With the shift from in-person to virtual work, what EQ components have improved or deteriorated?

Walker said connections are harder to form virtually because you lose most of the body language you rely on for social awareness. Strategies that helped her teams: a monthly informal session with no agenda, using the two to three minutes before a meeting starts for chitchat rather than plowing ahead, and virtual coffee chats where people respond with pictures or GIFs to prompt real conversation. She also noted that psychological safety, which she is studying for her doctorate, is difficult to achieve in any environment and becomes harder virtually. Leaders have to actively draw out quieter voices, including introverts, women, and people of color, because structural and social reasons cause those groups to self-silence. Sharing agendas in advance so introverts can prepare, normalizing mistakes, and asking good questions are the primary tools.

Jessica (audience comment): Is this topic important for networking and team dynamics?

Walker agreed, and added that she initially considered herself highly empathetic but Rob Volpe's book showed her how much further she could go. Her practical recommendation: when you see someone who appears to be struggling, the best thing you can do is ask a genuinely curious, nonjudgmental question.

Emotional Intelligence at Work: Strategies for Researchers and Team Leaders

Lori Walker, a custom insights master moderator and doctoral candidate, walks through the four components of emotional intelligence (EQ), practical strategies for developing each one, and a curated reading list to support the work. The talk is aimed at researchers and team leaders who want to apply EQ principles not just to interpersonal relationships but also to how they run meetings, conduct interviews, and build team culture. A short Q&A covers the added challenges of building psychological safety and human connection in virtual work environments.

Key Takeaways

Asking good questions is the single most transferable EQ skill. Researchers already practice it in the field; the opportunity is to carry that discipline into team meetings, feedback conversations, and salary negotiations.
Sleep, movement, positive self-talk, and limiting caffeine are physical foundations that directly affect your capacity to manage emotions. Treat them as professional tools, not lifestyle extras.
Social awareness requires knowing your colleagues well enough to notice when something is off, then acting on that signal with a curious, nonjudgmental question rather than ignoring it.
In virtual environments, connection requires deliberate design: monthly informal sessions, chitchat time before meetings start, and virtual coffee chats with visual prompts all help close the gap left by lost body language.
Psychological safety is a leadership responsibility. Sharing agendas in advance, treating mistakes as learning opportunities, and actively drawing out quieter voices are concrete ways to create an environment where everyone contributes.
Letting go of your interview guide, or any rigid agenda, and following the conversation often produces richer results. Know your objectives, then trust the dialogue.

Questions & Answers

With the shift from in-person to virtual work, what EQ components have improved or deteriorated?: Walker said connections are harder to form virtually because you lose most of the body language you rely on for social awareness. Strategies that helped her teams: a monthly informal session with no agenda, using the two to three minutes before a meeting starts for chitchat rather than plowing ahead, and virtual coffee chats where people respond with pictures or GIFs to prompt real conversation. She also noted that psychological safety, which she is studying for her doctorate, is difficult to achieve in any environment and becomes harder virtually. Leaders have to actively draw out quieter voices, including introverts, women, and people of color, because structural and social reasons cause those groups to self-silence. Sharing agendas in advance so introverts can prepare, normalizing mistakes, and asking good questions are the primary tools.
Jessica (audience comment): Is this topic important for networking and team dynamics?: Walker agreed, and added that she initially considered herself highly empathetic but Rob Volpe's book showed her how much further she could go. Her practical recommendation: when you see someone who appears to be struggling, the best thing you can do is ask a genuinely curious, nonjudgmental question.

Session Notes

What Is Emotional Intelligence?

EQ, unlike IQ, can be improved over time. It is composed of four components, each of which can be developed through deliberate practice.

Self-awareness: recognizing and naming your own emotions in the moment.
Self-management: using that awareness to stay flexible and manage your reactions.
Social awareness: reading the emotions, body language, and expressions of others.
Relationship management: using your own and others' emotions to navigate interactions successfully.

What a High-EQ Meeting Looks Like

Walker contrasted a typical, low-engagement meeting with one shaped by EQ principles. The difference is less about format and more about intention and presence.

Devices put away so everyone is present.
A preset agenda shared in advance and followed.
Time to share and celebrate successes before moving to problems.
One concept learned through role-play or practice, not passive listening, followed by a debrief.
Mistakes treated as lessons, not failures.
Accountability check-ins built into the close.

Component 1: Self-Awareness

The foundation is learning to notice what you are feeling before you react. Walker described a simple loop: recognize the emotion, name it, identify why you think you are feeling it, breathe, then decide how to respond.

Brené Brown's Atlas of the Heart maps dozens of distinct emotions and the differences between them, giving you the vocabulary to name what you feel.
Susan David's and Marc Brackett's books walk through the same recognition and naming process and explain why giving yourself permission to feel an emotion matters.
Naming an emotion is not indulgent. It is the first step toward not being controlled by it.

Component 2: Self-Management

Managing your reactions starts with optimizing your brain and body. Walker emphasized that many inputs people treat as lifestyle choices are actually performance inputs.

Physical and Cognitive Foundations

Sleep hygiene: Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep convinced her to prioritize seven or more hours. Building this took three to four years of schedule work.
Smiling and laughter: Actively seeking out funny content has a measurable effect on brain function.
Self-talk: Kindra Hall's Choose Your Story, Choose Your Life is about turning internal narratives from limiting to enabling.
Values clarity: Ryan Holiday's Stoic titles (Ego Is the Enemy, The Obstacle Is the Way, Stillness Is the Key) are about identifying your values, living them, and focusing on what actually matters to you rather than external validation.

Accepting Change

Walker's framing here, drawn from positive psychology, is that you rarely know in the moment whether a change is good or bad. Treating it as uncertain rather than negative keeps your brain out of threat mode. The goal is a default orientation of learning: every situation, every person, contains a lesson.

Component 3: Social Awareness

Walker opened this section with a story from her reading: a Black woman whose mother had died that morning came into work visibly distressed, and her colleagues responded only by asking her to smile more. No one asked if she was okay. The lesson is that reading expressions and body language only matters if it prompts a human question.

Key Skills and Resources

Body language reading: Joe Navarro's What Every Body Is Saying (Navarro is a former FBI interrogator). His core lesson: you will almost never be able to tell if someone is lying, but you can use nonverbal cues as prompts to ask better questions.
Listening: Kate Murphy's You're Not Listening defines what genuine listening requires. Listening badly looks like interrupting, vague responses, phone checking, fidgeting, assuming you already know, or mentally composing your next reply while the other person is still talking.
Empathy: Rob Volpe's Tell Me More About That is built on setting aside judgment and assumptions and simply asking good follow-up questions.
Testing for accuracy: From Never Split the Difference, the practice of reflecting back what you heard ('It seems like X is happening') to confirm understanding before moving forward.
Ditching the agenda: Walker described finishing a one-on-one research interview having asked only one scripted question and letting the conversation lead. At the end she checked the guide and had covered everything. Knowing your objectives deeply lets you hold them lightly.

Component 4: Relationship Management

Beginner's mindset: Approach any topic or person as if you have something to learn. Age and experience are not reasons to stop.
Deliberate curiosity: The film producer featured in A Curious Mind made a point of having one substantive conversation with a new person every week for 30 years. Cross-disciplinary conversations are where new ideas form.
Receiving feedback: Stay curious, ask questions, listen for the lesson rather than defending against the critique.
Giving feedback: Radical Candor by Kim Scott is especially useful for managers who want to be honest and kind at the same time.
Tackling tough conversations: Most of the books Walker cited build toward this. Asking a good question when tension is high is her consistent fallback and, she noted, it has gotten her out of difficult situations repeatedly.

If all else fails, just ask a really good question. It has gotten me out of trouble a lot.

Daily EQ Habits

Walker referenced the book Emotional Intelligence Habits, which outlines 17 strategies for each of the four EQ components. She highlighted the ones she considers most actionable.

Practice gratitude throughout the day, not just as a journaling exercise.
Use positive affirmations at the start of the day. Research supports that they improve outcomes.
Avoid future-focused worry. Plan for risk, but do not let unresolved 'what ifs' occupy your cognitive bandwidth.
Disconnect from devices regularly. Put the phone away, especially in conversations and before bed.
Limit caffeine, particularly in the afternoon, if sleep quality is a problem.
Reframe negative events. The 'Silver Lining' perspective is not just optimism, it reduces physiological stress.
Take two minutes to breathe before high-stakes meetings.
Set and hold boundaries. You do not need to explain why you need something, only state what you need.
Practice mindfulness or a simple 10 to 12 minute brain break in the afternoon to reset for the second half of the day.
Structure free time intentionally. Tiny Habits (BJ Fogg) helped Walker more than Atomic Habits for understanding how to make small changes stick.
Greet people by name. It strengthens relationships and, practically, helps you remember who they are.
Do not seek external validation. Living your values removes the need for likes, approval, or comparison.
Apply the Platinum Rule: treat people the way they want to be treated, which requires actually knowing them.
Turn off your inner voice when someone else is talking.

EQ Applied to Research Practice

Walker drew direct lines between EQ strategies and research craft throughout the talk.

Reading body language and facial expressions during presentations or in-person sessions tells you when to dig deeper before moving on.
Anticipating questions because you are paying attention to the room reduces the number of things left unaddressed.
Running distraction-free meetings, including client meetings, tends to shorten them without losing substance.
Holding debriefs after major projects or meetings to capture lessons learned builds cumulative team intelligence.
Celebrating successes explicitly, before moving to problems, changes the emotional register of a team.
Treating every interview or meeting as a negotiation: use calibrated questions, test your understanding, and follow the respondent's lead.

Transcript

Read the full transcript

so uh my name is Ivan or also Ivon bondeno I'm a recent addition to excellent research as a VP of Client Solutions and it's my pleasure to introduce you all to Lori Walker who is a custom insights Master moderator in doctoral studies at Capella University her topic will be sharing insights regarding emotional intelligence in the workplace sounds exciting and I can't wait to hear about it and I leave it all to you Lori thanks yvon can you see my screen okay yes I can wonderful well hello everybody thanks for joining us today I'm going to be talking about emotional intelligence at work and a little bit more about my background I am also an MMR graduate from a long time ago at a different University so I can attest to the value of that degree if anybody has any questions about that so today I'm going to be talking about emotional intelligence at work the screen going here so emotional intelligence what is it maybe you've heard of it maybe you've read about it most people agree that it has four components so we're going to talk about each of these and some strategies for each of these components so first of all self-awareness is the ability to identify and manage your own emotions as well as the emotions of others the second component is self-management so this means the ability to use the awareness of your emotions to stay flexible manage your reactions and the situations that you come up with and the people you interact with social awareness is your ability to pick up the emotions of others and listen and observe and then and then react and interact relationship management the last component is the ability to use your own and others emotions to manage your interaction successfully so EQ or emotional intelligence can be improved over time unlike your IQ which does not change so the good news is that you can get better at this you can look at some of these strategies that I'll be talking about today and adapt them into your own life even into your own the way you conduct research the way you interact with your teammates Etc I I'll tell you about a book in a little bit that has 17 strategies for each one of these components now I do not have time to go over all of them but I'm going to highlight what I think are the foundational strategies for each component so but first let's think about a typical meeting that you might be in could be virtual could be in person let's look at a typical sales meeting you might be reviewing everybody's numbers and a goal you might do a little team building exercise that doesn't really go into much depth doesn't have a lot of interaction you might have some training but since it's maybe just listening to a talky head like me today you you don't get to interact and you don't really learn anything and maybe there's some brainstorming but if you apply some of the things that we're going to talk about today your effective sales meeting could look like this first of all there's no distractions because everybody has put away their phone and put away their devices and they're paying attention Everybody's In This Moment you set out you sent out a preset agenda and we're going to go through it exactly as it is the first thing we're going to talk about is what do we doing right what are those success stories that we should share and celebrate and then you move on maybe to a one thing to learn right a concept that we're going to learn and we learn it by roll Ro playing and practicing it so that everybody can kind of immerse themselves and actually learn something and then you debrief after to to say what we learned and you can also learn from other people and what they learned and then we are going to take an opportunity to talk about learnings we Embrace mistakes and we learn from them so we're going to talk about how can we do better next time and then there's some check-ins for accountability so you can see that when you apply these things to a meeting it can be much more interesting you can learn more and you build the camaraderie of your team so let's dig into each component now I'm um a 30 some year researcher so I'm going to talk about how I apply these things to my research career as well but really no matter what role or function you have especially if you're a team leader these can apply to you so in the first component which is self-awareness you really need a foundation to help you and again there's so many strategies that we could cover but I think these are the three most important ones and that is learning to recognize your emotions and this is really about taking time to notice what you're feeling to stop think about it to breathe and reflect for a a moment and this all happens pretty fast once you get good at it you recognize that emotion and you ask yourself why am I feeling this way what am I feeling you learn how to name it and then you identify why you think you're feeling that way and then you proceed maybe breathe a few times and and then you can um deal with your emotion and so here are some resources that I would recommend uh bernee Brown if youve read atlas of the heart she talks about I think it's 80s something different emotions and the differences between them and yes that is the kind of information you need to learn to recognize your emotions and the two other books near the top here by Susan David and Mark bracket they explain exactly what this is learning to recognize learning to name it giving yourself permission to feel that emotion understanding why you have it all of that is very important to building your self-awareness and I'll talk a little bit more about this other book here so the next component is self-management so once you've recognized that emotion in yourself you got to think about what are you GNA what what what happened to cause that emotion so in order to be the most optimal human being that you can we have to give our brain and Physiology the best that we can as a as a human and that means uh some things that you might not think are related but are related to managing your emotions and first and foremost is sleep hygiene so that means enough sleep and quality sleep and after I read this book called why we sleep by Matthew Walker no relation uh I immediately tried to figure out how to get better sleep now if you're a person who has kids under 10 I I feel for you because it is very hard to get sleep but it's about prioritizing and making sure that you prioritize your time in the right way so sleep hygiene is critical for your brain function and that brain function is critical to managing your emotions as is smiling and laughing more now if you don't get enough smiling and laughing in your life there's probably ways that you can do that even without um needing to to have a sense of humor all the time I get my laughs and Smiles by listening to funny books or watching funny things on TV so even if you do more of that it's been proven to help your brain function the next thing is to take control of your selft talk so this book here by Kindra Hall Choose Your Story choose your life it's about taking the selft talk that is the conversations that you're having in your head and turning them in such a way that it helps you instead of hurts you so instead of saying I can't do this or I am bad at that you take that story and turn it around so taking control of that selft talk is extremely important in managing your emotions there's some other books here by Ryan holiday you'll see ego is the enemy obstacles the way sness is the key all of these books are about identifying your values living your values and then making sure that you can focus on what you need to focus on based on what you think is important so for example in my life curiosity drives just about everything and so I I use that to uh for example when I post on LinkedIn it's it's about things that I'm curious about and that's what drives me it's the value of curiosity is what drives me not the uh the need to compare myself to someone else or the need for likes and shares and things like that I don't really pay attention to that after um reading all of these books it's all about what's important to you and are you living that value the next thing is that we have to accept change and I know I don't know anybody who loves change not not too many people do most people have a reaction to it and what we want to get to the point where is that we accept change and in order to do that we have to have our brain chemistry and body optimized but it's also about learning to diagnose the emotions that are going on your brain when you when something uh hits you so if you think it's going to be a bad thing you really don't know that until more time has passed right even if it's a good thing that's happened you really don't know if it's going to be a good thing until more time has passed so really it could be good it could be bad you just have to wait and in the meantime you just deal with it and that's one of of the main things I learned from that book that was on the previous slide called positive psychology so or the topic was positive psychology so and also the main thing we want to do with our brain is have a mindset of learning we can learn a lesson from anything and everybody is my philosophy and so you got to get curious and ask the right questions and and make sure that when bad things happen we learn from them and we learn how to avoid that in the future or just deal with it better in the future so the next component is social awareness and here's some foundational skills so um I read a story from one of the books that I read so this is an example of someone who uh was displaying an emotion and no one asked her about it so this is a story of a a black woman and if you read um some some reading about that you know that sometimes um people with darker skin have uh other people have trouble reading their face so here's a black woman whose mom literally passed away that morning and she came into work and they noticed that she wasn't smiling and instead of asking her what's going on are you okay all they did was ask her to smile more and she was just beside herself struggling to get through work but literally nobody asked her about what's going on and are you okay and so you want to get to the point where you recognize people's faces and Body Language so that you can ask a question right we're all a lot of us are researchers your uh superpower of asking questions and asking good questions is one of the main strategies that you need to manage your emotions so that's good so we we've got to learn learn to read people to read the room to notice body language to notice Expressions but you also have to know someone well enough to know that there's something going on so there's a few resources here that I want to mention uh what everybody is saying by Joe Navaro is a really great book to understand body language and he's like a former FBI interrogator or something like this but his job was to try to find people who are lying and so the moral of the story is you're almost never going to be able to tell when someone's lying but you can observe their expressions and body language and things that they say to ask more questions to extract more information to figure out what's going on so use them as Clues to see what's going on another really great book to to build that skill is never split the difference even though it's a book about negotiating it's one of the best I've read it's about listening it's about learning to ask the right question learning to a how to ask the right questions and so it's it's a really great book to help build that skill another uh strategy for building social awareness is being a good listener now as a master moderator I thought I was a really good listener but once I read this book you're not listening by Kate Murphy it really really digs into what does it really mean to listen so if you want to be a bad listener do things like interrupt all the time respond vaguely to someone because you're not really listening or look at your phone while they're talking or fidget shift around a lot or make assumptions because you think you know better or you're always thinking about what you're going to say next if you're one of those people that's not being a good listener and I'll I'll talk a little bit more about the things that you should be doing to be a good listener and the next thing is empathy I know as researchers we try to create or or UND or start start with empathy anytime we do a research project right and I thought I was a very empathetic person but after I read this book tell me more about that by Rob vulpe he really displays empathy and and uh it's really all about setting aside the Judgment setting aside the assumptions and just asking really good questions a lot of these books have that in common ask really good questions and as researchers we should be really good at that right so the next thing is what I call testing for accuracy so that's from never split the difference it's getting to the point where you're listening and you're hearing what's going on and you and you say will it seems like XYZ is happening so you're you're testing that you understood you heard them and then when you get that yes then you're like okay I got it so now I can move on with my uh negotiation or whatever it else that I'm doing and so all of these things are great for building social awareness but also they make us better researchers too and the power of observation uh again body language expressions reading the room using your observation skills is super critical and the last res uh the last resource here is a book called ditch the pitch which is is really about letting go of your agenda and just listening and then responding to that person and I'll give you a really good example I I just finished reading this book and I was doing a one-on-one interview and uh and because I am a master moderator I've been taught to uh she calls it eat the guide and then burp the questions it sounds really silly but basically that means know your guide so well that you don't have to look at it well that's what I did I let go of it I asked my first and only question and then I just let the conversation go where it was going and then at the end I said you know I need just a minute to look at my guide to make sure I covered everything and sure enough I had so I just let it go and it was one of the most wonderful interviews I did so it really does work letting go but also understanding what your objective is so that you don't forget anything right don't forget to cover anything oh my goodness sorry I went ahead the fourth uh component is relationship strategies so as researchers we're s we are trained to ask really good questions right so we're already open we're already curious if you're not here's some ways that you can build up that skill um I already talked about never split the difference uh beginners and a curious mind beginners is about having a mindset that you are not too old to learn something you can uh no matter no matter where you are in life you if you choose to learn about something new you can do that and have that mindset so another another way to look at that as open and curious is this uh Curious mind this movie producer he made it a point to talk to an interesting person once a week so for 30 years he had conversations once a week with because he was a famous producer he could talk to those people but you could do that in your life I do that right now try to talk to someone at least once a week he's getting ideas uh you could you could be connecting dots that you hadn't thought about before so it's important to talk to people from different areas so even though you're in the grocery business maybe you want to talk to people who are not in the grocery business to get different ideas because when when you have two different disciplines and you bring them together that's where Innovation happens the next thing that that you need you would need to work on to build relationship strategies is learning to take feedback well um if you're like me feedback sometimes doesn't feel too good but have a curious mind ask a good questions and just listen and then also when you give feedback you know try to do it in the most respectful way you most people give feedback because they want things to get better right so be listening for the lessons learned and how you can get better building trust is just about being authentic and having uh those conversations where you could speak freely radical cander is a great book for that especially if you're a manager and then tackling tough conversations so all of the resources that I mentioned help can help you do that so and then as researchers you know we're all we all take pride on asking good questions but my question to you is do you take that to other parts of your life to home to other teams Etc think about how you can be the best question asker on your team so now what does it look like if you take all these strategies what does emotional intelligence look like at work well it means that you are going to notice when something is going on with a cooworker and that means you have to know them well enough to do that right you w to you're paying attention to body language to faces like when you're presenting do people have a puzzled look on their face or or are they nodding so you want to watch for those little um expressions and Body Language Etc you got to be able to read the room uh especially when you're presenting if you're presenting in person I know that's harder to do when you're virtual but if you're allowed to see the faces which I love to do when I'm presenting virtually hopefully you can notice that you are anticipating questions because you're reading the room and because you're paying attention to faces you you hopefully can anticipate questions that that might come up and be ready for them and you're also going to ask good questions so keep digging if someone brings up something it's because they have something that didn't quite uh come through so so keep going until everybody has been heard and you keep digging and then you've if you read that book never split the difference it's going to help you in just about every part of your life because negotiations are just conversations right you could be I'm sure parents out there have been negotiating with their kids you know as little as three and four years old they they come back with things that you're like whoa where did you learn that right so you can even use good negotiation skills in um for example uh a salary negotiation I actually did this uh in in a previous role where I knew what my salary should be because I did my research and I I knew based on my location and my experience and my education what it should be and when they presented me with a number I was like hm to saying to myself that doesn't make a lot of sense what what should I do and so I was I would I was thinking I just got to ask a good question so what's the best question I could ask so I just said so that's a little different than than my what my research uh showed so where how did you come up with that number and so then we were we proceeded to have a good conversation so my thing is like if all else fails just ask a really good question it gets you out of trouble get it has gotten me out of trouble a lot if you can and be in the moment and don't take notes at meetings I know that sounds crazy but if you are running a meeting um I know that it's very hard to follow an agenda and run a meeting and take notes and keep time so if you can ask somebody to help you take notes keep time and just be in the moment and really listen to people sometimes what I do if a meeting is recorded I will just go back and um like right after the meeting take all the notes that I remember and then watch it in high speed and make sure I miss anything but try to be in the moment and lastly act like a partner not a vendor so what does that mean that means my goals are your goals your goals are my goals we we we work together instead of you taking orders or me giving you orders so just have a different kind of mindset you know listen what's going on you got to know what the objectives are so that's really what it means act like a partner not a vendor so we've talked about a lot of habits and this book emotional intelligence habit as I mentioned has 17 strategies for each of the four components so I've talked about a few of them but I'll talk uh a few more and how they might apply to uh your research life if you are a researcher because like like Karen Lee I'm also a research nerd I get very excited when we talk about customer insights and things like that so emotional intelligence habits are really about building your optimal brain uh chemistry and your optimal physiology so that you're at Peak Performance so that you can be ready for emotion management because most of the time what your brain is trying to do is hijack your your your emotions are really just a hijack of your brain so that you can't can't think straight so a lot of these books that I've mentioned they talk about learning to prevent the hijack and so a lot of these strategies are trying to help you do that so one of them is appreciating what you have you've heard this have an attitude of gratitude well it's been shown that if you say things and appreciate um say gratitude type statements throughout your day it actually does improve your ability to handle things and your emotional intelligence so it's a really simple thing that you could do to to build that habit the next thing is positive thoughts and thinking you've heard of affirmations maybe like I I got this or you wake up in the morning you say I'm gonna have a good day well it's been proven that you will have a better day if you actually do that so these are some things that you could do that literally don't cost anything uh something else is avoid worrying about the future so avoid asking what if you know that's really great if you are a uh what do you call it a risk manager that's your job right but most of us should not worry about things that haven't happened until they happen so you can certainly plan for the risk but it's been proven that worrying about the future it doesn't optimize your brain chemistry so the the better thing to do is appreciate what you have and just be in the moment and be here now right the other thing is that we've have to disconnect every once in a while put that phone away put that laptop away just be with your own thoughts however you can do that it's been proven to help you limit caffeine intake I know that might be challenging for some people but you've got to figure out the optimal time to stop having caffeine whether that's 12:00 noon or 300 p.m. whatever it is if you aren't sleeping well this could be one of the reasons that you aren't and speaking of good sleep enough sleep that is something that uh I I used to be one of those people that that got less than six hours and after reading that book believe me you want to get more than six hours you want to get at least seven and yes I do get more than seven and it's taken work it's taken three to four years of work to to have the schedule that I want to have and get enough sleep as I mentioned before uh the stories you tell yourself so reframing your perspective when you think something is bad turning it around and and just talking about sure it it is the Silver Lining kind of perspective but it's been proven that this does help your brain chemistry as does breathing even just taking two minutes before you have a meeting or something like that to breathe it helps you it helps your brain another thing is learn to say no so you've heard the word boundaries right have your boundaries and stick to them I I don't do I don't do things in the evening because it it uh interferes with my sleep right so the most important thing that you can do for your sleep habit is to go to bed at the same time every day and so when there's a disruption in that schedule I've learned there's a heavy price to pay so uh I've just have to learn to say no to things most of the time during the week that's something that I've chosen to do in this book there's U ways to neutralize toxic people I don't have time to talk about that today but there's a lot of um good good ways to do that if you're facing someone who's toxic in your life how to deal with them but more importantly you know it maybe it's time to walk away from that relationship next up is don't hold grudges right the the only thing that that does is help the other person OCC y uh space in your brain which is not good it's been proven that it's it's bad for your brain bad for your physiology as well so just figure out how to Let It Go practicing mindfulness has really helped me uh to uh well I prefer to think of it more as a brain break so 10 to 12 minutes a day taking a break in the afternoon it helps me reset for the rest of the day and kind of clear out my mind and it's been shown that this really does help you manage your emotions over time your brain gets better at managing emotions and and stopping that hijack that I talked about structuring free time is something that you will have to learn how to do if you want to make time for the things that are important for you and the best way to do that is to look at your schedule take a hard look at how you spend your time if you find that you are scrolling Forever on one of these or sitting in front of the TV and that's not the best use of your time uh there's ways to to help that I I think I showed a book that was about building habits maybe some of you have read Atomic habits I actually got more out of the book called tiny habits and so it helped me understand you know how to look at the schedule what do you want to put in there and then ways to make it happen even if it's in little incr structuring your fee time just means like if I want to be a person who reads books I got to make time to read books right or if I want to be a person who who wants to learn how to surf I've got to make time for that thing that I want to learn and so that's what it means is to be intentional about how you structure your free time and I've I've talked about uh asking lots of questions and good questions it is definitely a skill that helps you uh relate to people in your job it it helps you get past situations that might be full of tension so it's it's uh all the resources that I talked about are are about how to be a really good question asker also when you're talking to someone put away your phone when you're in a meeting put away your phone we have a rule in my house that you are not allowed to pick this up if you're talking to somebody unless you say exactly what you're looking up and it's part of the conversation greet people by name so it's a very little thing that can help you uh improve your relationships with people but also uh it for me who has trouble remembering people's names you know you got to say it like three times to help remember it helps me remember I already mentioned smiling and laughing as much as you can if you don't have smiling and laughter in your life you can make it watching funny things listening to funny things the other thing is don't seek attention as I talked about you know living your values if you are living your values you should not seek the attention you shouldn't need the attention of other people and you shouldn't need to compare yourself to other people to feel good about what you're doing because you're living your values so uh a lot of the books that I've mentioned talk about just keep your head down and keep working and you'll get there you don't need other people's approval Platinum rulle just says treat people how they want to be treated but in order to do that you've got to know them very well right so that's just conversations getting to know people and how they work how they communicate Etc pay it's paying attention it's asking questions again paying attention to body language and uh expressions and things like this and then asking good questions and also turn off your inner voice voice it's really critical when if you're trying to improve your listening skills you've got to actually listen and turn off that inner voice when people are talking so here's so those are some of the habits that that I've brought forth there and again there's 17 strategies in this book but if you apply those things here's what your day might look like and it's not just dealing with emotions it's preparing your body and your brain to be the best that it can be you're getting s to eight hours of sleep you're saying positive things to yourself like pop out of bed and say I'm gonna have a great day and I will exercise is part of your routine it's not something that gets pushed aside because of other things so for me I do that first thing in the morning so that it can't get pushed away so it's built in you're you're eating healthy right you're making the good choices it's been shown that if you are optimizing your sleep and um optimizing your brain chemistry you will make better choices and some of those choices might be having to do with picking the healthier option than the junk food option so it's amazing how all these things work together so that you can be the optimal human human being that you want to be again taking 10 to 12 minutes to reset your brain or meditate whatever you want to call it I set a timer and I just try to blank out my brain and it usually doesn't work because people that meditate know you just start over you catch yourself and you start over and there's there's no good and bad ways to do meditation just just sit down you may or may not close your eyes uh but set a timer and then you can just let your mind go and of course practicing attitude being thankful thankful for everything you have so you're also a person that sets boundaries so you say no sometimes but you also tell people what you need but not why you need it so for example if I'm a dyslexic I I just say you know you might you might see some typos in this because I'm a really bad speller or I I can't I need less light in my office or you you don't say why you need it you just say I need okay talk about what you need again asking good questions is probably the key to life if you if you remember anything from this presentation remember that and being a good listener the other thing is stop making judgments about people or situations because you don't know if those situations are good or bad circumstances happen problems happen uh one of the books I read said everybody's got problems right you want to trade them up for good problems and the better problems Etc so you're never going to get away from problems learn how to use your emotions to deal with them you live in the present you've got a nighttime routine to wind down uh about an hour or so before you go to bed you're limiting your social media you're putting away your phone you're not looking at it you don't pick it up because it's not don't keep it by the nightstand if you're using it for an alarm put it far enough away that you got to get out of bed because you do not want to wake up in the middle of the night and look at your phone absolutely not that's really bad for Sleep hygiene so that's that's what it could look like when you're being an embracer in your work life and this is my last slide so if you've got questions feel free to put them in the chat in your work Life as a researcher it's super important to recognize the emotions of others and also on the people uh that you work with on your teams even your manager pay attention to Expressions right and and use that as a clue to ask a good question like okay I'm seeing something I'm seeing something what can I ask about that because obviously there's something there this person isn't isn't telling me so ask a respectful question you're also running a distraction free meeting you're asking people to put away their devices and be here in the present maybe your meetings run shorter because you do that right you embrace mistakes as learning and you dig into lessons learn I personally feel like any kind of big project or even big meeting you should always have a meeting afterward to talk about what did we learn what could we do better next time you want to create the environment where people feel free to speak up so uh embracing mistakes as learning instead of disciplining people is always the way to go if you're trying to create a a safe place to speak up we always want to celebrate successes right celebrate hard I always say uh and then if someone is displaying emotions you you want to ask them is is everything okay what's going on or if they're super happy when they come in it's like oh what's going on today you know just ask a friendly question but most importantly listening is really the key to most of this listen with the goal of understanding ing not just responding you should not be thinking about what you're going to say next remember go with the flow ditch the pitch listen to understand and then respond with a thoughtful question so don't think about what you're going to say next don't interrupt be patient and nonjudgmental remember if you stop judging and assuming things about people I I guarantee you your life is going to get better so think about what's the next good question you can ask to confirm your understanding so that is the end of my slides Lori thank you so much this has been really insightful your strategies it's very interesting eye opening I personally can use these in my everyday life have in the past a lot of what you put in here um so let me remind our audience so please put any questions in the chat or Q&A and while we wait for any questions to pop up let me ask a quick question to you Lori so with the shift in um our workplace from inperson to the virtual what are some of the components that you see that may have improved or not due to our working at home over the past cever years well I personally experienced that shift and and worked two different roles on the virtual side and we uh we we noticed that there was definitely some things that were different it is harder to make connections to people it absolutely is you have to pay more attention to people's Expressions because it's going to be harder to see the rest of their body language right so some of the things that we uh did is that we started to have once a month session where we uh just got together to talk about anything we wanted to so uh that's something that you could do to help connect your team connections are harder so you have to work a lot harder to get people in the right environment to talk about that usually you know you're going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting and you don't have time in and the another thing that we did is like when you're waiting for a people to come uh I used to be in the mindset of you know what we're going to start on time with whoever's here and you know for different reasons people are a few minutes late whatever it's fine use that time to get to know people you know have two or three minutes of chitchat instead of just plowing to the next meeting but you also have to be ready that your meeting might get cut short so you know but that you have to come up with creative ways for making connections and I think the other thing is that people uh I'm studying something called psychological safety in for my doctorate degree and it is very difficult to achieve for everybody for different reasons there's a lot of reasons why women don't speak up there's a lot of PE reasons why people of color don't speak up there's a lot of reasons like people like me like an introvert don't speak up the manager the leader has got to take responsibility for drawing out everybody and so like I talked about today you've got to be the best question asker in the world to help people feel safe to help people bring their ideas you don't want to walk away from all that Innovation and creativity and and you don't want it to be because people don't feel comfortable speaking up and so as a leader you've got to work really hard to get people in that comfort zone and the way you do that is you you know mistakes are okay you don't scold people you welcome lessons learned it's it's making sure that all the people are contributing it's making sure the introverts have the agenda ahead of time so we have time to think you know it's all these things that that create that safe safe safe Zone to speak up oh absolutely everything you're saying right there is so so important listening the one the one emotion that stuck out to me is empathy that you me and we don't see that enough in the workplace amongst leaders as well as within teams so if we could be more empathetic that definitely is a a big emotion to work on um Jessica has a comment she mentioned um this topic is so important for networking and just being a good team player in a professional setting soft skills like this matter long-term and it builds Rapport amongst us all we care about each other absolutely yes yes as I mentioned I thought I was really empathetic I even thought of myself as an empath I definitely absorb other people's emotions which can be a bit of a downer sometimes but um it just it just means that I have to work on controlling that so that I don't get really really upset but yeah Making Connections having empathy I would highly recommend that that book I mentioned because I thought I was really empathetic and a good question ask her and Rob vul page is he he's the most empathetic person I know and and I learned a lot from him so so yeah I would say the best thing you can do is just ask a really good question when you see somebody who might be struggling yep absolutely and any question you know from the from your team there's no wrong wrong question it's all questions are good when you're brainstorming everything counts so I totally agree there um while we wait for any questions from anybody um one thing that's helped me in the past too is listening to certain psychology speakers that use psychology as their basis um I don't know some people don't really listen to him but I like Tony Robbins because he does tap into how your brain works and um kind of um giving your yourself a way to just Prime yourself for different different types of situations much of the strategies that you put in there are touched on and I really loved everything that you put in there there's a lot more so I can't wait to read some of your um materials as well for sure a lot of the books that I've read they always start out with the psychology of your brain the chemistry of your brain and so you hear it and you hear it you hear it over and over again you finally go okay I get it and uh yeah so I'm sure a lot of books uh have the same kind of strategies and yes I've and I've read things over and over and over in different books and even books by someone else named Robbins Mel Robbins I've read a couple of her books and talks about the same same things over and over and over and and really if you just Embrace those few strategies you're gonna you're going to be a really good question asker and emotion uh manager right one one quick little suggestion to anybody out there that I Incorporated within my teams in the past was during Co creating a virtual coffee coffee pot or water cooler just a little discussion because you miss that nonb business kind of interaction where you could just like have a quick conversation on you know what's the latest in March Madness which by the way started today or whatever and that just builds another level of trust and care about each other one thing we did uh recently is I would ask I would have those virtual coffee chats or whatever and uh ask people to answer with a picture or a gift and so like what's your favorite food and you know put a picture instead of typing things and so it or where's your favorite vacation spot and and it got conversations going because then people could ask well what's going on in that picture tell me about your vacation that you loved or whatever and it really got conversations going and you get to get to know your co-workers uh at the same time so it's kind of win-win yep deeper level I love it all right um any other thoughts or last comments or questions anybody all right well um we're uh basically at the end of this presentation I want to thank Lori Walker for her time uh thank you so much for sharing this phenomenal presentation and I'm going to take a lot of this to my my personal use so in my business and um I want to share with my insights Community thank you for being part of uh our virtual insights Community uh U conference and uh helping to make this a successful platform