How to Shatter the 30-Employee Ceiling

If your team's growth has stalled, examine whether your managers are leading through expertise or curiosity. This article originally published in Entrepreneur. To read the full article, visit Entrepreneur.

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, researcher Eva de Mol identified a critical element of startup success: that experience alone won’t make a team successful. And data from Adecco USA confirms that experience isn’t everything, as 62 percent of hiring teams report reducing the experience needed for new hires. In her research, de Mol found that soft skills like shared passion and a cohesive vision are far more important traits to encourage in a startup team.

Yet during early team-building phases, most founders or managers lead primarily through expertise. In other words, founders and entrepreneurs share their vast knowledge stores, leading others to immediate solutions when problems arise. This is akin to sharing the answers to a test, but top performers don’t want or need that kind of hand-holding. Many even find it insulting. Plus, it relies on one person’s experience, depriving the team of more diverse thoughts and ideas, especially as the company grows and encounters new challenges. This leading by experience often causes companies or managers at larger organizations to hit two team-growth ceilings: one at 10 employees and the other at 30. These lags can cause an extreme growth bottleneck, especially at the 30-employee mark. Instead of leading by experience, leaders and managers must completely shift their styles to accommodate further growth. Otherwise, they will languish with fewer than three dozen workers and possibly stall further scaling.

According to Census Bureau research, 89 percent of America’s nearly six million businesses have fewer than 20 people on the payroll. And Guidant Financial data has discovered that small companies say it’s tougher than ever to woo and keep talent. For that reason alone, fledgling operations should rethink old-style management techniques to reduce the likelihood of constant turnover and disengagement. Besides, leading by expertise simply isn’t efficient when one person becomes the go-to authority on everything.

Case in point: For quite a while, I was an expertise leader with a line of people outside the door, hundreds of emails and a ton of stress. A wiser leadership style for a company that’s hit 20 or more team members is leading with curiosity. Questions lead; answers follow. If you aren’t leading with questions, then you’re following with answers. Leaders who put curiosity foremost ask questions to elicit ideas and lead people to their own solutions. Those concepts are often imaginative and fascinating because they come from different mindsets. By revamping my style from authoritarian to coach, I gave my people the freedom to make our company better and break through the 30-person glass ceiling.

If you’re struggling because people leave before you can take your business to the next level, consider whether you could benefit from a leadership style overhaul. Below are several strategies I’ve trusted to move my team from merely existing to prospering.

1. Hand out autonomy raises.

Micromanaging can be helpful in some situations, but across the board, it doesn’t make sense. Plus, overmanagement keeps workers from experiencing job satisfaction. Research from the University of Birmingham in the UK revealed that employees who experienced more autonomy also experienced a number of benefits, such as improved well-being.

Generate a “table of autonomy” outlining which actions or operations require approval and which lie in the hands of the doers. As you work to build a diverse team, you’ll likely find that some employees need different guidelines than others. Once you’ve agreed upon those guidelines, allow your best staff members to have freedom within them. By generating a playbook for your talent to gain more authority, you show that mutual trust is within their control.

2. Start questions with "what" or "how."

Mistakes will happen. Stop asking everyone why they erred when they make a misstep. Instead, present a future-forward approach by treating all experiences as learning opportunities. Ask questions like, “What will you do differently after this experience?” or, “How might this experience change the way you operate moving forward?”

The more you change your approach to snags, the richer and more honest your dialogue with people will be. They’ll begin to model your questions in their own interactions, helping them become better at evaluating their blunders and coming up with innovative solutions.

Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs was known to ask a few pointed questions to help drive the tech giant toward success. Simple inquiries like, “What is not working here?” and, “Why not?” helped him get to the root of problems and encourage employees to offer solutions that would improve the company’s products and offerings.

3. Ask, don’t tell.

When you feel the desire to give your team answers, pull back. Instead, seek to learn what’s in their heads and hearts by asking questions. For instance, when you prepare for meetings, come up with a list of inquiries instead of outlining what you want to tell attendees.

As data culled by Digital Synopsis notes, 95 percent of Google searchers stop at page one. In other words, a lot of people just want to be told what to do. Challenge your people to think for themselves, to value a variety of diverse opinions and to be inquisitive rather than look to you for the right answer every time. The more they hone this skill, the more native it will become.

4. Brainstorm with purpose.

When you encounter a big problem, gather your team. Ask them about their top three options, their ideal outcomes and the resources they’d need to make their ultimate dream solution a reality. Encourage them to identify the true problem source, the assumptions they have about the issue, the lessons learned thus far and what’s holding them back from taking further actions. Ask everyone to participate, because as you build out a team of people with differing backgrounds, you’ll be more likely to hear a variety of new opinions about problems and ideas for solving them.

You should participate little in the activity -- just step in to reiterate your questions if needed. Within an hour, you should be able to gather quite a bit of information that you can use to follow up with key individuals and drive initiatives. Not only will you lead others to answers, but you’ll serve as a mentor rather than an omniscient ruler.

For an example of excellent brainstorming in action, look no further than Pixar’s Notes Day. Once a year, the production company halts all other work to make way for an all-employee brainstorm session. Former CEO Ed Catmull said he views his leadership position as a chance to support his employees, not to get in the spotlight. Offering Notes Day presents Pixar with an opportunity to do just that and ensure all voices are heard throughout the organization.

Worried that you can’t seem to get traction when it comes to boosting your team’s numbers? Investigate your leadership practices. Focusing on leading from a place of curiosity could make all the difference.

The Employee Perks That Actually Work

Ping-pong tables are not a recruitment strategy. Yet some members of leadership and human resource teams think setting up game rooms and throwing occasional pizza parties somehow make their organizations super attractive to potential talent. That’s not the case. This article originally appeared on Glassdoor for Employers. To read the full article, visit Glassdoor for Employers.

Establish benefits that will actually matter to your employees, then share them with potential applicants you’re recruiting to help turn them into new hires. It’s tough enough to find good people: About half of human resource managers have job openings that are staying open longer than usual or that they can’t fill because of a lack of qualified applicants.

When you do unearth gems, you want them to feel your strong culture from the first impression. Here are the perks you need to set up to attract new rock stars and how you can showcase them during the hiring process:

1. Hand out authority raises.

At some point, raising paychecks no longer raises morale, and offering your star performers competitive wages won’t be enough to keep them around. Giving them more autonomy through an authority raise can be the ideal solution, and increased autonomy can play a huge role in team success (Australian Leadership Foundation, 2016)

For current employees, consider giving your top dogs wider decision-making berths. Does a stellar sales director need the go-ahead to authorize discounts of more than $5,000? Up the amount to $10,000 to give her a bump in pride and control. And during interviews, turn the tables to let the candidates ask questions — especially questions about salary, bonuses, and raises. This will show that you respect candidates’ time and encourage curiosity. They’ll also appreciate your openness on a typically taboo subject.

2. Provide a taste of luxury.

Most people will never own a Porsche. But what if your company purchased a used Porsche to hand out when employees achieve exceptional successes? The talent would get to drive it for a weekend, showing off to family, friends, and neighbors. It would be a huge ego hike — and a reason to talk up the company as a great place to work. Admittedly, a sports car or exotic Bentley convertible isn’t a cheap investment. If that’s not in the cards for your company, try something else, like giving successful employees a “blank check” gift card for dinner at an expensive restaurant in your city.

Either way, you’re showing employees that you trust them and giving them an experience they’ll remember as a reward for their accomplishments. And while you can’t let prospective employees test-drive a Mercedes, you can give them a tour. Like all exceptional tour guides, you should have a playbook of great ideas. For example, knock on the CEO’s office door and facilitate an “impromptu” chat. How many initial interviews include a warm welcome from the C-suite?

3. Offer on-site fitness training.
Healthy employees feel confident, tend to fight off sickness, and have improved stamina. Offer everyone on your team a comfortable place to work out with a treadmill and functional weight trainer. It will cost less than $5,000 and will immediately show your commitment.

Take it one step further by hiring a personal trainer to come to your facility for a few hours a week. Employees could meet with the trainer in groups or pairs, encouraging them to get fit while meeting people from other departments. It’s a great way to facilitate connections across siloed verticals and hierarchies and to foster company wide camaraderie. Advertise gym and trainer access in every job description you post, and when candidates come in for interviews, ensure your company tour swings by the gym for a sneak peek.

4. Cater lunch and learn sessions.

Sixty-one percent of professionals would hand over work-related data to have the chance to develop themselves on the job (Accenture, Decoding Organizational DNA, 2019). At the same time, most team members don’t think much of the food their companies provide (ZeroCater, 2017). Why not kill two birds with one stone by simultaneously upping your cuisine game and setting up opportunities for whole groups to learn critical new skills?

In my experience, it works like magic. Our office provided lunch one day a week. During the lunch, one employee would teach something to the rest of the group. The topic didn’t have to be a deep dive: We had only about 30 minutes to share. Still, 52 weeks’ worth of content added up. It also forced everyone to take a stab at public speaking, which turned out to be a huge advantage for people who hadn’t done so before. During interviews, mention these sessions to show that your company values professional development. If you ever have an interview at the same time as a session, consider having the applicant sit in. If not, consider connecting the applicant with an employee who recently led a session.

By all means, keep the Pac-Man arcade game by the water cooler. Just don’t rely on it to do the recruiting work of more essential perks aimed at constructing a tight-knit culture in which people can thrive. Learn more about employee engagement and leadership by watching my speeches.

 Krister Ungerböck is the global expert on the Language of Leadership. Krister is a captivating keynote speaker, a coach to high-performance CEOs, and former CEO of one of the largest family-owned software companies in the world. Based upon his experience observing business leaders in more than 40 countries, building businesses in six and living in three, he shares insight into leadership that bridges between business, relationships, and family.

NPR Podcast: Applying 'The Language Of Leadership' at Work and at Home

Listen to the radio interview here on National Public Radio

Krister Ungerböck often works with high-profile CEOs, coaching them on best practices when it comes to leadership, communication and employee engagement. But his efforts to help people lead well extend beyond the upper echelons of organizational management and into everyday workplaces as well as family life.

On Monday’s St. Louis on the Air, St. Louis Public Radio’s Jeremy D. Goodwin talked with Ungerböck as he looked to travel to St. Louis a little later in the week to speak  at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

5 Entrepreneurs Share How They've Handled Client Disasters

Client disasters don’t have to be catastrophic. To read the full article, visit Forbes.

When customers go from being satisfied buyers to brand haters, companies should take the opportunity to learn what inspired the change and prevent it from happening in the future — or even turn it around in the moment.

Sometimes, though, clients are bound to stay unhappy. If the company stops offering an unprofitable service that a small group of clients needs, the former buyers will be upset no matter what. Rather than bumble through changes hoping for the best, businesses facing client-related mishaps must learn to anticipate potential strife and recognize when compromise is (or isn’t) possible.

Keeping Client Disasters to a Minimum

It’s imperative to anticipate certain customer issues and train your staff to handle those issues. The more you prepare your team for what it might encounter, the better it will do when faced with a customer service issue. During my time working in the consumer products and retail business, I’ve also learned that, as an owner and manager, I can defuse most customer service situations.

If you elevate a problem to a senior person, people tend to feel more confident that you are taking them seriously and care about their problem. In addition, even if the situation calls for you stepping in, it’s crucial to empower your team to handle customer complaints and to support them in their decisions.

Keeping customers happy isn’t just nice for the company’s reputation — it has a direct effect on the bottom line. Companies that provide great experiences enjoy higher rates of retention, customer satisfaction, and opportunities to upsell. Where price used to be the biggest differentiator between companies, the customer experience has taken the throne. More than four out of five buyers are willing to pay more for exceptional experiences.

No matter how much companies prepare, however, a few client disasters will always slip through the cracks. Someone’s unreasonable expectation will go unfulfilled, an employee will make an unforgivable blunder, or the forces of the universe will simply decide that the relationship needs some strife. When that happens, companies need to know how to handle the situation without losing face — and without letting one customer’s bad day lead to widespread displeasure.

After all, as much as companies love good clients, unhappy customers can do far more damage than happy clients can do good. One study by Dimensional Research found that 95 percent of people who experience bad customer service tell someone else about it, with 54 percent expressing their displeasure to at least five others — compared to just 33 percent who share a good experience.

Faced with these stats, I asked five entrepreneurs and business leaders to share with me what they’ve done in the face of client disasters:

1. Matt Clervi, CEO of Fresh Ideas Management

Growth is great, but it can make longtime customers feel like afterthoughts when personal service becomes less attentive. Matt Clervi knows this all too well. “We were growing fast, and one of our first clients said that our growth had robbed them of our attention,” he said. “They weren’t feeling the love anymore. They threatened to take their business elsewhere.”

Clervi believes that deep listening and hard questions are the key to salvaging damaged relationships. After that client complained, he challenged everyone within his company to slow down. They took time to listen to the challenges of their client and put timelines around a solution. Clervi said it taught his team members to be grateful for growth, but not to allow the rate of growth to lessen the experience they’re able to provide clients.

“When you appreciate the people who helped you grow and consistently listen to them, you put yourself in a position to consistently succeed,” he explained. He added that his company reviewed its culture and hiring practices and implemented techniques to better identify when a candidate is self-aware and able to slow down and ask hard questions.

2. Erik Huberman, CEO of Hawke Media

When small blunders carry massive costs, deciding who foots the bill can be a treacherous prospect. Erik Huberman shared a time when his company had a glitch occur with a client’s email system, which meant a discount email offer intended for a small subset of his client’s customers was sent to a much wider audience. When he recommended that the company retract the discount, the client declined — then decided not to pay its several outstanding bills for Huberman’s company’s services.

“They had asked me to just keep working and the bills would get handled,” he said. “They basically lied and took advantage.” After hearing that they would not be paying, Huberman said he told the company that he could get a lawyer to collect his money. The client’s founder began texting him slurs and threatening to drag his name through the mud.

That’s when Huberman said he made another mistake: “I jabbed back, threatened, sank to the same level. Then I said, ‘Good luck with marketing,’ and not to call me again. Then the other partner in the company called me apologizing and begging us to keep working together.” Huberman said his company ended up making some money back, but it was the beginning of the end for that client relationship. If Huberman could do it again, he said he wouldn’t let emotions guide the way he handled the situation. Customers can afford to get heated, but business leaders cannot.

3. Caroline Santiago, Founder and CEO of Utopia Life Consulting Inc.

Clients will be hesitant to work with a person whom someone else has selected, a phenomenon Caroline Santiago experienced firsthand. When the chief operating officer at one client company hired Santiago to work with the chief technology officer, the CTO felt saddled with an unasked-for partner and wanted nothing to do with her. Santiago arranged a daily 9 a.m. check-in meeting with the CTO, whom she described as an independent thinker and leader, but when she showed up on the first day to meet him, he didn’t show. He then ignored her attempts to meet with him the next several days.

Eager to get started on work the firm was paying her to do, Santiago met with the CTO’s technology department leadership team over the course of three days. After those three days of meetings, the CTO showed up to the scheduled daily check-in meeting with Santiago, but his reaction wasn’t what she was expecting. “The CTO proceeded to yell and scream at me, stating he didn’t want me here and asking what authority I had to schedule meetings and work with his leadership team,” she recalled.

“I told him he should interview me right now for this position, and if he did not think I was a good candidate for the role, I would not show up to work tomorrow.” The CTO’s shock at her proposal showed in his face. That on-the-spot interview went well, and Santiago received the buy-in she needed from the CTO to keep the relationship going. Santiago said that, through this experience, she learned to make sure she is able to speak with all key client stakeholders before signing a client agreement. Clients don’t always want the world. Usually, they just want to feel like they have a choice in the matter.

4. Josh Hudgins, Managing Partner and Director of US Sales at Global Ecom Partners

Every company makes mistakes. But the best ones take responsibility for them, especially when those mishaps occur early in the client relationship. Josh Hudgins learned this lesson when his company onboarded a new client but failed to walk that client through the onboarding process. That omission led to a lag in shipping time to the end customer, which was soon caught and corrected. Unfortunately, Hudgins’ company also failed to realize it had overlooked the part of the onboarding process in which the client’s in-house marketing is moved to its platform. That oversight resulted in zero marketing for all of the client’s products for a month.

“The most significant dilemma was maintaining our client’s confidence in our ability to execute what we had promised and not leave us after such a short honeymoon period,” he said. “Luckily, we had set the expectation that there would be bumps in the transition process but let them know we were committed to resolving any issues quickly.”

Hudgins reminds anyone in his situation that deals are not over at closing. They are a series of commitments, each of which requires appropriate fulfillment — a lesson he learned through this client mishap. The poor onboarding experience and transition led his company to create a new onboarding checklist. “This checklist allows complete transparency and accountability to everyone involved in the new client process, which has resulted in a better client experience,” he said.

5. Krister Ungerboeck, Strategic Planning and Leadership Consulting Expert

Krister Ungerboeck relies on what he calls “the language of license,” meaning that clients need to know when they’re getting in the way of a successful partnership. With this in mind, when one of his clients kept pushing their agreement to the bottom of the list and making his team run behind schedule on a project, Ungerboeck took action.

He and the client’s CEO engineered an agreement to give each other’s teams permission to raise red flags. That way, if a project is running behind schedule, each team feels comfortable enforcing the schedule. Ungerboeck said: “This discussion gave our teams authority to hold one another accountable. I call this move ‘the permission play,’ and it’s imperative to my leadership playbook.”

Businesses should not wait for clients to reach the brink of disaster before getting firm. Clients would much rather have a tough conversation early than missed revenue later. Ungerboeck added: “Be sure to give your team permission as a group rather than individually. Communicating this to the group will have a more powerful impact.”

Not every client relationship can be salvaged, but every business needs to know how to handle things when something goes wrong. By remaining flexible and keeping the lines of communication open, businesses can minimize client disasters and ensure every customer experience is as great as it can be.

People Who Love Their Jobs Work for This Kind of Boss

Want to be a leader who's revered, not reviled? Do three of the most important things that empathetic bosses do every day. To read the full article, visit Inc.

Money alone doesn't make talented, motivated, career-minded people get out of bed. What does is a sense of purpose, a feeling they're making a direct impact. Regrettably, many leaders still haven't gotten this memo.

As a consequence, is it any wonder that we envision Michael Scott of NBC's The Office when we picture the quintessential bad boss? Troublesome, emotionally confusing managers abound, often prompting high employee turnover, low office morale, and constant client churn with their management style. Unless you're interested in becoming a memorable boss for all the wrong reasons, you'll want to learn how to make your employees feel valued, not undermined.

Go from being a downer to a defender

Far too many leaders remain stuck on the notion that they have to manage by force. In some cases, this comes from the belief that barking orders will cause their people to "get $#!+ done." However, heavy-handed approaches to managing talented teams will quickly devolve into disengagement.

To be sure, switching gears from gruff, demanding manager to supportive mentor and coach isn't simple. Nor does it happen happen overnight. It takes a willingness to learn the power of empathy, something that's lacking in 60 percent of leaders.

I discovered how effective it can be to praise and recognize others publicly as well as empathize proactively. I took steps to increase my emotional quotient when I learned about the chasm between the way employees view empathetic and non-empathetic bosses. Workers tend to love their jobs when their managers show empathy; conversely, they merely clock in when leaders have a dictatorial management style.

If you aren't bettering yourself in the areas of humility and team empowerment, I recommend you try doing what the best bosses do.

1. Look for opportunities to build trust each day.

Trust between a boss and an employee doesn't occur after one positive encounter. It unfolds over time as the worker comes to realize that the leader isn't going to throw sudden curveballs or fly into a rage. Look for ways to show your employees you believe in their judgment. After all, that's why you hired them.

Put the brakes on micromanagement. Give workers the freedom to make choices, then allow them to proceed unfettered. Will they always succeed? No. When they make mistakes, show empathy rather than immediately withdrawing your trust. Come from a position of understanding and walk them through their decisions. Treat them not as failures but rather as talented individuals who misjudged a situation, an outcomes, the data, etc. The next time you give them a task, encourage them to use their past experiences as a guide to map out better solutions.

2. Silence your inner know-it-all.

As a manager who has tripped on his gift of gab more than once, I couldn't be more aligned with the advice from leadership consultant Krister Ungerboeck. "How many times do we march into a conference room with a list of things to say?" he asks. "Yet it's far more prudent, productive, and profitable to shift from having all the answers to asking all the questions."

I've been guilty of this, and I bet you have, too. Speaking over everyone and having all the answers just leads to disengagement among team members, as Ungerboeck points out. In time, employees with exciting ideas may start to doubt themselves, assuming that only you can run the show. Instead of losing fantastic, innovative ideas from your team, take a backseat role more often than not in group settings. Oh, and banish "We tried that before, and it didn't work" from your phrasebook.

3. Walk out of the bathroom with toilet paper attached to your shoe.

OK, so you don't literally have to do this, but do be humble. Show employees you are a real human and not some kind of would-be superhero. Rather than puff out your chest at how amenable a tough client became thanks to your risky strategy, reveal how you wondered whether your gamble would pay off. Talk about your actions not in terms of self-satisfaction but self-awareness.

When you express humility, you change the way employees see you. A research project published in Organization Science showed links between retention and humble bosses due to the resulting job satisfaction and employee engagement. How does this translate into everyday life on the job? Two words: Be real.

You don't have to be a flawless boss to master leadership traits that will keep your employees eager to tackle projects on behalf of your brand. In fact, it's better if you're not! You just have to make changes to your approach to others, starting with the empathy you feel and show.

PUBLISHED ON: DEC 20, 2018

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

Do You Struggle With EI? Three Hacks Will Help You Boost Your EQ

Emotional intelligence has been in the leadership spotlight for decades, but that doesn’t mean today’s leaders are any better at identifying, evaluating, controlling, or perceiving emotions in themselves or others. To read the full article, visit CEO World.

Despite a TalentSmart study that linked high emotional intelligence with strong workplace performance (and Google’s statistical findings that depict EI as more important than technical skills), executives continue to lag behind in the empathy department.

What’s behind the C-suite’s struggle to understand colleagues’ feelings, needs, and expectations? As one Harvard Business Review article explained, the higher up in the corporate ranks someone is, the higher his or her tendency toward inflated ego and self-interest. Not surprisingly, this leads to a disconnect between managers and employees, which can directly affect engagement by up to 70 percent, according to Gallup.

While I’ve always had a strong logical understanding of EI, I assumed it simply involved me telling others how I was feeling. I was mistaken. What I’ve come to understand is that EI isn’t based on being transparent with your initial emotions but on diving beneath the surface to find out what’s motivating those emotions. It can be difficult to stop from lashing out automatically, as leadership involves wielding power and making immediate choices. But when emotions are involved, executives must learn to hold back.

The ABCs of building better EI

Wherever you are on the journey toward true emotional intelligence, you can enhance your progress with these three strategies:

1. Recognize anger as an alarm bell.

The next time you find yourself disappointed in your employees, pause and take a moment to assess your emotional state. Which emotions are you actually experiencing? Fear? Frustration? Confusion? You need to flesh out the true cause of your primary reaction. Think of anger like an alarm bell; it isn’t a primary emotion, after all.

It can be hard to admit when you’re terrified that a client will jump ship because a project wasn’t finished on time. Sure, you may be mad, but you’re more worried than anything. It’s more constructive to communicate that worry than to simply lash out without addressing the root cause of your ire.

Anger disconnects people, whereas primary emotions like fear or shame connect people. Most people don’t want their boss to be afraid or embarrassed, but being honest about those feelings make you more human and relatable. Your workers will appreciate your candor.

1. Beef up your emotional vocabulary.

There is research that part of improved emotional intelligence is simply having a deeper vocabulary to describe our emotions. For example, frustration and disappointment are variations of anger. An important element of EI is knowing the nuances.

We all understand basic emotions — happiness, anger, sadness, and so on. What separates those with high EI scores from people who struggle to empathize is the ability to identify secondary and tertiary emotions such as sentimentality, fascination, and skepticism. After all, how can you truly feel an emotion if you don’t have the words to describe it?

Being able to pinpoint precise emotional reactions in yourself helps you clarify your own feelings, but it also enables you to recognize them in others. If you aren’t able to acknowledge situations that make you feel hurt, then you’re more likely to say hurtful things to others and not understand the consequences of those actions.

1. Practice sensing how others feel.

If you aren’t an innately intuitive person, you might have trouble predicting others’ emotions. Therefore, you need to use trial and error to educate yourself in this arena. Need some help? Read “Nonviolent Communication,” a book written 50 years ago by a peace activist who created a communication technique to help defuse race riots. One of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s first orders of business upon taking the helm was to recommend the book to his leaders so they could practice spotting and validating others’ emotions.

The language of nonviolent communication looks like this: “You are feeling _______ because you are needing _______.” By filling in the blanks here, we can experiment with identifying others’ emotions. People are more likely to correct us and tell us the actual emotion they are experiencing when we use this language.

Over time, you’ll get more accustomed to stifling knee-jerk emotions and controlling potentially negative impulses. Taking a moment to understand others lessens the likelihood that you’ll unconsciously say something that could potentially ruin a good relationship forever. Something you say in a split second of frustration can stick with a person for years; it’s not worth the risk.

The fundamental definition of “empathy” is the ability to understand another person’s emotions, and that’s the key to emotional intelligence. Fortunately, you don’t have to be born empathetic to develop the EI skill set. You simply need to recognize your need for improvement, actively pursue emotional knowledge, and pay attention to the reactions of yourself and others. In time, you’ll unravel the mystery of EI success.