Emotional Intelligence: Why It Matters

Podcast Transcript

Michelle Lampton: Welcome to Learning to Lead, a leadership development podcast from Cleveland Clinic. I'm Michelle Lampton, and today we're going to hear about the importance of emotional intelligence in leadership. My colleague within Mandel Global Leadership and Learning Institute, Elizabeth Pugel, spoke to Shannon Pengel, Chief Nursing Officer at Cleveland Clinic's Main Campus, who shared about her leadership journey and how emotional intelligence impacts how she leads.

Elizabeth Pugel: Welcome Shannon Pengel. We are excited to have you with us today talking about emotional intelligence. Welcome.

Shannon Pengel: Thanks, Elizabeth. I'm really happy to be here and talk to everyone about this topic and my leadership journey around this topic. Thanks for having me.

Elizabeth Pugel: Absolutely. And we are excited to hear from your vast experience about how emotional intelligence has played into perhaps personal and professional lives today. I'm curious to know and I think it would be a good starting point to find out what does emotional intelligence mean to you?

Shannon Pengel: I think emotional intelligence means to me really how I respond in different situations, how I read an audience, how I read an individual of what's going on. And I think most importantly, what triggers me. What situations kind of invoke a feeling within me that I need to learn how to control? I think I have by nature, I'm a very competitive person and so I almost look at emotional intelligence as really being the defense of a team. I need to be ready for however someone's going to respond and I need to kind of play my emotions, meet people where they are. And I think that's part of the reason in my career and working with different key stakeholders, I've been able to develop such collaborative relationships because I kind of meet them where they are. I try to understand and put myself in their shoes and come up with solutions that position both of us for success.

Elizabeth Pugel: And that sounds like a great intro to our podcast today and really gives our listeners a great opportunity to understand where you're coming from with your view on emotional intelligence. I'm curious to know, why do you think emotional intelligence is important?

Shannon Pengel: Well, I think, as I talked about earlier, emotional intelligence is really the foundation of all the relationships that we have, whether at work or in our personal lives as well. I'm a mother of two boys and I can tell you that I used emotional intelligence every day, especially when they were teenagers, when they thought they knew more than everyone else. But really here at work, I think one of the things that I have again, found myself looking back upon, is my ability to develop deep connections and relationships with the people that I work with. And this is important and this is key in leadership. If you can't develop these relationships with the folks that you work with, you're never going to establish trust. You're never going to be able to move teams forward if there's no trust and that collaborative relationship is not there.

The other piece I feel very strongly about is those trusting relationships provide an area of psychological safety for two leaders to have open, honest discussion. One of the things I've learned through my leadership journey is if your team members aren't giving you feedback, you don't have a very effective team if they're afraid to tell you what's wrong. I think having that strong foundation is just absolutely key. And then when you think about yourself in a leadership role where you're working with maybe a provider or someone like that, I think it's very important that they know I'm going to speak up when there's a problem and vice versa. They know they can call me when there's a problem and we can have honest and open dialogue about that. It's been just really for me, I'd say the foundation of everything that I do starts with emotional intelligence.

Elizabeth Pugel: Great. Thank you. You talked a lot about your relationships, your deep connections, establishing trust, having that psychological safety in your work environment. Can you tell us a little bit about how you know when you have achieved that trust or in a psychologically safe relationship?

Shannon Pengel: Yeah, for me, I think it's just the feedback that you get. I appreciate honest feedback. It's not always easy to hear, but it's the right thing to do, especially when in a leadership role that impacts patient safety. I have to be able to have that feedback. And so for me, a good judge, if I'm having a conversation with a team, let's say as an example, and I'm not hearing any feedback and I know it's there, I have not done a good job really connecting with that team, helping them understand. And sometimes I have to almost kind of pull it out too, of the team to say, "Guys, I know there are emotions around this. I know there are feelings around this. I want you to be honest, there's no wrong answer here. We have to do what's right for patients." I think sometimes it takes some skill in working with teams to pull some of that out and get them to feel like they can speak up.

Elizabeth Pugel: It sounds like you are really able to read your audience and if you're not getting the response that you think you should be getting, you have the ability and courage to seek it, which I think is great and a really tremendous leadership quality. It sounds like you have really identified opportunities and ways to solicit that feedback and continue to establish that trust with your team. How else do you use your emotional intelligence?

Shannon Pengel: I think, one of the things that I've learned over time is understanding my own emotional intelligence and what triggers me. I think we've all probably been in situations and I'll use just group meetings, where maybe you're working alongside of colleagues and you feel like all fingers are pointing to you as the problem. And I think, it's just as important to use your emotional intelligence in those situations and sit back and listen. Hear what everyone is saying. A lot of times there's high emotions in those types of meetings and passion around an outcome.

Really just taking it all in, evaluating it in your head and responding kind of with the approach that we respond to families and patients when they're upset, using the HEART method of, I hear what you're saying. This is incredibly frustrating to you. I can understand how it impacts your patient. This is what I'm going to do and this is what I'm going to look into and thanks for sharing with me. Thanks for the opportunity to understand this problem better. I think that has been a good strategy for me to use when I can feel that kind of trigger inside of me going up and taking away that ability to respond in a defensive manner always helps the situation.

Elizabeth Pugel: It's great that you are so self-aware to be able to identify your triggers and pay attention to them and provide the best response and really use your emotional intelligence to direct a conversation or direct a next step in a situation. What have you learned from other leaders about emotional intelligence?

Shannon Pengel: Well, I think I've certainly learned in some situations what not to do. I think we'll start there, but I think, when I talk about learning my own triggers, I can tell you that some of my mentors that I have watched over the years really exemplify emotional intelligence. I'd never really understood when I first started in leadership, how important emotional intelligence was. I thought it was just some survey I was taking to identify my strengths and weaknesses, but as I watched other leaders in the organization, I watched them display very high levels of emotional intelligence and I think that's what I have taken away from other leaders the most is watching them in intense situations, watching them give constructive feedback that's not defensive at all.

And I think the other piece that I've seen with leaders with high emotional intelligence is they are fierce advocates. They are able to speak up on behalf of our caregivers without damaging that relationship at the same time. And again, I think as long as you have a leader that you're working with that is highly intelligent, that is welcomed, but I think those are some of the characteristics I've seen with our leaders that really do a great job with emotional intelligence.

Elizabeth Pugel: Sounds like you've learned a lot from other leaders to really impact the way that you utilize emotional intelligence today. How do you inspire others to be emotionally intelligent?

Shannon Pengel: I think in my leadership career, one of my passions has been around developing future leaders. I have a strong passion for nursing. I have a strong passion for being clinically excellent and I have a strong passion for taking care of our caregivers. And it's really important to me that when I'm no longer in a leadership position, that I have left a legacy of other leaders with some of the same characteristics.

And so in my own leadership journey, I've focused on leadership development. I have really helped my managers understand their role and how impactful they are and hopefully in turn have inspired them to learn some of these, what I would call finer skills within nursing leadership and leadership in general, the ability to influence people, the ability to motivate people, to really communicate clearly and create a sense of calm. I think a lot of times in a leadership role, especially this past year in 2020, dealing with every new COVID crisis that came up every other day, people look to leaders to create a sense of calm, give direction. And I think, I try to teach my managers that every day and my team that every day and inspire them to continue to develop those skills.

Elizabeth Pugel: It sounds like you've really focused on inspiring leaders to be more emotionally intelligent. And if you could give a couple pieces of additional advice, how would you recommend leaders become more emotionally intelligent?

Shannon Pengel: Well, I think it's a process. I think that you learn over time. I don't think it's something that you can just go take a course on and all of a sudden you're an expert at it. I think you have to be very self-reflective. You have to look at those relationships that go well in your life and think about what do you do in those situations. But even more importantly, you need to evaluate the relationships that maybe aren't going as well and try to understand how can you approach that person using some of the emotional intelligence concepts that you've learned over the years.

I would also highly recommend identifying a mentor, someone that is very good and has high levels of emotional intelligence that you can bounce ideas off of. If you understand, as I mentioned earlier, what your internal triggers are, and you know what situations kind of evoke that emotional response in yourself, you can talk through it with a mentor. You can say, "This is the problem I'm facing. This is what this person said, can you believe it?" And get all of that emotional stuff out on the table before you have that conversation with the individual. I think, lots of practice as well as a practice conversations.

Elizabeth Pugel: That's a great recommendation to get a mentor for a variety of reasons and to really have that sounding board for someone maybe experiencing some difficult conversations. Why do you think it's important for others to understand emotional intelligence?

Shannon Pengel: Again, I think, when I started in nursing, I would say, I didn't think it was that important either. I thought I'm a good person. I'm a nurse. I take care of people for a living, but I didn't think I understood the importance of, again, once you kind of move into that leadership role, the importance of developing the relationship and the need to be able to influence and motivate people. I think that's a big key of leadership and why others need to see the value in emotional intelligence. I tell some of my managers, "You can be a leader, you can get whatever title you want, but if nobody's following you, you're really not a leader." I think, that's one of the aspects I see with emotional intelligence of what makes it so important in developing our future leaders.

Elizabeth Pugel: If you could instill one or two emotional intelligence traits in every person in your organization, what would they be? And what do you think the impact would be?

Shannon Pengel: I think for me, the trait of empathy is a huge one in emotional intelligence. Everyone is coming from someplace good or bad, every situation there's emotions involved and you really need to display high levels of empathy to really put yourself in someone else's shoes. And I think if everybody really focused on that trait a little bit more, we could all be a little bit more understanding of the situations that we're dealing with every day at work, what we're bringing to work. In healthcare, I think we have an overwhelming burden of not only dealing with what we're dealing with now in the hospitals and in our areas of practice, but we also are bringing in a lot of personal things into everyday that influence how we work and when we come to work. I think just really trying to understand where people are at that time is just incredibly, incredibly important.

And then the second trait I would say is if we just have an understanding that we're all here trying to do the right thing for the patient. I think sometimes we instinctively feel that someone is maybe trying to fulfill an agenda instead of just trying to do the right thing for the patient. And if we always focus on that, we can never go wrong if our objectives are to put things in place to provide an exceptional environment for their recovery.

Elizabeth Pugel: It sounds really impactful if everybody had more empathy and really focused on their work and patients with more positive intent, what the outcomes could be in our environment. Thank you for sharing those. Shannon, you've talked a lot today about your journey with emotional intelligence and really the importance of responding, reading the audience, reading the group, even some personal triggers for you that show up and how to manage those in difficult situations. You've also really talked about building relationships and having that connectivity through trust and psychological safety. I wanted to give you an opportunity to provide any other insight at this point on emotional intelligence that you would like for our listeners to learn or hear a little bit more about from you.

Shannon Pengel: I think the only other thing I would add, Elizabeth, that we haven't talked about yet and I touched a little bit on it is with emotional intelligence in personal life too. And I'm sure many people listening to this podcast are raising children and I think I'm just so happy that my children survived their teenage years because at points in time I thought either I was going to have a nervous breakdown or they were. But I think, the principles that I've learned around emotional intelligence, I've tried to instill in my children as well. It's just about doing the right thing and being a good person and helping people through different challenges that they're facing and coming out with a situation that is a win-win for everyone. It's not always a competition of who finishes first.

When you're working with people, we all have skin in the game and we all have to collaborate every day, which sometimes is hard for them, especially as teenagers. I can remember them saying, "No, I need to win this argument. I'm right." And they would get sick of hearing me say, "Well, it doesn't really matter who's right or wrong. We all come to the table with an opinion." I think it's just important in all aspects of your life and I think a really important topic for this discussion today so thank you.

Elizabeth Pugel: Yeah, of course. And thank you for all of your input. Do you have any additional final thoughts to leave our listeners with today on emotional intelligence?

Shannon Pengel: Like I said, keep practicing, find that mentor. It is a journey. It's not going to happen overnight and really be self-aware. No one is going to do this for you. This is a journey that you have to take yourself as a leader.

Elizabeth Pugel: Well, these have been some great insights, really appreciate your leadership perspective and providing all of your input on what it takes to be a successful, emotionally intelligent leader. We appreciate your time and we appreciate your service and we appreciate all of your insights on emotional intelligence today, Shannon. Thank you.

Shannon Pengel: Thank you, Elizabeth. It was an honor to be here today. Thanks so much.

Michelle Lampton: And that's our episode today. Thank you, Shannon Pengel, for sharing your leadership lessons with us, and thank you as always Elizabeth for your thoughtful and insightful questions.

 That's it for us at GLLI! Stay curious and keep learning!