Why Empathy Wins: Leading People In An AI World | RR348

Rob, Hello everyone, and welcome to this

week's episode of relationships rule. Today I'm joined by Dr

Robin hills, a leading voice in emotional intelligence, and the

founder of Ei for change, whose work has reached more than half

a million professionals across 200 countries. Wow. You've been

doing this for a long time. Robin. Robin believes that self

awareness is the gateway to intelligent behavior, and his

mission is to make emotional intelligence practical, relevant

and essential in our everyday work and leadership. I hope

today that we're going to dig into how emotional intelligence

is shaping the future of success, why it's the ultimate

competitive edge for leaders, and how it can bring more

humanity back into the digital world of business. So welcome to

the show Robin.

Dr Robin Hills: That is, that's a brilliant introduction. Yes, I

have been doing this a long time, and thank you for having

me on your show, my pleasure. Really delighted

to be here once I found out you were from

Manchester, England, you're in, yeah, exactly for my listeners

and viewers. It's because I'm from Manchester, England, and so

it has a warm place in my heart the the last sentence that I

read why e i is the ultimate competitive edge for leaders and

how it can bring more humanity back into the digital world of

business. Um, I don't know. Lately I've been feeling as

though the digital world is just coming down heavy on me. It's

just becoming very pressure ridden to be out there, to be on

LinkedIn, more than I have been. Even though I teach people to be

on LinkedIn, I just have been feeling that heaviness. And I've

noticed also that I I'm seeing in some in people's work that's

out there that people are getting back to the human touch

and getting back to wanting to actually talk to people. Have

you noticed that?

Dr Robin Hills: Yes, very much. So I think the shine is starting

to come off. Some of the the llms, the large language models

like chatgpt and Gemini, because people are recognizing that they

are tools. They're very useful tools, but they're not

absolutely brilliant. They're not school free, and often you

actually have to go back and challenge the outputs that

you're getting from these AI systems, because they're not

quite right, and in order to check whether they're right or

not, if you don't know, you actually have to go along speak

to somebody else who might know. So that brings into play the

conversations that we need to have. So don't let me take

anything away from Ai. I think it's a wonderful tool, but the

critical word within that is the word tool. We mustn't let it

take over who we are, what we are and what we do.

You know, on us on a smaller scale. I used to

feel that way, and I still do, actually, about the Reliance

people have on spell check, because spell check will just

tell you if you spell the word correctly, but it could be the

right spelling of the wrong word that's in the wrong sentence, in

the wrong place, right? And so it's that same feeling for me

that don't rely on it, just as you said, use it as a as a tool

to to, I guess, as a starting point. In some ways, I know

spell, but whatever.

Dr Robin Hills: Well, I could be a bit pack handed. I'm very

pedantic with my spelling, but I look back on some of the things

that I put on LinkedIn, and I recognize that I've used to

press two keys instead of one. I didn't notice it. So I think

that the other important thing to bear in mind. And it goes

back to early part of our conversation. Look, I'm from

Manchester in England, so any of the outputs from Ai need to be

Robin eyes. So I need to get to speak in my voice. So what I

need to do is I need to take out the Americanisms and the

American spellings. So there's nothing wrong with Americanisms.

There's nothing wrong with American spellings. It's just

not me.

So the same thing in Canada, yeah, yeah. Same

thing exactly.

Dr Robin Hills: And I think people haven't quite realized

that there is bias within these AI models, right? And it leads

to a degree of prejudice in in the fact that all of the outputs

tend to be very us focused. So what we've got to do, we're in

English. Speaking countries. So what we've got to do is to take

those outputs and make them relevant the way we speak. It

may be that we speak to Americans, it may be that I

speak to Canadians, but I need to speak as an authentic

Englishman and not try and be something that I'm not so

Buddhist only knows what it's like when it's working with

people from Germany who speak German, right from France who

speak French, or even from the other side of Canada who have a

different accent around their French, speaking

Exactly So, Robin, let's back up a little

bit. You've built your entire career around emotional

intelligence. What? What started all of that, what drew you to

this field, and how has that evolved over the years?

Dr Robin Hills: Well, I think it would be false to say that I

started my career in emotional intelligence, because when I did

start my career,

that's right, so, but maybe it was there, but not

in certain that name. Maybe you were all,

Dr Robin Hills: yeah, I think what I learned so that the time

when I started my career, I was working in sales, and when

people are working as sales people. They need to learn how

to engage, build relationships with the people that they're

selling to. And I recognize fairly early on, there were some

people that were more than happy to engage with me at the deep

level, and there were some that weren't interested. Now it

wasn't a role, because people would change roles, or they

would go out of one role and there'd be somebody you come

into that role, and I actually had to build up an understanding

and a relationship with the new person. And sometimes that

relationship is a good one, and sometimes the relationship was

not as good as I would like it to be, right? And I recognize it

wasn't me, it wasn't the role that was the issue. It was the

person, and it was the way in which the person was using their

emotional intelligence. Now I didn't know that at the time,

and it wasn't until I left the sales role and started to work

in leadership and management. At about that time, Daniel Goldman

published his books and bought emotional intelligence out of

the academic circles into the everyday working world. And so

when I became aware of these books, I recognize this is what

I've been looking for. This is the understanding that I've been

looking for. So that realization helped me in the work that I was

doing. But it wasn't until I left the commercial environment

altogether, through a series of redundancies within my role. But

I decided, look, I'll set myself up and go see, let's specialize

in what I really believe in, and that's people development,

that's relationship building, and that's everything.

So I don't I noticed also in looking into

your background that you know you also are trained in, and

this is small part of what the big picture of what you do, but

in those personality type, what do you call them? Assessments?

Questionnaire, thank you. Yes, like disc and is that the one

you do? Yeah, I think I've done them all from when I was in

corporate, because they all went through their cycle right at

some point or another. I can't remember anything about any of

it, not even what my my letters or my numbers or whatever are. I

think even did true colors. And there were lots of them, but

were those like the forerunners of emotional intelligence, or

were those just tools that you use within

Dr Robin Hills: the practice? I think it's a bit of both. Lacher

this, because these tools are very, very powerful, and they've

been around for a long period of time. I mean, this that you

mentioned was worked on and developed from Marsden's work,

and he lived and worked and published his studies around

that in 1928 so it's about 100 years ago, yes, And then it was

refined by somebody called I Senate, and he worked in the

1960s and his models have now been refined into the modern

assessment that we know is this. And then Carl Jung developed his

ideas and his theories, and they were built upon in the fifth.

These and 60s by mother daughter team, Catherine Myers and Isabel

grace, and they brought together the components of Young's work

and made it more accessible to people like you and I. Now, the

difficulty with all of these is exactly what you've said. People

will use them within the core corporate environment, because

they're a bit like a party trick. Yes, this is who I am.

This is what I am. And they do nothing more than with it. You

know, they get a series of letters, or they get a color, or

whatever it is that comes out of it. And as I said, they do

nothing more well.

Now, yeah, I will say, though that if I think

about it, all of those things, like in my history and in my

experience, I think have helped me in, that's the word I'm

looking for, not internally, but they've helped me sort of on an

aside without me realizing it. I forget the words Yeah, with my

assessment of people that I'm dealing with, yes, yes. So I

think it subliminally. I think that's the word I was looking

for, you know. Okay, so I know somebody you know is what I

would call a promoter, or very outgoing sales person, type of

they could sell ice to Eskimos type of person. And they might

be a red or they might be like those things would still come to

my to my mind, you can't be, they're not the end all and be

all, but it, you know, you talk faster to those people of

because they talk fast, too, and things like that. So, yeah, but

tell me a little bit more about so that's the self awareness

piece. I think it is right. It is, yeah. So that's the gateway,

you say, to Intel, it to intelligent behavior.

Dr Robin Hills: So a lot of people can be self aware without

taking a personality assessment. Of course, of course, yeah,

yeah. The way in which I use them, and the way in which my

team use them is to bring them very much into the real world,

make them live. And instead of using them as a bit of a party

tree, build upon what people know and build it more into the

subliminal, the unconscious way that you're using it, and really

reinforce that, so that they become an inherent part of the

way in which the person engages and the way in which that person

builds relation to it.

Okay, so, so self awareness in this area is, is

that something you must learn, or can it be innate, and does it

come from being a curious person?

Dr Robin Hills: I think there are certain people who have this

ability to be a lot more self aware than others, and they've

got the innateness about them, and they've got an ability to

build up relationships really well and really quickly. And

they do it, yeah, because they're good at it, because,

right, you do it, yeah, yeah.

Dr Robin Hills: And they've got this essence that we're talking

about emotional intelligence, and there are some people in the

world, like me who has to work very hard on it, really and

Well, look, I've been in this field for so long, I actually

then taken all the personality assessments that I work with. I

know them in depth, so I have great understanding of my

personality and my preferences and the way in which I behave,

and I know what my strengths are, and I also know what my

limitations are. Doesn't mean to say that I'm any better at

working with them than anybody else, but that knowledge, that

knowledge, is the first part of self awareness. And the older I

get, and the more I work with them, the better I become.

Well, that's encouraging, isn't it? Yes?

Because I think I have this argument with my with my husband

sometimes, because I'll say, well, didn't you notice that? Or

didn't you see that? Or what you know like, and it doesn't matter

what it is, it's like he doesn't have that depth of detail or

interest in that detail. You're still muted. Robin, it's okay.

Dr Robin Hills: Am I? Can you hear me now? You're good? Yeah,

no, that's great. Yes. I think the other thing to bear in mind

is that we all perceive and see the world in different ways, and

we will see it through our own lens. In our own lens. It's

based around what our preferences are and what

interests us. So you might see one thing one way, and your

partner may see something in a completely different way. You're

looking at exactly the same thing, but you can see it and he

can't, or he can see it and you can't. And also, he's got his

own interests, and he'll watch certain television programs that

you've got no interest in whatsoever, right? But that's

part of the richness of life, and that's part of the

relationship that you've got with him.

Yes, I suppose, I suppose. Do you think, though?

Why do you think that emotional intelligence gives leaders like

a powerful competitive edge? Why does it give you a step up?

Dr Robin Hills: Well, let's go back to our discussion around

artificial intelligence. Let's have a look at what artificial

intelligence does. It works with data very, very quickly. It

produces outcomes. It helps us in terms of constructing

documents. It helps us in terms of analyzing data and coming out

with some outputs that we can use. It's very good now at

generating images. It's now very good at taking those images and

converting them into videos. This is 2026, technology. So

what AI is capable of doing is doing some really good, magical

stuff, but in terms of leading and motivated and inspiring

teams, that's where leaders come in. I'm not going to be

inspired. I'm not going to be motivated by a robot. I'm going

to be inspired and motivated by another human being. And I do it

because I want to do it for them as much as wanting to do it for

me. And part of that is because I want to do the best that I

possibly can. So leaders have a very key role in terms of the

relationships and the collaboration that they have at

work in ensuring that it works, and they do that through

ethical, value based decision making. They do it through the

way in which they engage with people through empathy, and they

do it because they give people purpose, and they give people

meaning, and they can do it creatively. And these are things

that robots AI can never and will never be able to do, you

know, it's funny, I was doing something on chat

GPT yesterday, and it it spit out the answer to what I was

looking for and and I said, I'm not. I think it was some titles.

I wanted some ideas on some titles for something, a

newsletter I was doing. And I said, Well, I like this one, I

like this one, but I think I'd prefer blah, blah, blah. And it

comes back and it says, that's very insightful. Janice, I

totally agree with you. I think it's lying to me, because it

doesn't really right, and it's just the way that I've trained

it to talk to me, I guess, and in that more human tone. But you

can get caught up in that,

Dr Robin Hills: you know, we've got to go back to the fact that

it's been programmed to be particularly and overly

friendly, so to be very, very agreeable. Yes, there are

prompts out there, and I must admit, I haven't used them, but

there are prompts out there that you can put into chat GPT, and

you can ask it to put it in its deep memory. That means that

it's a lot more critical and a lot less friendly. Now, I like

the friendly side, even if it doesn't come out with the right

answer, yeah. You know, it's nice to be told, Oh, well,

that's very inspiring, Robin. Or that's very interesting, Robin.

Or you've done a good job here. So even though I've said

earlier, I don't get my motivation from the robots, it's

still very nice to hear it and

read it, isn't it? Yeah, it is, and you have to

take it with a grain of salt. That's Yes,

Dr Robin Hills: yes, that's right, that's right.

You just mentioned empathy. So in your

experience, what role does empathy play in driving

performance and engagement at work?

Dr Robin Hills: Well, look, let's go back to basics here.

I'm talking to you on your podcast. Relationship rules. You

know the answer to this? It's about understanding the other

person's perspective. It's engaging with them, because you

can feel it in the same way, and you're starting to think in the

same way. You don't have to agree with the other person. You

just have to understand, well, that could run, yeah, yes, yeah.

That component, that component is. Not available to artificial

intelligence, right? It can understand the thinking, perhaps

it can understand the context, but it can't understand the

feeling, the depth of feeling, and what that is and what that

means. It doesn't understand how much it hurts. It doesn't

understand how much it inspires, it creates that feeling of joy,

that feeling of wonder, that feeling of just getting

something really valuable, and it just doesn't understand that.

All it does is it turns out words,

yeah, it does make it Yeah. It's just missing

that component that we that warm, fuzzy that everybody

needs,

Dr Robin Hills: sorry, and everybody needs it because

they've got a wonderful tool available to them that AI has

not got, an AI will never have, and that's The human brain and

the nervous system.

Well, yes, no, yeah, okay, like when you said

the the human brain, I'm thinking, well, the robotic

brain, like it can spit out the facts just as easily as the

other piece that makes it different, right? It's doesn't

have that doesn't have that empathy, that

Dr Robin Hills: it doesn't have that squishy pink blob inside

its cranium. We really don't know how it works and how it

does what it does at a very, very deep level. And we do know

to a certain extent, where it works and how it works within

the robotic brain, because it's just very simply, a set of

algorithms and a set of pathways. So, you know, we can

dig around within the robotic brain, and we can say, Oh, this

bit is the memory. Where does the memory reside in our brain?

We don't know. Pull out something from your childhood.

Where's that come from

Yes, yes, yeah. It's funny, you know? Oh, I just

saw somebody this morning on a slight scroll I was doing, was

talking about doing, the importance of doing. It's

nothing to do with emotional intelligence, I don't think, but

he was talking about doing brain exercises every day to help with

memory and to help with, you know, the the somebody was

saying about the older I get, the less I remember. And he

said, and this guy maintains, you do need to keep practicing

to maintain your memory, but it's a skill that you have to

keep like, I always remember people's names, and my husband

never remembers people's names, and he says things like, I just,

I just don't do it. I just can't I can't remember people's names.

Well, I say you have to pay attention to it, and you have to

practice. So I agreed with this guy, this memory thing, but, but

you also mentioned interest. You have to have an interest in it.

So you it's what you're interested in doing. He can

remember the football score of any game in the past 10 years,

and that would be American football, just to clarify and

but names Forget it, you know. So there you go.

Dr Robin Hills: It's the other thing that I've learned. And

again, this is down to the uniqueness of me, not anybody

else. So what I've learned over the over the years is that I

have a very, very strong associate in the fact that I can

associate various things from way back in the past. So I can

remember events with people, and I can remember the context, and

I can remember who they are, what they are. I may not be able

to remember people's names, but I have that bit of understanding

of what we did together, and as I engage with them again, it all

comes flooding back.

Yeah, sometimes I've done that where I've run

into someone from my high school or university days, and I can

remember that whole thing that you just described, but I don't

want to tell them, because I'm embarrassed, because they don't

even remember my name. They recognize me, but they don't

remember my name, and they don't want to embarrass them.

Dr Robin Hills: Let me tell you a little story, which is very

relevant here. Last year I went on a tour, a holiday, an

archeological tour in Northern Greece, and I chose to go on it

with my dear beloved wife for 40 odd years, because the professor

that was leading the tour was a friend of mine from school. And

as boys, we would go cycling at the weekend, and we would walk

to and from school, and we got to know each. Very, very well.

Now, I hadn't been in touch with him for almost 50 years, and I

turned up on this tour, and I said to him, No. Didn't tell

him. I just wondered whether the tour operator would have given

him a list of people's names, whether it had gone down and saw

my name and recognized it. Now whether they didn't or didn't, I

don't know, because if they did, he certainly didn't recognize

the name or put the association there. So when I when I greeted

him, he was very cold and very standoffish, and for most of the

tour, he completely blanked me or avoided me. And I think a lot

of it was the fact that he had either forgotten a lot of what

had happened within his school life, or he blanked it out for

some reason, because emotionally there was such a level of

intensity he didn't want to or didn't need to remember it. Now.

He's a professor. He lives in Greece. He has his family, he

has his life in groups. He does no need to come back to the

United Kingdom. So all of that is very much in the past. But to

him, it it's not important, and to me, it's very important,

because I am who I am through the relationships that I built

up over the years. They're an inherent part of me.

And never said anything. He never said anything

to him.

Dr Robin Hills: We had certain conversations, but we didn't

have things get the conversations that I was hoping

and expect,

but you told them who you were. Oh, yes, okay,

yeah, but I did

Dr Robin Hills: share various aspects of our lives together,

like I say, we just didn't. We didn't share memories in the

same way. Oh, do you remember this happened when that

happened? Yeah? The I got to put it down to the fact that I don't

know how he was feeling, but it just wasn't the same way that I

was feeling about

fascinating, but I've experienced that too,

where, yeah, because you have no idea what that the rest of his

life brought on that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr Robin Hills: Very interesting is being empathetic. It's being

understanding, and it's not forcing my agenda onto him. It's

just going a long way there and trying to try to build up,

effectively, a new relationship.

Yes, interesting. So I wanted to mention your new

you have a new book, correct, the second edition a year ago,

the second edition of the authority guide to emotional

resilience in business.

Dr Robin Hills: Correct, that's correct. Can you hear me? Yes,

yeah, no, I just muted. Too cool.

So yeah, it's no problem. So do you want to

mention, let's talk about your book a little bit so you when

did you first release it?

Dr Robin Hills: Thank you. Janice, yes, I released the

authority guide to emotional resilience in business in 2016

and my publisher contacted me a couple of years ago and said,

Are you interested in putting a second edition? And I jumped at

the chance, because although emotional resilience and

emotional resilience in business doesn't change a lot of what has

changed has occurred within the last 10 years. We've been

through a pandemic. We've got the introduction of artificial

intelligence. A lot of work is now done virtually. So I felt it

was important to bring those aspects into the book, just to

bring it back up today. So the first edition, and for everybody

who's got the first edition, is still very, very relevant. That

forms the basis of the second edition. But what the second

edition does is it just goes into different areas that

weren't as relevant as they are today because of events that

have happened over the period of time.

So you've you've trained people all over the

world. So can you share like it when you mentioned earlier about

you know how when we were talking about the language stuff

and about different countries and the different spellings and

all of that, how is it when you're in a completely different

country, maybe English isn't their first language, and you.

You know they I guess they think differently in different places

of the world. I mean, I'm not as experiencing that. How do you

bring it together? How do you build those relationships? Do

you see differences? I guess is what I'm asking, major

differences. Or are all people the same?

Dr Robin Hills: Can I just change your your words slightly?

I don't see differences. I don't see differences. I experience

differences.

Yesterday, I was talking to someone who was all

about visual

Dr Robin Hills: leadership, yeah, rightly so. No, I'm not

observing differences. Because we can all observe differences

when we go to a different country, I think the the key

there is to experience it okay. And when I go to a country, I

can never know, and will never know what it's like to live in

that country. So what I'm trying to do is to learn and understand

and look at the relevance of what I do within their culture,

and the way to do that is to treat them like human beings. So

I'm not interested in status, I'm not interested in ego. I'm

interested in why they engage with the world, and more

importantly, I'm interested in the way in which they engage

with other people and how they build up relationships. And

utilizing that knowledge, I will work in an emotional

intelligence to help them to understand how to use and apply

emotional intelligence.

That's kind of that's really interesting,

because maybe I'm too maybe i i lump things too much

stereotypically, but that's what I'm thinking like, you know,

stereotypically, you know, the a certain, you know, like, maybe

the Asian people, that they're much more closed and and keep

things to themselves. This is just my perception, okay, and so

they don't well, and it's not true. They can be very

emotional, like I've seen it. You know that they can be, but

so I'm sort of contradicting myself, but you know, like and I

have certain perceptions of different races of people, I

guess. And how would I experience it through those

eyes? Am I helping or hurting myself? You know? How do you get

those I don't know what I'm trying to say, but intelligence,

I think it's yeah.

Dr Robin Hills: What I tend to do is to go into a workshop with

people, yes, to try and understand now, I've got my own

prejudices, I've got my beliefs. I've got my own understandings

of the country or the people that I'm working with. I've got

heartworm and I've just got to help them in terms of building

up, or what we've already talked about, an understanding of

themselves through self awareness and an understanding

of emotions and how they work with emotions, how they express

those emotions, and how they regulate them. So if we strip it

down to absolute basics, we look at the seven basic human oceans

that everyone experiences, and then we just build it up from

there. And we could there's a richness in looking at those

seven emotions, because working with those movements in your

very raw and intense way is really it underpins a lot of the

problems that people have around the relationship. So let me

mention this.

Break it down for me, yes,

Dr Robin Hills: yeah, we've got happiness, yes. So we all

experience moments of joy and happiness when things are going

the way in which we want them to. We all experience anger, and

these are the ones that people tend to gravitate towards very,

very quickly. But then there's also sadness when we lose

something very, very dear to us. There's also fear, fear of the

unknown. We experience surprise when things happen that we don't

expect. We have a feeling of emotional expression of disgust

when there's something that really goes against what we

believe and really does cause it's a lot of emotional

problems. And then there's another one in terms of content,

where I feel superior to the other person. Now, if we combine

all of those emotions, like, say, a hate pot, we get a

palliative emotion, so we can have a little bit. Of anger

here, the sadness there, and a little bit of fear there, and

that creates a certain emotional state. So what I tend to do is

to work with the seven basic human emotions and help me to

understand how those work, and how to understand how to work

with those more efficiently and more effectively, particularly

within the business environment, and if we bring it back to that,

we've got to take away a lot of the cultural prejudices Anyway,

well, because we're all trying to do the same thing.

Yeah, that's interesting, though, because it

brings to mind a story that I experienced when I was I was

invited to teach a session on networking to a group of, I

think they were like, it was like an adjunct college course

in a local college and and so this professor wanted me to talk

about networking and give them some, you know, actual

experience that they were new to Canada, I think maybe and from

different places. And I remember putting them into groups and

going around to the different groups to see I'd given them

something to, you know, some business thing to talk about.

And I remember this one woman, she just stood there the entire

time, and she was kind of behind the circle a little bit, and not

wanting to participate very much. And afterwards, I I kind

of, I asked her about it on her own, and I was so I like, I felt

really, I didn't know ignorant, I guess in that, this circle

that she was in was all men, except for her. And in her

culture, they stepped behind the men. That was the, you know,

the, I think it was Middle Eastern. She was Middle Eastern

some sort, right? And she could not bring herself to

participate. And I'm not sure that they even tried. But, you

know, they weren't all Middle Eastern. They were just, you

know, a group of guys, but, and it made me realize that there's

so much that I don't think about when I'm, you know, in front of

a group of people. Now, everybody, you know, it's a

multicultural community. This was quite a few years ago, but I

didn't it wasn't as as relevant, or as you know, in the forefront

for me to think about it. So I'm sure that's all has to be taken

into consideration in every situation, even though you take

it back to the the seven parts of,

Dr Robin Hills: what did you call it? Human emotion,

human emotion, yeah, the human emotions. Then

there's still those other things that are there that have to look

Dr Robin Hills: very much so. And what I do in these sort of

circumstances is I say to people right at the beginning of the

training, look, I'm going to create a learning environment

for you. It's up to you to learn through this environment,

because your individual needs are going to be very different

from each other, and they're very different from the way

anxiety that you need training. So all I can do is to facilitate

you to have the right environment in order to learn.

So it's up to you to take away from this workshop what it is

that you need it. Also, it's a nice, easy way to get rid of any

dissenters, because you're actually saying to them, Look,

this is your opportunity to learn. If you don't want to

learn, it's up to you, right? And we've all run training

workshops where people just aren't interested. They're very

hostile. So, you know, in those sort of situations, I don't have

hostages, because I've created that, that statement,

yeah, that that means that you are much more

highly aware than I was at that time.

Dr Robin Hills: I think you are going to be far more aware of

what you were at that time as well. And you've grown, and

you've developed, and you've got that understanding because of

that experience, exactly.

But stayed with me, right? It stay there, you

know? And there's all sorts of things like that, so, so

absolutely good,

Dr Robin Hills: because that's all part of you, learning and

growing, and I've got various stories and various skeletons in

my cup of coffee in front of you.

Yeah, no, that's really good. That's really good.

Okay, thank you. So, is there one story or one situation or

one memory that comes to you from your across the world that.

Is maybe an example of joy, of something that happened.

Dr Robin Hills: Look, I think it's only fair to say that I do

experience that feeling of joy at the end of a training

workshop, where I feel that people have had some level of

transformation. I can see it, I can feel it, I can be sense it.

And it goes back to what I've said to you in terms of

facilitating the workshop. It is entirely up to me to create that

learning environment. And then you rightly said, it's a piece

of having that awareness so my sensory acuity is such that I'm

continually scanning their lives. And so if somebody is not

engaging, it's up to me to go along and find out what the

issue is. It may be that they just have a bereavement, they've

had some bad news, they've just spoken to their boss, and

there's a major issue that's right at the back of their mind.

Whatever I do and say, it's not going to take that away from

them. So if they are feeling a certain level of pain, it's

supposed to working with it. But more often than not, most people

really do engage. They get a lot, a lot from it, and the

feedback that I have is imperfectly positive, but I'm

finding that very, very rewarding. At the end of the

day, I'm absolutely shattered, and all I want to do is to go

another lie down and have a bit of a sleep. But it also goes

back to looping back to right at the beginning of our

conversation, but it fits very much with my personality type,

because for those who know what Myers Briggs is, I'm an ENFP,

which means that I'm creatively looking out to do the best for

people and helping People to the best for themselves, and that is

inherently who I am, what I am and what I'm about

that's beautiful. I think that the more I've

spoken to you, the more I can see how no I can feel. It

actually is how much you feel when you're talking about what

you're doing and how it is a passion. And I can see that. And

you think, I think that you think about what you're going to

say before you say it.

Dr Robin Hills: Well, if I do, it's very, very quick, and I

probably don't notice it. But again, nature, or is it trading?

Yeah, I don't know. It's Anyway, okay,

Dr Robin Hills: but thank you, Chad, yes, thank you.

If there's one takeaway that you would like my

listeners and my viewers to remember about emotional

intelligence and leadership together, what would

Dr Robin Hills: it be the future is human, and the future is

around the way in which you are emotionally engaging into the

world. What is your purpose? What is it that fires up? Fires

you up? What is it that motivates you, and what is it

that inspires you? If you don't know, go and find out, because

ultimately you will then understand yourself better, and

when it happens, you can feel it better. Beautiful.

That's beautiful. So just before we wrap up, then

just a couple of quick fire questions, if you don't mind. So

my favorite word is curiosity, and I would love to know your

take on it. Do you believe that curiosity is innate or learned?

And part two, what are you most curious about these days?

Dr Robin Hills: Curiosity is an interesting word because the

moment people talk about curiosity, my brain pathways are

such that it goes down an avenue curiosity killed the cat, which

is an expression that we use in the United Kingdom to suggest

that curiosity is not necessarily a good thing

and satisfaction brought it back. It always is.

That's the second part of the question. I've never heard that

there, yes,

Dr Robin Hills: but I'm particularly curious. I'm

really, really interested in finding things out, and you can

only do that through curiosity. And again, this is an element

that we can do as humans that AI can't. So let's nurture

curiosity. What am I curious about? I've mentioned earlier in

our conversation around taking an image and converting it into

a video. I'm very curious about how I can get AI to work for me

some of the new things that it's doing in the future to help me

to bring learning to my online courses in a much more. Gaging

way. They're very 2025 I now need to make them 2026 relevant,

and that's where my curiosity is driving me. And look, Janice,

we're having this conversation on the January. Not even a month

into January, I'm already curious.

That's fun. How do you take in most of the like,

do you your information these days? Are you a reader? I know

you probably are a better reader. Or, like, still need to

hold a book or an e reader or video or listen. What's your

favorite motive?

Dr Robin Hills: All of them. Okay, I think, I think what I

will do is use all of them to reinforce my learning to the

other modes. So yes, I'll read about then I'll listen to

somebody talking to them about it, then I'll look at a video,

then I'll go and experiment. So I like all of them, but that's

my preference, and what I'm going to realize is that other

people don't necessarily share that preference for all of them,

right?

Okay, I may have asked you this when I first met

you, but last question very important, who's your favorite

soccer team.

Dr Robin Hills: Who's my favorite soccer team? I am one

of the most unusually I know now I remember the answer, yeah,

because I have no interest in soccer whatsoever.

Just seems English.

Dr Robin Hills: Here I am in the heart of soccer lab, yes, less

than a mile away is the oldest soccer ground in the United

Kingdom. It's in, it's in little village called Turton, behind

the church, behind the parish church. Okay, there is nothing,

absolutely nothing there to suggest that it's so relevant in

the field of software, with a little plan right at the front

of the softer ground, relaying that fact it's not a stadium.

Ah, okay, okay, no, it's just, it's just a patch of green with

a visual post and a bit of paint on the ground. So to answer your

answer your question, what my favorite soccer team is, is I am

threatened by other people's passion around doing the sport.

So if they talk to me and they're passionate about it, I

love listening, but don't ask me any questions about something,

because I don't know one end of a ball from the other.

Love it. Well, thanks for being so honest,

Robin. That's so funny, okay? Because I know how, how in

Manchester. I mean, I was a kid when I lived there, so I don't

remember anything about it from there, just from my parents in

that respect. And I mean, you were either red or blue, it

wasn't. There was no, right? Yeah, anyway, but this has been

lovely. Thank you so much for spending time with me and my

audience, and I would like you to let my audience know if they

enjoyed what they heard. Where can they find more of you? And I

will put it in the show notes. So how can people get hold of

you?

Dr Robin Hills: Robin, people can get hold of me through my

website, which is EI for change.com that's ei numberport

change.com they can go and have a look at my courses, which is

HTTPS, colon, backslash, backslash, emotional. Dot

intelligence, dot policies.

You know, you don't have to have all that

stuff anymore. I think it's just the

Dr Robin Hills: name of the website. Well, I know all the

bits at the beginning, if I don't put it in, I don't know.

It doesn't necessarily come up. So I say it, and then people can

find me on LinkedIn. I was an early adopter within LinkedIn.

So I got the URL, which is just Robin hills,

so yes, and I have Janice Porter too.

Dr Robin Hills: It's wonderful, isn't it? So, you know, I don't

have a load of numbers and letters after mine. You don't

have to have those anymore, though you can do I, I know, I

know. But a lot of people, interestingly enough, over the

holiday period, I was looking a lot of people's LinkedIn

profiles, and then still got them.

I know that's part of what I lure people in

with. I'll change it with them, yeah, and okay. And your book is

called, again, the authority guide to emotional resilience in

business, Second Edition. And where can they find that

Dr Robin Hills: they can find that on Amazon, they can find

that in the US version of Amazon, and they can find it in

the Canadian version of Amazon as well as in the UK version.

Perfect.

That's wonderful. So thank you. Thank you so much.

And I know that Robin has reminded us that emotional

intelligence isn't a soft. Skill. It's a success skill in a

world that's increasingly automated, connection is still

what drives trust, collaboration and lasting results. So if you

would like to learn more about Robin and his work, I will put

those places in the show notes. Basically, e, i The number four,

change.com ei for change.com and as always, in business and in

life, remember, relationships rule. Thank you so much. You.