Patrick:            Hey everybody, Pat V. here, and you’re listening to the Rise Above Your Best podcast, where I’m not only obsessed with identifying and understanding the habits, strategies, techniques, secrets that have made other people successful, but also in uncovering and identifying the research that demonstrates that great success is available to anyone. And it all starts when we believe in the power of rising above our best.

Patrick:            This is a really special episode for me. A lot of the work that I’ve done over the years has obviously been in leadership and team development, and recently I had put together a workshop series called Lead Like No Other. And the reason it’s like no other, or that I’ve phrased it that way, is because there’s so much more to leadership than just skills and techniques and strategies and understanding how to delegate.

Patrick:            One of the foundational components to it is finding out how to be comfortable with yourself, and be happy with who you are. And that’s why this episode, the title of it really is about living life on the EDGE, and how to successfully live life on the EDGE, and we’re gonna talk about four behaviors that really is foundational for a lot of the work that I do in terms of leadership that help leaders, or aspiring leaders, to feel good about who they are.

Patrick:            Because if you don’t feel good about who you are as an individual, if you’re not content or happy with yourself, then it’s gonna be very difficult for you to be there for somebody else, whether it’s a loved one or somebody in the office or somebody in the community, it doesn’t matter.

Patrick:            So these four behaviors that I’ll speak to I think are foundationally four of the most important things that you can do to live a great life, and when you do that, especially if I’m developing as a leader, these will provide the things that I need to be a better leader, again, at home, in the community, or at work. So let’s get going.

Patrick:            As I thought about putting this podcast together and the acronym for the model that I’m gonna talk about around EDGE, I thought, “You know what, when we think of living on the edge there’s some excitement to that, that we’re right there.” And to me, this model really is just that, it’s how do we maximize everything we can out of life? These four behaviors that I’m gonna talk to I think do that.

Patrick:            Now, even though the acronym is EDGE, I’m gonna talk to you about expectancy, and discipline, and gratitude, and empathy, which spells EDGE, the order of these that I’m gonna speak to you in is a little different. Because we’re gonna start out with gratitude.

Patrick:            Gratitude is so important for living, I think, a fulfilled life. I’ll start off with one of the quotes that I’d come across that I think speaks to this. This was by a woman, Melody Beattie, she said, “Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” And I think that is so true in terms of gratitude.

Patrick:            And I think we have to practice it every day, and that’s part of the model that I put together and part of what certainly I live myself, and I know it’s made a huge difference that every morning I will write down three things that I’m grateful for, to start the day out. They might be just getting up, was, “I have another day today.” It could be, “I’m grateful for my family,” or, “for the opportunities to help other people.”

Patrick:            One of them is usually more simple though. Could be, “I’m thankful for a great cup of coffee this morning,” or, “for a sunrise”. Whatever that might be. So it’s not always I’ve gotta completely outdo myself every time I’m thinking grateful every morning.

Patrick:            But there’s a lot of research behind the benefit that gratitude provides us in terms of wellbeing. And if we think about it, it’s very difficult to be grateful and sad at the same time. It’s just hard to do, it’s almost like they’re binary, that either one or the other has to be taking place at one time, they both can’t happen at the same time.

Patrick:            And I think it’s really important to think about gratitude as focusing on the challenges that we face within our lives too, not just the good stuff, but the challenges. That when we can look at those things that have created struggle and think, “I’m grateful for that happening,” that it gives us the power over those things that we can look and say, “Yeah, this was terrible, this sucked, but there’s something that’s gonna come out of this that I’m grateful for, that I’m gonna grow somehow because of this.” And if you listened to the episode that I did, Your Past is Your Power, that’s really where I speak more in depth about that. But it’s so important.

Patrick:            Along those lines of gratitude, if you’ve ever seen the musical Dear Evan Hansen, I chuckle when I think of it because it starts out, one of the lines is, “Today’s gonna be a great day, and here’s why.” And as corny and hokey as that sounds, that’s often the way our brains operate, is that we give ourselves that “why”. “Why is this gonna be a good day for us?” That we start to position ourselves as to why things are gonna work out for us.

Patrick:            Too often what do we do? We take the opposite approach, and we look at the negative of why things aren’t gonna work out for us. The importance here is to go from that place of gratitude, we’re saying, “This is why things will work out for me today.” From a scientific standpoint, what starts to happen is we can activate what’s called the confirmation bias. The confirmation bias basically says that, whatever we put out there, we find evidence to back up why we’re right.

Patrick:            So if I’m gonna take that approach and leverage that research, then why not make it work in my favor? “Why will things work out for me today?” And when I can do that, when I can have that focus, generally only good things are gonna come of that.

Patrick:            I’ll end our gratitude piece with a quote from Dennis Wheatley. He said, “Happiness can’t be traveled to, owned, earned, worn, or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.” I think that’s so true. When we can really be in that space, it’s not about what we own, the title we have, it’s about living. And gratitude certainly is how we start this out.

Patrick:            So when we move on from gratitude, the next one is expectancy. This is a practice every morning as well. I expect to get where I’m going. That’s sort of the, not the glass is half full, that my glass is full. And it dovetails off of the gratitude piece.

Patrick:            Oftentimes when we’re dealing with expectancy, though, we get in our own heads. We start to talk ourselves out of it. One of the quotes that I think of often comes from a woman, Mary Morrissey, she said, “Feed your faith and your fears will starve.” And I think about that often, this idea of what is faith, and that when we feed our faith, our belief in ourselves or something else or someone else, a higher power, that our fears really will starve when we do that.

Patrick:            And when we go back to thinking about gratitude, we can think in this space of, “Why will I be successful?” We start to, again, activate the confirmation bias piece here, that it’s thinking of all the reasons why we’re gonna be successful and not why we can’t.

Patrick:            This is not a pollyana approach, or like it’s roses all the time, I don’t believe that. I can recognize that there are challenges, and I can have crappy days. But I know in the end that things are gonna work out. That’s just the way it is.

Patrick:            There’s a model that I use in coaching, and it’s called GAIL. It really deals with four ways that really we try and protect ourselves, or our brain tries to protect us, and the first is gremlins. It’s this space of we say we’re gonna do something, but then that voice gets in our head of saying, “What are you, crazy? You can’t do that. Don’t even try.”

Patrick:            The next one is around assumptions, it says, “Well, if this was the way it was last time, this is the way it’s gonna be this time. I wasn’t able to pull it off last time, and chances are I’m not gonna be able to pull it off this time.” So we talk ourselves out of it.

Patrick:            The next is around interpretations, that it says, “I see it a certain way, and that’s the only way it is. It can’t be a different way than it is.” And the last one is around limiting beliefs, and it says, “I’m too short, I’m too tall, I don’t have enough education, I don’t have enough money, I don’t have enough time,” whatever it might be, that we put that roadblock in front of ourselves.

Patrick:            And in coaching we often talk about resources and resourcefulness, and really limiting beliefs is about resources. We’re always gonna lack something, whatever that might be, but what we always have equal opportunity to is resourcefulness. And when we think of those two things, we start off with gratitude, what am I grateful for every day, we move on to expectancy, I expect that I’m gonna get where I wanna go, that oftentimes revolves around making sure that we set good goals.

Patrick:            Before we transition into our next behavior around discipline, I’ll leave you with a quote from Mark Twain, who said, “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.” That is so true, that if I look back to when I started my own business now, if I knew everything that was involved and really how naïve I was in some regards, I don’t know that I would have done it. But having that ignorance, but also the expectation, the confidence that I was gonna succeed, it really did provide success.

Patrick:            Which leads us into the next behavior that we talk about, and that is around discipline. If anybody had any questions about thinking, “Gratitude, expectancy, where’s the beef” so to speak, here’s where it comes in. The discipline component of this is to set up, “How am I gonna get there? What do I want, and how am I gonna get there?”

Patrick:            Episode one we talked about set goals. Specific, emotional, and timebound, an easy way to set goals and really set their trajectory. There’s a quote that I love by a gentleman, Dwight Newell Hillis, and he said, “A person must take their choice between ease and wealth. Either is available, but not both.”

Patrick:            And I believe that in my own life, certainly, is that I’ve had those opportunities to choose ease and to choose wealth. It really has seemed to be more binary, that I get one or the other. If I get ease, I don’t get a lot of the good stuff that goes along with it. And if I want wealth, it’s not gonna be with ease. There’s gonna be work, and that’s okay.

Patrick:            So the discipline comes down to, “What are my goals? What do I want? Are they specific? Are they emotional?” Meaning, what’s the “why”? “How strongly do I want this? Are they timebound? Am I gonna have this done by a certain amount of time?” It’s looking at being grateful for what I have, but also expecting that I’m gonna get there. I can’t just put it out there, “It’s gonna work out, I’m just gonna keep hoping for it,” without doing what needs to be done. I’ve gotta put the work in.

Patrick:            And when I do that, it also helps to keep me focused when things aren’t going well, that I’m like, “Okay, I know why I’m doing this. I know what the end result is gonna be, and I know how I need to get there.” So gratitude and expectancy is certainly needed to put me in that place, but discipline is what’s gonna pull me through and allow me to really get where I need to go. And it’s not always gonna be easy, I know that.

Patrick:            Another quote when I think in this area, and it’s on the signature of a lot of my emails that goes out, is by Galatians, and the quote says, “Do not grow weary by doing good, for in good season we will reap if we don’t give up.” And that’s the hardest part, if we don’t give up. And when we’re thinking about this from the standpoint of living on the EDGE, I’ve talked about three behaviors that really do make a difference.

Patrick:            One is I’m grateful for what I have. In the morning I’m grateful for it, when I go to bed I’m grateful for what happened during the day. But I have also trained myself to expect that things are gonna work out. That faith, I’ve activated that faith. And then I’ve employed discipline in terms of making sure that I’m doing what I need to do on my end to make that happen. When we think about that from a standpoint of being in a place of wellbeing, you can see where that can create that space for us, especially as leaders.

Patrick:            But there’s one last component to this, and this is around the other E. That’s empathy. If you look at a lot of the research out there in regards to wellbeing and happiness, you’ll often hear it suggested that having a purpose is one of the most important things somebody can have in terms of creating wellbeing or happiness in their lives. It really is about feeling as though there’s something more than just yourself that you’re involved with, that you’re making a purpose.

Patrick:            Dan Pink talks about it in his book Drive, purpose is one of the three motivators that he’s found in the research that he looked at, this idea of, “What am I doing? Who am I serving beside myself if I really wanna be happy?” Again, the research would suggest that those that are able to do that, that they find a way to have purpose for other people, they’re happier.

Patrick:            The term that I’ve used here around that is about empathy. One of the first quotes that I think about when I think of empathy and to me this idea of being for others, is by a quote by Napoleon Hill, who said, “Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.”

Patrick:            Again, I can use what I’ve got to get a bigger house, better car, better vacation, all about myself, and I think oftentimes when people aren’t happy with who they are that’s what they try and live through first. “What can I feed myself that will take away from the other stuff that’s lacking? Is it a new suit, or a bigger trip?” Whatever it might be, we realize that that doesn’t last long.

Patrick:            From a research or a scientific standpoint, we call that hedonic adaptation, which really means that after a certain period of time the luster wears off. The car is just a car, the suit’s just another suit, the house is just a house again. Because what we really needed to feed is not that, because we’re doing it for ourselves, not for other people.

Patrick:            Gary Vaynerchuk will talk oftentimes about the 51% rule, and I would agree with that, this idea of trying to provide 51% of the value in any relationship that I go into. And when we do that, it really does activate that piece of being for others that our sense of purpose, when it’s for others as opposed to ourselves, puts us in a place of wellbeing and happiness.

Patrick:            The last quote that I’ll speak to in this area is by Samantha Power. She said, “All advocacy is, at its core, an exercise in empathy.” Again, when we can live from a place that we’re thinking of other people and what our actions have on them, and how we can impact them, and we’re able to say, “Yes, we’re doing that positively,” it creates a sense of positive wellbeing in us and happiness.

Patrick:            And from a leadership perspective, that is such a critical component of being there for others. Inspiring others by our actions to wanna follow wherever we go. And again, whether that’s at home or in the community or in your organization.

Patrick:            So we recap here, again, living life on the EDGE can really be the most powerful place to live it. When we’re practicing those things, when we expect to get where we wanna go, when we apply the discipline needed to get there, when we’re grateful for what we have and where we are in the moment, and when we’re able to exercise and demonstrate empathy for others in a way that says, “I’m more interested in making a difference for other people than I am about what’s in it for me.”

Patrick:            I hope you’ve found this podcast helpful. As I read each one of these things, I know in my own life and in those people that I work with that I’ve seen them exercise these, it can create such a difference in terms of who you are and how you live your life. I hope you were able to take something away from this that helps you to rise above your best, if you know somebody that could benefit from this as well, that you forward it on to them, and if you hadn’t already, please subscribe to this podcast.

Patrick:            Leave me a rating. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that when that happens because I know that the message is continuing to get out there. And I hope you’ll continue to listen to me as I bring on more guests and more research and more strategies to helping not only you but those around you to rise above their best. Till the next episode. Take care.

Thanks For Listening!

 

Increasing emotional intelligence: (How) is it possible?

Can emotional intelligence be trained? A meta analytical investigation.

Emery Leadership Group

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Patrick:            I’m here again with Larry Barker, the president and CEO of Machias Savings Bank. Again, Larry, it’s probably been a couple of months, I think, since I first spoke with you about trying to get this set up. I had seen over the last year or so just a couple of the accolades, I should say, that your organization has won nationally. My background being in leadership development and employee engagement, I thought here’s somebody in my own back yard that obviously his organization is really doing things the right way.

Patrick:            I wanted to bring you on board and really sort of explore what that looks like in regards to Machias Savings Bank and why you think your organization is where it’s at today in that regard. So again, thanks for being here.

Larry:               Yeah, fantastic. It’s fantastic. We appreciate the opportunity, Patrick.

Patrick:            I’ll let you take the lead here, in terms of gloating about your employees and the success you’ve had so far.

Larry:               Well, I’ll just start off by telling you just a little bit about Machias Savings Bank. We’re a $1.4 billion in assets. We have 269 employees, 16 locations across Maine spanning from Caribou to Portland. We’re a mutual savings bank, and so creating shareholder wealth is not a priority for us. That’s not part of the equation. Our purpose as a company, Patrick, is to make a difference in our communities. Everything we do falls under that umbrella. We have an amazing culture that revolves around employee experience, customer experience, and ultimately community impact.

Patrick:            How old is the bank?

Larry:               150 years in 2019. Started in 1869. Our original charter was signed by Joshua Chamberlain.

Patrick:            That is incredible. You had mentioned, I had, just for the audience, I had sent out a list of questions earlier in the week regarding some of the topics that we might talk about. Larry got back to me to say he didn’t think it was really going to be appropriate, because the questions were all revolving around himself. I quickly got back to him to say that that’s exactly now … If he wasn’t willing to do it for that reason, which was probably more the reason I wanted to have him on was his sense of humility and sharing the success of the organization with the employees within the organization. Larry, you mentioned to be in terms of what some of your values are as an organization. I wonder if you could maybe mention those again.

Larry:               One of our culture standards, and we’ve memorialized our culture standards, those are those key things that we think have made a successful committee is one of those is attitude. The first sentence of defining that standard is that Machias Savings Bank employees are friendly, genuine, flexible, driven, hard-working, and humble. It’s one of our culture standards, and it’s really important to us as an organization.

Patrick:            Now I’m looking, some of the awards that you’ve won, obviously this is you’re in the top five companies to work for in the state of Maine. Once again, how does that process take place?

Larry:               Yeah, so look, if I had to pick, say, the top two reasons that Machias Savings Bank is in that league, I would say the opportunity that our employees have to make a difference in our communities, which directly relates back to our purpose, first of all, and secondly, our family first philosophy. Again, I mentioned earlier our purpose and our passion as it pertains to the impact, this is something that our employees embrace and get excited about. We encourage all employees to be active volunteering in the community with the causes they’re personally passionate about.

Larry:               In fact, Patrick, we don’t just encourage them to do that. We pay every employee in the bank up to 20 hours a year to volunteer with the community. We match employee contributions to their favorite cause up to $100 every year, every employee. Beyond that, we have a dollars for doers program where we match every 40 hours volunteered with a $200 donation.

Larry:               The second piece, and we really put our money where our mouth is when it comes to making a difference in our communities, but we also have a family first philosophy. What we mean by that is if your child has a Little League game this afternoon, not only do we want you to be there, we’re going to be disappointed if you’re not there. Again, in fact, we’re going to pay you to be there, in addition to regular vacation time, we’ve added 16 hours of family flex time for every employee, so you can go to that game, that musical recital, or whatever it is, and even get paid while you’re there.

Patrick:            That is incredible. I will tell you the reason why is that I will often, when I’m going in with some organizations is what’s the mission or the vision? You always hear somewhere along the lines that our employees are our most important asset, yet often times when I deal with the employees, most of them would laugh when they read that, because there’s not congruence. It’s not the walk and the talk that you’re talking about right now where this idea, we put our money where our mouth is, that you’re really able to do that through those things like matching and paying employees to volunteer, and the idea of family first, again, I think is one of those that often times doesn’t get a lot of real traction, but when you’re saying that you’re disappointed if they don’t make it there, then …

Larry:               Well, and let me tell you, so if I was going to pick the third thing, and maybe the most important, Patrick, I would say that it’s listening. Many things that we do on this front, and I think listening is the most important, you’ve probably heard the Steve Jobs quote around hiring really great people, not so he could tell them what to do, but rather so they could tell him what to do. We practiced this philosophy, and I can attest to the fact that it works really well if you act on what you hear. Now if you don’t, then I think you’re better of not asking the question, because you’re doing more damage.

Larry:               We participated in the Best Places Program, which is an annual employee survey. We don’t do that for the banner or the accolades. We participate so we can keep a really close eye on what’s important to our employees. I would like to share, one of the questions on that survey, Patrick, is I’m proud to work for this company. I’m proud to share with you that for the last two years in a row, 100% of our employees have answered yes to that question.

Larry:               Now this year, we did have one out of 269 that answered no. So we broke our two year running record, but we still feel pretty darn good about those results. Six months later we do another internal engagement survey. This is our own survey, because we don’t want a whole year to go by without knowing what’s important to our employees. We identified the top two or three areas of concerns and opportunities for improvement based on those surveys, and we put plans together to improve those areas.

Patrick:            In my experience in this regard too, and you hit the nail right on the head when you say if you’re not going to do something about it, you’re better off not to do anything at all, because all it does is it continues to build cynicism where people say, “Why are we doing this? Nothing happens with the information anyway.”

Larry:               Exactly. Beyond that, every employee has a monthly what we call fireside chat with their manager. This is expected. We have town hall meetings across the different regions of the bank every year. We call these family gatherings, because we consider every employee to be a member of the Machias Savings Bank Family. We ask questions like what’s working, what isn’t. What’s your biggest frustration? What’s getting in the way of you providing an exceptional customer experience?

Larry:               We have a culture champion program where upwards of a dozen employees are nominated by their peers every year as Machias Savings Bank culture champions. We host an off-site retreat with this group. We have a lot of fun, but we also do some work. The work piece, again, is around listening and discovering what we can do better to make sure we’re doing the best we can to enhance and promote this great culture that I told you about.

Patrick:            It’s interesting there because, again, my experience in this area is to say that most people understand if they’re going to bring forward recommendations, not every recommendation can be implemented. Often times it’s that people just want to know that they were heard, that something was done, that it just didn’t go into a black hole and nothing happened. I’m curious, how do you work with your teams or whatever just to keep that or to close that loop on recommendations and things like that?

Larry:               Well, like I say, we take it very seriously. We can’t wait to get our hands on those surveys, and we try to identify the biggest issues. Look, our family first philosophy, a few years ago, we added eight hours of family flex time, because in those surveys, our employees emphasized how valuable that family first philosophy is to them. The comments just kept getting more and stronger, so the next year we added eight more hours.

Larry:               Look, our employees said our vision care isn’t very good. We fixed it. For two or three years, the past two or three years, our employees have said we need more training. This year we’re making a significant investment. We’re creating a training department. You have to act on that input. If you don’t, you’re wasting your time and doing damage.

Patrick:            Yeah, I completely agree. One of the other rewards or recognitions that you’ve won was the American Banker Magazine, one of top 10 banks to work for in the nation for 2018, eighth overall. How did you end up with that recognition?

Larry:               It’s the same process. It’s the Best Places Survey that gets submitted to the American Banker Magazine. It is that same survey. Now they have several other questions. They want to know what kind of programs that you have around employee engagement and satisfaction, and so it’s a very similar process. Then they take those results and compare them against other banks across the nation. They nominate the top 70 make the cut. To be in the top 10 is something that, again, we get very excited about, take great pride in.

Patrick:            If I remember, was there maybe one other in New England?

Larry:               In the top 70, I believe. I don’t think there’s any in the top 10.

Patrick:            Yeah. Okay. I think I only remember seeing one that may be in just the top 70 or so. It was really very impressive.

Larry:               Yeah, you might be right.

Patrick:            Then the last one that I think was really what piqued this or prompted me to finally make the call to you was the last award that you won a recognition was around being a psychologically healthy workplace, which I never really heard of before, in terms of even being able to be recognized for that. How did that one come about?

Larry:               I believe it was our branch manger in southern Maine that was aware of that program. She submitted, nominated our bank as somebody that should be considered as a leading example in that program. Shortly thereafter, this is a national program. We didn’t realize the significance of it, what an honor it was to be chosen really until after we had been chosen. We’re actually surprised to see that that award picked up significantly more PR and recognition than the best places. It was a pleasant surprise.

Patrick:            Yeah, as I said, I know for me certainly being in this arena, it’s one that I had not seen before and certainly I think really it has such an impactful, just the wording of it I think really speaks to the commitment of Machias Savings Bank to be able to be recognized for this is really, really impressive. From a standpoint of management development and working, giving skills to them to be able to do this, what type of programs do you do for employees?

Larry:               We [inaudible 00:12:18] significantly. We have a lot of different framings. We have some great folks that do that for a living. TJ Holloway, for example, at a bank or has been in and provided some incredible training for us. We have a gentleman out of Florida that’s been in this year. We have a leadership institute, we have a manager’s retreat. Look, we provide executive coaches to a lot of management level folks that want to lean in and have that level of employee growth and development. I personally have an executive coach. Look, my philosophy is Tom Brady and the Patriots have, what, eight or 10, maybe a dozen coaches? Why shouldn’t I have one?

Larry:               I really enjoy that process. We’ve made that available to every member of the senior team. I believe every member of the senior team has taken advantage of opportunity to have an executive coach. Many of our managers have done the same thing. We don’t think we’ve got it all figured out, and we don’t think we’ve arrived. That’s, again, part of our culture. We’re constantly pushing the envelope. We’re always looking over our shoulder. We’re always trying to figure out what we need to be doing to keep this thing rolling.

Patrick:            I’m going to change gears here for a minute, because again, organizationally from a standpoint of walking the talk, often times you can have organizations where they want to implement certain trainings or workshops at a mid level or ground level area. The question always comes up if this is so important, why isn’t senior management involved in this? Why aren’t they at the top levels involved in this? Everything that I hear you talking about is to say that no, there’s really congruence here, that you’re walking the talk, in terms of this filters all the way down within the organization. From that standpoint, maybe you can speak a little bit about how you started at Machias Savings Bank and how that has evolved, in terms of you progressing to where you are now?

Larry:               Sure. I like to say my career at the bank began in the blueberry fields of Washington County. I grew up raking blueberries. In the summers of ’90 and ’91, I raked blueberries for the president of Machias Savings Bank, Ed Hennessey. In August of ’91, Ed approached me on the field and suggested that I should come see him if I ever wanted a job at the bank. At the time, I had no interest in banking. I wanted to be a state trooper, but I was in a serious relationship and figured I’d better get a job.

Larry:               A couple weeks later, I took him up on that offer, and I began working at the bank in October of ’91. It’s been a great ride. It hasn’t disappointed at all. A lot of great people, and incredible culture. This culture, look, make no mistake, Ed Hennessey is the founder of the culture at Machias Savings Bank. I’ve been president for seven years now, and really my job is to make sure we don’t go backwards to enhance and promote the, like I say, the incredible culture that’s been around for 30 years.

Patrick:            What are you most proud about?

Larry:               I think, Patrick, I would say the 269 employees we have across the state, we’ve got an amazing group. I think that’s one of the … When you think of how have employee engagement levels impacted the bank from a financial performance and growth standpoint, that’s a difficult one to quantify, but I think common sense would lead us to believe that very happy employees contributes to happy customers. Happy customers equals success with both financial performance and growth.

Larry:               I think being the best bank to work for in Maine in a large employer group is certainly adding to our ability to attract and retain really great employees. Look, I can say with confidence we have the best employees in the state. We’re attracting more exceptional, top-quality employees by the day. This investment, this culture of investing employee engagement and satisfaction has consistently led to strong growth and strong financial performance. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I think if you did the math, you would see over the past couple decades that our return on assets has consistently had us in the top third, when compared to the other banks in Maine.

Larry:               For the first six months of this year, I don’t have September for the peers, but we’re in the top three out of the 20 mutual banks in Maine. We’re in the top six when compared to all Maine banks. It’s 26 total. Absolutely has a huge impact on the success of the company.

Patrick:            Which is amazing at times when you hear of companies that they don’t invest in this, because there’s a financial benefit that organizations receive from employees that are happy. I think you would agree, and certainly this is first is that I really think there is an obligation that you have, in terms of people that work for you. There’s a huge responsibility, especially if people report to you, that you have such a responsibility to them, because your behaviors and how you treat them and what you do for them impacts them when they go home, but it’s not just-

Larry:               Absolutely.

Patrick:            If I’m mistreating somebody in the office, that goes home. Maybe it impacts the relationship they have with their spouse or with their kids or in so many other areas.

Larry:               It’s such an important part of the equation. What you just said reminds me of the conversation between a couple of executives. One says, “What if we invest in our employees and then they leave?” Of course, the other says, “What if we don’t invest in our employees and they stay?”

Patrick:            Yeah, and it’s-

Larry:               It’s a no-brainer, in my opinion.

Patrick:            It’s so true. I remember even 10 years ago when people were talking about, “Well, the economy was so difficult at that point. Well, people aren’t leaving companies.” My response to that was always the same is that the same number of people are leaving companies. It’s just that in really difficult times, they just quit and stay, which, for the organization, is far more costly, because they’re just underground. They’re just not leaving yet, but they will, as soon as they have an opportunity.

Larry:               Yeah.

Patrick:            In regards to daily routines for yourself, any rituals that you have, in terms of how you start your day out or how you end your day?

Larry:               I do. I have a few, because again, I’m a big believer in personal growth and development. Look, I’m up at 5:00 AM every day. I practice winning the first hour. Now I didn’t make that up. I borrowed it. For me, to win the first hour means no cell phone, no email. If you get out of bed and pick up that cell phone and start reading email right out of the gate … Look, I’ve done it before. I did it for years, but you’re reacting. I don’t believe any executive could be most effective for their organization if they’re constantly reacting. I believe you have to have time for clear, uninterrupted thinking.

Larry:               My first 20, 30 minutes of the day, I’m drinking my coffee and meditating. Next 10 to 15 minutes I’m reading inspirational stuff that’s personal to me, taking inventory of what’s going well, the promises I’ve made to myself, for example. Look, another ritual I try to practice every day on the drive home, and again, haven’t always done this. I used to practice the opposite for many years, but on the drive home, three wins. Take inventory of three wins. What did I have for three wins today? Look, I find this to be a great practice, as opposed to what I used to do, which is what did I screw up today? The three wins is much more beneficial in taking inventory of what’s going well.

Larry:               The last thing I’ll mention is that consistent with what I said earlier, I try to schedule at least two half days a month off the grid, if you will, deliberately taking and scheduling time for clear, uninterrupted thinking. I find this time to be my most effective, some of my best work at this time off the grid. I find it very refreshing, energizing, and [inaudible 00:20:24]. I encourage every member of my senior team to do the same thing.

Patrick:            Some of the things you just mentioned are certainly things that I fully believe in and try to follow myself. One of the things that you spoke to, I think we often are one or the other. We’re either a thermostat or a thermometer, in terms of what happens around that. By that I mean that just like a thermometer, all it can do is react to the environment that it’s in. If its too hot, it goes up. If it’s colder, it goes down.

Larry:               Love it.

Patrick:            Where really when we’re actively involved, we’re more like the thermostat. We have the ability if the room’s too cold, we turn it up. If it’s too hot, we turn it down. It’s in our control. When we can focus on not being acted upon, we’re responding versus reacting. I love that, what you said about that. The second is I don’t know if you’ve ever seen or heard of a gentleman named Shawn Achor. He actually was a Harvard researcher, and he did what was called the 21-day challenge. They really only did five exercises. There were five things that they asked people to do over 21 days. One was in the morning write three things they were grateful for. The next was do something for somebody else, just once, go out of your way to do something for somebody else. The next was to, at the end of the day, write down a couple sentences on what went well for the day. As you talk about your three wins, I was thinking of that.

Patrick:            The other two things that they did was exercise only had to be 10 minutes a day, just 10 minutes a day of some type of exercise, so going out for a walk at lunch, whatever that might be, and the last one was around just finding at least two minutes of quiet time, some type of quiet time to meditate. That’s it. Five things [crosstalk 00:22:13].

Larry:               Yeah. Look, if you asked me what I would do differently if I could go back and do it over again, I would … For years, I was in the Army, so 6:00 AM exercise has not been a priority for me, but I’m glad you brought it up, because that is part of my morning routine. Look, I’ll say more recently, so I’m going on three months in a row of a one-mile walk and 10 minutes of dumbbells every morning. I am here to tell you it’s a game changer. My levels of energy, I’m at the point now where I look forward to it every morning. That’s part of my goals with my executive coach is to really make the investment into my personal health and wellbeing. I strongly, strongly recommend that.

Patrick:            Yeah. The research is so strong in this area of the psychological wellbeing that it provides us when we do that, just simple things that you speak to. I’ll give you just a cheat sheet on that that I use. I call those five things power. The acronym of power, and I will challenge people have a power day. Praise is the three things you’re grateful for, that’s the gratitude, the O is others doing something for somebody else, the W is writing at the end of the day, the E is exercise, and the R is relaxation or meditation. When you could think about it in terms of power, those are the five things. It really does. It creates such a difference for people.

Larry:               I love the gratefulness practice. That’s on the list of things that I do every morning under the reading inspirational stuff is affirmations and asking myself a few questions, like what am I grateful for? Taking inventory of what’s going well, it’s powerful.

Patrick:            It really is, because how can you be in a bad place when you’re thinking about the things that you’re grateful for? It’s like an on/off switch. It’s one or the other. They can’t work at the same time.

Larry:               Exactly.

Patrick:            They can’t work at the same time.

Larry:               Well said.

Patrick:            As you continue on your journey with Machias Savings Bank, what would you want your legacy to be?

Larry:               We want to have an impact on our communities that’s a game-changer. It’s not just lip service for us. We want to make a significant difference. That’s something that we’re really focused on, we’re going to continue moving the needle on. We would like to be so impactful in that area that other companies across the state, other companies across the nation take their game to the next level as a result. Look, everybody benefits. Everybody wins.

Patrick:            Without question. Right. I fully agree with that. Again, you’re living it, and the research backs up that you’re where you are because of the behaviors that your organization has demonstrated at each level. As we close out here, I always like to ask is there … You’ve mentioned several along the way, but I’ll be curious if there’s one in particular that is sort of a go-to for you, but a particular quote or saying that you sort of follow.

Larry:               There is a quote that I’ve followed over the years that is really great. It’s a bit long, but I’ll go through it really quickly. This is Teddy Roosevelt. He said, “It’s not the critic who counts, not the person who points out how the strong man or woman stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes up short again and again, but because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions, spends him or herself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those timid and cold souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Patrick:            I’m guessing you’ve read that before.

Larry:               I have read it a few times. I love it. I love it. Look, I love to be in the trenches with my team fighting the fight. Look, in winning and succeeding as a team is one of the best parts of the job.

Patrick:            Yeah. To me, you’ve got to be in the game to win the game and not be afraid.

Larry:               Yeah, absolutely. The harder you work, the luckier you get.

Patrick:            Yeah, easier to do when you’re around people that support you though, which certainly sounds like that’s what you have there.

Larry:               Oh my goodness. Yeah, yeah. For sure.

Patrick:            Well, Larry, thank you again for this. This really, I so look forward to having this. As we wrap this thing up, I’m glad I pushed forward on this, because it’s been everything I expected it would be from you. So thank you for that.

Larry:               I appreciate your persistence, Patrick, and thank you for your interest in Machias Savings Bank. Appreciate it.

Patrick:            Great. Look forward to talking to you in the future. Thanks.

Larry:               All right. Absolutely. Take care. Thank you.

 

Machias Savings Bank

Thanks For Listening!

 

Increasing emotional intelligence: (How) is it possible?

Can emotional intelligence be trained? A meta analytical investigation.

Emery Leadership Group

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Patrick:            I’m here again with Larry Barker, the president and CEO of Machias Savings Bank. Again, Larry, it’s probably been a couple of months, I think, since I first spoke with you about trying to get this set up. I had seen over the last year or so just a couple of the accolades, I should say, that your organization has won nationally. My background being in leadership development and employee engagement, I thought here’s somebody in my own back yard that obviously his organization is really doing things the right way.

Patrick:            I wanted to bring you on board and really sort of explore what that looks like in regards to Machias Savings Bank and why you think your organization is where it’s at today in that regard. So again, thanks for being here.

Larry:               Yeah, fantastic. It’s fantastic. We appreciate the opportunity, Patrick.

Patrick:            I’ll let you take the lead here, in terms of gloating about your employees and the success you’ve had so far.

Larry:               Well, I’ll just start off by telling you just a little bit about Machias Savings Bank. We’re a $1.4 billion in assets. We have 269 employees, 16 locations across Maine spanning from Caribou to Portland. We’re a mutual savings bank, and so creating shareholder wealth is not a priority for us. That’s not part of the equation. Our purpose as a company, Patrick, is to make a difference in our communities. Everything we do falls under that umbrella. We have an amazing culture that revolves around employee experience, customer experience, and ultimately community impact.

Patrick:            How old is the bank?

Larry:               150 years in 2019. Started in 1869. Our original charter was signed by Joshua Chamberlain.

Patrick:            That is incredible. You had mentioned, I had, just for the audience, I had sent out a list of questions earlier in the week regarding some of the topics that we might talk about. Larry got back to me to say he didn’t think it was really going to be appropriate, because the questions were all revolving around himself. I quickly got back to him to say that that’s exactly now … If he wasn’t willing to do it for that reason, which was probably more the reason I wanted to have him on was his sense of humility and sharing the success of the organization with the employees within the organization. Larry, you mentioned to be in terms of what some of your values are as an organization. I wonder if you could maybe mention those again.

Larry:               One of our culture standards, and we’ve memorialized our culture standards, those are those key things that we think have made a successful committee is one of those is attitude. The first sentence of defining that standard is that Machias Savings Bank employees are friendly, genuine, flexible, driven, hard-working, and humble. It’s one of our culture standards, and it’s really important to us as an organization.

Patrick:            Now I’m looking, some of the awards that you’ve won, obviously this is you’re in the top five companies to work for in the state of Maine. Once again, how does that process take place?

Larry:               Yeah, so look, if I had to pick, say, the top two reasons that Machias Savings Bank is in that league, I would say the opportunity that our employees have to make a difference in our communities, which directly relates back to our purpose, first of all, and secondly, our family first philosophy. Again, I mentioned earlier our purpose and our passion as it pertains to the impact, this is something that our employees embrace and get excited about. We encourage all employees to be active volunteering in the community with the causes they’re personally passionate about.

Larry:               In fact, Patrick, we don’t just encourage them to do that. We pay every employee in the bank up to 20 hours a year to volunteer with the community. We match employee contributions to their favorite cause up to $100 every year, every employee. Beyond that, we have a dollars for doers program where we match every 40 hours volunteered with a $200 donation.

Larry:               The second piece, and we really put our money where our mouth is when it comes to making a difference in our communities, but we also have a family first philosophy. What we mean by that is if your child has a Little League game this afternoon, not only do we want you to be there, we’re going to be disappointed if you’re not there. Again, in fact, we’re going to pay you to be there, in addition to regular vacation time, we’ve added 16 hours of family flex time for every employee, so you can go to that game, that musical recital, or whatever it is, and even get paid while you’re there.

Patrick:            That is incredible. I will tell you the reason why is that I will often, when I’m going in with some organizations is what’s the mission or the vision? You always hear somewhere along the lines that our employees are our most important asset, yet often times when I deal with the employees, most of them would laugh when they read that, because there’s not congruence. It’s not the walk and the talk that you’re talking about right now where this idea, we put our money where our mouth is, that you’re really able to do that through those things like matching and paying employees to volunteer, and the idea of family first, again, I think is one of those that often times doesn’t get a lot of real traction, but when you’re saying that you’re disappointed if they don’t make it there, then …

Larry:               Well, and let me tell you, so if I was going to pick the third thing, and maybe the most important, Patrick, I would say that it’s listening. Many things that we do on this front, and I think listening is the most important, you’ve probably heard the Steve Jobs quote around hiring really great people, not so he could tell them what to do, but rather so they could tell him what to do. We practiced this philosophy, and I can attest to the fact that it works really well if you act on what you hear. Now if you don’t, then I think you’re better of not asking the question, because you’re doing more damage.

Larry:               We participated in the Best Places Program, which is an annual employee survey. We don’t do that for the banner or the accolades. We participate so we can keep a really close eye on what’s important to our employees. I would like to share, one of the questions on that survey, Patrick, is I’m proud to work for this company. I’m proud to share with you that for the last two years in a row, 100% of our employees have answered yes to that question.

Larry:               Now this year, we did have one out of 269 that answered no. So we broke our two year running record, but we still feel pretty darn good about those results. Six months later we do another internal engagement survey. This is our own survey, because we don’t want a whole year to go by without knowing what’s important to our employees. We identified the top two or three areas of concerns and opportunities for improvement based on those surveys, and we put plans together to improve those areas.

Patrick:            In my experience in this regard too, and you hit the nail right on the head when you say if you’re not going to do something about it, you’re better off not to do anything at all, because all it does is it continues to build cynicism where people say, “Why are we doing this? Nothing happens with the information anyway.”

Larry:               Exactly. Beyond that, every employee has a monthly what we call fireside chat with their manager. This is expected. We have town hall meetings across the different regions of the bank every year. We call these family gatherings, because we consider every employee to be a member of the Machias Savings Bank Family. We ask questions like what’s working, what isn’t. What’s your biggest frustration? What’s getting in the way of you providing an exceptional customer experience?

Larry:               We have a culture champion program where upwards of a dozen employees are nominated by their peers every year as Machias Savings Bank culture champions. We host an off-site retreat with this group. We have a lot of fun, but we also do some work. The work piece, again, is around listening and discovering what we can do better to make sure we’re doing the best we can to enhance and promote this great culture that I told you about.

Patrick:            It’s interesting there because, again, my experience in this area is to say that most people understand if they’re going to bring forward recommendations, not every recommendation can be implemented. Often times it’s that people just want to know that they were heard, that something was done, that it just didn’t go into a black hole and nothing happened. I’m curious, how do you work with your teams or whatever just to keep that or to close that loop on recommendations and things like that?

Larry:               Well, like I say, we take it very seriously. We can’t wait to get our hands on those surveys, and we try to identify the biggest issues. Look, our family first philosophy, a few years ago, we added eight hours of family flex time, because in those surveys, our employees emphasized how valuable that family first philosophy is to them. The comments just kept getting more and stronger, so the next year we added eight more hours.

Larry:               Look, our employees said our vision care isn’t very good. We fixed it. For two or three years, the past two or three years, our employees have said we need more training. This year we’re making a significant investment. We’re creating a training department. You have to act on that input. If you don’t, you’re wasting your time and doing damage.

Patrick:            Yeah, I completely agree. One of the other rewards or recognitions that you’ve won was the American Banker Magazine, one of top 10 banks to work for in the nation for 2018, eighth overall. How did you end up with that recognition?

Larry:               It’s the same process. It’s the Best Places Survey that gets submitted to the American Banker Magazine. It is that same survey. Now they have several other questions. They want to know what kind of programs that you have around employee engagement and satisfaction, and so it’s a very similar process. Then they take those results and compare them against other banks across the nation. They nominate the top 70 make the cut. To be in the top 10 is something that, again, we get very excited about, take great pride in.

Patrick:            If I remember, was there maybe one other in New England?

Larry:               In the top 70, I believe. I don’t think there’s any in the top 10.

Patrick:            Yeah. Okay. I think I only remember seeing one that may be in just the top 70 or so. It was really very impressive.

Larry:               Yeah, you might be right.

Patrick:            Then the last one that I think was really what piqued this or prompted me to finally make the call to you was the last award that you won a recognition was around being a psychologically healthy workplace, which I never really heard of before, in terms of even being able to be recognized for that. How did that one come about?

Larry:               I believe it was our branch manger in southern Maine that was aware of that program. She submitted, nominated our bank as somebody that should be considered as a leading example in that program. Shortly thereafter, this is a national program. We didn’t realize the significance of it, what an honor it was to be chosen really until after we had been chosen. We’re actually surprised to see that that award picked up significantly more PR and recognition than the best places. It was a pleasant surprise.

Patrick:            Yeah, as I said, I know for me certainly being in this arena, it’s one that I had not seen before and certainly I think really it has such an impactful, just the wording of it I think really speaks to the commitment of Machias Savings Bank to be able to be recognized for this is really, really impressive. From a standpoint of management development and working, giving skills to them to be able to do this, what type of programs do you do for employees?

Larry:               We [inaudible 00:12:18] significantly. We have a lot of different framings. We have some great folks that do that for a living. TJ Holloway, for example, at a bank or has been in and provided some incredible training for us. We have a gentleman out of Florida that’s been in this year. We have a leadership institute, we have a manager’s retreat. Look, we provide executive coaches to a lot of management level folks that want to lean in and have that level of employee growth and development. I personally have an executive coach. Look, my philosophy is Tom Brady and the Patriots have, what, eight or 10, maybe a dozen coaches? Why shouldn’t I have one?

Larry:               I really enjoy that process. We’ve made that available to every member of the senior team. I believe every member of the senior team has taken advantage of opportunity to have an executive coach. Many of our managers have done the same thing. We don’t think we’ve got it all figured out, and we don’t think we’ve arrived. That’s, again, part of our culture. We’re constantly pushing the envelope. We’re always looking over our shoulder. We’re always trying to figure out what we need to be doing to keep this thing rolling.

Patrick:            I’m going to change gears here for a minute, because again, organizationally from a standpoint of walking the talk, often times you can have organizations where they want to implement certain trainings or workshops at a mid level or ground level area. The question always comes up if this is so important, why isn’t senior management involved in this? Why aren’t they at the top levels involved in this? Everything that I hear you talking about is to say that no, there’s really congruence here, that you’re walking the talk, in terms of this filters all the way down within the organization. From that standpoint, maybe you can speak a little bit about how you started at Machias Savings Bank and how that has evolved, in terms of you progressing to where you are now?

Larry:               Sure. I like to say my career at the bank began in the blueberry fields of Washington County. I grew up raking blueberries. In the summers of ’90 and ’91, I raked blueberries for the president of Machias Savings Bank, Ed Hennessey. In August of ’91, Ed approached me on the field and suggested that I should come see him if I ever wanted a job at the bank. At the time, I had no interest in banking. I wanted to be a state trooper, but I was in a serious relationship and figured I’d better get a job.

Larry:               A couple weeks later, I took him up on that offer, and I began working at the bank in October of ’91. It’s been a great ride. It hasn’t disappointed at all. A lot of great people, and incredible culture. This culture, look, make no mistake, Ed Hennessey is the founder of the culture at Machias Savings Bank. I’ve been president for seven years now, and really my job is to make sure we don’t go backwards to enhance and promote the, like I say, the incredible culture that’s been around for 30 years.

Patrick:            What are you most proud about?

Larry:               I think, Patrick, I would say the 269 employees we have across the state, we’ve got an amazing group. I think that’s one of the … When you think of how have employee engagement levels impacted the bank from a financial performance and growth standpoint, that’s a difficult one to quantify, but I think common sense would lead us to believe that very happy employees contributes to happy customers. Happy customers equals success with both financial performance and growth.

Larry:               I think being the best bank to work for in Maine in a large employer group is certainly adding to our ability to attract and retain really great employees. Look, I can say with confidence we have the best employees in the state. We’re attracting more exceptional, top-quality employees by the day. This investment, this culture of investing employee engagement and satisfaction has consistently led to strong growth and strong financial performance. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I think if you did the math, you would see over the past couple decades that our return on assets has consistently had us in the top third, when compared to the other banks in Maine.

Larry:               For the first six months of this year, I don’t have September for the peers, but we’re in the top three out of the 20 mutual banks in Maine. We’re in the top six when compared to all Maine banks. It’s 26 total. Absolutely has a huge impact on the success of the company.

Patrick:            Which is amazing at times when you hear of companies that they don’t invest in this, because there’s a financial benefit that organizations receive from employees that are happy. I think you would agree, and certainly this is first is that I really think there is an obligation that you have, in terms of people that work for you. There’s a huge responsibility, especially if people report to you, that you have such a responsibility to them, because your behaviors and how you treat them and what you do for them impacts them when they go home, but it’s not just-

Larry:               Absolutely.

Patrick:            If I’m mistreating somebody in the office, that goes home. Maybe it impacts the relationship they have with their spouse or with their kids or in so many other areas.

Larry:               It’s such an important part of the equation. What you just said reminds me of the conversation between a couple of executives. One says, “What if we invest in our employees and then they leave?” Of course, the other says, “What if we don’t invest in our employees and they stay?”

Patrick:            Yeah, and it’s-

Larry:               It’s a no-brainer, in my opinion.

Patrick:            It’s so true. I remember even 10 years ago when people were talking about, “Well, the economy was so difficult at that point. Well, people aren’t leaving companies.” My response to that was always the same is that the same number of people are leaving companies. It’s just that in really difficult times, they just quit and stay, which, for the organization, is far more costly, because they’re just underground. They’re just not leaving yet, but they will, as soon as they have an opportunity.

Larry:               Yeah.

Patrick:            In regards to daily routines for yourself, any rituals that you have, in terms of how you start your day out or how you end your day?

Larry:               I do. I have a few, because again, I’m a big believer in personal growth and development. Look, I’m up at 5:00 AM every day. I practice winning the first hour. Now I didn’t make that up. I borrowed it. For me, to win the first hour means no cell phone, no email. If you get out of bed and pick up that cell phone and start reading email right out of the gate … Look, I’ve done it before. I did it for years, but you’re reacting. I don’t believe any executive could be most effective for their organization if they’re constantly reacting. I believe you have to have time for clear, uninterrupted thinking.

Larry:               My first 20, 30 minutes of the day, I’m drinking my coffee and meditating. Next 10 to 15 minutes I’m reading inspirational stuff that’s personal to me, taking inventory of what’s going well, the promises I’ve made to myself, for example. Look, another ritual I try to practice every day on the drive home, and again, haven’t always done this. I used to practice the opposite for many years, but on the drive home, three wins. Take inventory of three wins. What did I have for three wins today? Look, I find this to be a great practice, as opposed to what I used to do, which is what did I screw up today? The three wins is much more beneficial in taking inventory of what’s going well.

Larry:               The last thing I’ll mention is that consistent with what I said earlier, I try to schedule at least two half days a month off the grid, if you will, deliberately taking and scheduling time for clear, uninterrupted thinking. I find this time to be my most effective, some of my best work at this time off the grid. I find it very refreshing, energizing, and [inaudible 00:20:24]. I encourage every member of my senior team to do the same thing.

Patrick:            Some of the things you just mentioned are certainly things that I fully believe in and try to follow myself. One of the things that you spoke to, I think we often are one or the other. We’re either a thermostat or a thermometer, in terms of what happens around that. By that I mean that just like a thermometer, all it can do is react to the environment that it’s in. If its too hot, it goes up. If it’s colder, it goes down.

Larry:               Love it.

Patrick:            Where really when we’re actively involved, we’re more like the thermostat. We have the ability if the room’s too cold, we turn it up. If it’s too hot, we turn it down. It’s in our control. When we can focus on not being acted upon, we’re responding versus reacting. I love that, what you said about that. The second is I don’t know if you’ve ever seen or heard of a gentleman named Shawn Achor. He actually was a Harvard researcher, and he did what was called the 21-day challenge. They really only did five exercises. There were five things that they asked people to do over 21 days. One was in the morning write three things they were grateful for. The next was do something for somebody else, just once, go out of your way to do something for somebody else. The next was to, at the end of the day, write down a couple sentences on what went well for the day. As you talk about your three wins, I was thinking of that.

Patrick:            The other two things that they did was exercise only had to be 10 minutes a day, just 10 minutes a day of some type of exercise, so going out for a walk at lunch, whatever that might be, and the last one was around just finding at least two minutes of quiet time, some type of quiet time to meditate. That’s it. Five things [crosstalk 00:22:13].

Larry:               Yeah. Look, if you asked me what I would do differently if I could go back and do it over again, I would … For years, I was in the Army, so 6:00 AM exercise has not been a priority for me, but I’m glad you brought it up, because that is part of my morning routine. Look, I’ll say more recently, so I’m going on three months in a row of a one-mile walk and 10 minutes of dumbbells every morning. I am here to tell you it’s a game changer. My levels of energy, I’m at the point now where I look forward to it every morning. That’s part of my goals with my executive coach is to really make the investment into my personal health and wellbeing. I strongly, strongly recommend that.

Patrick:            Yeah. The research is so strong in this area of the psychological wellbeing that it provides us when we do that, just simple things that you speak to. I’ll give you just a cheat sheet on that that I use. I call those five things power. The acronym of power, and I will challenge people have a power day. Praise is the three things you’re grateful for, that’s the gratitude, the O is others doing something for somebody else, the W is writing at the end of the day, the E is exercise, and the R is relaxation or meditation. When you could think about it in terms of power, those are the five things. It really does. It creates such a difference for people.

Larry:               I love the gratefulness practice. That’s on the list of things that I do every morning under the reading inspirational stuff is affirmations and asking myself a few questions, like what am I grateful for? Taking inventory of what’s going well, it’s powerful.

Patrick:            It really is, because how can you be in a bad place when you’re thinking about the things that you’re grateful for? It’s like an on/off switch. It’s one or the other. They can’t work at the same time.

Larry:               Exactly.

Patrick:            They can’t work at the same time.

Larry:               Well said.

Patrick:            As you continue on your journey with Machias Savings Bank, what would you want your legacy to be?

Larry:               We want to have an impact on our communities that’s a game-changer. It’s not just lip service for us. We want to make a significant difference. That’s something that we’re really focused on, we’re going to continue moving the needle on. We would like to be so impactful in that area that other companies across the state, other companies across the nation take their game to the next level as a result. Look, everybody benefits. Everybody wins.

Patrick:            Without question. Right. I fully agree with that. Again, you’re living it, and the research backs up that you’re where you are because of the behaviors that your organization has demonstrated at each level. As we close out here, I always like to ask is there … You’ve mentioned several along the way, but I’ll be curious if there’s one in particular that is sort of a go-to for you, but a particular quote or saying that you sort of follow.

Larry:               There is a quote that I’ve followed over the years that is really great. It’s a bit long, but I’ll go through it really quickly. This is Teddy Roosevelt. He said, “It’s not the critic who counts, not the person who points out how the strong man or woman stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes up short again and again, but because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds, who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions, spends him or herself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that their place shall never be with those timid and cold souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Patrick:            I’m guessing you’ve read that before.

Larry:               I have read it a few times. I love it. I love it. Look, I love to be in the trenches with my team fighting the fight. Look, in winning and succeeding as a team is one of the best parts of the job.

Patrick:            Yeah. To me, you’ve got to be in the game to win the game and not be afraid.

Larry:               Yeah, absolutely. The harder you work, the luckier you get.

Patrick:            Yeah, easier to do when you’re around people that support you though, which certainly sounds like that’s what you have there.

Larry:               Oh my goodness. Yeah, yeah. For sure.

Patrick:            Well, Larry, thank you again for this. This really, I so look forward to having this. As we wrap this thing up, I’m glad I pushed forward on this, because it’s been everything I expected it would be from you. So thank you for that.

Larry:               I appreciate your persistence, Patrick, and thank you for your interest in Machias Savings Bank. Appreciate it.

Patrick:            Great. Look forward to talking to you in the future. Thanks.

Larry:               All right. Absolutely. Take care. Thank you.

 

Machias Savings Bank

Thanks For Listening!

 

Increasing emotional intelligence: (How) is it possible?

Can emotional intelligence be trained? A meta analytical investigation.

Emery Leadership Group

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Patrick:            Hey everybody, I’m Pat V. Welcome back to another episode of The Rise Above Your Best podcast, where you’re probably tired of me saying, but not only obsessed with interviewing and understanding the habits that have made other people successful, but also in uncovering and presenting the research that demonstrate that great success is available to all of us, and it all starts when we believe in the power of rising above our best.

Patrick:            The past few episodes have all been around developing emotional intelligence, and that really is the foundation for a lot of the work that I do, whether it’s around teams, or individuals, or leadership, personal development, career development. It really is foundational for all of the different components of what I do. We’ve talked already about awareness of self, how to develop that, how to become more aware of others, how to effectively express our own emotions, and how to manage our own emotions. That idea that we talked about, about being a thermostat versus a thermometer.

Patrick:            These last two episodes, I’m going to combine them. One is going to be around managing emotions of others, really being able to help others in that space. Then the last is around emotional self control, and this is this ability of being able to develop a long fuse when we’re around issues that might be stressful and why is that important, and how do we do it? So why don’t we get into it?

Patrick:            When we talk about emotional management of others, there’s really three things that you can think about in terms of what it does. The first is people that are highly skilled in this area are able to create environments that really make people feel more optimistic and positive about the workplace that they’re in. They’re also able to communicate and interact in ways that motivate and engage others at work. Then lastly, they’re really very adept at being able to help others see things from different perspectives.

Patrick:            Now again, for each of these modules or episodes in terms of developing emotionally intelligent behaviors, I always go back to work and personal that if we look at those three things, there’s no difference why that isn’t important to be able to have in a personal life, whether in family or in the community, wherever that is. So from a business case standpoint though, which is what I often start out from, is we look at why is it important. Again, why is it important to develop a stronger skill set in terms of managing other people’s emotions? Well, obviously when we’re able to do this, we create greater workplace morale and satisfaction. It helps us to deal with workplace conflict more effectively. It can help us to effectively inspire or motivate other people to be more committed to their own work as well as to increase their own level of performance. If we’re able to help them stay in a place where they’re more effective. That’s really what this is about.

Patrick:            How can we do that? How can we help other people? Well, there are really a few different strategies that we can use. When we think back to the module that we talked about or the episode that we talked about around managing our own emotions, much of this is the same. It’s trying to first hopefully model our own ability to manage emotions so that others can see what we’re doing. Really, this idea of walking the talk, they see us doing it so they’re able to understand like, “Hey, I can do this too.”

Patrick:            Before we can help others manage their own emotions though we really need to go back to one of the episodes that we talked about before in terms of awareness of other people’s emotions, and that really deals with our own ability or skillset that hopefully we had been working to develop that’s looking at maybe the words that somebody is using. Are they using more emotional words? The tone of voice that they’re using, the facial expressions, maybe some of the emotional displays that they might have. What are they doing with their body and what are their behaviors? What are they doing? I mean, are they … Can you just visibly tell if this person’s upset for angry? Whatever that is. We need to be able to understand that first.

Patrick:            Then next when we’re talking about the idea of managing that emotion. Really what we’re trying to do is slow this whole thing down, because oftentimes we are in two different states. We’re either reacting or we’re responding, and responding often is more effective. Obviously, if we’re really … If it’s a life threatening event, then we need to be able to react, that’s the primitive part of our brain. Most of the time, though, we really need to just slow down, and we need to respond, and that’s the difference here. That’s what helping other people manage their emotions as able to do. It’s to say, how do we slow this thing down?

Patrick:            Our first strategy in this situation is really going to revolve around distraction. How can we get them out of that space that they’re in? Some suggestions might be just to go for coffee, give them five minutes to vent. Again, we talked about this before, right? Venting should be like gone on vacation, not living there. Maybe it’s just to take them and go for a walk around the block or to recommend a timeout, but the whole goal of this is to say, how can I break the pattern? What can I do to almost sort of call a time out here? We’ve got to switch this thing up. That’s the first part of this.

Patrick:            Then the next part is really around disrupting the thought pattern too. What is actually going on? To do this we look at four different components, we look at evidence, alternatives, implications, and usefulness is one way to frame this as a box almost. The first part is this idea of clarifying all the evidence, and really what that involves is uncovering the supporting and discounting evidence related to the unbalanced thoughts, really, or feelings that we’re having. When feeling negative people can discount evidence that directly contradicts their thoughts and feelings. Really, what they’re trying to do is validate where they are, so they forget everything else that goes counter to that, and that’s where the first part of this, distracting people, allows us to get to this next part where we can almost, on a more even keel basis, we can say, “Okay, let’s look at the evidence. What really is going on?” Almost like, “Let’s look at the facts.”

Patrick:            So from there, what we do is we go onto considering the alternatives. Really what this allows us to do is generate a range of alternative ways of thinking and feeling. It’s helping people to consider that what might be occurring for the situation they are feeling is there’s more to this. So as an example, when we’re talking about considering all of the alternatives, you could simply ask that question, what else could be going on here? Or what’s another way of thinking about the situation? It allows us to help the other person to see things like maybe what we think we’re seeing isn’t really what’s going on. Once we’ve done this, we go onto step three, which is about identifying the implications. An example here is to help somebody consider like what are the implications and likely outcomes for the, we’ll call them unbalanced thoughts that they’re having that’s creating this environment?

Patrick:            As an example, sometimes unfortunate things happen in life. However, those things typically are not as severe as people imagine they’re going to be. So it’s almost like taking what’s the worst case scenario here when we think about the identifying implications? I mean really, based on the situation that we’re in right now, what is the worst case that can possibly happen? Somebody says, “Well, you know what? I could get fired from my job.” Okay, so from that standpoint then what’s next?

Patrick:            The last part of this is the usefulness piece, and it’s really challenging people at this point to really think about what is the value of the position or thought that they’ve had, and is there a more effective or appropriate way that they might be able to respond to the situation other than the one that they’re currently doing? So, as we recap on this box model, we say, “Okay, let’s look at the clarifying evidence first.” Question might be: what’s the evidence that supports and contradicts what you’re thinking? From there we go onto considering all the alternatives and we say, “Well, what additional points of view or perspectives and opinions might exist? What other things are there?”

Patrick:            Then we moved down to this idea of identifying the implications, the third box, and we say, “What can you do to minimize the negative impact of this issue?” Give people that alternative. What do you think you can do? And then lastly, we go over to the fourth box here about assessing the usefulness of their current thinking, and the question there could be: how useful is it for you to continue to think like this? What’s the value here? Almost to get them to recognize themselves like, “This is a waste of time. I’m wasting so much energy on something that in all likelihood isn’t going to happen and even if it did, worst case, we’ve already explored that, what that might look like.” That’s a way that you can start to work in terms of managing the emotions of others.

Patrick:            Now, the last component of the emotional intelligence work that we’re discussing is: from my own perspective, what do I do about my own self control and what does that look like? When you think about when we discuss emotional self control, it really is the skill of effectively controlling strong emotions that we experience, and this really is the ability for us to have what I would call a long fuse. It allows us to overcome anger at work by thinking through what’s causing it. We don’t get hijacked. It also allows us to more easily concentrate on a task when we’re really excited at work or upset about something, we can stay focused more often.

Patrick:            One of the examples that I use is from US Air. Everybody is probably familiar with the pilot Sully. When he put the plane down in the Hudson River, and it was great when people are asking like, ‘How did you do that?” They just listened to him and his correspondence or whatever and he just matter-of-factly talked about putting this plane down the Hudson River, and they were amazed. They were like, “How could you do that?” And he said, “Well that’s really just what we practice for. So when that happens we’re able to remain calm and do it.” That really is very similar to this idea of emotional self control, that’s what we’re doing here is we’re, almost ahead of time, we’re identifying certain triggers that create emotions for us before they happen. Same thing with training, putting the plane down in the Hudson River. I need to be prepared for it before it happens. So when it does, I already have a pattern or a way to deal with it. Again, it’s responding versus reacting.

Patrick:            So, how can you enhance your own self control in this situation? Well, there are a number of things that you can do, and I’m just going to list five of them.

Patrick:            1. Really identifying what are the strong emotions you tend to experience. I would think if you really think about it, there are certain emotions that we tend to experience on a more regular basis, and the idea is to find out what those are. Not to ignore them or deny them, but really say, “What things tend to happen to me when I’m in a really high stress situation? What emotions tend to come out?

Patrick:            2. Describing the things you notice when you’re experiencing those strong emotions that tend to sort of build up and become more intense. When we’re able to describe our thoughts, our feelings, the physical sensations and memories for the strong emotions that we’ve experienced, it allows us to put them into context and also to better understand why they tend to occur and what situations do they tend to come up in.

Patrick:            3. Determining what are our emotional default patterns of behaving when we’re experiencing these strong emotions? As an example, when we’re in danger, we fight, we freeze, or we flee, and by identifying our emotional defaults we are better able to choose the most mindful way of responding when we notice that we are having an experience of that strong emotion, what am I going to do? “All right, I know I’m feeling threatened right now. What? What’s my normal default? And is this really something that I should be getting that upset about?”

Patrick:            4. So once we’ve sort of understood what our defaults are, then that fourth component to this as to say, “What are some alternatives?” That plan B, “What can I do when I know this is coming on? This has been my default all along, hasn’t been the most effective in many situations. Here’s an alternative.” So when I know I’m starting to feel those sensations or I’m feeling I’m in that situation where I know I’m going to blow up right now or I’m going to behave in a way that probably isn’t very productive, what’s an alternative? What else can I do?

Patrick:            5. The last recommendation here really is around visualizing what that looks like, and there’s more and more research that demonstrates the impact and importance that visualization can have on our actual outcome. A lot of times our brain doesn’t know the difference. If you’re old enough to remember, there was a Memorex commercial that was with a tape player, and they used to play music so loud that it shattered a wineglass. And the tagline was: is it live or is it Memorex? And our brain is the same way. Is it real? Our brain doesn’t know the difference, oftentimes, especially when we’re visualizing. So, the whole idea here is to say, visualize a better situation, a better response, what that would feel like, how you would respond to that, because when we’re doing that we’re practicing and strengthening that self control muscle and what that might look like.

Patrick:            Now, when we look to put this into practice, if we think of the first part of this of labeling a strong emotion that I experience, I would challenge you to pick an emotion or two, maybe it’s resentful or it’s fearful or it’s furious, whatever that might be for an emotion. Why did you select it, first? Then as you’re thinking of that situation in the past where you experienced that, say it’s anger, what triggered it and what were the thoughts that you noticed when you felt that? So you might say the feelings, the moods that I noticed when I was experiencing that strong emotion of anger were what were they? Betrayal, whatever it might be. Then what were the physical sensations that you noticed in your body? You know, I was tensing up. I felt myself getting hotter, I could feel my heart rate, I could feel my hands shaking, and what were the memories that you have of that? This is a way of really sort of understanding what was that situation, because we’re going to use that again when we go forward in terms of how do we visualize a situation that doesn’t look like that.

Patrick:            After we have identified that strong emotion, the next is to dig a little deeper in regards to what are our defaults, and we all have them, and really we start to see our defaults when a core belief that we have, our value is challenged. That’s when our default tends to come up, and there were a number of defaults, so I’m going to list a few of them here:

Patrick:            1. What we term as an attacker, and this is the person that comes out charging. The best defense is a strong offense. This person comes right at you.

Patrick:            2. Another would almost be the opposite. This is the victim. This is the person that becomes overwhelmed by emotion. They over generalize the situation as this never ending pattern. It just won’t end.

Patrick:            3. You might have an avoider, somebody that just completely withdraws from the situation.

Patrick:            4. You might have what’s called a hero. This is the person that refuses to ask for other people’s help.

Patrick:            5. You might have somebody that acts like a sniper. They use innuendos or almost sort of passive aggressive to trigger distracting emotions in others. Could be playful teasing or not so subtle remarks.

Patrick:            6. Maybe you’re a judge. You’re the person that adopts a tone of absolute certainty.

Patrick:            7. Maybe you’re the saboteur. You’re the person that finds fault with everything, but you’re seldom offering a useful solution.

Patrick:            8. The opposite of that is a Pollyanna. This is sort of that unrealistic optimistic person. They’re always demonstrating a strong positive bias, but they’re unable to recognize sort of the downside of what’s going on, and there can be.

Patrick:            9. You could have the fortune teller. This is the person that sort of jumps to unsupported conclusions. They’ve already said where this thing is going to go. It’s already been predestined for them.

Patrick:            10. You could have a person that is super agreeable, always reasonable and sincere, but really unauthentically so.

Patrick:            11. Another one might be as a child, right? You report the shortcomings of others, but you fail to take responsibility for your own actions. It’s always somebody else’s fault.

Patrick:            12. Then the last one, it gets termed as sort of a gloomy gus, this is the person that discounts the positive. They’re hyper pessimistic, they exaggerate the issues and they discount either others or their own sort of qualities in regards to being able to deal with us.

Patrick:            Those are just a few of the defaults. My guess is, if you were to go down that list, you can find out that you’re probably in one of those buckets at some point that that is a default that we have.

Patrick:            The key to addressing our emotional default is really to almost create an emotional alternative. What is the different approach that we’re going to take? We can’t do that until we respond. We need that space between the action of what happened and how we respond to it, and that’s really when we’re able to develop the emotional alternative.

Patrick:            So for each of the defaults that I mentioned to you, there’s actually an emotional alternative:

Patrick:            1. If we were to take the attacker and we think of it now as the alternative really is around being a coach. This is now somebody that can work with others. They cooperate, they’re willing to connect with other people and sort of how they’re feeling.

Patrick:            2. When we’re the victim our emotional alternative now is to be the strategist. We’re able to recognize personal power. We connect with the emotion and we plan the outcome.

Patrick:            3. If we’re the avoider, we become the engager. We take ownership and we’re open to sort of a win-win resolution here.

Patrick:            4. If we’re the hero, our alternative is then to become the collaborator. It’s not, I can do it all. We ask for help. We’re not afraid to do that.

Patrick:            5. If we were the sniper, now we’re the supporter. We’re more of an advocate for others. We’re developing that ability to not try and shoot people down or stab in the back, but we’re actually going to try and support them however we can.

Patrick:            6. If we were the judge, we’re going to be the acceptor, we use a tone of curiosity now and we’re sort of open minded. What might be the third alternative to the situation?

Patrick:            7. If we were the saboteurs we’re now the problem solver. We seek solutions to our own and to other people’s issues here.

Patrick:            8. If we were the Pollyanna, we’re now going to be more of a pragmatist. We’ll sorta look to develop this power of emotional discernment where we’re able to account for many perspectives and we weigh a lot of options.

Patrick:            9. If we were the fortune teller before, now we’re more the fortunate seeker. We seek out supporting and emotionally balanced evidence. We ask other people their opinions.

Patrick:            10. If before we were super agreeable, now we’re more dependable. We demonstrate sort of this sincerity in terms of what we say.

Patrick:            11. If we were the child before. Really now we’re just the adult. We take ownership for our own and for others.

Patrick:            12. If we were that gloomy gus before, now we’re more harmonious. Where self-compassionate, we seek out the positives, we explore sort of the, what’s termed the emotional shades of gray and we’re just more stable.

Patrick:            So, you can see I’ve listed down emotional alternatives and those are ways that we can challenge each other to take a different perspective on things when we’re talking about self control. But again, this is just like a muscle. The only way it gets stronger is when we actually sit there and say, “Okay, how can I become more like the coach? What things can I do to prevent myself from being the attacker?” Well, again, “What do I know about that default and what do I know about the emotions that bring that out or the environments that create this space where I fall into the attacker mode?” And until we can do sort of the things around visualization and labeling what those emotions are and how they feel, then we don’t have the opportunity to create a different environment going forward. We don’t have that ability to be Sully and to have a plan B. We’re just going to crash as opposed to land it smoothly on water.

Patrick:            I hope you have found both of these outlines on developing emotional self control as well as helping others to manage their own emotions, I hope you found both of these to be helpful. If there’s somebody that you know that you think can benefit from this as well, please forward it on and maybe there’ll be able to gain benefit from it as well. As always, I appreciate your comments and if you found this valuable in help for yourself, if you’d go online and rate this, and certainly if you haven’t already, if you’d subscribed to it.

Patrick:            Also, if you have any suggestions on future episodes or things you feel like weren’t addressed here in regards to developing emotionally intelligent behaviors, I’d love to hear about it. Until our next episode I hope you’re able to go out there and rise above your best.

Thanks For Listening!

Increasing emotional intelligence: (How) is it possible?

Can emotional intelligence be trained? A meta analytical investigation.

Emery Leadership Group

To share your thoughts:

• Leave a comment below.
• Share this show on Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest

To help out the show:

• Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.
• Subscribe on iTunes