired today, but it
(42:36):
always, I was always tired whenpeople were asking me difficult
questions,and I'm like, All right. Marc,
do you realize this pattern?
Like you're overwhelmed, you'rehaving a breakdown, you're
tired, you know, you're kind ofnot in the mood. So you tell
everybody you're tired,Like my mother. In life, I tell
(43:58):
this story all the time, butduring the pandemic, my mother
got locked in her house, but shedidn't get locked in our house.
She's from Panama, and couldn'tgo back to her home because
there were no flights to Panama.
And it was she came for awedding, and everything shut
down for seven months. Shecouldn't go back. And it was not
(44:19):
easy. I love the lady, but like,seven months is a long time, and
we had a big falling out onenight, and I decided, like,
Marc, you're the freakingdirector of the Center for
emotional intelligence. Like,how could you be so
dysregulated? Not cool. You gotto be the role model. How would,
how would, if the, if the realdirector of the Center for
(44:39):
emotional intelligence, youknow, was there in that moment.
What would he have done? Andthat's what I thought about when
I went to bed at night and thencame down the next morning. I'm
like, That's the version of theself that I want to be from now
on. Now it's hard when you gettriggered, but what you can do
is then I go to work or take awalk, I come back into my house.
I didn't know she'd be sittingthere just getting ready to
(45:01):
annoy me. I would put my hand onthe door now, take a deep breath
and say, center director, you'retrying to come out. Come on,
baby. Where are you? You'regonna and that's who entered in
the room. And it made a hugedifference. So my point is that
it has to be cultivated,practiced, you know, refined,
(45:25):
and you got to make itpermanent. In terms of the
habit.
Scott Allender (45:32):
Can you talk just about the ruler system that
I mentioned in the intro? Whatis it and the impact it's had?
Marc Brackett (45:39):
Yeah, thank you for asking, since I spent 30
years of my life working thisthing called ruler.
So importantly, ruler comes outof two things. One is my deep
relationship with my uncle whowas building a feelings
curriculum in the 1970s but withthe school teacher who didn't
have a PhD, he didn't have, youknow, a lab, but he didn't have,
(46:02):
you know, access to a lot ofresources, but had a lot of
brilliant ideas, and I wasblessed to have learned them.
And then, as I was working withmy uncle to write a curriculum,
I decided marketing like noone's gonna like, who wants to
talk to a 23 year old about thisstuff, like, who has no degrees
and no background, you need toget some credibility, so I'm
(46:24):
like PhD in psychology, and itlearned who these kind of major
theorists were, and wrote tothem, and some of them didn't
write me back and butnevertheless found my way to get
my PhD with one of the foundersof theory of emotional
intelligence theory. Then did apostdoc with the second one, and
blah, blah, blah. But ruler isboth, you know, a model for
(46:52):
teaching the skills of emotionalintelligence, but it's also the
skills themselves. And so itcomes out of the practice piece
of my work with my uncle, and itcomes out of the scientific
piece of my, you know, manyyears of research on the science
of emotion and emotionalintelligence. So there are five
skills that I call ruler skills.
And again, these are directly anoutgrowth of the theory that was
(47:15):
first written by Peter SullivanJack Mayer. So first is
recognizing emotions. So like,I'm watching you nod, right now,
Scott, I'm thinking, like, is heinterested, or is he patronizing
me? The second is understandingemotion. Like, okay, is it what
I said, or is it Scott? Like,where's it coming from? The
(47:36):
third is, you know, what is theactual feeling? Do I know what
the feeling is? My own feeling,your feeling. The fourth is
expressing emotions, knowing howand when to express emotions,
understanding there are a lot ofcultural nuances. And then the
fifth one is regulatingemotions. So ruler takes those
five skills of emotionalintelligence and embeds them
(47:59):
into systems. I work a lot inschool systems, but my work,
along with your work, it's, itstarts with the district level
or the local educationauthorities, if you're using,
you know, UK terms. It startswith leadership, because you
cannot have an emotionalintelligence curriculum in a
(48:20):
school that will have lastingresults unless the leadership
also buys into it and makespeople accountable for
delivering it. It just will notwork. It'll be a, you know, I
did that workshop. I can't tellyou I went to a workshop on
emotional intelligence. I'm likeMazel Tov, yes. Like, all right,
and so Where has your behaviorchanged? This is life's work,
(48:44):
which is why, in ruler, it'spreschool, elementary school,
middle school, high school, andthen college and and on. I mean,
it's a big piece, you know, we Iright now, really do a lot of
work on kind of the mindsets ofemotional intelligence, not just
(49:05):
the skills of emotionalintelligence. And so you need to
apply a growth mindset to theprinciples or the skills of
emotional intelligence, becauseyou are going to fail, you're
going to make a mistake, you'regoing to mislabel someone's
feeling you're going to makesomeone feel bad about
themselves. You're going to bedysregulated once in a while,
and you have to ask yourself,you know, what was that? And how
(49:27):
could I do better tomorrow? AndI'll tell you, you know, part of
the reason why I worked, I havea new another book that's coming
up, called dealing with feeling,which was that it was funny,
because I, you know, it's veryproud that my first book did
well. It's been translated into27 languages, but I got all
these emails like, Thank you forgiving me permission to feel.
But now what the brink do I dowith my feelings? And then the
(49:50):
pandemic hit, and then all of asudden, I was like, I thought I
was the director of the Centerfor emotional intelligence, and.
Then. So my mother was there,and I'm trapped at home, and
then we go, everybody's hybrid,and then there's masks and no
masks, and yelling about masksand vaccines and no vaccines,
and everybody's freaking outabout everything. And so I
(50:10):
decided to do, like, a lot ofresearch on what was getting in
the way of people regulating andwhat were the evidence based
strategies that we knew wouldhelp people to regulate and
there are real strategies. Theone that showed up in my
research, as I shared earlier,as being the most important was
this idea of just sort of like,I know I'm having this feeling
(50:34):
it's okay, that kind ofpermission to feel acceptance.
Piece
Jean Gomes (50:41):
we're living in a very unusual period of history
where we've got so many thingsgoing on at a cultural level
around the topic of of feeling,identity, politics, uncertainty,
you know, everything that'sgoing on at the moment, the
intergenerational stuff, thethings that Jonathan heights
(51:03):
been writing about in terms ofthe coddling of the American
mind and so on. What is yourperspective on how emotions are
being interpreted by differentparts of society? How's that
formulating up to permission tofeel? Yeah,
Marc Brackett (51:20):
it's funny because I have a chapter in my
new book called seven reasonswhy nobody knows how to
regulate. And I give you likethe sneak preview. I think the
first is, if I can remember myown work at this point, Funny
how that happens, right? But awe don't value emotions period.
(51:42):
It's like I said earlier,emotions are weak. B, nobody
taught us anything about this athome. C, we didn't learn it at
school either. You know. D is weall just want the quick fix. I
mean, let's be real. So mucheasier to just drink an extra
beer, take an extra pill, youknow, and now it's cold plunges.
(52:06):
That's this that's going to saveyour life, you know, look at
you. Look at the look at thetree for five minutes a day.
Prefer you're going to be happy.
I mean, these things drive me.
If there's one thing that'sdriving me crazy today, it's the
quick fix thing. It's the socialmedia influencers who have the
strategy that's going to, like,you just do this one thing and
(52:27):
like, you know, call people youlove twice a week. Okay, what if
I don't have people I love? Youknow, you know, my partner's
grandmother would be 109 withoutever doing a cold plunge. I just
think these things areridiculous, and I think it's
hurting people. The fourth orthe E, I guess it is. The fifth
(52:51):
is we'd rather spend a lot ofmoney on expensive interventions
than be prevention focused. Ithink that's a big one. It's
like, we don't want to invest inthe building of people's
capacity. We just want to waituntil they are have suicidal
(53:15):
ideation, you know, majordepression, anxiety, and then do
treatment. And if it only knewhow much more expensive it is to
treat and how much moreeffective it is to build the
skills as kids develop, youknow, we'd have a much better
society. The other one is that Isaid people don't value
(53:36):
emotions. We don't get taughtthis stuff. But before that even
is, do we even, like, appreciatethat emotional intelligence is a
valuable skill, you know, thewhole soft skills, like soft
skills. And then the big one, Ithink, related to what you were
saying, is, and this is myvision, which I know is going to
(54:01):
take a lot of work, and I needall help I can get, is, does
government, you know, do thelarger institutions make space
for this kind of thing? So if Ihad it my way, every policy
maker before they, you know,finalized whatever policy
(54:26):
they're creating, they wouldhave a review process that would
say, is this going to be helpfulor harmful to children's
emotional development? And ifyou see what people do in terms
of detaining kids at borders andseparating from their mothers.
(54:46):
We know from research that isthe worst thing that you can do
to support a healthy child, butsomehow another we get away with
it, and if only peopleunderstood child. Development
and cared. I think the worldwould be a very different place.
Scott Allender (55:06):
Marc, I want to keep talking for like three more
hours. There's so much I lovethe work that you're doing. When
does your when does your nextbook come out that you
mentioned?
Marc Brackett (55:16):
September? Yeah, so I just got the cover. You
want to give you a sneak peek.
Yeah, I don't know if it's goingto come up in the reverse, but,
Scott Allender (55:25):
yeah, excellent.
So
Marc Brackett (55:27):
I'm excited about this. This is, like, it's rare,
you know, part of the way Ilearn is just by kind of, like,
escaping and, you know, thinkingand writing, and I feel my I
have a theory about my owndevelopment, which is, I don't
know anything until I canexplain it well. And so the I
(55:49):
felt the need to just reallyruler as a whole, or recognize,
understand, label, express andregulate. But where people
struggle is in the regulationpiece and but I think it's also
it comes after the basics ofpermission to feel like you just
like building your vocabulary. Ijust want to share one other
(56:10):
thing, by the way, with youguys, two or two things. One is
I developed this new web series.
It's called dealing withfeeling. Which are interviews
that I do with leading expertslike John Hite, Angela
Duckworth, just a bunch of wellknown scientists and other
people like musicians like dothMcKagan from Guns and Roses and
Jewel, the singer, where I talkabout emotions and the skills
(56:32):
that they learned, and kind ofpull out of that. And the second
is an app that I built with thefounder of Pinterest. It's
called the how we feel app, andso we have put a lot of big
investments that app, and I'mproud to say it's available for
free on both Android and iOS.
Jean Gomes (56:55):
There you go. Yeah, I've been using this for, I
don't know, since it came out.
Actually, that's cool. Yeah,
Marc Brackett (57:01):
we're gonna build more features. It's really, it's
cool, it's funny. I just, I metwith the head of HR for our
university few weeks ago, andit's like, I've been using that
for two years. I taught myselffour times a day. I'm like,
You're a little, you're you'recrazy, like, you're really into
this. But it was a greatconversation about what he's
(57:21):
learned about himself, and nowhe wants he and I doing a talk
for the university, to geteverybody to use it. So that's
exciting, but it's a great tool,you know, to get back to the
basics of, you know, we startedthis conversation with the
question of How you feeling, andI'll just say that a lot of us
don't get asked that questionvery often. We usually say,
(57:44):
How's it going, Yeah, what's up?
You know, we don't say, How areyou feeling. And I think that
gets back to that fear ofintimacy, you know, fear of what
we're going to hear. But truthis that even when we're asked a
question, what do we say? Fine,fine. We're not really granular.
And so I think the first step inthe process is just that self
(58:07):
awareness. And then, as I sharein my work, the labeling piece
actually is a pathway ofchoosing better strategies for
regulating. So that's anotherconversation for another day.
Yeah,
Jean Gomes (58:28):
well, if you're up for it, we'd love to have you
back to talk about our book.
Marc Brackett (58:32):
I'd be delighted.
Thank you.
Jean Gomes (58:33):
It would be wonderful. And we're going to
put details, both of the app andthe web series and the book,
which is definitely worthreading. That's a UK cover, but
it's well, you like, you don'tlike that
Marc Brackett (58:47):
one, fine. It just is amazing how every
country of it, you know, yeah,they just design their own
cover, which is fine.
Jean Gomes (58:55):
Excellent. But we'll put all the details so that
listeners can get access tothose things.
Marc Brackett (59:00):
And I'll be over in the UK for some presentations
this summer, so maybe we canhave a coffee.
Jean Gomes (59:04):
That would be wonderful.
Scott Allender (59:06):
Marc, thank you so much for joining us today.
I've thoroughly enjoyed this. Iso appreciate the work that
you're doing in the world andfor giving some of some of your
valuable time to us today.
Marc Brackett (59:17):
My pleasure.
Thank you for inviting
Scott Allender (59:18):
me and folks in a world where you could be
anything be an Uncle Marvin.
Think about this for a second. Emotional Intelligence
has been a mainstream conceptfor over 30 years. It's been
studied, measured and championedas a critical leadership skill.
We know that leaders who excelin emotional intelligence build
stronger teams, make betterdecisions and drive higher
performance, and yet, here weare, decades of research, best
(00:26):
selling books, training programsand executive coaching later,
and the emotional intelligencegap in organizations remains as
wide as ever. Let's look at thedata.
A 22 study from the WorldEconomic Forum still ranks
emotional intelligence as one ofthe top skills for leadership
and workforce success. Yetresearch by Gallup shows that
(00:47):
only one in three employeesworldwide strongly agree that
they work in an environmentwhere they feel valued, heard
and emotionally safe. Even moretelling, studies by McKinsey and
Deloitte reveal that while 90%of executives say emotional
intelligence is critical toleadership. Only 30% of
organizations actively train forit. In other words, we
(01:08):
acknowledge its importance, butwe fail to embed it into our
cultures. So the question isn'twhether emotional intelligence
matters. We know it does. Thereal question is, why aren't
organizations taking itseriously. Why do companies
still prioritize technicalskills over emotional agility?
Why is emotional literacy stillseen as soft when it's at the
(01:31):
heart of high performance, trustand resilience? Today, we're
joined by one of the world'sleading voices on emotions,
Professor Marc Brackett. Hespent his career, proving that
how we feel shapes how we think,how we lead and how we perform.
If business continues to ignorethe Power of Emotions, what are
they losing and moreimportantly, how do we finally
(01:51):
make emotional intelligencestick tune in for an important
conversation on the evolvingleader. I
Scott Allender (02:16):
Hey, friends, welcome to The Evolving Leader,
the show born from the beliefthat we need deeper, more
accountable and more humanleadership to confront the
world's biggest challenges. I'mScott Allender
Jean Gomes (02:27):
and I'm Jean Gomes.
Scott Allender (02:28):
Hello, Mr.
Gomes. How are you feelingtoday?
Jean Gomes (02:31):
That is a big question Given our guest, so I'm
gonna tread carefully here andsay. I'm gonna say, actually,
I'm feeling pretty good. I had agreat morning with with a client
who was very expansive and opento the thinking that we were we
were up to. So I felt, you know,I felt very valued and made a
(02:53):
good contribution in thatconversation. So I'm feeling
great, and I'm really lookingforward to this conversation.
It's been, it's been a whilecoming. So, yeah, how are you
feeling, Scott?
Scott Allender (03:02):
I'm feeling grateful. I'm feeling settled.
I'm feeling just a lot ofpositive emotions this week,
because it's very positive froma work perspective. And I, like
you, Jean, have been filled withanticipation for the
conversation we're about tohave, because our guest is
someone we've long wanted on theshow someone who's inspired each
(03:23):
of our work. And I know Jean youfeatured his research in your
latest book, and are a greatadmirer. Today, we're joined by
Dr Marc Brackett, the foundingdirector of the Yale Center for
emotional intelligence, is theprofessor in the Child Study
Center at Yale and author of thebest selling book. Permission to
feel he's an award winningresearcher, having raised over
100 million in grant funding andpublished 175
(03:46):
scholarly articles on the roleof emotional intelligence and
(04:06):
learning, decision making,creativity, relationships,
physical and mental health, aswell as workplace performance.
(04:45):
Over 5000 schools across theworld have adopted ruler RULER,
(05:05):
an evidence based approach tosocial and emotional learning
(05:25):
that Marc led the development ofand has been shown to improve
(05:47):
academic performance anddecrease school problems like
bullying and teacher stress andburnout, and we could go on and
(06:26):
on, because His accomplishmentsare driven by a huge passion for
(06:48):
the work, which I know you'reabout to hear, and everything he
(07:09):
has to say. So Marc, thank youfor being here, and welcome to
(07:30):
The Evolving Leader.
Marc Brackett (07:37):
Thank you for the invitation. Glad to be here.
Jean Gomes (07:44):
Welcome to the show.
How are you feeling today?
Marc Brackett (07:52):
How am I feeling?
I'm feelingwe we're an investment
management company. Like,emotions, we're lawyers.
Emotions, like, Give me a break.
Marc, that's fluffy stuff.
(08:15):
And of course, you know,oftentimes I say I just
interviewed the people whoreport to you, Mr. CEO. And like
everybody hates their job, butI'm kinder than that, but you
get what I'm talking about. Theother reason is that emotions
drive decision making. I mean,I've done research which shows
that ethical behavior in certaincompanies is directly related to
(08:40):
the emotional intelligence ofthe leader. I know, if you
really get to it, if you workwith someone who's emotionally
dysregulated, like you start notreally caring about your work.
The third is relationships.
That's all related. Emotions aresignals, right? They tell us to
approach or avoid So, facialexpressions, body language,
(09:00):
vocal tone, approach, avoid,approach. Avoid respect,
disrespect, power over powerwith the fourth is mental
health. They are the obviousthere and then the last one is
the one that's the big one,which is performance. And
whether it's academicperformance or workplace
performance. You know what I'veshown in my research is that,
yes, of course, academic skillsmatter. It's always better to
(09:22):
have high cognitive abilities.
Why, of course, but it's not theanswer to all of life's
challenges. There are otherskills, like emotional
intelligence, that arecritically important. For
example, in dealing withfeedback, inspiring a team,
managing the anxiety,frustration and disappointment,
(09:44):
achieving our goals, and sothat's my big five.
Scott Allender (09:48):
Let's pull some of that apart, if we could,
because Jean and I agree sowholeheartedly, and we've
written about, you know, this,this topic in our own books as
well. I'm.
Want to hone in on on the sortof leadership approach and
companies sort of resistance tothis topic. It seems to me that
(10:10):
you know, where there is even anappetite for tolerating this
conversation around emotionalintelligence. Really, it's
about, well, I want my people tobe regulated enough to like
behave the way I want them tobehave, but not really space for
being able to articulate whatthey're actually feeling in real
time. Could you tell us a littlebit more about what you're
experiencing there, and anyshifts you've been able to help
(10:32):
achieve for organizations inthat space?
Marc Brackett (10:35):
Yeah, I think that's a big one, because the
mindset for some people is, youknow, when we're regulated, you
know, it's compliance. It'slike, it means I want you to
regulate, because I don't wantyou to bother me, right, right?
I don't want you to be adisrupter. I don't want you to
give I don't want you to give mefeedback. It's like, you know,
(10:56):
deal with your frustration withme, you know. And it's a
misunderstanding of what emotionregulation is, right? It's not
about like locking yourself inthe bathroom and crying and
screaming. It's about using youremotions wisely to have good
relationships to achieve goals.
And so I think that's a bigdeal. You know what you're
(11:16):
bringing up here?
Jean Gomes (11:22):
You you make a point early on in the book about the
importance of recognizingemotions as a form of
information, and how you'vealready said this in there how
crucial that is to makingdecisions. So it's kind of
ironic that leaders are tryingto suppress one of the very
things that would improve theirdecision making. How have you
seen because we know we did,like, 30 years into this
(11:44):
conversation about emotionalintelligence and some things are
just not changing at all. Whatis it you see the resistance in
this? What is it? The core ofit? Do you think,
Marc Brackett (11:53):
I think there are a few things the one is this
mindset. You know that emotionsare feminine. You know that
feelings are feminine, that whenwe experience strong emotions,
that makes us irrational, andthat's just a misunderstanding
of what emotional intelligenceis. Because, you know, I've
(12:16):
lived with anxiety for 55 years,and I've been pretty successful.
And, you know, it took a whilefor me to have a new
relationship with anxiety. It'slike, oh, today is one of those
days you have anxiety. Let'sobserve that and and welcome it
and recognize that you'reanxious because you care so much
about your work. And you know,there's uncertainty about that,
(12:39):
and so let's problem solve aboutit. It's a very different way of
approaching emotion than I'm amess. This is never going to
change. I was born this way,unhelpful, and it's wrong
anyway. You know, doesn't makesense from the principle of
emotion science. So I think thatweakness piece, the idea that,
(13:03):
you know, emotions are kind oflike we're pre wired and
programmed to be this way, andyou can't change it, is another
big issue. I'll just say the bigone also is the effort that has
to get put into it. I wish itwas easy, you know, I wish it
was easy to deal with myemotions every day, you know.
(13:25):
And I'm just, you know, theanxiety is the one that lingers
with me. But you know, how manyof us have got irritated with a
colleague, how many of us haveever looked at someone's work
and be like, this is terrible,you know? And you want to just
say, like, throw it at theperson and say, like, you know,
like, what do you do? You'rekidding me with this crap. But
you know, you have to thinkabout that in terms of, oh,
(13:46):
well, since emotions drivejudgment, decision making,
relationships, performance, youknow, my expression of emotion
is going to have a direct impacton their willingness to work
harder, their willingness tochange, their willingness to
accept my feedback. So, if youunderstand the power that
emotions have to create good inthe world. In an organization,
(14:07):
you'll be more strategic abouthow you use those emotions to
achieve those outcomes. So
Jean Gomes (14:11):
you've had countless conversations with leaders
around this, and I'm sure peoplehave come to you and said, Look,
I really struggle with whatyou're talking about. I struggle
to not react. I struggle to notbe cross and angry and enact
out. Where do you help them onthe journey towards managing
that?
Marc Brackett (14:32):
Yeah, I mean, I feel like, sometimes I want to
just be my father and be like,get over it. You know, move on.
But that doesn't usually workvery well, or more like rolling
my eyes and but you got to bekidding me, like, really? But
the you know, a friend of mine,Stuart Avalon, who's a
psychologist, he says it's, youknow, it's skill, not will, and
(14:57):
most people want if they knewthe value.
Of the skill and what it woulddo for them. Like the CEO of the
big company was like, you know,I don't need to. I never forget,
I was in this big, famouscompany here in New York City,
big corner office on the HudsonRiver. The guy looks at me, he's
like, I don't what do I need?
Emotional Intelligence for Marc,like, look at my office, you
know? And I was like, yeah,maybe your company is
(15:20):
successful, but how much moresuccessful could it be if
actually had a more positiveemotional climate? People had
strategies to deal with theirdifficult emotions.
So I think, you know, the firstis the value proposition. You
really have to I'm a data guy,and so like, I can tell a
(15:42):
million stories, as you can seealso, but the and I have to get
to know your audience. And sosome people, you know, I come in
with the anecdote, and they getit. Some people like, you know,
Marc tells too many stories. Youknow, I want the science, and
I've got researchers supporteverything that I say. One thing
I always tell people is like,maybe you want my opinion, but
(16:04):
don't look for my opinion. I'mgoing to go with the research
which supports the hypothesis.
And so with that in mind, itgoes back to what do we know
about how the emotion systemoperates? And so some of us are
more easily tricker than otherpeople, just the way we're born,
(16:25):
that is biological. I happen tobe one of those people who is
very easily startled. I have afifth degree black belt, you
know, I used to be a martialarts instructor, and I'm still,
like, afraid of my own shadow. Ican defend myself, but my
initial reaction is like, just,here's what it is. I recover
(16:47):
more quickly, and I canstrategize last year because I
developed a skill, and then it'sfilling that space. You know?
I'll just give you one moreexample. So, you know, big piece
of our work is teaching people,you know, the stimulus, response
kind of format, right? And thenknow the things that get under
(17:08):
our skin, you know, and we haveto know what our typical, mostly
maladaptive, unhelpfulresponses. And I know, I mean, I
could go through all thedifferent emotions, you know,
when I'm anxious, I tend toruminate. When I'm angry, I tend
to want to retaliate. Unhelpful,unhelpful. Okay, so what can I
(17:32):
fill that space with? And that'swhere all the magic happens with
healthy strategies, whether itbe just breathing. I know people
roll their eyes when we say,take a deep breath, but it
biologically, makes a differencein our nervous system. It works.
The second is, you know,sometimes just stepping back,
(17:52):
give me, give me some space. Ineed to like, I need time. I
can't respond without somecognition. Well, I can't have
the problem solving when I'mactivated, just can't do it
biologically difficult. Sogiving yourself that space and
then learning, you know, dozensof research based strategies.
Scott Allender (18:14):
I'm really curious to hear more about how
you sort of de program some ofthe less helpful responses you
said something so important thatI don't want to like move past
yet. A while back, you said younow when anxiety surfaces, you
sort of go, oh, anxiety is here,right? Like you almost can kind
of welcome it. That's that's nota inconsequential place to be
(18:35):
like that. That's a reallyemotionally evolved place to be.
And I'd love to hear more about,how did you get there? Because
I'm sure there's listeners rightnow going, Yeah, anxiety
surfaces for me, but it causesme to do X, Y and Z, right? So
how do we, how do people startto make that shift? I'd love to
hear more about the practices.
Marc Brackett (18:53):
Well, one thing importantly, it doesn't cause
you to do anything. You causeyourself to do it. I think
that's an important that's wekind of we like to blame our
emotions for our behavior, butour responses to our emotions
are learned, and so we have tolearn how to unlearn our
unhelpful ways of dealing withour feelings, and that subtlety
(19:14):
and language is important tohelp us kind of sit back and
take ownership of our behaviorlike you made me feel that way,
though I didn't make you feelthat way. So this bring this
goes back to my newest research,actually, which I'm very excited
(19:35):
about, and it's going to be mybook after my next book that I'm
working on already. Sopermission to feel was this
treatise that I wrote about whyemotions matter. And you know,
it stems from the story, youknow, of my relationship with my
uncle, who was the first personto give me that permission to
(19:58):
feel when I was feeling. Selfhatred and anger and fear. He
didn't say, like my father wouldsay, Son, you know, gotta
toughen up. Or what my motherwould say, which is, oh, my God,
we can't handle this. I'm gonnahave a nervous breakdown. I had
very stereotypical kind ofparents, which was like, I can't
handle this. You know, you're onyour own, kiddo. I'm gonna have
(20:18):
a breakdown knowing that you'rebeing bullied. To my father
being like, I don't know what tosay or do, so you better just
tough on up kid. Neitherapproach was very helpful. It's
like, okay, I'm not going totell anybody about my
experiences because, like,there's nowhere to go. There's
no There's both of those areclosed doors. Yeah, so
(20:43):
permission to feel uncle Marvincomes into my life, asks me how
I'm feeling, says we're going toget through this together. Now,
what I didn't do for that book,because I didn't have the idea
of doing it, was the research onthe uncle Marvin's in the world.
So now I've launched thisinternational study. I've got
(21:03):
about 25,000 people who've doneit looking at the
characteristics of those peoplein our lives. Now the first is,
what's the percentage so acrossthe world, whether in the UK or
you're in Connecticut, where Ilive, or you're in Hong Kong,
Australia, Spain, wherever, onlyabout a third of people say they
(21:28):
grew up with someone that theyfeel safe and comfortable with
around emotion. It's ubiquitous.
It's the same. No matter where Igo, it's a third, a third, two
thirds say no. That'sunfortunate that two thirds of
us are running around feelinglike we were never seen or
heard, that we didn't have aplace to go with our emotions.
The second is, what are thecharacteristics of these people?
(21:50):
There are three characteristicsyou want to guess. What they
are. Think about the person ifyou had one, who you believe
gave you permission to feel, whocreated the condition for that,
or if you didn't have someone,imagine what they might be like.
What do you think are thecharacteristics of those on
those people?
Scott Allender (22:13):
Non judgmental?
Marc Brackett (22:15):
Okay, that's one, listening,
Jean Gomes (22:19):
good listening, capacity to listen.
Marc Brackett (22:22):
All right. Well, you're both geniuses, because
those are the top two. Butthere's one more
Scott Allender (22:28):
empathetic. You
Marc Brackett (22:29):
got it? Gosh, you guys are getting the A in my
class. So top three, it's thoseare actually the three that show
up everywhere. The top three.
The first is non judgmental. Thesecond is good listening, and
the third is empathy andcompassion. Now take a think
about those three things, nonjudgmental, good listener,
(22:50):
empathic, compassionate. None ofthose are saying fixer, problem
solver. It's all about the it'sall about helping to create the
conditions for the person to seetheir situation and come up with
solutions. Which is the beautyof the work. It's fine, like I
(23:14):
love what I do in schools,because the teacher, oh, I'm not
skilled at this. I'm not, youknow, I don't have my PhD in
psychology, and it's like,that's okay. I'm not asking you
to actually solve the kidsproblems. What I'm asking you to
do is create the conditions forkids to feel safe, comfortable,
non judged, when they knowyou're listening, whether they
know you care. And then you givethem the opportunities to think
(23:35):
about the solutions, and youhelp them evaluate those
solutions, try them out and thenrefine them as they grow. That's
what the work is about. And so Ishare that with you, because you
going back to your question nowis what I find in my research is
of all of the emotion regulationstrategies that help people have
(23:59):
greater well being and purposeand life and life satisfaction.
Of all of them, the top one ispermission to feel. It's not a
strategy in of itself. It's anattitude. It's a mindset. I am
allowing myself to have thisfeeling because I know this
(24:20):
feeling is probably impermanentand I'm okay with it. I can be
anxious and productive, I can besad and still go to work, and I
think that's empowering andreally important. So the radical
acceptance of your emotions isthe top strategy.
Jean Gomes (24:46):
And you listed out a couple of emotions earlier on,
and it's quite helpful forpeople to understand how to
think about each of thosethings. Somebody yesterday who I
was talking about, the fact thatwe were talking. And he said,
Tell me about resentment, afeeling of resentment. What?
What? What is going on there?
How would you what's the theregulation strategy around when
(25:08):
you feel resentment towardsothers? It's
Marc Brackett (25:12):
funny you say that because I did this podcast
with Brene Brown, and we talkedabout this exact thing, same
thing. And she was like, itbecame her like thing everywhere
she went. I had this epiphanytalking with Marc about
resentment,and so let's think about let's
just unpack it for a minute. Sowhen we are resentful, it's some
(25:36):
combination, most likely ofanger and envy. You know, envy,
in its purest form is, you know,I'm envious of, you know, your
bookshelves, your Gosh, you'veread more than I've read, or I'm
envious of your gorgeous home,or your fancy watch. It doesn't
(25:58):
mean I hate you. It means maybe,you know, I actually envy has
been a motivator for me, becauseI watch other people give
presentation like that. Tommywas freaking great. I'm going to
figure out how to incorporatethat into my presentations. My
envy of one of my philanthropistfunders homes. I'm like, I'm
(26:19):
going to work harder. I wantthat pool, and so it's not such
a bad thing. However, when we'reresentful, we hate the person
for having what they have,right? We're angry that we don't
(26:39):
have it, and we feel it's aninjustice that we don't have it,
and we also feel envious. Soit's a combination, which I
think is is more dangerous, youknow, and oftentimes I think it
comes from deep insecurity. Sowhat's
Jean Gomes (27:01):
the move? What's the move that you when you recognize
that's the awareness piece. Whatdo you do there to kind of try
and counter that?
Marc Brackett (27:09):
If I do sometimes feel I don't feel that way as
much anymore, because I feellike, you know, maybe because I
feel like I've made it, but Ithink a it's got to go back to
kind of really unpacking whereis this coming from. Like, why
(27:31):
is this about me, or is thisabout the other person? You
know, what's really going onhere? Marc, is this, is this my
insecurity? You know? Why am Iso insecure about this? Am I not
actually working hard towardsthat goal? And I just feel angry
that the other person has gottenit, Marc, you
(27:58):
a pretty good life. You know,you're not going to get
everything, and so why don't Ijust take a moment and realize,
like, compared to many people inthe world, you're living a
freaking fantastic life. And somaybe take a moment for some
gratitude. I think the gratitudepiece is way overlooked, and
people think of it as cliche,and I think it's the antidote to
(28:21):
much of our anger in society.
Scott Allender (28:25):
I agree. I'm curious about the role of meta
emotion in this. So, you know,thinking about permission to
feel and welcoming emotions,right? Like I know when I've had
anxiety surface in the past, Ialmost feel shame about feeling
anxious, right? So is is a metaemotion?
Marc Brackett (28:47):
You're a dude.
Scott Allender (28:50):
I tell them that all the time. Anybody? Yeah, I
didn't feel shame until Jean gotto hold me
me no. But is that an in? Isthat indicative of like, if can
we pay attention to our metaemotions as an indicator of how
much we're allowing ourselves tojust welcome the primary emotion
and accept it for what it is?
Does that play a role? It
Marc Brackett (29:12):
does huge and sometimes it's some of the self
unconscious, you know, that weneed to really sit with and ask
ourselves the question is, youknow, is the feeling driving,
you know, my behavior right now,or is it the feeling about the
feeling? And I think oftentimesit is the meta emotion, you
know. So going back to the youknow, very related to your
(29:36):
story. You know, as a kid, I wasreally badly bullied in school,
like terrible stuff, likeextortion, beaten up and spit on
it was terrible, but because ofmy parents and my father in
particular, and I wasembarrassed. I was being
bullied. I was feeling hatredand fear and all the other
(29:56):
emotions too, but it was myshame and embarrassing.
Embarrassment that I was feelingafraid because my father
wouldn't like my father wouldn'tbe afraid. He would just punch
back. Well, that's not in myDNA, and so that, I think was
what prevented me from talkingabout the feeling, you know, or
(30:19):
the experience with my family, Ijust kept it inside, because the
shame and the embarrassment kindof took over. And so being aware
of that is critically important.
Obviously, we need strategies.
And I wanted to say something,you know, as we're talking about
this, one of the things that Ithink is so important is that,
(30:41):
especially, you know, withyounger people, is that we have
to the onus should not be on theindividual, especially a younger
person who's being bullied, tofigure it out right. The the
onus is on the adults who areraising and teaching kids to be
aware of what the hell ishappening and be supportive. You
(31:05):
know, I think that's and that'sthe same thing, by the way, the
workplace, right? And when, ifsomeone is feeling that way at
work, they're feeling like theirboss, you know, is
unappreciative, or it's the jobof the boss just to check in and
say, Hey, how much gratitude doI show the people you know in my
office and or how am I speakingto people you know that they
(31:27):
don't feel seen or heard?
Jean Gomes (31:31):
Can we talk about the work you've done with how
memory and emotions worktogether? What have you learned
about that particular aspect ofyour work,
Marc Brackett (31:42):
yeah, I mean, that's, I don't do so much
research in that space anymore,but just the basics of it, you
know, is that there's somethingcalled mood congruent memory,
and it's an interestingPhenomenon. And so, you know, if
you our memories are are tied toour emotions. So, the example I
(32:06):
have of that, I did this projectwith the with the singer Lady
Gaga, about 10 years ago. Youknow, it was a big deal like
it's, you know,Marc Brackett, psychology
professor, doing with some popstar, you know, at Yale doing a
presentation. And, you know, itwas interesting to think about,
(32:27):
like, I just talked about itright now, and, boom, go back to
the experience, right? I could,it's amazing how, you know how
memory works, but it's tied tothe elation, you know, and the
fun and all that that I washaving, you know, in that
moment, I think giving a moreextreme example would be maybe
(32:49):
helpful for some people around atraumatic experience. And so the
way our brain operates withtrauma is that when we have a
very strong, intense, scarything happen, certain neuro
(33:09):
chemicals get released thatimprint the experience in our
memory system, In ourhippocampus. And that's
intentional, because it's it'spreparing you for future
instances where you might needto prepare better for those
situations. And so it's a reallygood example to me of the
(33:31):
adaptive value for emotion andmemory. However, it also can be
very maladaptive if you don'thave the strategies to deal with
it. And so that's how trauma,you know, if you don't have the
skills to identify, you know,the thing that's activating you
around the traumatic experience,it's just going to, you know,
(33:52):
it's going to keep you in thattrauma cycle. So it's both
adaptive and maladaptive,depending on the skills.
Scott Allender (34:01):
Can we come back to the role of emotions and
decisions? I'd like to, I'd liketo get into a little bit more in
terms of our leaders listeningright now and sort of thinking
about how they can pay moreattention to the role of
emotions in facing some of thebiggest challenges. You know, as
the world feels more uncertainthan ever and more polarized,
(34:24):
and people are bringing a wholelot with them to the table every
day. And as you said earlier,there's still this sort of
stigma around leaving emotionsat the door and how that's going
to leak out sideways and causeall sorts of harm. So there's a
lot in there. But I mean as aspeople themselves, as leaders,
need to pay attention to howthey're feeling because of the
(34:45):
state of the world and how theymight be feeling in it. They've
got team members who areexperiencing a vast array of
different opinions and emotions.
Feels like there's a lot comingto each coming with people to
each boardroom table, etc. Sohow do leaders think about all
of that?
Marc Brackett (35:04):
I mean, a lot.
There's a lot to think about,but I don't want to make it
complicated either, you know,because that's not helpful. I
think the first thing is thatevery leader should ask
themselves, are they an uncleMarvin or not? And you know that
made me people think, Oh, this.
Roll their eyes at me right now,but I didn't get to my other
(35:29):
research, which is that peopleare much more successful, much
more productive, have muchbetter skills at regulating
their emotions have betterpurpose in life, or higher
purpose in life, much greaterlife satisfaction. Are better,
healthier, happier. The listgoes on. When they see either
(35:51):
their parent or their leader ashaving those three
characteristics, it's actuallyin my own like, humility here,
I'm blown away by how much I'vereplicated this. And like,
literally, I've done 60 studiesin the last three years, six
zero. I have not run a study onthe characteristics of those
(36:14):
uncle Marvin's in terms of, didyou have one, did you not have
one, or do you have one at work,or don't have one at work? And
found that it predicts lifesatisfaction, job satisfaction,
etc, etc, etc. It is a big deal.
People are sick of feelingjudged. They want to be seen,
they want to be heard, and theywant to know that they're a
leader or their teacher orparent cares about them. It's
(36:38):
really just that much. It's thatstraightforward. Now, I think
the problem is that people getreally like parents. For
example, one example, I givethis speech,
and this mom, she's like, youknow, I've had an epiphany, and
(36:59):
I have two kids, and I know myson has the uncle Marvin, but my
daughter definitely doesn't. AndMarc, I am leaving here today,
and I'm gonna find my daughterher uncle Marvin. And I'm like,
lady, it could be you
Jean Gomes (37:14):
don't out source the deal.
Marc Brackett (37:17):
And you know, the same thing applies in the
workplace. It's like, Fine, youknow, go see your therapist.
This is not about therapy.
Remember, it's not about problemsolving. It's not about fixing,
it's about being present. It'sabout creating the conditions
where people feel like you care.
And so what's the barrier? Well,the number one barrier, people
(37:40):
say is time. I don't have time,like you don't have time to be
non judgmental. Give me a giveme let's talk about that one.
Give me a break. I mean, if youreally get into the nuances of
the brain, it's moremetabolically demanding to be
judgmental, it's more draining,right? Because you're just
(38:03):
constantly thinking, Oh, they'renot good enough. I'm smarter
than they are. You know, theyare, like, that's effortful.
It's not effortful to just benon judgmental. Like, I mean,
listening does take effort. Youknow that showing compassion is
deliberate. The second barrier,however, which is the big one to
(38:26):
me, is fear. People are afraidbecause they think they be
stepped all over if they'reactually non judgmental,
compassionate and empathic, orthey fear that they're not going
to be to handle what comes atthem like it's, I'm not a
therapist. I'm not you know, whyam I going to be give someone
(38:49):
permission to feel because thenthey're going to just want to,
like, tell me all theirproblems, and they're going to
think I have to fix them, and Ihave to constantly remind people
that nobody wants to be fixed.
Nobody wants you to solve alltheir problems for them.
Sara Deschamps (39:05):
If the conversations we've been having
on the evolving leader havehelped you in any way, please
head over to Apple podcasts andleave us a rating and a review.
Thank you for listening. Nowlet's get back to the
conversation.
Jean Gomes (39:18):
Can we can we talk about one of the hot topics in
emotions, which is triggerspeople. You throw this word
around all over the place, and alot of the time, as you said,
they use it as you're triggeringme, as opposed to the fact that
this is something that'shappening within me. Can we talk
about what you've learned inthis area? I
Marc Brackett (39:39):
mean, I think you know, if you take a
constructivist view of emotion,you know, if I went like this to
you right, or if I say Fu,right, the same tone, the same
energy, the language of fu wasmore think he is the middle of.
(40:00):
Like Marx a lunatic, and so it'sall appraisal. And I just think
we have to understand that it'sthe appraisal process that
causes us to have feelings.
Nobody makes us feel anything.
It's our interpretation. If Ihave is someone on the street
(40:21):
who I don't know at this on thesubway here in New York, says to
me, you know, like you're blank,blank, okay, like whatever, if
my father, if my husband, if mywife, if my whoever says that,
it has a different meaning,because it's an interpretation.
So what that means is that wecan have a different
(40:44):
relationship with our triggersif we take a step back and kind
of go back to that appraisalprocess. So I think that's key.
Number two is that our responsesor reactions to those triggers
are learned, which means we canunlearn if we learned it, that
(41:07):
means we could learn new things.
And so if your automatichabitual response is to
retaliate, I'll give you one. IThis is like a simple one, but
when I got overwhelmed, mymother had this. She just always
said, I'm having a breakdown.
Like that was just her way of,like, escaping anything that was
going wrong in the family. Andshe just, like, lock herself in
(41:28):
a room and, like, knock him outfor a few hours. And I would be
like, I remember thinking tomyself, I'm the one being
bullied. Why are you having abreakdown? Wrong model here. But
anyway, shouldn't have anemotional education. So I have
empathy for that. The I haveempathy for it as an adult, not
(41:49):
as a kid. Now, my point here is,I was on a business trip, I
don't know, five years ago, I'mon this flight. Everything's
going wrong. It's canceled. It'sweather. Then we got in the
flight, it was turbulence. I hadto prepare my presentation. The
internet didn't work on theflight. And I was with a
(42:13):
colleague, and she was, are youdoing right? I'm like, I'm
having a breakdown. You know?
I'm like, shit. I became mymother, and it was like,
automatic, like I just my, youknow, you know. And I learned
that I started having these goto strategies for myself when I
was either irritable, not in themood, or overwhelmed. So at
work, I would always have thisthing, I'm tired today, but it
(42:36):
always, I was always tired whenpeople were asking me difficult
questions,and I'm like, All right. Marc,
do you realize this pattern?
Like you're overwhelmed, you'rehaving a breakdown, you're
tired, you know, you're kind ofnot in the mood. So you tell
everybody you're tired,Like my mother. In life, I tell
(43:58):
this story all the time, butduring the pandemic, my mother
got locked in her house, but shedidn't get locked in our house.
She's from Panama, and couldn'tgo back to her home because
there were no flights to Panama.
And it was she came for awedding, and everything shut
down for seven months. Shecouldn't go back. And it was not
(44:19):
easy. I love the lady, but like,seven months is a long time, and
we had a big falling out onenight, and I decided, like,
Marc, you're the freakingdirector of the Center for
emotional intelligence. Like,how could you be so
dysregulated? Not cool. You gotto be the role model. How would,
how would, if the, if the realdirector of the Center for
(44:39):
emotional intelligence, youknow, was there in that moment.
What would he have done? Andthat's what I thought about when
I went to bed at night and thencame down the next morning. I'm
like, That's the version of theself that I want to be from now
on. Now it's hard when you gettriggered, but what you can do
is then I go to work or take awalk, I come back into my house.
I didn't know she'd be sittingthere just getting ready to
(45:01):
annoy me. I would put my hand onthe door now, take a deep breath
and say, center director, you'retrying to come out. Come on,
baby. Where are you? You'regonna and that's who entered in
the room. And it made a hugedifference. So my point is that
it has to be cultivated,practiced, you know, refined,
(45:25):
and you got to make itpermanent. In terms of the
habit.
Scott Allender (45:32):
Can you talk just about the ruler system that
I mentioned in the intro? Whatis it and the impact it's had?
Marc Brackett (45:39):
Yeah, thank you for asking, since I spent 30
years of my life working thisthing called ruler.
So importantly, ruler comes outof two things. One is my deep
relationship with my uncle whowas building a feelings
curriculum in the 1970s but withthe school teacher who didn't
have a PhD, he didn't have, youknow, a lab, but he didn't have,
(46:02):
you know, access to a lot ofresources, but had a lot of
brilliant ideas, and I wasblessed to have learned them.
And then, as I was working withmy uncle to write a curriculum,
I decided marketing like noone's gonna like, who wants to
talk to a 23 year old about thisstuff, like, who has no degrees
and no background, you need toget some credibility, so I'm
(46:24):
like PhD in psychology, and itlearned who these kind of major
theorists were, and wrote tothem, and some of them didn't
write me back and butnevertheless found my way to get
my PhD with one of the foundersof theory of emotional
intelligence theory. Then did apostdoc with the second one, and
blah, blah, blah. But ruler isboth, you know, a model for
(46:52):
teaching the skills of emotionalintelligence, but it's also the
skills themselves. And so itcomes out of the practice piece
of my work with my uncle, and itcomes out of the scientific
piece of my, you know, manyyears of research on the science
of emotion and emotionalintelligence. So there are five
skills that I call ruler skills.
And again, these are directly anoutgrowth of the theory that was
(47:15):
first written by Peter SullivanJack Mayer. So first is
recognizing emotions. So like,I'm watching you nod, right now,
Scott, I'm thinking, like, is heinterested, or is he patronizing
me? The second is understandingemotion. Like, okay, is it what
I said, or is it Scott? Like,where's it coming from? The
(47:36):
third is, you know, what is theactual feeling? Do I know what
the feeling is? My own feeling,your feeling. The fourth is
expressing emotions, knowing howand when to express emotions,
understanding there are a lot ofcultural nuances. And then the
fifth one is regulatingemotions. So ruler takes those
five skills of emotionalintelligence and embeds them
(47:59):
into systems. I work a lot inschool systems, but my work,
along with your work, it's, itstarts with the district level
or the local educationauthorities, if you're using,
you know, UK terms. It startswith leadership, because you
cannot have an emotionalintelligence curriculum in a
(48:20):
school that will have lastingresults unless the leadership
also buys into it and makespeople accountable for
delivering it. It just will notwork. It'll be a, you know, I
did that workshop. I can't tellyou I went to a workshop on
emotional intelligence. I'm likeMazel Tov, yes. Like, all right,
and so Where has your behaviorchanged? This is life's work,
(48:44):
which is why, in ruler, it'spreschool, elementary school,
middle school, high school, andthen college and and on. I mean,
it's a big piece, you know, we Iright now, really do a lot of
work on kind of the mindsets ofemotional intelligence, not just
(49:05):
the skills of emotionalintelligence. And so you need to
apply a growth mindset to theprinciples or the skills of
emotional intelligence, becauseyou are going to fail, you're
going to make a mistake, you'regoing to mislabel someone's
feeling you're going to makesomeone feel bad about
themselves. You're going to bedysregulated once in a while,
and you have to ask yourself,you know, what was that? And how
(49:27):
could I do better tomorrow? AndI'll tell you, you know, part of
the reason why I worked, I havea new another book that's coming
up, called dealing with feeling,which was that it was funny,
because I, you know, it's veryproud that my first book did
well. It's been translated into27 languages, but I got all
these emails like, Thank you forgiving me permission to feel.
But now what the brink do I dowith my feelings? And then the
(49:50):
pandemic hit, and then all of asudden, I was like, I thought I
was the director of the Centerfor emotional intelligence, and.
Then. So my mother was there,and I'm trapped at home, and
then we go, everybody's hybrid,and then there's masks and no
masks, and yelling about masksand vaccines and no vaccines,
and everybody's freaking outabout everything. And so I
(50:10):
decided to do, like, a lot ofresearch on what was getting in
the way of people regulating andwhat were the evidence based
strategies that we knew wouldhelp people to regulate and
there are real strategies. Theone that showed up in my
research, as I shared earlier,as being the most important was
this idea of just sort of like,I know I'm having this feeling
(50:34):
it's okay, that kind ofpermission to feel acceptance.
Piece
Jean Gomes (50:41):
we're living in a very unusual period of history
where we've got so many thingsgoing on at a cultural level
around the topic of of feeling,identity, politics, uncertainty,
you know, everything that'sgoing on at the moment, the
intergenerational stuff, thethings that Jonathan heights
(51:03):
been writing about in terms ofthe coddling of the American
mind and so on. What is yourperspective on how emotions are
being interpreted by differentparts of society? How's that
formulating up to permission tofeel? Yeah,
Marc Brackett (51:20):
it's funny because I have a chapter in my
new book called seven reasonswhy nobody knows how to
regulate. And I give you likethe sneak preview. I think the
first is, if I can remember myown work at this point, Funny
how that happens, right? But awe don't value emotions period.
(51:42):
It's like I said earlier,emotions are weak. B, nobody
taught us anything about this athome. C, we didn't learn it at
school either. You know. D is weall just want the quick fix. I
mean, let's be real. So mucheasier to just drink an extra
beer, take an extra pill, youknow, and now it's cold plunges.
(52:06):
That's this that's going to saveyour life, you know, look at
you. Look at the look at thetree for five minutes a day.
Prefer you're going to be happy.
I mean, these things drive me.
If there's one thing that'sdriving me crazy today, it's the
quick fix thing. It's the socialmedia influencers who have the
strategy that's going to, like,you just do this one thing and
(52:27):
like, you know, call people youlove twice a week. Okay, what if
I don't have people I love? Youknow, you know, my partner's
grandmother would be 109 withoutever doing a cold plunge. I just
think these things areridiculous, and I think it's
hurting people. The fourth orthe E, I guess it is. The fifth
(52:51):
is we'd rather spend a lot ofmoney on expensive interventions
than be prevention focused. Ithink that's a big one. It's
like, we don't want to invest inthe building of people's
capacity. We just want to waituntil they are have suicidal
(53:15):
ideation, you know, majordepression, anxiety, and then do
treatment. And if it only knewhow much more expensive it is to
treat and how much moreeffective it is to build the
skills as kids develop, youknow, we'd have a much better
society. The other one is that Isaid people don't value
(53:36):
emotions. We don't get taughtthis stuff. But before that even
is, do we even, like, appreciatethat emotional intelligence is a
valuable skill, you know, thewhole soft skills, like soft
skills. And then the big one, Ithink, related to what you were
saying, is, and this is myvision, which I know is going to
(54:01):
take a lot of work, and I needall help I can get, is, does
government, you know, do thelarger institutions make space
for this kind of thing? So if Ihad it my way, every policy
maker before they, you know,finalized whatever policy
(54:26):
they're creating, they wouldhave a review process that would
say, is this going to be helpfulor harmful to children's
emotional development? And ifyou see what people do in terms
of detaining kids at borders andseparating from their mothers.
(54:46):
We know from research that isthe worst thing that you can do
to support a healthy child, butsomehow another we get away with
it, and if only peopleunderstood child. Development
and cared. I think the worldwould be a very different place.
Scott Allender (55:06):
Marc, I want to keep talking for like three more
hours. There's so much I lovethe work that you're doing. When
does your when does your nextbook come out that you
mentioned?
Marc Brackett (55:16):
September? Yeah, so I just got the cover. You
want to give you a sneak peek.
Yeah, I don't know if it's goingto come up in the reverse, but,
Scott Allender (55:25):
yeah, excellent.
So
Marc Brackett (55:27):
I'm excited about this. This is, like, it's rare,
you know, part of the way Ilearn is just by kind of, like,
escaping and, you know, thinkingand writing, and I feel my I
have a theory about my owndevelopment, which is, I don't
know anything until I canexplain it well. And so the I
(55:49):
felt the need to just reallyruler as a whole, or recognize,
understand, label, express andregulate. But where people
struggle is in the regulationpiece and but I think it's also
it comes after the basics ofpermission to feel like you just
like building your vocabulary. Ijust want to share one other
(56:10):
thing, by the way, with youguys, two or two things. One is
I developed this new web series.
It's called dealing withfeeling. Which are interviews
that I do with leading expertslike John Hite, Angela
Duckworth, just a bunch of wellknown scientists and other
people like musicians like dothMcKagan from Guns and Roses and
Jewel, the singer, where I talkabout emotions and the skills
(56:32):
that they learned, and kind ofpull out of that. And the second
is an app that I built with thefounder of Pinterest. It's
called the how we feel app, andso we have put a lot of big
investments that app, and I'mproud to say it's available for
free on both Android and iOS.
Jean Gomes (56:55):
There you go. Yeah, I've been using this for, I
don't know, since it came out.
Actually, that's cool. Yeah,
Marc Brackett (57:01):
we're gonna build more features. It's really, it's
cool, it's funny. I just, I metwith the head of HR for our
university few weeks ago, andit's like, I've been using that
for two years. I taught myselffour times a day. I'm like,
You're a little, you're you'recrazy, like, you're really into
this. But it was a greatconversation about what he's
(57:21):
learned about himself, and nowhe wants he and I doing a talk
for the university, to geteverybody to use it. So that's
exciting, but it's a great tool,you know, to get back to the
basics of, you know, we startedthis conversation with the
question of How you feeling, andI'll just say that a lot of us
don't get asked that questionvery often. We usually say,
(57:44):
How's it going, Yeah, what's up?
You know, we don't say, How areyou feeling. And I think that
gets back to that fear ofintimacy, you know, fear of what
we're going to hear. But truthis that even when we're asked a
question, what do we say? Fine,fine. We're not really granular.
And so I think the first step inthe process is just that self
(58:07):
awareness. And then, as I sharein my work, the labeling piece
actually is a pathway ofchoosing better strategies for
regulating. So that's anotherconversation for another day.
Yeah,
Jean Gomes (58:28):
well, if you're up for it, we'd love to have you
back to talk about our book.
Marc Brackett (58:32):
I'd be delighted.
Thank you.
Jean Gomes (58:33):
It would be wonderful. And we're going to
put details, both of the app andthe web series and the book,
which is definitely worthreading. That's a UK cover, but
it's well, you like, you don'tlike that
Marc Brackett (58:47):
one, fine. It just is amazing how every
country of it, you know, yeah,they just design their own
cover, which is fine.
Jean Gomes (58:55):
Excellent. But we'll put all the details so that
listeners can get access tothose things.
Marc Brackett (59:00):
And I'll be over in the UK for some presentations
this summer, so maybe we canhave a coffee.
Jean Gomes (59:04):
That would be wonderful.
Scott Allender (59:06):
Marc, thank you so much for joining us today.
I've thoroughly enjoyed this. Iso appreciate the work that
you're doing in the world andfor giving some of some of your
valuable time to us today.
Marc Brackett (59:17):
My pleasure.
Thank you for inviting
Scott Allender (59:18):
me and folks in a world where you could be
anything be an Uncle Marvin.
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