In a World of AI, Lean into Your EQ with Dr Robin Hills

Show Notes

00:16 Show Intro
00:52 Introducing Robin Hills
01:38 How Robin got into EI training
01:52 What is emotional intelligence?
03:23 How he works with people on EI
03:56 500,000 people have taken his online training course
04:43 EI underpins everything we do
05:27 Bart asks for an example of how EI competency works
05:54 Just forget about EI! 
06:38 Help leaders understand what emotional triggers they are vulnerable to 
07:33 Bart talks about stock price trigger
08:27 Coaching around "What could you do, or have done better?"
08:53 It's not the physiological response, but the behavior that is the problem 
09:43 What can a leader do to improve the emotional climate?
11:10 Bart asks about the rise of AI and its impact
12:42 Example of a radiologist using AI
14:57 A robot can never be a leader
16:34 Empathy is a key part of emotional intelligence
17:20 Leaders – ability to be entrepreneurial and innovative
19:06 Spiritual intelligence
20:09 How does spirituality fit into leadership?
22:23 Putting things into larger context and perspective
25:27 Using behavioral psychological assessment tools
26:16 I'm not interested in your failings! 
26:53 Asking friends and family: "What is it about me that you like and respect?"
29:38 Learn your emotional triggers!
32:44 Give yourself permission to be angry, or fearful
33:43 Should we "keep our emotions out of the workplace?"
34:20 Aristotle's quote about anger
34:53 I don't use "positive" and "negative" for emotions
35:29 Emotional intelligence is INCREDIBLY hard!
36:05 Building your storybank
38:10 We've been trained not to brag
39:24 Bart summarizes key points
40:08 Final piece of advice: Just BE
40:19 Just be you 
40:55 How to find out more – and get resources
41:46 Thank yous
42:03 Outro

Show Transcript

Robin Hills: What I do when I'm working with leaders, for example, is help them to understand what it is that, is an emotional trigger for them, a hot button, something that would destabilize them within an interaction when they're under pressure.

Bart Egnal: Welcome to the Inspired Podcast, where we examine what it takes to intentionally inspire. I'm your host, Bart Egnal, president and CEO of the Humphrey Group. And if you've ever asked yourself how can you develop an authentic leadership presence or how can you tell stories that have people hanging off every word, well, then this podcast is for you. And it's not just for executives. This is a podcast for anyone who wants to influence and inspire others in their work, but also in their life.

So my guest, on today's episode of the Inspired podcast is Robin Hills. And Robin is the founder, managing director of EI4Change. and this is really a company that has taken leaps into the world of providing, training and skills in the realm of emotional intelligence. And you know, Robin, I know we got connected and we're talking about how at this moment in time, we're recording this in March 2025, with AI advancing at leaps and bounds, how the world of human interaction and at the heart of it, emotional intelligence is going to take on even more critical importance. So I want to have you on the pod, being that this is a pod about leadership communication, to talk about, the future of eq, the skills that people need, and why humanity matters. So welcome to the podcast.

Robin Hills: Oh, thank you ever so much for having me on your podcast. But it's a pleasure to be here.

Bart Egnal: Pleasure to have you. So I've given you a very short intro, but let's take it back and tell me how you got into this world of training people around emotional intelligence.

Robin Hills: Emotional intelligence is the way in which you combine your thinking with your feelings in order to make good quality decisions and, build up authentic relationships by taking appropriate action. And there are many examples, many, many examples of where emotional intelligence works and works well. And there are many, examples of where emotional intelligence doesn't work and doesn't work quite so well, or really, quite honestly the way in which people use their emotional intelligence, and it doesn't work quite as well as it should do. So, how I got into the field is emotional intelligence underpins everything that we do. And I've worked in the field of training for a number of years now, and I've come to recognize that doesn't matter whether I'm training around leadership, communication skills, teamwork, working, personal development, emotional intelligence really is at the hub of that. So what I decided to do when I was setting my business up 15 odd years ago was really to specialize in this area of emotional intelligence and to make it practical and make it relatable to people within the business work environment.

Bart Egnal: And today, how broad, just give us a sense. How broad is your impact? How many people is your company training? What kind of work are you doing today?

Robin Hills: Well, I do a lot of live training and I work with government officials, public sector officials, people within finance and they come from the African continent. I do work with people within the United Kingdom where I'm based around that. But globally, my online training courses have been taken up by well over half a million people in 200 countries. So that's the extent to which, I'm touching and influencing people's lives.

Bart Egnal: And I think that scale and scope really speaks to the desire that people have to foster that human connection. I love that combination that as you describe this combination of your thinking and your feelings so that you make these quality decisions, you build these relationships. And so maybe that's a good segue too. So people listening to this podcast, they want to improve their ability to inspire. They want to be better leaders. They aspire the leadership. How does emotional intelligence, or why is emotional intelligence tied to leadership?

Robin Hills: Well, as I say, emotional intelligence underpins everything that we do as human beings. We are driven by our emotions. Our emotions are physiological and psychological reactions to changes that are going on around our environment. So if we are experiencing an emotion, we can then utilize the data, the information that that emotion is providing us to make these better quality decisions. And really a lot of leadership is about human interactions. It's about building up relationships. So how do we emotionally engage with people at a deeper level?

Bart Egnal: Can you give me an example? like it could be a hypothetical leader who through emotional intelligence, like tell me about someone you've worked with where they're dealing with intense pressure, intense emotions brought on by that pressure. And this kind of competence in emotional intelligence allows them to do exactly what you're describing. what would be a story that you'd think of?

Robin Hills: Well, firstly, what I would encourage people to do is just to forget about your emotional intelligence.

Bart Egnal: Okay, we can do this podcast right now. That was easy. That was easy.

Robin Hills: The whole idea really is if you are focusing too much, on oh, am I emotionally intelligent in this situation, you're not being a Good leader.

Bart Egnal: Okay.

Robin Hills: It's the case of understanding your reactions to situations, to events and to people, and how that is then driving your thinking and it's driving how you're feeling. So, to go back to answering your question and to giving you some really tangible examples, what I do when I'm working with leaders, for example, is help them to understand what it is that is an emotional trigger for them. A hot button, something that would destabilize them within an interaction when they're under pressure. so I have a range of various exercises that I work through with people.

Bart Egnal: So Robin, just to. I want to play with this. So let's imagine m. I work with a lot of this CEOs. I work with CEOs on investor relations and I’ll tell you one trigger is the stock price. You So I have seen CEOs come into a meeting and the stock is up and it's like the world is glorious. And I've seen CEOs coming from be in the stock for whatever reason that has nothing to do with anything that's been done is down 5%. And boy, that meeting change, the tone of that meeting changes. So is it fair to say that's a trigger? And if so, how would you now apply your work to that with them?

Robin Hills: Well, what I would encourage them to do is to do a bit of self reflection and to help them to understand what that trigger is and what has caused that trigger to fire. and if we can get them in a similar situation and get them to realize, I'm starting to be triggered here, how do I manage myself better? we're actually making some progress now. They're human beings like you and IB Bar, so they will get it wrong at times. So what I would encourage people to do, and this is where coaching comes in, which is another valuable tangible asset that you're very familiar with. I would coach people around, well, what did you do? What could you have done better? What stopped you from doing that? Because it's not the emotion, it's not the physiological, the psychological reaction internally to the situation that is causing the problem. It's the behavior. And the behavior is something that they can choose.

Bart Egnal: Ok, so you're going to have that reaction. But how you manage the emotion and how you change your behavior really is the mark of an emotionally intelligent person.

Robin Hills: That's it. And that is the way in which I would get people to look at engaging with people more appropriately. CEOs, as you know, they will say to you, oh, I want all of my people to be productive.

Bart Egnal: Yes. At every moment.

Robin Hills: Yah. This is it. Even when I'm not around.

Bart Egnal: Right.What climate do you induce within your organization? How are people feeling

Robin Hills: What climate do you induce within your organization? How are people feeling? if you're angry with them all the time because they're not hitting targets or they're not doing the things that you want them to do, and they are living in constant fear of your anger that is not conducive to good productivity. So what is it that you can do to get the climate that you need in order to improve productivity? So again, without mentioning options or emotional intelligence, we're actually getting them to think about the impact that they are, having their behavior, behavior is happening on the people around them. And then we can build in the emotions of, unpleasantness, fear, anger, happiness, contentment, and get them to select the behavior that is conducive to the productivity that they're looking for.

Bart Egnal: I like this, and I want to come back to this because I think you've signaled, you've given some great examples here of how for leaders you're going to have emotions, they're going to be real, because we're humanists, even CEOs are human, as you said. But it's, you know, your ability to manage those and be intentional around the tone, emotional tone you create in the audience you have that really matters. So let's just park that for a moment because I want to come back to the how of that and I think a lot of people listening would want to know, get some free coaching from you. Well, I will too. Experts are wrestling with whether artificial intelligence will change their work

but I do want to come back to this point in time that we were in, which is the rise of AI. I mean every. You cant throw a rock without hitting an AI model these days. And you talk about emotion. I think one of the biggest, we were kind of vastly between excitement and fear. I mean, I was on this weekend, I was chatting with a friend of mine in the medical sector. He said radiologists, doctors who look at scans are both incredibly energized and incredibly fearful that this is going to fundamentally you enhance their ability to do great medicine or destroy their livelihood or both. And so tell me about how you would advise people, listening, who are wrestling with these to think about not whether or not AI will, how will change their work because obviously that's going to be different, but what you view as the quintessentially human parts of work that they can and should lean into in the years of Hex Bar.

Robin Hills: Let's put this into some level of Context. AI, is a tool many, many times. It can be used brilliantly. It's a brilliant tool to improve, productivity. It's very, very efficient at managing vast banks of data and analyzing that data and coming up with conclusions. now it does that without any emotion. So what we've got to do in terms of looking at, let's take the radiologists for example. They can detect cancers very, very quickly and much, much more efficiently through utilizing, AI as a tool. Now the AI part is great. You just plug them into a machine, the machine does its job, the machine does its analysis and it comes out with a result. Now, as the result is not what the person wants and it's not what the radiologist want, this is where the core component of being a radiologist, which most radiologists have forgotten, this is the part that they really do need to impart at that particular moment in time. It's empathy, it's compassion. It'helping people to come to terms with something there is deeply, deeply unpleasant and potentially life changing. That is something that only a human can do. AI cannot do it. Y. We're talking about effective computing. This is, emotional computing where, computers can behave as if they've got empathy. There is nothing, nothing that would replace a warm hug from somebody and an empathetic conversation around helping somebody come to terms with a loss or something that is causing them, to feel deeply, deeply concerned and anxious for the future. Yeah.

Bart Egnal: And I think you're so right that so much of the work that we do is human work, increasingly knowledge work. Right. And how we interact. And that is something humans do want. And there's a phrase I've heard that new economies of abundance create new economies of scarcity. So you have this abundance of tools and the ability to analyze data like never before. And yet that means the qualities of humanity are in some ways even more precious that we have and for leaders become more critically differentiation. A leader is somebody who has the capability of motivating their team

Robin Hills: Well, I think the other important point to raise here is that a robot AI can never be a leader.

Bart Egnal: interesting. Tell me more. I'd love your perspective on that.

Robin Hills: Well, again, if we're looking at the human components, a leader is somebody who has the capability of motivating their team. They understand what the motivators are. They're actually able to read the strategic environment to say, right, these are the decisions that we need to make from an entrepreneurial's perspective and we need to gel together as a team. Fred, you've got these skills. Go away and do that. Edna, you've got These skills go away and do this. we'll all come together, we'll all think about it, we'll all share ideas, we'll all innovate, and we'll all do things in a different way to the way in which we've been doing previously. come up with something really creative. And we can do that as human beings. Machines can't.

Bart Egnal: It's true. I love it. No one will be led by a robot. you can be given information by a robot, but you can't be led. And I think the best leaders are gonna develop even more of these EQ skills. So let's shift to that. What are the key skills that leaders should have to be empathetic leaders

People listening. And I'm curious. All right. What, in this day and age, this age of excitement and anxiety, where we can at least know that you're gonna be led by a human, and many people desire to lead, what are the key skills that leaders should have to be empathetic leaders and practice? Emotional intelligence. What would the first one be?

Robin Hills: Well, the first one would be the key word that you ask within the question, and that's empathetic. empathy is a key fundamental component of emotional intelligence that the AI will never be able to do. What is empathy? Empathy is understanding things from another person's perspective, understanding their thinking, understanding their feeling. It's being able to think in the same way it's being able to feel in the same way. You don't necessarily have to agree, you just have to understand. And that is the fundamental key component which will differentiate us as humans from the robots. The next one is if we're looking at leaders in leadership, and that's the ability to be entrepreneurial, innovative, creative. again, do something. I hate the expression, but it works and it's perfect. Think outside of the box.

Bart Egnal: Right, Right. Because, you know, when you look at LLM Sorry to jump in, like the ch B of the world, there are really derivations of existing thinking. Right. Rather than innovations. So is that kind of what you're referring to, that this spark really is a human quality?

Robin Hills: It is, and it's being silly. And we can be silly as human beings, which will lead to breakthroughs in thinking. what would your grandmother have to say about this? how would this problem look if it was a teapot?

Bart Egnal: So that spark of playfulness.

Robin Hills: Yeses. How does this smell to you at the moment? 'really m engaged with some of these really human qualities because this is where the creativity and innovation comes in. That's an interesting question. I've not thought of it that way before. How would it smell how does it smell at the moment? Is it pungent? Is it pleasant? And then what would you need to do to change that?

Bart Egnal: I love it.

Robin Hills: maybe.

Bart Egnal: Maybe a last one, if I may. I'm going to go back to what you were saying earlier and infer you. I'm thinking of the CEO example, and it's almost that self awareness piece. Like, hey, this is emotionally triggering. What is the reaction? Is it fair to say that's equ Quality as well for leaders?

Robin Hills: Definitely. And I think that then leads into a, real fundamental difference, which you probably haven't discussed a lot on your podcast. It's around spiritual intelligence. Why am I here? What is the meaning behind me, my life, my relationship with the universe? And this is where the self awareness peace comes in. They are talking about AI having self awareness. Yeah, fine. But it will be a different self awareness to the self awareness that you and I have, Barket. Because AI doesn't have what you and I have. And that's the human brain.

Bart Egnal: Right.

Robin Hills: How does spirituality fit in your view of leadership

Tell me more about the spirituality. I really know when we prep for this, all the other ones kind of into a nice box, right? You think about, yes, leaders should be empathetic. Leaders should have this spark of creativity. But I think this was the one that I was most intrigued by because it doesn't fit neatly into kind of business productivity. Leadership productivity. And yet I was most intrigued by it. Tell me what you mean. How does this concept of spirituality and, fit in your view of leadership?

Robin Hills: It's really the way in which we are engaging with the environment that we're in. And I mean the broader word of the environment. And I can go back to one of my previous sentences. It's our relationship within the world. It's our relationship within the universe. Now, you can see behind me, this won't work for the people who are listening on audio, but behind me there is, a wood, a path going through the wood, and there's a river on one side of me. Now, in terms of me, relating to the world, I actually get a lot of energy and a lot of refreshment by spending time going on this war.

Bart Egnal: so that's an actual place you go. It's not just a stock photo?

Robin Hills: No, it's about a kilometer away from where I live. So. Well, what it means is that when I just need to, have a bit of downtime, have a bit of refreshment, just go away from work and do something completely different, I can go and spend time, about a kilometer away from where I am. And I find that that's very, very rewarding. I'm out in the fresh air. I'm doing a little bit of physical exercise in. I can walk quite fast. A lot of people do joalking, but m. It's actually proving to me that there is, more in the world than emotions, emotional intelligence, Robin Hills and the eye for change. So it actually gets me out of myself into the big, wide world and say, well, what is my place here within the world? And being really, really realistic about it. I have a very, very, very small part to play. But the key for me is how can I make that small part significance.

Bart Egnal: When I think about myself? I've been in the business world for almost 25 years. And when I started, you're so focused on achieving things, achieving success. And as I've aged and, I see leaders who have inspired me and mentors, they do have this piece. Right. of putting it in perspective and also really thinking about your life and what matters in life. and so I do think you're right, that this is an underrated quality for humans and for leaders.

Robin Hills: It is. And, without opening up a complete kind of worms here, it is vitally important to stress that a lot of people will get a lot of spiritual comfort from their beliefs, particularly from their religion. No, I was brought up, my father was a Christian minister. I am not in any way religious in the way in which he was. I think my life has taken me in a different direction. But the values and the qualities and the spirituality around that is very, very meaningful for me. Now, a lot of people will get a lot of comfort and they will get a lot of their spiritual intelligence through their religion. Be it Christian, be it Buddhist, be it, Muslim, it really doesn't matter. It's where you get your nourishment from and what is important to you.

Bart Egnal: And so many people are spending so much time and work, and that I think those leaders who can create that connection genuinely are more effective. There’s a sentence that I forget, ah, who it was, who said it. But in our communication, in coaching and programs, we talk about, which is no one will remember what you said, but they’ll remember how you made them feel. I gotta to look up who that quote was from. Its been a while, but I think its a kind of a good cap on what you’re saying, that the power of these skills for Lear.

So lets shift. Okay. Youve laid out some great skills in this, in this age, you know, innovation, self awareness, playfulness. Empathy and spirituality. Okay, let's talk. So someone's listening to like wow, that all sounds great. I want to be that kind of leader or I want to develop that. How do I go about, how do I begin cultivating or honing or strengthen these qualities? What would the first step you'd recommend they take be?

Robin Hills: My recommendation would be to become more self aware, just to be a little bit more understanding around yourself. What are your core qualities? What are your strengths? What is it that differentiates Robin from Barth? What is it?

Bart Egnal: How do I do that? How do I develop that self awareness about who I am?

Robin Hills: well, the way in which I would do it. And this is going back into the cognitive, rational, logical way of doing it. But I think this is important because a lot of your listeners are going to be that way inclined. The way which CH would do it is to use a personality or a behavioral assessment, a psychometric. So I'm qualified in using the Myers BRICSGS type Indicator. Step one, step two. I'm qualified in using disc. I'm qualified in using ocean. I'QUALIFIED in, an Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire. There are many, many, many more. It doesn't matter which one is being used. It just gives you a lens of focus on who you are, what you are, are, and it will highlight certain things about you, that perhaps you, are't consciously aware of. And when I'm working with a lot of leaders, particularly in the live training, I will then say to them, what are your strength?

Robin Hills: I'm not interested in your weaknesses. I'm not interested in those. Everybody's got weaknesses. What is it that you were good at that nobody else that you know has got that ability or that capability? And many leaders look at me and think, I don't know. T know really well without going down the psychometric, right? What I say to them, this is a live workshop, remember what I say to them is that, okay, I told you to put it away at the beginning of the workshop. Get it out now. Get your mobile phone out, we're going into a coffee break. So what I'd like you to do is to text three people. Your friend, your family, your mother, your sister, it doesn't matter who it is. Text three people and say to them, look, I'm in an emotional intelligence leadership training course. What is it about me that you like and respect? And they sit there and they think, don't want to do this. Go on, do it.

Bart Egnal: I'm giving you permission.

Robin Hills: Yeah, I've given you permission. After you go, you've given the person context. I'm in a training course. What is it that you like? What is it you respect about me? We then go into the coffee break and all these txts come in and, they're all coming up to me. Oh, somebody said this about me. And then afterwards, what I do is say, right, okay, get your phones out and write, write down the core learnings that you've had from those, those texts. What is it that are core qualities and core strengths that you've got that people are recognizing and seeing in you? most people. I love that loads of people are saying, I do this. But doesn't, everybody. Well, everybody doesn't you do it. And there's seen some value in that. And then I get them to stand up in front of the group and to actually look at the group in the eye and say, this is what I'm really good at.

Bart Egnal: No butts, no I think qualifiers, right?

Robin Hills: No qualifiers at all. Just say it as it is. I love it. Find that quite energizing, and quite revealing.

Bart Egnal: and one of more fun self assessment than filling out Myers bricks. I feel like if you're listening to this podcast right now, you should do this. You should send those three texts and then imagine standing up in front of the audience and saying, this is what I'm good at. So great. And it's free.

Robin Hills: It's. Well, it depends on your network provider.

Bart Egnal: That's right. That's right, exactly. Free. As it get frees.

Robin Hills: It's very, very, very cheap way. I love it of getting some insight to people what other people are seeing in you.

Bart Egnal: Okay, so that's great suggestion. One, discovery your strengths. Know what makes you unique. What's the second way that people can begin to build this emotional intelligence muscle?

Robin Hills: well, I will go back to what I said to you right at the beginning of the podcast. We need to help people to understand their emotional trigger because.

Bart Egnal: So how you do that.

Robin Hills: Well, what I would do is, again, this is the way I do it. I get people to interview each other and the interviewee, just speaks. The interviewer, has to write down word for word, without qualifying, without judgment, without discussion exactly what's being said. And then afterwards they sit and discuss it and I give them some questions as a steer and I can't remember sequence of questions. But, some of the key questions are, it makes me angry when get the person school finish this sentence. I feel offended when at work. I wish people would at work. I wish People wouldn't. And there's a sequence of a few more questions. But effectively what people are doing is the other person is writing down their words. The exercise asks delegates to reflect on their emotional triggers and heart buttons.

And the fact that they're being interviewed means that the answer comes from the heart. It's a raw answer. People are not thinking about it because if they have the questions in front of them and I say, okay, they sit there and fill out the answers, they've got the time to think. How do I want m to ask?

Bart Egnal: How would people think I should answer this?

Robin Hills: Yes.

Bart Egnal: Yes versus I like that. The rawness of the interview, it is.

Robin Hills: And then, without putting any judgments or qualifications around it, people will then talk about it. And then once people have had that conversation, flip. So the interviewer, becomes the interviewee and the interviewee becomes the interviewer. So it works the other way. And then the other person then gets a chance to reflect on their emotional triggers and heart buttons. And whilst it sounds a very, very simple exercise, it has been revolutionary and life changing for a number of delegates. And that surprises me, Bart, but the reflections that I've had from people afterwards is know I wasn't aware. This has really given me some insights that I haven't had before. And I now know what it is that makes me so angry and I can now make better choices.

Bart Egnal: Well, I think you just nailed it. I mean, I was thinking at first too, this shouldn't be shocking. It's not like they're going through a deep study, they're just saying it. But I think we often back to the point around the CEO and the stock price. We have the emotion, it triggers us and then we react. And what you're really doing is you're, asking people to be more self reflective. And it's almost a meditative process in the sense that you're saying that's the emotion. It's okay, it's happening. How do. I don't want it to change my behavior. And so it's thinking about those triggers as something I don't think we do enough of.

Robin Hills: No, no, give yourself permission to be angry, to be fearful, to be anxious. Whatever it is, it doesn't feel particularly pleasant. Give your position to permission to experience that emotion, but make choices around the way in which you are, behaving and expressing that emotion and the impact that that is having on other people. Could this be a third point around emotion because something like embrace your emotions

Bart Egnal: Could this be a third point around emotion because something like embrace your emotions. Because my experience is that many emotions are not welcome at work and often on gendered lines, for example, for men, its really Anger. Anger is one of the few ways, permissible ways to deal with conflict or setbacks versus things like sadness or, what might be viewed as weakness in the workplace. So is it that we have kind of said we were not going to. I think you use the phrase in our prep. There’s this fallacy of, oh, keep your emotions out of the workplace.

Robin Hills: Yeah, often, I often heard this from CEOs. I heard it more than once. So it has been doing the rounds. A lot of CEOs will actually say we don't do emotions in, organization. We leave that.

Bart Egnal: Let's be AI.

Robin Hills: Well, yeah, let's be AI. Or let's leave that to Barry Vanal Low. So, the important thing is to embrace these emotions and get them to work for us. Now, I'm going to misquote this an apologies. I'm forever misquoting this, but the intention is there. it was Aristotle who said, anyone can become angry, that's easy. But to be angry with the right person at the right time and in the right way for the right reason, that is very hard. That's difficult not easy. So, yeah, anyone can become angry. But how do I utilize that anger? anger is an emotion. It's often deemed a negative emotion. I don't use the word positive and negative emotions. And that's wrong. That's another occasion. But it's unpleasant. But, we have some choices. How do I utilize this emotion to constructively build relationships rather than destructively destroy relationships? So how can I use it the right way at the right time for the right person? And one of the things I've got to say, Bart, is look, I'm an emotional intelligence specialist. I've been working in this field for a number of years. If anyone knows how to do this, can they let me know, please? I've work, you know, I this stuff, but when love to it, it is incredibly hard.

Bart Egnal: The last point I want to touch on, in terms of how to build your muscle. You talked about the spirituality piece. You talked about getting in touch with kind of the larger humanity. And one of the things that you shared as a piece of advice when we weret preparing for this was to tell stories, to build your story bank where you tell stories about your humanity. Can you tell me a bit more and tell people listening a bit more what you mean by this and how to do it?

Robin Hills: Well, I think people, you've asked me on a number of occasions throughout the conversation that we've been having. But for examples Right. And what I think stories do is not once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. And that's what people will equate stories with. It's giving real life examples and being able to put them across succinctly and impactfully. So I've give you these examples of, some of the exercises that I run in my workshop. To an extent, those are stories in themselves. this is the way in which I will build self awareness. This is the way in which I will help people with their emotional regulation. I told to you about the story about, the image behind me and how I would work and use that, how I would spend time in nature in terms of getting my energy and refreshing myself. that's what I mean by a story.

Bart Egnal: Yeah. And I think what's powerful about the stories you've shown, and I think the one in some ways that resonates, that really was resonating most of me was this story about the people at your workshop who you got to get those texts. And here you have these people, successful business professionals, spent their whole career they didn't. And just that human connection to the fact that they didn't know what their strengths were contrasted with the joy and euphoria when people they cared about texted. And that kind of lit them up. And you can be in that moment and it is going back to where we started in this world of AI. It's that humanity that is unique to who we are and that quality of emotion. So it's powerful.

Robin Hills: It is. But I think a lot of that might be around, another elements of what we've been, trained with regards to where we are within the work environment. You and I have been boys, we've grown up. Our parents have, introduced us to certain ways of being, certain values, certain ways of behaving. And part of that is a degree of humility. And so we are being taught as young boys not to go out there and brag. So when it comes to talking about our strengths, we feel very, very uncomfortable because that is bragging and that is not part of what we've been trained to do. And that's being humble. And so, I think what we got to do is to retain that, but at the same time get the balance right in terms of having that humility. But at the same time just being able to express, okay, this has been, given to me on a number of occasions. People have reflected that this is my core quality, this is my strength, this is what I am working at becoming even better at.

Bart Egnal: And you give them in your workshop permission to shine.

Robin Hills: Yeses.

Bart Egnal: I love it, Robin. This has been very illuminating. Ah, what I'm leaving with, I hope people listening with or leading with is like in this world of tumultuous upheaval, humanity and emotional intelligence really remain, not just remain at the heart of leadership, but are going to become increasingly important. And you’ve really talked about some of the qualities like empathy, like innovation, like self awareness, like spirituality to cultivate. And I love your steps that do a self assessment. You could do a real one or you could. I love your friends and family self assessment. Get in touch with your emotions and embrace them. Tell some stories and just kind of lean into this. So I really appreciate you coming on the program and maybe I'll give you the last word.

Robin Hills: Get started and then I know you have some resources available

What's the kind of piece of advice you give people? Get started and then I know you have some resources available, people, where can they go to connect with you and get that process rolling?

Robin Hills: I'd like to give people just a little piece of advice. Two words. just be. Just be yourself. Don't try and be somebody else, but be a better version of yourself and try and work to be a better version of who you are. Nobody else can be Robin Hills. They'd be a very, very poor version of me. So how can I be the best, best version of me? Nobody can be Bart Egnal. So how can you be the best Bart Egnal there is out there? And I would encourage your listeners to think about that. My resources, I have a range of online courses. You can go to EI for change eiforchange.com that's EI number fourange.com. number of different resources there, there's free book, there's free course. There are free, light bulb moments cards. there are quizzes. I've got two books that, are published. The Authority Guide.

Bart Egnal: I'm looking at them.

Robin Hills: The Authority Guide to Behavior in Business and the Authority Guide to Emotional resilience in business. Second edition. Came out 2025/grats these are available, on Amazon and through good bookshops. Thank you, Barb.

Bart Egnal: And we can link to all of those in our show notes so that people can easily access them. No, thank you too, Robin. I think at this time in the world, this is exactly the conversation that we need to have and I know everyone listing will appreciate.

Bar: I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Inspire Podcast

So thanks for being guests on the inspired podcast.

Robin Hills: Thank you, Bar. It's been a pleasure.

Bart Egnal: I hope you enjoyed that episode of the Inspire Podcast and the conversation that I had, with our guests. And hopefully you left with some really practical, tangible tools and tips that you can use to be more consistently inspirational. If you're enjoying the pod, I'll ask you a favor. Please rate and review it. I love the comments, appreciate the reviews, and the visibility allows others to discover the pod. It's really how word of mouth has spread the Inspired podcast to so many listeners and helped us keep making this great content. Stay tuned. We'll be back in two weeks with another inspiring conversation. Thanks so much for listening. Go forth and Inspire.