📍 Hey guys, welcome back to No Silver Spoons. I'm Sarah Beth Herman. Thank you guys so much for being here and tuning into this episode. We are continuing the Human Side of Leadership summer series as we make our way toward the end of season five. I have loved this series because it has given me room to talk about leadership in a way that feels much closer to how I actually experience it.

Not that leadership after everything worked out and somebody turned it into a keynote, I mean, like, leadership while you're still in it, while you're frustrated, when you don't have all the information, when somebody is disappointed in you, when you're trying to make a right decision while carrying 15 other things that nobody in the room even knows about.

My team is already working on season six, and I can't wait for you to see where we're going next. But before we're getting there, there is still a few conversations that I really want to have, because I think some of the most important things we learn about leadership aren't what we say at all.

It's about what we carry into the room with us. Think about the last time that you walked into a meeting and immediately you knew something was wrong. Or maybe you hopped on a conference call, and you immediately knew something was wrong.  Nobody announced it. No one sent this email saying, "Hey guys, the energy is gonna be weird today."

Nobody put it in the agenda. You just knew something was off. And maybe it was somebody's face. Maybe it was the way they answered a question, or how someone walked in the room, or how they put their things down, and they just barely acknowledged anyone. You didn't have the information, but you had the feeling.

And when the person giving off that feeling is the leader, it carries more weight There's actually research behind this. Researchers use the term emotional contagion. They use that to describe the way emotions can spread between people. Bar-Saad's research on emotional contagion in groups found that positive and negative emotions could spread among group members and influence things like cooperation, conflict, and perceptions of performance.

That's fascinating to me because it puts research behind something that most of us have experienced without ever having a name for it. The leader walks into the room differently and the room changes. There's another distinction I want to make right at the beginning here because I think it matters for everything that we're gonna talk about today.

Having an emotion is not the same thing as handing your emotion to everybody else. I'm gonna say that again. Having an emotion is not the same thing as handing your emotion to everybody else.  I don't want to teach leaders to become emotionless. I don't want my team working for a robot, and I don't want to work with robots either.

There are days when I am frustrated. There are days when something has happened in the business and I'm disappointed. There are days when I'm excited and everybody knows about it. There are also days when something is happening in my personal life and I have to decide how much of that belongs in the room I'm about to enter.

Emotional intelligence doesn't mean you stop feeling any of those things. It means you get better at recognizing what you're feeling, understanding why you're feeling it, and deciding what you're going to do with it. And that is what really matters in leadership and something I have been passionately trying to teach the world around me.

Research examining emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness has found a meaningful positive relationship between the two. One meta-analysis looked across ninety-eight studies, more than one hundred effect sizes, and over twenty-seven thousand participants and found a moderate positive relationship between leaders' emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness.

But I learned something about this long before I knew any of that research. I learned it sitting across from a leader during an annual review. I was in my early thirties, and I had been working for this company for about three years. My role had grown significantly during that time.

At any given moment, I was overseeing more than thirty dental practices, and I had taken on far more responsibility than what I had originally been hired to do. And it was time for my annual review. The process was pretty standard. I was given a document to evaluate myself, my leader completed a separate evaluation, and then we were going to sit down together to compare them.

I have to tell you something about the version of me who filled out that evaluation because I see her very, very differently today. I thought being really hard on myself demonstrated maturity. I really did. I thought if I gave myself the highest score, maybe I would appear arrogant. So instead, I found everything I could have done better.

I thought that would show self-awareness. I thought somebody would look at it and think, "Wow, she really holds herself to a high standard." I was harder on myself than I needed to be because I thought minimizing what I did well somehow made me more impressive. And today, I would tell that younger version of myself something very different.

Self-awareness does not require self-minimization. If you did excellent work, you're allowed to say you did excellent work. If you produce results, know your results. If you took on more responsibility, be able to articulate that. You can know exactly where you need to grow without pretending you don't know where you're already strong.

I had not understood that yet. So I completed my evaluation, and I walked into this meeting. And before my leader started talking, I knew something was different. That's the part that I remember. I knew this person. I had worked with them now for about three years. I knew how they normally carried themselves.

I knew what their confidence felt like. And the person sitting across from me that day felt guarded. There were circumstances happening inside the organization involving this leader that had already become widely known internally. I'm intentionally not going to give you those details because they belong to someone else, and the details aren't actually necessary for what I'm trying to teach you.

What matters is that I had watched a leader that I once experienced as very confident begin to seem different. Their energy had changed. Their decision-making appeared different to me.

There seemed to be a nervousness around certain situations that I hadn't noticed before. And sitting across from this person during my annual review, I felt it before we ever got to compensation. We started going through the evaluation, and this is where things got interesting. My leader had scored me exceptionally well.

In several areas, they had actually evaluated me more favorably than I had evaluated myself. There wasn't some giant performance problem waiting to be revealed. There wasn't a list of things I had failed to do., There wasn't something sitting on the evaluation that suddenly made me think, " n-now I understand."

My performance had grown. My responsibilities had grown. The number of practices I was responsible for had grown. My contribution to the organization had grown. Eventually, we got to compensation, and I knew I was due for an increase. What I didn't know was how much it would be, and I was hoping that whatever they offered would appropriately reflect how much my role had changed and how much value I was bringing to the organization.

The increase was very small. When I did the math, it essentially worked out to about another dollar an hour. I remember asking whether some of the other compensation associated with my position could be adjusted instead. I received stipends for things like my vehicle and cell phone, so I asked whether those could be increased.

I was told that they had already been asked The answer was no. And that was essentially it. Of course, I was disappointed,  but the money isn't actually why I'm telling you this story all these years later. I remember that room. I remember knowing that something didn't feel right before I even knew what the answer was gonna be.

And I wanna be fair to that leader today in a way I probably couldn't have been in my early 30s. I didn't know every conversation happening above them. I didn't know exactly how much authority they had over my compensation, and I didn't know everything happening inside that organization. And I cannot tell you that the circumstances I knew about in that person's life caused the compensation decision.

I don't know that. I don't want to take something I felt and turn it into a fact simply because enough years have passed now. But I do know this: I experienced my leader differently, and that's the part that I have carried with me. Because today, I am the person sitting on the other side of the table.

I've owned my company for 12 years. I make compensation decisions. I have conversations where I know things the other person doesn't know. I have business pressures my team may not be aware of. People trust me with personal information. I have access to information because of my position that I cannot and should not share with everyone.

And sometimes I have to walk into a room carrying all of that and still lead the person across from me very fairly. That has made me think differently about the old idea that integrity is who you are when nobody is watching

I understand that sentiment, but I think there's another side of integrity when you're a leader. Integrity is also who you are when everyone is watching, but they don't have all the information  you have. Can you make the principled decision when the person on the other side of it may never understand everything that went into it?

Can you protect confidential information when sharing it would make you look better? Can you protect confidential information when sharing it would actually make you look better? Can you allow somebody to be frustrated with you instead of revealing something that isn't yours to reveal? Can you know something about an employee and refuse to let it become gossip?

Can you walk out of one terrible meeting and into the next without making an innocent person carry what happened in the room before them? That is emotional intelligence too.  Something happened this week that brought that old annual review back to me in a way that I wasn't expecting.

I'm working through HIPAA certification in several of the companies that I own today, and one of the concepts we deal with in HIPAA is minimum necessary standard. In very simple terms, when the standard applies, access to and disclosure of protected health information should be generally limited to what is reasonably necessary for the intended purpose.

I'm obviously not trying to turn a HIPAA privacy requirement into a leadership model, but reading it made me stop and think about something. What would minimum necessary look like in the way we carry information as leaders? How much information do I actually need? How much information am I allowing myself to collect simply because I have access to it?

How much of somebody else's personal life belongs in my head when I'm evaluating their performance? How much of the conversation I just had belongs in the next conversation? How much of something I'm frustrated about needs to enter the next room with me?

Because leadership gives you access. You get invited into conversations other people aren't in, and you know who's struggling. You know who asked for more money. You know who's thinking about leaving. You may know somebody's marriage is struggling, their child is having a difficult time, or that they're worried about money.

You know things about the business before everyone else does, and I have come to believe something very strongly.  Access is not permission. Just because I can know something doesn't mean I need to. Just because I know something doesn't mean I get to repeat it. Just because someone trusted me with information doesn't mean that information now gets to influence every opinion I form about them.

And just because I'm carrying something difficult doesn't mean everybody who interacts with me that day needs to carry a piece of it too. And that's where emotional intelligence becomes much bigger than controlling your temper. It's learning to notice what you're carrying before you walk into the room.

Research published in Organization Science has examined how the timing of leaders' emotional expressions can communicate information to employees about their own social worth, including feelings of respect and status.

Think about what that means in ordinary life. You walk into a meeting frustrated about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the people sitting there. You know why you're frustrated, but they don't, and human beings are really good at filling in a blank. Is Sarah Beth upset with me?

Are we in trouble? Did I miss something? Sometimes the most emotionally intelligent thing that you can do isn't to hide what you're feeling. It's giving people enough context that they don't have to create their own fill-in-the-blank. You can say, " I want you guys to know I'm frustrated this morning. It has nothing to do with anyone on this call.

I'm working through something, and if I'm a little bit quieter than usual, I don't want anybody wondering why." I think that's a much healthier version of emotional intelligence than pretending that you're just fine. You're not asking your team to manage your emotions. You're also not making them guess.

And this is something that I have had to learn as I've become more of an experienced leader. There are things I handled in my thirties that I would handle completely differently today. There are rooms I walked into without ever thinking about what I was carrying with me. There were times I thought being hard on myself was the same thing as being self-aware.

There were probably times I thought being strong meant keeping everything contained

Owning a company for 12 years has changed that for me Leading people from different backgrounds, personalities, cultures, and life experiences has changed that for me. Leadership has changed that for me. And maybe that's really what emotional intelligence starts to look like over time. Not arriving at some magical place where you're perfectly regulated and never frustrated again.

It's recognizing yourself sooner. It's noticing the frustration before it becomes somebody else's problem. It's knowing when you need five minutes before you answer. And I think it's understanding that having access to information doesn't mean you need to carry all of it.

I think it's being able to walk out of a difficult conversation without making the next person pay for it And maybe it's being willing to ask yourself whether the person sitting across from you is experiencing the leader you intend to be. That annual review happened a long time ago. I don't remember every sentence that was said.

I couldn't reconstruct the entire evaluation for you today. But I will never forget how the room felt and how the room made me feel. And now that I'm the person who sits on the other side of those conversations, I understand something I didn't understand then. People notice when something has changed.

They notice when what you're saying and what you're carrying don't seem to match. That doesn't mean they're always going to interpret you correctly, because they won't. And our responsibility isn't to control everybody's perception of us. We can't. Our responsibility is to keep checking our own alignment.

Before we close today, I want to pull this together because we covered a lot. I want to leave you with something that you can actually use instead of simply saying, " That was interesting," and moving on with your day. The first thing I want you to remember is that having emotions does not make you an emotionally unintelligent leader.

You are going to get frustrated. You're going to have stressful days. You're going to receive bad news five minutes before a meeting. You're going to be disappointed in the people that you care about, the people that work for you, people you work for. You're going to have things happen outside of work that don't magically disappear because you opened your laptop or you walked into the office.

The goal is not to become emotionless. The goal is to recognize what you are carrying before everybody around you has to recognize it for you. Second, I want you to remember that people experience more than your words. They experience your tone, your face, your silence, your urgency, your hesitation.

And because you're a leader, they may assign meaning to those things that you never intended. That doesn't mean you have to manage everybody else's interpretation of you. Sometimes it simply means giving people clarity. I'm frustrated, but I'm not frustrated with you. Or I'm processing something, and I need a few minutes.

Or this is important to me, which is why you're probably hearing some emotion in my voice Or maybe I don't have an answer for you yet, and I don't wanna give you one until I've thought it through. Those aren't weak leadership statements. They are clear ones. And the third thing I want you to remember is what we talked about with minimum necessary.

Access is not permission. As your leadership grows, so does your access. You'll know things other people don't. People will trust you with personal information. You'll be included in conversations because of your role. You'll hear things about employees, clients, finances, relationships, and the business that other people aren't supposed to know, and they probably couldn't handle knowing.

You don't have to carry all of that, and you certainly don't have to repeat all of that. Sometimes integrity is demonstrated by what you refuse to do with information that you are trusted enough to receive. So here's what I want you to do this week. Before one meeting every day, I just want you to stop.

Before you walk through the door, click join, or pick up the phone, I want you to give yourself ten seconds. Ask yourself three questions. What am I carrying right now? Does it belong in this conversation? What does the person on the other side of this interaction actually need from me? And that's it. You don't need a worksheet for this.

You don't need to turn it into another thing on your calendar. Just ten seconds. Then pay attention to what you notice. Maybe you're still irritated about the meeting you just left. Maybe you're nervous about something that hasn't happened yet. Maybe you know something about the person that you're about to speak to and speak with, and if you're really paying attention, you realize it's affecting you in a way that you're approaching them.

Maybe you're completely fine and you walk right in. The point is that you gave yourself the opportunity to notice Because the leader who walks into the room without examining what they're carrying can unintentionally make everybody else carry it too.

The leader who notices gets to choose, and I think that's one of the greatest privileges and responsibilities we have in leadership. We get to choose what enters the room with us, and that's where I'm gonna leave you this week. We're getting closer to the end of Season 5 and to the end of this Human Side of Leadership summer series.

And when I look back at these conversations, I think there's a thread running through all of them. Leadership isn't something that we perform for people, it's something people experience from us. They experience who we are when we're confident and when we're unsure. They experience us when we're making a popular decision and when we're making one that nobody particularly likes.

They experience our standards, our communication, our emotional awareness, and our integrity in moments that we probably don't even realize they're paying attention to. And that's exactly why I'm so excited about where we're headed next. Our team is already working on Season 6 of No Silver Spoons, And we are gonna take so much of what we've been talking about this summer and bring it into the realities of building and growing something.

We're going to talk about strategy, execution, decisions, business growth, and what happens when you're trying to build something that can actually last without losing yourself or the people around you in the process. Thank you for spending another episode with me. If something in this conversation made you think of another leader, a business owner, a practice owner, or even somebody who's just beginning to lead people, send this episode to them.

. You never know which part of someone else's story is going to help us see our own leadership a little differently. And this week, before you worry about what you're going to say when you walk into the room, take those 10 seconds, pay attention to what you are bringing with you, and  📍 I'll catch you guys on the next episode