Emotional Intelligence and Business Outcomes with Meg Poag
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
“When people say they have communication issues, they have trust issues.”
— Meg Poag
Assessing and Improving Emotional Intelligence: Strategies and Tools
- Crucial for personal development, especially for leaders.
- Highlights areas needing improvement by understanding emotional tendencies and triggers.
- High ROI in business: improves profitability, efficiency, talent retention, and business health.
- Effective emotional management enhances decision-making and fosters a healthy organizational culture.
Exploring the Skills of Emotional Intelligence: Emotional Self-Awareness
- Understanding one’s emotions and their influence on thoughts and behaviors.
- Many leaders struggle with this, hindering decision-making and interactions.
- Practices like mindfulness and self-reflection improve self-awareness and emotional regulation.
The Power of Questioning Our Distortions: Challenging Distorted Thoughts
- Question the validity of distorted thoughts and encourage alternative perspectives.
- Seek evidence contradicting initial assumptions to reveal complexity.
- Recognize emotions' impact on perception and use simple questions to de-escalate emotional reactions.
The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace: Impact and Resilience
- Emotional intelligence development impacts personal and professional life.
- Employers value resilience and strong interpersonal skills.
- Identifying weaknesses in emotional intelligence guides targeted development efforts.
- Focus on resilience and meaningful relationships to enhance overall emotional intelligence.
Self-Coaching for Emotional Intelligence: Empowering Self-Development
- Self-coaching enables independent development of emotional intelligence skills.
- Tools like the adversity hack or cycle aid in managing emotional triggers and gaining awareness.
- Integrating neuroscience and behavioral science principles promotes personal growth and resilience.
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Mike Goldman: Meg Poag is a a visionary known for her passion and prowess in empowering leaders and she's the bestselling author of the Adversity Hack by seamlessly integrating her successes. As an executive, Meg has cultivated a track record transforming leaders in both the nonprofit and for profit sectors. Meg's influence expands to the stage as a sought after speaker. Frequently gracing national conferences and leadership gatherings as a leadership facilitator and author, she inspires transformation, sharing her insights and strategies to light the way for the next generation of impactful speakers.
Meg, welcome to the show.
Meg Poag: Thank you for having me
Mike Goldman: Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you more. We talked a little bit already. Meg and I are both Vistage certified speakers and we were sharing some ideas on how to get the most out of, our experience there that, that's how, Meg and I met. So So I'm excited to, to dive in deeper on some things on the show.
And, you know, Meg, the first question I always ask after all the show's called The Better Leadership Team Show so we focus on how to create a great leadership team. In your mind, what's the one most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Meg Poag: This one's easy for me. right away, I thought trust. Very high levels of trust. I think sometimes people answer that question with communication, like, good, proactive, direct communication. and usually when people say they have communication issues, they have trust issues. Trust is kind of underlying factor a team that truly has faith in each other, knows what to expect, meets each other's expectations and shows up consistently. That, I think is the cornerstone of a great leadership team.
Mike Goldman: Beautiful. And I'm sure that will tie into some of the discussion, you know, we'll be having about the work you do and your expertise.
And I know a big part of what you do is a focus on emotional intelligence and the EQ assessment. So I want to dive into that. We hear so much about emotional intelligence.
How do you, let's start really simple. How do you define emotional intelligence?
Meg Poag: Yeah, it's really funny when, Mike, when I asked the question, what is emotional intelligence? Everyone just kind of freezes and looks at me like, oh, yeah, wait, what is it? Right? And unfortunately, I don't think there's there's a real shared definition out there that everyone agrees to. Because it's a relatively new concept. and you can start with kind of a surface level definition, which is I basically, I can understand what I'm feeling. I know what I'm feeling and why I'm feeling it. Okay, so, that to me is part of the definition, but not all of it. I think when you ask the average person, what's emotional intelligence? They're thinking of a set of skills beyond that. And, um, I think it's essentially in my mind, emotional intelligence is not only awareness of your feelings and why they're occurring, but also my ability to manage them and keep a good head on my shoulders. And then also to be aware of what other people are feeling and how it's impacting their thinking and to have a really judicious response to relationships. Because I understand my feelings, I can anticipate your feelings. I'm managing mine well, and I know how to be in relationship with you in a way that's gonna not trigger you worse or derail you right? And to be able to support what your needs are as well.
Mike Goldman: Yeah, I think the the second half of what you said is so important because if it's about, you know, knowing what I'm feeling and why and being able to manage those feelings, I'm automatically picturing some of my clients in my head and some of them are very, on the one hand, very, skilled, talented leaders. But on the other hand, might have a tendency to get very angry at some of the folks around them that aren't quite as quick as they are, and they react to it in a, in a way that really hurts them, hurts the team, hurts the other person and they would claim well, I know what I'm feeling and why I feel this way because the people around me are not very good and I'm angry and I should be angry so, I'm not going to manage that and I'm like well according to the first half of the definition they've got emotional intelligence. But according to the I think the more important half of it the second half that's not very emotionally intelligent at all
Meg Poag: right? Yeah, I would say that he's at the third grade level of emotional intelligence if that's his attitude, right? Because there's a lot of missing skills there I think there's about 16 Fundamental emotional intelligence skills that are totally different. You can have 15 and not one you can have. Three, you know, like there's a set of skills involved and some of those skills are reliant on the foundational skills being there, to truly be able to develop it. But, a really good example is teaching children, just basic executive function. You know, like my son is in the third grade, which is why I know that leader is at the third grade level he has been taught and supported and identifying his feelings. And frankly, really annoying because he's got a large emotional vocabulary and he will tell me all about what he's feeling, but he has no ability to manage it. And he doesn't take responsibility, you know, to do that. He relies on me to help him manage his emotions, to deescalate him, to point out what's really happening. You know, like let's calm down. What do you really see here? I didn't give you ice cream. Am I a bad mommy? Because that's a decision you made, right?
But that was an emotional decision. And I do that with executives. I'm like, okay, you're mad because everyone's stupid. All right. So is everyone actually stupid? Or is your anger kind of tainting the way that you're seeing a situation? And a lot of emotional intelligence is my ability to go, okay, I'm feeling these things and they're probably affecting the way that I'm thinking. And I'm going to get really good at understanding how my feelings are tainting my thoughts. And I'm making these little micro decisions that are actually really bad decisions because I'm in a heightened emotional state and I'm not functioning with a high level of cognition.
Mike Goldman: I want to get into, how someone could assess their level of emotional intelligence and therefore what they need to work on.
But I want to again, stick to the basics first and talk about ROI, talk about return on investment. if leader is going to focus on improving something. They're going to do it certainly if it feels good because it feels good.
Yes, but they're also going to spend significant time and prioritize it over other things if there's a real return on investment. So, you know, is this just soft, squishy stuff and it's hard to calculate a return on investment on, on doing right? Or is there a a real ROI, a real set of benefits that we can call out for folks?
Meg Poag: Yeah, no. And Mike, like we mentioned earlier, it's still a relatively new area of study.
And there's not a shared definition, but there is some emerging research that shows an ROI. And also both the cost of low emotional intelligence in the workplace. And then also the ROI of improving emotional intelligence in the workplace.
So there's a little bit of both out there right now. And we know definitively that especially for someone in a leadership role and a high level leadership role, the biggest predictor of your success is going to be your level of emotional intelligence. I was talking with a private equity investor, right?
And he said that he can tell within 10 to 20 minutes if someone's going to be successful. And he said the way that he can tell that is he can quickly assess the degree to which that entrepreneur is making decisions based on fear, which is low emotional intelligence. When you're afraid of something, you get frustrated, you feel threatened. And then you act in order to get out of that pain, right? You focus on the short term and you start to make decisions from a place of self preservation, survival and threat. You make really stupid choices.
so I think, when, when you're talking about the cost to a business, most executive coaches that I've talked to will tell you that your number one role and your number one value to your company as an executive Is the quality of the decisions you make. That's really what it comes down to right? I'm not getting paid for the hours I work. I'm getting paid because I'm making really smart choices that are going to yield profit efficiency, talent, retention, all those metrics of a healthy business right? And if I'm looking at, short term payoff, I'm not making great decisions. If I am distorting a situation because I see it in a way that's stressful and I'm, I'm looking at things through a lens of survival, I'm not going to look at the complexity of a situation.
I'm not going to have the patience. I'm not gonna be able to rationally analyze a whole bunch of complex options because that's just not the state that my mind is in. Your brain functions very differently under stress. The more negative emotion you experience, the lower your IQ is. It's very clear correlation. So some of us have bigger feelings than others, right? Some people are actually wired to have more bigger emotions. and so it can be even harder for, for those people with bigger emotions to understand how to deescalate them and also just the impact on their thinking. Like a highly intelligent person when they're feeling a lot of negative emotion, they're functioning at the logic level
four year old because they're not accessing the smart part of their brain at all.
Mike Goldman: So it impacts your decision making and I think when most leaders hear decision making, they think strategic decisions, you know, tactical decisions around what we should be prioritizing or a question around dealing a certain client or product line. But I imagine it's also about decisions focused on relationships.
And I've seen that that big time where it can really have an impact on relationships micro level and culture at a macro level.
Meg Poag: Absolutely. You know, when, I was still emerging in my emotional intelligence skills, we'll call it that, right? I was a CEO. and I had a good level of, I had a pretty, pretty good head on my shoulder. but I thought that I had good emotional intelligence because I could compartmentalize my emotions. I can shove them aside and run away and stay busy and hopefully I would outrun them. Right? I was good at just not feeling them and moving through things. The problem is my emotions were definitely still impacting my nervous system and my brain and making me see things in a way that wasn't super accurate. and I can look back and see that some of the hiring and firing decisions I made or promoting people versus not promoting people right? Or Or even just hiring from a place of fear. Well, I don't, I don't know if this is the best candidate, but I hope it works out or firing someone when really the, it didn't need to get to that, right? If, if I would have had higher emotional intelligence and that person would have had higher emotional intelligence, we could have come to a clear understanding of what was going on, but instead, we became defensive when conflict would arise.and that high level of trust I was referring to, it's much easier to have a healthy relationship, a high level of trust when your emotional intelligence is higher. The lower your emotional intelligence is, the more likely you are to erode trust in other people and also the, less likely you are to trust other people. So think about that in the context of leadership, right? If I have lower emotional intelligence, I'm gonna get guarded and defensive or try to control and dominate because that is a natural threat response. I'm maybe gonna hide information and avoid working with certain people and I'm not going to want to delegate or give people more responsibility on my team because I'm going to be afraid that they're going to mess up. these things are very subtle. You're making these subtle little micro decisions from a place of defensiveness. And a lack of rational thinking. And that's got a huge cost on business.
Mike Goldman: So how could we better understand our level of emotional intelligence and where we're strong and where we need some work? do you, I know you help clients that. So, So, how could how could we better understand that?
Meg Poag: Yeah. So, I've got a real quick and dirty and pretty accurate way. And then I've also got a more scientific way. And I usually use both.but, one really basic thing that people can do is get feedback from those around them. a lot of a 360 review, a really good 360 review of a leader will include, emotional intelligence skills. Like can you rely on this person showing up in consistent ways? Do you trust that they're going to have compassion for you? Does this person make great choices even when things aren't going well? Is this person able to learn quickly from mistakes, rebound and bounce back? Right? is this person able to maintain a level head?
So you can ask for other people's perceptions because what I have found is people with lower emotional intelligence also lack a lot of awareness of how they're coming off to other people. Right? so when we do 360 reviews, we ask very specific questions around someone's behaviors and those behaviors being indicative of low emotional intelligence. Is this person flying off the handle or making the same mistake over and over, or doing things that are really eroding trust with other people? So that's, that's, I call it a quick and dirty, but it's actually raises a huge level of awareness of how, you know, my lower skills and managing myself and my relationships are impacting other people. How am I being perceived, but a more scientific way there, there's some pretty good assessments out there. I use a psychometric assessment to assess someone's emotional intelligence. so some, most actually almost every, psychometric assessment that is pretty heavily used in the market, like desk or predictive index, they do not assess someone's emotional intelligence, or at least not holistically or comprehensively. I use an assessment called. The pairin assessment PAIRIN and it's a psychometric kind of personality and work style. But it also measures a whole bunch of domains of social emotional skill.
Mike Goldman: And then the result of it will tell you across those skills where you're strong, where you're weak. So, here's one of the things I'm fascinated with is once you understand that, once you help someone understand that is then the process of doing something about it. And I'm thinking about it on two levels.
The basic question is, you know, so, okay, so what do we do about that stuff? How could we improve? But, but at a more foundational level, have you found that the level of emotional intelligence It's also somewhat tied to the level of coachability. So someone with very high levels of emotional intelligence, are they more coachable?
And therefore, if you've got someone with low emotional intelligence, it's a little bit of an oh shit moment because they need a lot of help and they may not be coachable or, or am I reading that wrong?
Meg Poag: That's such a such a good question. so I'm going to give you a yes and a no, are people with higher EQ more coachable usually? Yes they are, because they're able to receive feedback. They're able to examine how I took this choice approach or action. Did it give me the intended or desired results?
They're able to analyze that rationally. Right? and so a coach can use that data and work with someone to help them see that see the areas of where they're behaving in ways that are antithetical to what they want. what I will also say is I have coached a lot of people with really serious gaps in their emotional intelligence and they've made really dramatic progress. Because a coach should be really good at helping someone to see what they care about and what they want and always make that bridge between the work we're doing right now. I know it's hard, but it's gonna help you get what you want. And to form that relationship of trust and compassion with someone so that when they are really struggling and you're asking them to do work that's incredibly hard, you're able to use your relationship with them and what you know about them to help them to see the benefit of it. Because it does feel like taking your medicine sometimes.
Mike Goldman: Absolutely. When we think about improving, I think you mentioned earlier that there are 16 skills. And I don't know if, does the assessment assess those 16 skills? Is that part of what it does? So, know, we don't necessarily need to go through all 16, but give us a little taste of, for, you know, if someone's listening and they're saying, you know, okay, this all sounds great, but let's make it real.
What are some of the skills and how would you actually improve?
What are some of the things that you see come up more often, especially in leaders. What are some of the skills you see come up as, as ones that have a lot of room for improvement, and then we could use that to launch it to how someone might improve?
Meg Poag: Okay Oh, this is fun. There's so, I'm in my mind I'm struggling between a couple different skills. I'm going to give you two examples if I can, of skill deficits, how it plays out and how we've worked on it. the first I think of as the foundation for a lot of the other skills. And that is the emotional self awareness that I mentioned earlier, where not only am I aware of what I'm feeling, but I'm able to understand how my thoughts are being impacted by my feelings. Okay, so that's really that next level that a lot of people aren't good at because they have a negative feeling. I was working with someone who we'll call Alan. There was a team member of his who was really frustrating him. And every time that team member would do something that he didn't like, he would go back to, Oh, this person's lazy, and they're always doing this, and he would start to go right into distorted thinking, where he was not seeing the situation clearly. So, part of the skill building that I do in emotional intelligence is help people to see how what they're feeling in that moment is tainting the way they're seeing that situation. And also, how the, feelings that they've had in the past about the person or situation have made them form beliefs about the person or situation that are also distorted. So, I have some activities that I do that help people identify thought distortions and link back to their own frustration and their needs not getting met. And then placing those distortions on the situation. And one of the things they always ask me is, but what if my distortion is true? What if this person really is out to get me or take my job from me?
Right? So we, do a lot of work around that, and helping people to step around that and get curious and look for what else might be there. And they, a hundred percent of the time, they'll come back to me and go, you're, you're, right. That was a distortion. Right? But I made that assumption. I didn't realize it was an assumption.
I just knew that I was right. And you second guessed that. Right. And, and I make them go look for evidence that contradicts their assumption and they always find it. They realize the situation's a lot more complex.
Mike Goldman: I they
that. And I love that. And it's consistent with, with the TEDx I did, back in, January of 2023, where I talked about, so I didn't talk about it as emotional intelligence but I'm now realizing some of what you're saying is what I talked about. It's the idea of we, make up these stories in our head about why someone is doing something or what they're doing and they must wake up in the morning and say, Ooh, what could I screw up today?
know? And, so it sounds like what you're saying and this is, is part of what, what I've done just personally is sometimes when you make up a story about someone else that riles you up, you just got to ask simple questions like, well, what else could that mean? Because there is there's two dozen other stories that may be true as alternative to the crappy, unproductive one you may be telling yourself in your head.
Meg Poag: absolutely. And Mike, there's no reason for us to even make up a narrative. If we didn't have emotions around it, think about that, right? Like if you, if you weren't feeling a little triggered and emotional, there's no reason for you to go into a tailspin of trying to figure out why that person is so messed up.
Mike Goldman: And the emotion I imagine causes me to take what may have been a problem that's a two out of ten on whatever problem scale I'm making up right now, but it's a two out of ten. And then the emotion, the anger, the fear causes you to tailspin, as you just said. And all of a sudden that problem at a two out of ten becomes a nine out out ten.
Meg Poag: And also what's really interesting, Mike, it's, it's not only that you screw up and distort how big our problem is, but you've picked the wrong problem. So let me, let me explain what I mean there. let's say that I keep coming home every day after working long, long hours. My husband's been off all afternoon and he looks up at me and says, what's for dinner? Right? And exhausted, I've been working he's been sitting at home doing nothing. So, in my mind distorted thinking, if I get triggered, I get real emotional, my IQ drops. I'm going to go, this guy's a sexist jerk. I cannot believe I married a sexist jerk
and
I am just now figuring this out. Right? And so then I start working on the problem of, I need to make my husband not sexist. That's one problem. That's one way to look at it. The problem is I distorted the situation and I distorted the problem. First of all, did he imply that I needed to make dinner? He no, he was really just acknowledging whoops. We don't have a plan. Right. But I took it personally. also I have contributed to this pattern of just being the one that figures out what's for dinner. So I'm really responsible here for this, right? I've never asked him, do you think that morning I asked him, could you make sure and have dinner ready? No, was that an expectation or request I had ever made to him? No, but I'm still gonna assume that he's a sexist jerk because in that moment I'm mad and I'm tired and I feel threatened and angry, right? So we got to pick the right problem, which is have I expressed my needs? Do we have shared expectations? Have we figured out how to support each other in this marriage when things are stressful and hard and we don't have much time? Do we both have the support that we need? Right? Are we planning ahead? Those are the real problems, right? Not that my husband's a sexist jerk.
Mike Goldman: Although you've talked to me off the air and now I'm kidding. what you're bringing up is so important, just the fact that you brought up a personal situation rather than a business situation, kind of, you know, the bright light went on over my head that, or actually, I'll ask it as a question.
If someone is having some problems related to emotional intelligence at work, I would imagine, and you tell me if it's true, that chances are pretty good that problem goes beyond just work. I mean, are, is emotional intelligence at work very different than emotional intelligence at home? Or does it typically go together?
Meg Poag: No
Mike Goldman: let's
Meg Poag: you are the same person with the same set of skills and these skills can be developed. Or they can not be, but you're, you're going to have that same lack of awareness and skill and all areas of your life. And, you know, I was I was talking to, kind of nationally renowned executive coach who was really good at hiring super smart people. And he said, what I look for is I look for people who are resilient and high achievers in all aspects of their life. Right? They, I look for people who have played a professional or semi pro sport, or I look for people who have a really tight community surrounding them and really meaningful relationships and know what's important to them. Right? I look for people who are resilient and hardworking and all aspects of their life. And that involves a ton of emotional intelligence.
Mike Goldman: Let's do a a second example. And again, we're not going to be able to go through all 16. We'll just probably do a couple. But what's a second example of a skill that tends to come up pretty often in leaders where, you know, scores tend to be lower, it has a big impact, and we can talk a little bit about what you do about it.
Meg Poag: Yeah okay, another one. this is more related to the relationships is your perceptivity of what's going on with other people with both their thinking and their emotions. Okay. So how curious and aware are you of what is probably going on with someone else? And if this is happening, if we're in a hard situation and I say X, I'm probably going to trigger them.
So, how can I say it in a way that's more compassionate or professional, right? And intentional. and there are a lot of people who are really good at being aware of themselves and managing their own emotions. And they've got a huge gap when it comes to being able to anticipate and inquire around what's going on with someone else. and I saw that in this manager who had a bunch of complaints about him. Right? And the CEO said, you need to coach this guy. I'm going to have to let him go. If he doesn't improve, he needs anger management. I was like, okay, let me give him an assessment and start. He didn't need it. Anger management.
Right? what he was, he was just kind of assuming that everyone else was like him and he wasn't very aware that other people would have different reactions to things than he did and even working with him at fundamental levels my coaching, homework for him after just a couple sessions was after your one on one with all of your direct reports, I want you to ask them to name some feelings and emotions that they felt while they were talking with you. And what it was that you said that caused those emotions, positive and negative. So he was getting these little reports, right? And he was completely floored by the way he was making people feel and what he said that made them feel that. But he's a quick study. He's brilliant and he cared. Right? He had a lot of compassion, and he really loved being a mentor and helping other people grow and develop, and he was great at mentoring people who were wired just like him, and he was horrible at the 80 percent of people who are not wired like him, and so after just like a couple months of really studying, what are the types of things that I say that bring about emotions and other people, he was able to change his behavior really dramatically, but he had to develop that skill.
Mike Goldman: I Iove that. And what it brings up for me is I haven't done it in a long, long but I, you mentioned DISC earlier in predictive index, I have a disc certification. I haven't used it since I don't remember when and and with apologies to any disc fans out there, and and I did get a lot of value out of it.
My clients got some value out of it, but one of the reasons I haven't done it in years and and you just brought up something that reminded me of it is that I think people tend to use who they are as an excuse for being a jerk. So, there are a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, CEOs that are a high D on the disc scale, which means they're more about facts than emotions, they're more about getting it done quickly versus analyzing it to death. It's all, here's what we got to do. Let's get it done. And when people would see that, they go, Oh my God, that's me. I'm a high D and isn't it great. I'm a high D. And then, they'd act like a jerk. And by the way, I I'm a high D so I could, you know, it's one of the reasons why I could high D's and, you know, it's okay, I'm, I'm insulting myself, but they would, they would act like a jerk and just run over somebody.
And they'd go, they go, that's just who I am. I'm a D it's like, do you realize how that other, I'm a D that's just how I am. It's like. Well, you know, the point of these things is not to use it as an excuse to be a jerk. It's to use it to flex to the needs of other people and the needs of the situation.
So, you know, I think that
that's right at the heart of what you brought up is, is understanding the way you're making somebody else feel, that's important. But also giving a crap about it is important.
Meg Poag: Yeah, and I think that all people actually give a crap about each other at a fundamental level. Like we, we care, we don't want to hurt each other and we care about each other's success. When we act like a jerk is when we get stressed and threatened. And then we make these justifications and excuses for doing things that make ourselves feel better.
It's all ego, right? It's all trying to get out of pain and throwing away your compassion for other people. it's a lack of self discipline, but those are skills. It's not like a characteristic or personality trait. These are skills that you've developed or you haven't, right? And it's difficult to learn them I think, you know, women, girls are pressured much earlier to be more perceptive. You About what other people are thinking and feeling that's kind of societal programming, right? So, question I get is, are women more emotionally intelligent than men? Absolutely, not. not. I have no there are no correlations in emotional intelligence and gender. But there are some behaviors that are going to be more common to certain people and then based on how we were programmed by our culture and our society, but it's not a reflection of your level of skill and that whole set of skills involved in this.
Mike Goldman: So, what is that? What does that look like if someone, and you could feel free to talk about exactly how you work with clients here, is if someone is saying, you know, I, I've got some ways to improve and I'd love to understand in more detail where my challenges are and how to improve.
What is that coaching relationship or, or consulting relationship, whatever the right term is, is for what you do. What does that relationship look like? How long is that relationship?
Meg Poag: Yeah.
Well, actually, I don't want people to rely on a coach to improve their emotional intelligence. I think that people are capable and whole and if they want to improve, then we should be able to give them some tools to do it themselves. So, that's why I worked for years experimenting on hundreds of leaders to create my adversity hack or my adversity cycle because it's essentially a tool that you use for self coaching.
It's got 4 steps. And when you hit adversity, when stuff hits the fan is when we usually derail and do our dysfunctional things. But it is our opportunity to actually grow the skills of emotional intelligence because we'll be negative emotionally triggered and adversity. So, that's the time for your own self coaching. and I created this self coaching tool so that people wouldn't need me and I can teach them how to use this tool and the questions to ask themselves when they get triggered. To first de-escalate, gain awareness of their emotions, de-escalate them, peel away their thought distortions, see things rationally, take responsibility, see their part in it, and then think about the needs of other people and themselves and the situation.
What are the true needs here? What are approaches that are going to be more effective? And how can I use my purpose and my guiding principles to guide me here and creating a win win, right? So that's the essence of the four steps and it's because that is the kind of four sets of skills and emotional and social intelligence and I've just created them into a self coaching tool and it's very grounded in neuroscience and behavioral psychology.
Mike Goldman: So, folks want to and I will put this stuff kind of stuff in the show notes too, but if folks wanted to find out about that, where do they go?
Meg Poag: They could buy the book, The Adversity Hack on Amazon. I also, on my website and LinkedIn, my LinkedIn profile, we have adversity hack crash courses, where I actually coach a group of people through using it and understanding it. and then there's, of course, programs that I offer for groups of leaders or one on one, where I give them assessments so that we can see where their unique gaps are. And I coach them and using the adversity hack. but with the goal of you not needing me pretty quickly, let's just do this for a couple of months, get you to change your behavior, try new approaches, build skill really quickly. And then I go away and you keep using this stuff and you continue to grow and learn.
Mike Goldman: Love it. Love it. So, so they've got the book, the adversity hack they can buy. They've got the, the self coaching and where else, where should people go to find out more about you if they want to hire you? I know you do some, you do a lot of speaking as well. Where should people go?
Meg Poag: Yeah. our website for the company and also my speaking and about the book, all on missionsquared.com.
Mike Goldman: Love it.
Well, Meg, this was great. I always say if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Meg, thanks so much for helping us get there today. This is great.
Meg Poag: Thank you. Yeah. This was a lot of fun. Good questions.