#3: The EQ Matrix: How Self-Awareness Transforms Leadership

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Pressure reveals one thing more than anything else.

Your emotional intelligence, you've seen it before. One leader stays calm and focused in the midst of the chaos while another panics lashes out or shuts down the difference. Emotional intelligence or what we like to call eq. And here's the hard truth. If you cannot manage yourself mentally, emotionally, physically, then you cannot lead others effectively.

I'm Eric Pfeiffer, and in this episode I'm joined by Don Den, and today we're breaking down the EQ matrix, our tool that helps you harness your emotional intelligence as a leadership superpower. 

Oh yeah. So you and I have worked with enough leaders to know that there are some real things at stake if you don't know how to manage your emotional intelligence.

If you have a low eq, and I [00:01:00] guarantee you that everybody listening to this has experienced leaders that have low eq. I think it's important to point out too, that oftentimes we see leadership failure as a strategy problem, and I would suggest that more often than not, leadership failures stem from an emotional intelligence problem.

Yeah, a hundred percent. It's our lack of EQ that undermines our IQ every day. 

That's right. So we've all been, I just wanna set the scene. We're in a meeting and things start to go a little sideways, and we know the difference between a leader who stays very calm and I.

They're not a doormat by any means, but they just have this composure that is able to guide the team through that chaos. And then there's the people that you literally can feel the temperature in the room rising because the leader cannot manage their [00:02:00] emotions. 

Eric: That's right. 

Dawn: It begins to feel really unsafe.

Everybody starts to feel, put on the spot and really defensive. There are so many negative team effects that happen when a leader cannot manage their emotional intelligence. So we at Empower like to say that EQ is not just a soft skill. It really impacts how a team performs. How they're able to trust their leader and how as an organization they manage challenge.

And today we're gonna dig into the tool, the EQ matrix. Love it. So. Walk us, give us lay out the tool for us, Eric. 

Eric: Yeah, so obviously these are visual tools that we've developed. Uh, visual tools make them, I think easier to remember, easier to transfer. So they're scalable. But for this podcast, we don't have the visuals.

I'm sure we have links so that people can see what these look like. Or they can pick up a copy of leadership Gravitas. One of our first books that we put [00:03:00] out that's really all about this tool and essentially reminding us as leaders that. Our ability to lead others always begins with our ability to lead ourselves.

And so in our last session, we were talking about how we all get triggered to be human as we get triggered and sometimes we get derailed. What happens when we get derailed? How do we operate in those moments? And really what's at stake, I wanna say, is. Other people's ability to trust and follow us.

If we're losing our minds and we're overreacting and we're throwing an adult tantrum, is what I like to call it, which by the way, I have thrown plenty in my life and probably will continue at times. We break trust with the people around us, the leaders that we wanna follow are those who can stay calm, cool, and collected under fire.

We don't wanna follow a battalion or a military leader that when shots are being fired in our direction, they freak out and run and hide. Right? Or they start screaming and lose their mind. We want to be the kind of leaders. That [00:04:00] other people can trust in the midst of chaos. So the EQ matrix sets us up to understand there are four basic quadrants that help us understand every experience that we're having in life, right?

So there are two basic relationships that we're dealing with every single day. The first is the obvious one with all the people in the circumstances around us. That's. The relationship that we're most paying attention to throughout our days, but there's a second relationship that's equally important, if not more important, and that is our relationship with ourself.

And 

Dawn: last week, you're often blind to that. 

Eric: Oh yeah, maybe blind, unaware. Naive, maybe just haven't spent much time really paying attention to what's going on for us internally, mentally, emotionally, and physically. So we've got these two relationships, and every day there are two ways that we're having to navigate those relationships.

One is awareness. How aware are we of what's going on around us with other people? Uh, but also how aware are we of what's going on for ourselves internally? The other [00:05:00] engagement is what I like to call leadership in Daniel Goldman's original work, in his book, emotional Intelligence, he coined the phrase, he's the godfather of this conversation.

He talks about management. I don't like that word because it sounds a little bit too status quo for me. So I like to say leadership. It feels more proactive, more intentional. It's our responsibility. So we've got relationship with others, relationship with ourselves. We've got awareness of others in ourselves, and we've got how do we lead others and ourselves?

And like I've already said. Our ability to lead others is directly connected to our ability to lead ourselves. When we talk about getting triggered, right when we get a little bit hijacked, it's really important to remember those are just indicators, like the indicators on the dashboard of our car, like the lights light up and say, Hey, you got low tire pressure, you've got low windshield wiper fluid.

Hey, you have a check engine light on. Like those indicators are our friends. They're our friends because they're there to let us know [00:06:00] something's going on in the vehicle that we may not be aware of. If we don't pay attention to those indicators, right? As often we do, okay, the check engine light been off for six months, but if the car still drives, so we're fine.

I don't got time to to to slow down and have it checked out. Until we find ourselves broken down on the side of the road and then we're like, darn it. Why didn't I go get it checked out before? Right? So the EQ matrix gives us a way to understand that when we get triggered, what do we do with those triggers?

How do we manage ourselves in the midst of the, the challenges, the chaos, you know, we're getting pinged left and right. It helps us understand that every time that we are feeling triggered, it's an opportunity to start in self-awareness. First and foremost, what's going on for me internally, our temptation is to blame the world around us.

Like we talked about in the last session, our temptation is to point fingers. But the reality is if we're triggered, [00:07:00] that's on us. And so personal responsibility requires that my first step. Is to process what's going on for me through the lens of self-awareness. How do I understand, oh, go ahead.

Sorry. 

Dawn: You know, it is so interesting about that, Eric, is that often this is backwards from how we typically view leadership. When we are triggered, this experience is outside of us. It's somebody else's problem. It is because of some mistake that somebody else made, and we view our responses as. Almost we have no control over them, and you're challenging us here to flip that upside down and to say, when you're triggered, instead of trying to lead others out of that situation that is causing you to be triggered, you start by paying attention to yourself and leading yourself.

Eric: That's right. Because we can't control the world around us, but we are in. Supposed to be in control of our responses, right? Our attitudes and behaviors. So we jump into self-awareness. We pay attention to what's going on for me, [00:08:00] mentally, emotionally, physically, I own myself. We often talk about the importance of owning our emotions or they will own us, right?

And then that gives us an opportunity, not just to see ourselves more clearly, but that is the beginning of the, what I would call the sobriety process, right? We, when we get hijacked, we lose our sobriety. We get hijacked by all these fears, insecurities, anger, hostility, bitterness, unforgiveness, whatever it is, and we lash out from those emotions.

And self-awareness gives us a chance to recognize, Hey, I do. I am being disrupted. I am having these emotions, but guess what? My emotions don't have to dictate how I respond to this situation. They're just indicators that I'm being disrupted in some way. Now we practice self-awareness so that we can see ourselves more clearly because we have a little saying in our world, you can't lead what you can't see.

So once we see ourselves more clearly, then we have an opportunity to move into the next [00:09:00] quadrant, which is self-leadership. The starting point for emotional intelligence is not dealing with everybody else, right? It's dealing with ourselves. Yes, because we can only give to others what we first cultivate internally.

If we're cultivating anger, hostility, bitterness, resentment, then that's what we're gonna give to the world around us. If instead, we're learning to cultivate. Peace, clarity, confidence, courage, understanding, empathy, compassion. Then that's what we're gonna bring to the environment around us. So once we see ourselves more clearly, now we get to lead ourselves more effectively.

We get to practice the skill of composure. Where we remember that as adults, we don't have to fly off the handle. We don't have to react violently or aggressively. We don't have to withdraw and go hide ourselves in a hole. We get to choose how we show up to any situation. Which then gives us a chance to practice things like adaptability, flexibility, and also gives us a chance to really see the situation more clearly.

Now that we've recovered [00:10:00] some of our sobriety, we're more likely going to see the circumstances that we're facing with a new perspective. 


Where we get to reframe the situation. Instead of seeing life happening to us, we get to say, Hey, no life is happening for us. Instead of seeing this as an obstacle, we get to see it as an opportunity and the number of clients that you and I have worked with over the years where they are up against something really difficult.

But when they slow down and say, before we try to fix or solve the problems around us, we together are going to practice self-awareness, self-leadership, and that puts them into a new posture where they have now a new perspective. They're able to reframe. The situation. And that's where they begin to harness the collective genius of the group as they then move into the other two quadrants of others awareness and other leadership.

Now I'm gonna get to those, but just really quickly, I want to hear what you're connecting with on that. Yes. 

Dawn: Thank you. Because I want to drop in [00:11:00] a illustration that you use all the time, which, illustrates beautifully self-leadership and that is the image of a swan. Right. We see the swan just so gracefully, gliding across the water.

It looks effortless, and what we don't see is that underneath the water, those little swan feet are paling for all it's worth, that is how self-leadership and self-awareness kind of work together. There might be a lot happening internally, but I still get to choose how I'm operating above the water, how people are experiencing me, how I'm leading.

As you said that really that ability of being able to choose that and cultivate that in myself is then what I'm able to offer other people nobody wants a leader that is panicked in the midst. Of chaos that does not instill confidence. 

Eric: Absolutely. I mean, we also use the illustration, of the iceberg.

Yes. Right. Like when we're dealing with the challenges around us, [00:12:00] um, I think our temptation is to think that 90% of the issue I. Is, is what we see above the water, right? The Titanic sank not because it didn't see the iceberg, but because it only saw what was above the surface, which is only 10% of the mass of the iceberg.

90% is hidden beneath the surface, and I think 90%. Of how we engage life and what we're getting out of life really has more to do with what's happening beneath the surface internally for us. Yeah. And once we pay attention to that now, what we bring above the surface is something that we can feel excited about and confident in.

Yes. So we move. We move from self-awareness, self-leadership. Now we have a chance to move into others' awareness because we've regained some of our sobriety, we see other people more clearly rather than through jaded or negative lenses. And so we can start seeing other people, the circumstances, the situation, the problem, with not just greater clarity.

But now we're able to see how can we leverage whatever we have available to [00:13:00] us to come up with the most creative solutions. And again, we can only lead what we can see. So the better we see the people around us, the circumstances, then we can eventually move into others' Leadership. Where we get to communicate effectively, we get to practice whatever conflict is required of us in that context, and also be able to engage whatever the situation is from a position of clarity, confidence, and courage.

And as leaders. I would suggest that is one of our primary responsibilities is to bring a better version of ourself to these very chaotic, difficult, challenging situations. That's what's required of us, and so as leaders, it would do us all a lot of good, if we would dare to do this, to actually get some feedback from team members, from spouses, from older children in our households to ask, Hey.

When things are tough, when [00:14:00] we're up against, you know, a challenge. How do you see me behave in those moments? Where do you potentially see me overreacting or operating out of negative emotions? Where do you see the best version of me? Where do you see the worst version of me? Because it's not until we get, I think everybody thinks they're awesome under pressure.

Yeah. It's not until we get that feedback that we get a little bit clearer view on the areas that we get to work on. 

Dawn: Yeah. It's those blind spots that are the real problem. When we have ignored the dashboard lights for long enough, they kind of just become a part of the dashboard.

We don't even see them anymore. I drive a car with over 300,000 miles. Every light on my dashboard is on at all times. Which means something could go wrong at any moment. I have stopped paying attention to those lights altogether. And that's what our own internal life can be like. We just are blind to it.

It means nothing to us, the way that we're operating or feeling in those moments. So [00:15:00] that outside feedback is crucial. 

Eric: Well, let me on that note. Let me say this, because I think what you just illustrated is so powerful that we kind of, cope with those indicators that are first screaming in our faces.

Like when the light first comes on, you're like, oh my gosh, my car's gonna fall apart. Yeah. But then after a few days, you're like, no, that's still running. I still can get away. It's fine. And so we just, we begin to ignore the signs. Right. So listen, this is really interesting. Here's the greatest challenge for most leaders is that most leaders actually think they have a high degree of self-awareness.

And statistically speaking, this is not, this is not us. Even though I would agree with this stat, most do not. Yeah. When they've assessed like thousands and thousands of leaders across different industries at different levels, they say, Hey, at the beginning. What's your sense of your self-awareness scale of one to 10?

Ah, I'm a nine, I'm a 10, I'm an eight. Great. And then they actually take them [00:16:00] through a battery of exercises and discover, actually their real EQ score is more like a two, A three, or a four. Right. And that can feel maybe condemning or daunting to feel like, oh my gosh, I'm not as good as I think is, or we can allow that to become a wake up call for us to realize, you know what?

If this is such an important feature in great leadership, then why not take the opportunity. To pay more attention to these skills of emotional intelligence and develop in this area so that we really can be a leader that fosters greater trust. And what I like to call follower ability in our context.

Dawn: And that can be an invitation and not a condemnation. 

Eric: That's right. I like that. An invitation, not a condemnation. 

I 

Dawn: like it. I like it. So me. That might be what we offer to the listeners today. Like come at it with a sense of curiosity, not feeling condemned, that you don't [00:17:00] have emotional intelligence.

It's an invitation. On that note, I wanna move us into a practical piece because at Empower we are all about having these ideas be actual things that move the needle for us, not just nice ideas. So give us some. Practical things, maybe one practical thing we could do this week to kind of practice.

Self-awareness to take that invitation. 

Eric: Well, let me do this because I, I wanna offer that, but I wanna share a quick story that will help us really feel the stakes that are involved here. So, you know, sometime ago, we were working with a large corporation working with the executive group, and one of the executive members, we'll call him Bob.

Okay. Right. We'll just give him that name. Actually this story features at the beginning of, the new book that's gonna be released here in, in, in a few months. But Bob, when the company started, was an invaluable asset to the company [00:18:00] because he was a genius with numbers, right? So he was overseeing the financial health and stability of the company as the director of accounting or whatever his title was.

And, in the beginning he was indispensable, through those early years, making sure that, you know, they had cash on hand when they needed it because there was a lot of money going in and out, right? Their large distributorship. And as the company grew and they added more team members, they went from a team of like 30 to like hundreds, in a very short period of time, Bob eventually over time had to start working with a team of people that were hired beneath him, to help offset the load that was growing.

Yeah. And when I started working with the company, I heard about Bob and then when I finally met Bob and started working with him, there was a massive gap between the asset that Bob was in terms of his ability as an individual to do a particular kind of work and his ability to actually lead and run and [00:19:00] manage a team effectively.

What I discovered very quickly is that his team did not like him. They abhor working for him. They all felt slighted. They all felt micromanaged. They all felt condescended against, they all felt like he thought they were stupid. He was harsh in the way that he would correct them. There was little to no affirmation.

There were no developmental opportunities. He was kind of the, as they say, the bottleneck through which everything had to go. They had tons of responsibility and no authority, and the problems were just, you know, on and on and on. So I started meeting with Bob and I said, Hey Bob, I wanna bring this to your attention.

This is, you know, a little bit of how your team is experiencing you, and as the company grows, you're gonna have to take on the responsibility of leading more people. And his response was shocking to me. I'm nervous. He basically was like, well, that's their problem. They're probably difficult to lead.

And I was like, well, I. I mean, yeah, I'm sure they're difficult to lead. All people are difficult to lead at some level, but I [00:20:00] think maybe it's time to, you know, pay attention to your leadership style. And the way that you're handling these people. And you know, when things get tough, man, you blow up, you curse, you are sarcastic, you are passive aggressive.

And, anyways, we worked for months together, me trying to help him pay attention to his blind spots. And he found it almost impossible to do this. It's almost like he had taken on that mentality of like, I'm so good at what I do that my competence should make up for my lack of character. Because that's really what it was.

It was a lack of character on his part is unwillingness to grow and learn and develop. And it was costing not just his team, but it was costing the organization because they were starting to turn over a bunch of people on that team. And eventually it cost him his job. And I'll never forget one of my last calls with him when he had been told, Hey, this isn't a good fit.

This is not gonna work. He said to me, you know, Eric, I, I [00:21:00] don't understand if I'm really good at what I do, what does, what does the rest of it matter? And I think sometimes we can all fall into this, like, I'm really good at what I do, so why does it matter if I show up poorly to work? Why does it matter if I have a negative impact on my environment?

Why does it matter if there's some toxicity? Mm-hmm. And I, and I told Bob, I said, Bob, I'm really sorry man, but you have to remember that when you leadership business is a team sport. And if you can't engage your team members in a way that gives them the courage to follow you, then that's your problem.

That's on you. That's your responsibility, right? Because the old adage is, you're only a leader if there's people following you. And I told 'em, I said, clearly nobody is ready and willing to follow you. So anyways, that it's just a, it's a heartbreaking story, but it's a story that we've seen almost on repeat with almost every company we work with.

And for that reason we just, all of us have to wake up. 'cause maybe we're not Bob's, but all of us have a [00:22:00] little bit of bob in us, right? We all have those dynamics in the workplace where, you know, we show up, you know, with negative attitudes or behaviors that where we are most likely having a negative impact in our environment.

And if we don't. Do the work to discover those blind spots, eventually those blind spots will get the best of us. 

Dawn: Yep, that's absolutely right. And we all have experience with those individuals that come show up with that mentality of, I'm so good at what I do, the rest doesn't matter. And the reality is that it does matter.

All of us who've experienced that know how much it matters. 

Eric: Yeah. 

Dawn: Yeah. So doing this work is incredibly important. 

Eric: Yeah. Alright. 

Dawn: Give us some practical handles. 

Eric: Yeah. So here's one thing that I want to encourage our listeners to do is, and we can do this one of two ways. Number one, last week we talked about journaling.

So this could be part of our journaling [00:23:00] exercise if we wanted, but to, to start paying attention. To the moments in our days or the areas in our life or the relationships that we regularly engage with, where we lose our composure. Now, in the ideal world, we are aware of when we lose our composure, but for all of us, it would greatly help if we sought feedback from the people around us that we trust the most to say, Hey.

Help me identify the moments when you see me lose composure, and what does that practically look like? Do I raise my voice? Do I become a dominating personality? Do I cut people off? Am I aggressive or am I passive? Do I withdraw? Do I withhold information? Do I kind of, you know, cut myself off from the conversation?

Whatever the case is, like seeking that feedback is one of the surest ways to discover the blind spots that we're unaware of at this point once we discover those areas where we are [00:24:00] losing our composure, where we're starting to act out, where we're starting to throw adult tantrums, where we're starting to try and control our environment, this goes back to, you know, when we are operating outta the victim reveal mindset, here's the next thing we need to do.

We need to practice three things in those areas where we're losing. Push number one is brutal honesty. We need to be brutally honest about not only what's going on for us internally, but our impact on the environment. So ask those people. When I raised my voice, when I was using foul language, when I was being sarcastic, when I did X, Y or Z, how did that impact you or the environment?

That's the first orbit. The second thing is to practice humility, which we define as accepting who we are for better. And first, we can only be who we are today. So there's no point in, you know, glossing over or shading the truth. Right. But we need to learn to accept, like this is an area of growth for me.

Mm-hmm. And that's okay because I'm a human being, so I'm always a work in [00:25:00] progress and I get to stumble and bumble and fumble my way forward. And so to give ourselves permission. To be who we are by accepting even the worst bits about ourself. And then the third, thing is to practice self-love, which is not to kind of excuse ourselves from poor attitudes and behaviors, but simply to give ourselves, like I said, permission to become a better version of ourselves, permission to grow.

One of the things that I say to my wife all the time is, babe, you know what? I've grown a lot up to this point, but I've still got a lot of growth to do. So The one thing I can promise you is that I'm gonna commit myself day in and day out, week after week, month after month, year after year, to trying to become a better version of myself for my marriage sake, for my kids' sake, for my business sake, for my team's sake, for my client's sake.

That I'm on a continual growth journey. People talk about this as having a growth mindset. Self-love is not about excusing or giving yourself a pass. It's about giving yourself permission to forgive yourself for those indiscretions, those, [00:26:00] less than great moments, in our behaviors, and to commit ourselves to saying, how do I get better?

Absolutely. 

Dawn: I love that because the, the self-love piece is taking a moment to say. What has gotten me here, I'm gonna, like, what I've had to do has gotten me to this point. And now I'm recognizing that there are some things that aren't as helpful in getting me to where I wanna go. And that is, a posture of forgiveness and acceptance that then allows us to move forward as opposed to a posture of condemnation and shame that makes us wanna hide from those things.

Eric: I couldn't agree more. 'cause that's probably where most of us tend to go when, when our worst bits are being exposed, is we go, we either go into, full-blown deflection mode or we go into a process of self condemnation and self flagellation. I suck, I'm no good, I'm [00:27:00] never gonna figure out, I shouldn't be a leader.

Why am I in this position? And of course, we've heard all of those voices, in our own heads and also from clients that we've worked with. But the best thing that we can do is just give ourselves permission to grow. It's okay. We're gonna get better. That's the best thing we can offer ourselves in the environment around us.

Dawn: That's right. And just a reminder that that's where the leadership starts with. The choice that we can grow and become better versions of ourselves. So on that note, I wanna remind everybody to subscribe to the Empower Podcast so that you don't miss any episodes. Next episode, we are diving into the Kairos Circle, which is the tool that teaches leaders how to master decision-making under pressure.

Which is probably the most difficult part of leadership, the number of decisions that have to be made in a day. Um, and we wanna invite you as well in the show notes. We, have a free mini course for you, five shifts to become the leader you [00:28:00] wish you had. You can, sign up for that in the show notes as well as find links to the visual tools.

So thank you for being here for this episode, and we will see you next time with the Kairo Circle.