Why Emotional Intelligence is Key in Leadership

What is the good word? Welcome to the Sales Made Easy podcast. How are things today?

Neptali Martinez [00:00:37]:

Thank you. It's a nice sunny day outside, so it's getting warmer, so I cannot complain about that.

Harry Spaight [00:00:44]:

Good deal, Niftily. So we are going to chat today a little bit about your journey into being a new author and talk a little bit about your leadership path and then a little bit about emotional intelligence. So I'm very excited about the conversation and I just wanted to get a little understanding of your background and where your journey has taken you so far.

Neptali Martinez [00:01:10]:

Okay, so my journey professionally begins in technology. I had a degree on that. I had a lot of years on that. I became a manager in the technology department, leading a team of professionals, supporting business applications. I'm not sure I was bored or whatever. It was simply I got to do something else. So the opportunity of doing human resources came up and I jumped at it. I became the Human Resources director for the same technology department. So that prompt me to go back to school. So I went back and I got a master's in Human Resources management and Development. And that clarified a lot of stuff for me that made me realize what were some of the transactional work that we were doing? We were talking about emotional intelligence. Definitely I was able to kind of manage that with a manager, with employee. And I did not realize at the time, but I was coaching them, I was coaching the employee, realizing I was coaching the manager. And one of them one day said, you know, when I retire, I'm going to become a coach. And you know, the light bulb, the pro light bulb went, ah, coaching. So when I finished working on HR, I went back to school and I took an intensive professional coaching course that lasted a month every day, nine to five for a month, in which I learned two things. I learned all about coaching and therefore I learned what I knew and what I didn't know. Okay? So that I've been doing for a number of years. But I also was teaching. I began teaching graduate courses, undergraduate on change management. And I spoke about 2 hours during that just about emotional intelligence because when you want to change people, you're going to be dealing with emotions. And it was, well, how do you do that with other people? How do you control your own emotions and all that? So, yeah, emotional intelligence has been something very active in human resources and in the teaching and of course in coaching. So one of the things that usually comes up in coaching in terms of emotional intelligence is that a newly minted manager comes in and starts giving orders left and right and it starts pushing people around and it's a whole thing. How do you come across? Are you building trust? So make them aware about themselves, their emotions, the tone of voice and all that. But also we talk about the other aspect of emotional intelligence, which is how do you manage the emotions on others, on your direct reports, on your clients, on your peers? Because emotions comes from everywhere and that's a different way of managing when you're confronting somebody that's going to be very, very emotional. I ask them to carry a container on their side, an empty container. And all the anger, all the emotions, all the vitro, put it in there so it doesn't hit you. Because if it hits you, you react like you want to defend yourself, right? But if you just let it go but in the meantime you are thinking, what is this situation about? What can I do? What is the person going through? What is it that we can work with? So by deflecting the thing that normally will hit you directly, you are able to stay calm, you're able to analyze what's going on and then you are able to kind of talk to the person about that because usually after they unload, then they're calm and you can talk to them. We feel attack, we feel insulted, we feel all kinds, our emotions get trouble and it's like, wait a minute, did you ask the person? That's what they meant, right?

Harry Spaight [00:05:21]:

Yeah, it's like that simple action. Thank you for sharing all that great stuff. The thoughts that come to mind related to emotional intelligence and leadership, I find it interesting that you were in a position of leadership when you were in technology, right? Yes, right. But you didn't really have the training on emotional intelligence. But I'm willing to bet you had quite a bit of emotional intelligence. Am I wrong?

Neptali Martinez [00:05:49]:

Well, you're right. Some of us have something, other people have other things. And I think that came naturally. I don't remember really being upset for things. My thing has been, okay, let me think, what's going on, what's the issue? What's the problem? It's not something I had to learn about it. I mean, I may have perfected, I may have educated myself about that, but yes, there was a base there that I was able to utilize.

Harry Spaight [00:06:22]:

So I look at leadership and sales as very similar. Some have defined leadership as influence and sales we're serving, but we're also trying to influence people that our solution, product or service is going to solve their problem. There's influence related to that. So emotional intelligence in sales is actually extremely important. Even though people don't typically think about it that way.

Neptali Martinez [00:06:50]:

Right.

Harry Spaight [00:06:50]:

But in leadership, I've come from a generation that people looked up to. People like Vince Lombardi, things like, we do it my way, this is the way we do things around here, and so forth. And I get it. That's football. You come in and it's a business and you have to win early, or it's the army, different situations. But I think even the army has changed to some degree today considerably compared to the days of Patton, perhaps. But the whole thing about leadership now with understanding people and where they are today and trying to help them to get to where they need to be it goes beyond just telling them. Right. And so why don't you tell me the difference between telling someone what they need to do versus coaching them through what can help them to be better?

Neptali Martinez [00:07:47]:

One of the big changes that I see is that we go from telling them to showing them. We go from mandating to including them to say, well, what do you think? I know you're an expert. I know. How would you do it? You see the goal that we have? How would you put yourself in there? So to me, that does two things. First of all, it kind of disarms this confrontation. But you're telling the person, hey, I trust your knowledge. Hey, I'm asking you. One of the samples that I usually use is that my boss, he was at a C suite level, okay? And she used to come to my office and knock on the door and ask me, Natalie, may I come in? Wait a minute. She's my boss. Sure, coming. May I sit down? Yeah, sure. May I close the door? And then she will tell me, I need your help. Now, that's leadership. She needed to come that way, but she was showing her regard for me. She was showing that she respected me, that she saw me where I was. So whatever she asked, do you think I did it?

Harry Spaight [00:09:14]:

I do.

Neptali Martinez [00:09:16]:

Of course. I was ready to do so. To me, that's leadership. A leader has followers. And when you follow someone, boy, that's a big difference. Managers want to be right. Leaders ask what is right. Managers usually take all the credit. Leaders give the credit. So there's a number of things that make a distinction between a leader and a manager. And up until a few years, there was a great confusion as to what is a manager and what is a leader. That's leadership because that's a leader. Everybody can be a leader, right? The janitor could be doing work and go to the manager and said, hey, I just saw a new cleaning product that's a lot better and it's cheaper. Why don't we get that? Now, that's a little cheap action as opposed to just doing a good job cleaning, which is the job, but no taking initiative to do something. Oh, you know what? I dream up a new routine that could cut the time in half. How about it? We do that. That's leadership thinking. Okay, so anybody can be. But when we went in our work environment, at least me, when I kept going up, they didn't send me to leadership school, they sent me to management school.

Harry Spaight [00:10:46]:

Yes, exactly.

Neptali Martinez [00:10:47]:

So leadership is coming out later these days. You talk about more leadership. I even went to a leadership training, which I learned a whole lot, but that's in the past few years only. So yeah, we're dealing with this kind of a heavy duty management directive, and that slowly but surely is changing. And emotional intelligence plays a big role.

Harry Spaight [00:11:09]:

Well, part of the whole emotional intelligence is this self awareness.

Neptali Martinez [00:11:14]:

Yes.

Harry Spaight [00:11:15]:

Right. For most people who are new in leadership, like you mentioned, they're not trained. I certainly wasn't trained. There are parts of what I did in the early years of leadership and management that were good, but I was probably a better leader when I wasn't a manager. And then people looked at me as a leader. When I became a manager, I somehow felt like, well, this allows me to be a jerk and to bark orders at people. Someone mentioned that to me, and I realized, well, that's not the way to go. So there's a lot of back and forth as trying to figure out what was good leadership. And sometimes it's a mix of I like what this person did, and I don't like what that person did. And we're trying to form and shape and so forth as to what leadership really should be for us. But that first step is really getting to know yourself, which is what a lot of us don't do. Right. We just don't have the time. We don't make the time for that. But what do you suggest as to how someone can become a little more in tune with themselves? Be a little more self aware? Yeah.

Neptali Martinez [00:12:32]:

So there's a lot of examples that you could bring into. For instance, I use the analogy of putting a mirror in front of you. So for instance, we could say, okay, here's you giving an order, and how does that come across and what are you trying to accomplish? Because if you say to somebody, okay, I want you to do that, that's all they're going to do. They're not going to be committed. They're just doing what you ask them to do. But if you ask them to think about it, if you ask them for their opinion and you make them part of it, you make them owners of that, you know what they're going to do it perhaps better. They're going to go faster, and they're going to have a better relationship with you because the way you treat them. And you mentioned the managers and leaders, but be aware that you're going to need both and just the right situation when you had to say, hey, get out of this room because something's happening. Well, that's the manager giving a direction and then you better do it because there's something right? But other than that, you have a dialogue. You ask the person, you talk to them, you ask for their opinion, you ask for their thoughts. Because one of the things that I find in coaching and also in dealing with employees is there's a level of apprehension. And we talk about emotional. There's a level of fear, there's a level of avoiding risk. Okay, I'll do that because otherwise else something's going to happen. But when you develop a relationship, when you develop a dialogue, when you trust the person, there's back and forth trust, then the fear goes down. The fear dissipates. Creating a safe environment, whether you're manager or whether you're leader, that's a big thing because that means I can talk to my manager, I can talk to my leader. I know whatever happens, good or bad, I know we're going to do something. Listen what I'm saying, that we are going to do something.

Harry Spaight [00:14:32]:

Well, this transfers over to selling. So naturally about this, I think about like maybe there's an initiative came out over when I was in corporate and they said, okay, so this is what we're going to do going forward. Now, I could go back to my team and I've done this more than once and say, well, this is what we're going to do going forward. And I'd get, well, that's stupid. Who comes up with this hair brained idea, that type of stuff. And already it's a fight. So I learned it's like so understanding what the initiative was. It was then I would say, how can I get the team to buy in and say, let's have a meeting and we're going to talk about what we can do differently about being a little more successful. How can we become a little more successful with whatever the initiative is in sales? It might be new business or cross selling or something like that. What are some ideas that we could have? Let's throw them all in and then eventually one of the ideas would be the initiative, right? And so then you could say, well, that sounds pretty good, and then get everyone else's buy in on that. Now it was the team's idea exactly, versus this came from up here and we have to do it, and this is the way to do it because they're our boss and we have no say in the matter. Big difference, right?

Neptali Martinez [00:15:58]:

I put this leadership training. One of the things was that they kept harping in our mind that the answer is in the room. Meaning the team, the answer is in the room. The answer in the room. And then you kind of begin to just find out, well, how do I get them to the point? How do I get them to open up? And it's exactly what you said I remember doing an exercise in which they asked for a volunteer. There was a room with about 20 people learning management and leadership, and they asked for a volunteer. So somebody volunteers and they took that person out of the room and the ones that remain, we were given wooden blocks to build a tower and the goal was to build the highest tower with the building blocks that were assigned to you. So there were like three teams and we tried this, we tried that. We finally they told us exactly how to build how to use the blocks to build the highest power possible. So now all three teams knew that, right. Okay. And then they called the person that volunteer because the person that volunteer was supposed to be the manager. And they told her, okay, this is the goal. We have to come up with the highest tower. So she came in and start telling us what she wanted. And we go, but wait, we have the answer. No, I'm the manager and you're going to do what I tell you. I know how to do that. So here were three teams that we knew the answer and we were not given the opportunity to share. We were not given the opportunity to demonstrate. So that was in my brain. Yes, in the room. So the challenge is how do you get them as a team? So what's the difference between a group of people and a team? They trust each other. That's the thing. How do you get them to trust each other and then only when they trust each other, they pull in the same direction?

Harry Spaight [00:18:01]:

I love what you just said. I mean, I think about sales teams.

Neptali Martinez [00:18:04]:

Yeah.

Harry Spaight [00:18:05]:

And many are put in place without trust, where they put competition into the sales and say, well, who's going to be number one? Who's going to be the best performer? I'm just not a fan of that at all. So every other division inside of a company should perform as a team. They have a common goal. They have a mission. They get buy in, so forth in sales? No. Everyone for themselves. And you wonder why salespeople are dysfunctional.

Neptali Martinez [00:18:38]:

Change the reward system. You're right. We are looking for rewards somehow. But yeah, change that.

Harry Spaight [00:18:44]:

Good stuff. Neptalite so I just got to ask you, now that you have your own business and you're making the podcast tour and you've got a book out, what have you learned about selling that you may not have known before or sales in general that you may not have known before?

Neptali Martinez [00:19:04]:

First of all, that is very tough that quickly you had to develop a thick skin, that you had to be comfortable with rejection, that rejection is not necessarily a bad thing. Maybe take rejection and turn into a redirection. Go someplace else. That is not the end of the day if you didn't make the sale. So that is kind of an area that I had no knowledge that my feelings got hurt when I proposed something. And then it's like, Wait a minute, I took that and I turned it to when I coach my clients. And we talk about odds that you have to learn what the odds are if you had to make a sale in an area. And the odds are that you have to talk to 50 people before you get a yes. You know what, start talking. And then the 49 don't get affected by it. That's a necessity. That's part of it. You are going to get you one, but you need to talk to 50 people. So making it logical as opposed to personal, moving away from the feelings helped me a lot because I had to find clients and I had to deal with the rejection. But also turning it like the reason I wrote the book, it's called Coachability With the Ability, a capital letter, because we uncover abilities that are there within us. But is, are you in the condition or state to be coach? Is because I realize that a lot of people are not ready for that.

Harry Spaight [00:20:53]:

That's a great answer. I appreciate the humility in that, where you mentioned how it affected you personally, and then it still impacts us personally. No one likes the word no. We can say whatever we want, but for a lot of us who are people people and want to be liked, still the no comes across as, is this me personally? That's where the emotional intelligence comes in, right? So we get the little sting, we get the little b sting. But the emotional intelligence is, I've got to persist. I have to stay motivated. I've got a business to run. I cannot let this little twinge in my emotions stop me from the bigger mission. Right?

Neptali Martinez [00:21:35]:

Yeah. I had a client that he wrote up a proposal and over the phone, they were talking with a client, and the client had another expert besides him on the phone. And they were talking, and they were pushing back to this client saying, oh, this so my client felt insulted, he felt disrespected, he felt ready to fight. And I was asking him. I said, you are professional. That was your professional opinion. Why can they challenge that? Why can they ask you for clarification? Why can't they push back? That's the client. That's what the client does. They were not insulting you. They were just asking. They were not against you. You are professional. You're supposed to have answers. So there's emotional intelligence that you take how you feel hurt and you say no. That's part of the discussion. And you need to be ready to answer that because you're putting yourself out there, and you need to be ready to take that without feeling that it's personal. So, yeah, definitely being humble, being accepting, not taking it personally definitely goes a long way. And like I said, that helped me understand why some people did not want to take my coaching services because I thought I was given the best thing under the sun. Right. And then they say no.

Harry Spaight [00:22:58]:

Right.

Neptali Martinez [00:22:59]:

Yeah.

Harry Spaight [00:22:59]:

Well, this is great, natalie, we could go on for quite a bit here. I love the conversation. So you have a book out, it's called Coach Ability. Like a second word there, but they're combined. But where can people find you and find the book?

Neptali Martinez [00:23:15]:

Okay, the name of the book is Coachability are you in the State or Condition to Be Coached? And is in Amazon, Barnes and Noble and any other online place you can find it? Yes.

Harry Spaight [00:23:29]:

Okay, great. And what about you?

Neptali Martinez [00:23:31]:

LinkedIn?

Harry Spaight [00:23:32]:

Is that a good place to find you?

Neptali Martinez [00:23:33]:

LinkedIn? It's fine. Yeah. I'm a big presence in there. My profile is open. I'm open to answer questions. Yes. Definitely LinkedIn.

Harry Spaight [00:23:42]:

Good deal. I love the conversation and looking forward to your continued path of success and helping others. So thanks a lot for making an appearance here on Sales Made Easy. It's a real honor having you here.

Neptali Martinez [00:23:55]:

Thank you for the opportunity.