The Evolving Leader

Permission to Feel with Dr. Marc Brackett

• Marc Brackett • Season 7 • Episode 15

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During this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are in conversation with Dr Marc Brackett. As the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Marc is professor in the Child Study Center at Yale, and author of the best-selling book 'Permission to Feel'. Marc’s next book ‘Dealing With Feeling – Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want’ is due for release in September 2025.

An award-winning researcher for 25 years, Marc has published 175 scholarly articles on the role of Emotional Intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, physical and mental health, and workplace performance. He is also the lead developer of RULER, an evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning (SEL) that has been adopted by over 5,000 schools across the globe, improving the lives of millions of children and adults. 

In addition to being featured frequently across media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Good Morning America and more, Marc is also in demand as a keynote speaker and is co-founder of Oji Life Lab, a corporate learning firm that develops innovative digital learning systems for emotional intelligence.


Referenced during this episode:

‘How We Feel’ app: https://howwefeel.org/

‘Dealing With Feelings’ webcast: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRM-kVGeBRqdXAf7q7ut91HZQlfZSx_VX&si=oLRQ11SXM1GqTEgC

‘Permission to Feel: Unlock the power of emotions to help yourself and your children thrive’ (Quercus, 2019) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Permission-Feel-emotions-yourself-children/dp/1787478815/

 

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

 

 

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Jean Gomes:

Think about this for a second. Emotional Intelligence has been a mainstream concept for over 30 years. It's been studied, measured and championed as a critical leadership skill. We know that leaders who excel in emotional intelligence build stronger teams, make better decisions and drive higher performance, and yet, here we are, decades of research, best selling books, training programs and executive coaching later, and the emotional intelligence gap in organizations remains as wide as ever. Let's look at the data. A 22 study from the World Economic Forum still ranks emotional intelligence as one of the top skills for leadership and workforce success. Yet research by Gallup shows that only one in three employees worldwide strongly agree that they work in an environment where they feel valued, heard and emotionally safe. Even more telling, studies by McKinsey and Deloitte reveal that while 90% of executives say emotional intelligence is critical to leadership. Only 30% of organizations actively train for it. In other words, we acknowledge its importance, but we fail to embed it into our cultures. So the question isn't whether emotional intelligence matters. We know it does. The real question is, why aren't organizations taking it seriously. Why do companies still prioritize technical skills over emotional agility? Why is emotional literacy still seen as soft when it's at the heart of high performance, trust and resilience? Today, we're joined by one of the world's leading voices on emotions, Professor Marc Brackett. He spent his career, proving that how we feel shapes how we think, how we lead and how we perform. If business continues to ignore the Power of Emotions, what are they losing and more importantly, how do we finally make emotional intelligence stick tune in for an important conversation on the evolving leader. I

Scott Allender:

Hey, friends, welcome to The Evolving Leader, the show born from the belief that we need deeper, more accountable and more human leadership to confront the world's biggest challenges. I'm Scott Allender

Jean Gomes:

and I'm Jean Gomes.

Scott Allender:

Hello, Mr. Gomes. How are you feeling today?

Jean Gomes:

That is a big question Given our guest, so I'm gonna tread carefully here and say. I'm gonna say, actually, I'm feeling pretty good. I had a great morning with with a client who was very expansive and open to the thinking that we were we were up to. So I felt, you know, I felt very valued and made a good contribution in that conversation. So I'm feeling great, and I'm really looking forward to this conversation. It's been, it's been a while coming. So, yeah, how are you feeling, Scott?

Scott Allender:

I'm feeling grateful. I'm feeling settled. I'm feeling just a lot of positive emotions this week, because it's very positive from a work perspective. And I, like you, Jean, have been filled with anticipation for the conversation we're about to have, because our guest is someone we've long wanted on the show someone who's inspired each of our work. And I know Jean you featured his research in your latest book, and are a great admirer. Today, we're joined by Dr Marc Brackett, the founding director of the Yale Center for emotional intelligence, is the professor in the Child Study Center at Yale and author of the best selling book. Permission to feel he's an award winning researcher, having raised over 100 million in grant funding and published 175 scholarly articles on the role of emotional intelligence and learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, physical and mental health, as well as workplace performance. Over 5000 schools across the world have adopted ruler RULER, an evidence based approach to social and emotional learning that Marc led the development of and has been shown to improve academic performance and decrease school problems like bullying and teacher stress and burnout, and we could go on and on, because His accomplishments are driven by a huge passion for the work, which I know you're about to hear, and everything he has to say. So Marc, thank you for being here, and welcome to The Evolving Leader.

Marc Brackett:

Thank you for the invitation. Glad to be here.

Jean Gomes:

Welcome to the show. How are you feeling today?

Marc Brackett:

How am I feeling? I'm feeling we we're an investment management company. Like, emotions, we're lawyers. Emotions, like, Give me a break. Marc, that's fluffy stuff. And of course, you know, oftentimes I say I just interviewed the people who report to you, Mr. CEO. And like everybody hates their job, but I'm kinder than that, but you get what I'm talking about. The other reason is that emotions drive decision making. I mean, I've done research which shows that ethical behavior in certain companies is directly related to the emotional intelligence of the leader. I know, if you really get to it, if you work with someone who's emotionally dysregulated, like you start not really caring about your work. The third is relationships. That's all related. Emotions are signals, right? They tell us to approach or avoid So, facial expressions, body language, vocal tone, approach, avoid, approach. Avoid respect, disrespect, power over power with the fourth is mental health. They are the obvious there and then the last one is the one that's the big one, which is performance. And whether it's academic performance or workplace performance. You know what I've shown in my research is that, yes, of course, academic skills matter. It's always better to have high cognitive abilities. Why, of course, but it's not the answer to all of life's challenges. There are other skills, like emotional intelligence, that are critically important. For example, in dealing with feedback, inspiring a team, managing the anxiety, frustration and disappointment, achieving our goals, and so that's my big five.

Scott Allender:

Let's pull some of that apart, if we could, because Jean and I agree so wholeheartedly, and we've written about, you know, this, this topic in our own books as well. I'm. Want to hone in on on the sort of leadership approach and companies sort of resistance to this topic. It seems to me that you know, where there is even an appetite for tolerating this conversation around emotional intelligence. Really, it's about, well, I want my people to be regulated enough to like behave the way I want them to behave, but not really space for being able to articulate what they're actually feeling in real time. Could you tell us a little bit more about what you're experiencing there, and any shifts you've been able to help achieve for organizations in that space?

Marc Brackett:

Yeah, I think that's a big one, because the mindset for some people is, you know, when we're regulated, you know, it's compliance. It's like, it means I want you to regulate, because I don't want you to bother me, right, right? I don't want you to be a disrupter. I don't want you to give I don't want you to give me feedback. It's like, you know, deal with your frustration with me, you know. And it's a misunderstanding of what emotion regulation is, right? It's not about like locking yourself in the bathroom and crying and screaming. It's about using your emotions wisely to have good relationships to achieve goals. And so I think that's a big deal. You know what you're bringing up here?

Jean Gomes:

You you make a point early on in the book about the importance of recognizing emotions as a form of information, and how you've already said this in there how crucial that is to making decisions. So it's kind of ironic that leaders are trying to suppress one of the very things that would improve their decision making. How have you seen because we know we did, like, 30 years into this conversation about emotional intelligence and some things are just not changing at all. What is it you see the resistance in this? What is it? The core of it? Do you think,

Marc Brackett:

I think there are a few things the one is this mindset. You know that emotions are feminine. You know that feelings are feminine, that when we experience strong emotions, that makes us irrational, and that's just a misunderstanding of what emotional intelligence is. Because, you know, I've lived with anxiety for 55 years, and I've been pretty successful. And, you know, it took a while for me to have a new relationship with anxiety. It's like, oh, today is one of those days you have anxiety. Let's observe that and and welcome it and recognize that you're anxious because you care so much about your work. And you know, there's uncertainty about that, and so let's problem solve about it. It's a very different way of approaching emotion than I'm a mess. This is never going to change. I was born this way, unhelpful, and it's wrong anyway. You know, doesn't make sense from the principle of emotion science. So I think that weakness piece, the idea that, you know, emotions are kind of like we're pre wired and programmed to be this way, and you can't change it, is another big issue. I'll just say the big one also is the effort that has to get put into it. I wish it was easy, you know, I wish it was easy to deal with my emotions every day, you know. And I'm just, you know, the anxiety is the one that lingers with me. But you know, how many of us have got irritated with a colleague, how many of us have ever looked at someone's work and be like, this is terrible, you know? And you want to just say, like, throw it at the person and say, like, you know, like, what do you do? You're kidding me with this crap. But you know, you have to think about that in terms of, oh, well, since emotions drive judgment, decision making, relationships, performance, you know, my expression of emotion is going to have a direct impact on their willingness to work harder, their willingness to change, their willingness to accept my feedback. So, if you understand the power that emotions have to create good in the world. In an organization, you'll be more strategic about how you use those emotions to achieve those outcomes. So

Jean Gomes:

you've had countless conversations with leaders around this, and I'm sure people have come to you and said, Look, I really struggle with what you're talking about. I struggle to not react. I struggle to not be cross and angry and enact out. Where do you help them on the journey towards managing that?

Marc Brackett:

Yeah, I mean, I feel like, sometimes I want to just be my father and be like, get over it. You know, move on. But that doesn't usually work very well, or more like rolling my eyes and but you got to be kidding me, like, really? But the you know, a friend of mine, Stuart Avalon, who's a psychologist, he says it's, you know, it's skill, not will, and most people want if they knew the value. Of the skill and what it would do for them. Like the CEO of the big company was like, you know, I don't need to. I never forget, I was in this big, famous company here in New York City, big corner office on the Hudson River. The guy looks at me, he's like, I don't what do I need? Emotional Intelligence for Marc, like, look at my office, you know? And I was like, yeah, maybe your company is successful, but how much more successful could it be if actually had a more positive emotional climate? People had strategies to deal with their difficult emotions. So I think, you know, the first is the value proposition. You really have to I'm a data guy, and so like, I can tell a million stories, as you can see also, but the and I have to get to know your audience. And so some people, you know, I come in with the anecdote, and they get it. Some people like, you know, Marc tells too many stories. You know, I want the science, and I've got researchers support everything that I say. One thing I always tell people is like, maybe you want my opinion, but don't look for my opinion. I'm going to go with the research which supports the hypothesis. And so with that in mind, it goes back to what do we know about how the emotion system operates? And so some of us are more easily tricker than other people, just the way we're born, that is biological. I happen to be one of those people who is very easily startled. I have a fifth degree black belt, you know, I used to be a martial arts instructor, and I'm still, like, afraid of my own shadow. I can defend myself, but my initial reaction is like, just, here's what it is. I recover more quickly, and I can strategize last year because I developed a skill, and then it's filling that space. You know? I'll just give you one more example. So, you know, big piece of our work is teaching people, you know, the stimulus, response kind of format, right? And then know the things that get under our skin, you know, and we have to know what our typical, mostly maladaptive, unhelpful responses. And I know, I mean, I could go through all the different emotions, you know, when I'm anxious, I tend to ruminate. When I'm angry, I tend to want to retaliate. Unhelpful, unhelpful. Okay, so what can I fill that space with? And that's where all the magic happens with healthy strategies, whether it be just breathing. I know people roll their eyes when we say, take a deep breath, but it biologically, makes a difference in our nervous system. It works. The second is, you know, sometimes just stepping back, give me, give me some space. I need to like, I need time. I can't respond without some cognition. Well, I can't have the problem solving when I'm activated, just can't do it biologically difficult. So giving yourself that space and then learning, you know, dozens of research based strategies.

Scott Allender:

I'm really curious to hear more about how you sort of de program some of the less helpful responses you said something so important that I don't want to like move past yet. A while back, you said you now when anxiety surfaces, you sort of go, oh, anxiety is here, right? Like you almost can kind of welcome it. That's that's not a inconsequential place to be like that. That's a really emotionally evolved place to be. And I'd love to hear more about, how did you get there? Because I'm sure there's listeners right now going, Yeah, anxiety surfaces for me, but it causes me to do X, Y and Z, right? So how do we, how do people start to make that shift? I'd love to hear more about the practices.

Marc Brackett:

Well, one thing importantly, it doesn't cause you to do anything. You cause yourself to do it. I think that's an important that's we kind of we like to blame our emotions for our behavior, but our responses to our emotions are learned, and so we have to learn how to unlearn our unhelpful ways of dealing with our feelings, and that subtlety and language is important to help us kind of sit back and take ownership of our behavior like you made me feel that way, though I didn't make you feel that way. So this bring this goes back to my newest research, actually, which I'm very excited about, and it's going to be my book after my next book that I'm working on already. So permission to feel was this treatise that I wrote about why emotions matter. And you know, it stems from the story, you know, of my relationship with my uncle, who was the first person to give me that permission to feel when I was feeling. Self hatred and anger and fear. He didn't say, like my father would say, Son, you know, gotta toughen up. Or what my mother would say, which is, oh, my God, we can't handle this. I'm gonna have a nervous breakdown. I had very stereotypical kind of parents, which was like, I can't handle this. You know, you're on your own, kiddo. I'm gonna have a breakdown knowing that you're being bullied. To my father being like, I don't know what to say or do, so you better just tough on up kid. Neither approach was very helpful. It's like, okay, I'm not going to tell anybody about my experiences because, like, there's nowhere to go. There's no There's both of those are closed doors. Yeah, so permission to feel uncle Marvin comes into my life, asks me how I'm feeling, says we're going to get through this together. Now, what I didn't do for that book, because I didn't have the idea of doing it, was the research on the uncle Marvin's in the world. So now I've launched this international study. I've got about 25,000 people who've done it looking at the characteristics of those people in our lives. Now the first is, what's the percentage so across the world, whether in the UK or you're in Connecticut, where I live, or you're in Hong Kong, Australia, Spain, wherever, only about a third of people say they grew up with someone that they feel safe and comfortable with around emotion. It's ubiquitous. It's the same. No matter where I go, it's a third, a third, two thirds say no. That's unfortunate that two thirds of us are running around feeling like we were never seen or heard, that we didn't have a place to go with our emotions. The second is, what are the characteristics of these people? There are three characteristics you want to guess. What they are. Think about the person if you had one, who you believe gave you permission to feel, who created the condition for that, or if you didn't have someone, imagine what they might be like. What do you think are the characteristics of those on those people?

Scott Allender:

Non judgmental?

Marc Brackett:

Okay, that's one, listening,

Jean Gomes:

good listening, capacity to listen.

Marc Brackett:

All right. Well, you're both geniuses, because those are the top two. But there's one more

Scott Allender:

empathetic. You

Marc Brackett:

got it? Gosh, you guys are getting the A in my class. So top three, it's those are actually the three that show up everywhere. The top three. The first is non judgmental. The second is good listening, and the third is empathy and compassion. Now take a think about those three things, non judgmental, good listener, empathic, compassionate. None of those are saying fixer, problem solver. It's all about the it's all about helping to create the conditions for the person to see their situation and come up with solutions. Which is the beauty of the work. It's fine, like I love what I do in schools, because the teacher, oh, I'm not skilled at this. I'm not, you know, I don't have my PhD in psychology, and it's like, that's okay. I'm not asking you to actually solve the kids problems. What I'm asking you to do is create the conditions for kids to feel safe, comfortable, non judged, when they know you're listening, whether they know you care. And then you give them the opportunities to think about the solutions, and you help them evaluate those solutions, try them out and then refine them as they grow. That's what the work is about. And so I share that with you, because you going back to your question now is what I find in my research is of all of the emotion regulation strategies that help people have greater well being and purpose and life and life satisfaction. Of all of them, the top one is permission to feel. It's not a strategy in of itself. It's an attitude. It's a mindset. I am allowing myself to have this feeling because I know this feeling is probably impermanent and I'm okay with it. I can be anxious and productive, I can be sad and still go to work, and I think that's empowering and really important. So the radical acceptance of your emotions is the top strategy.

Jean Gomes:

And you listed out a couple of emotions earlier on, and it's quite helpful for people to understand how to think about each of those things. Somebody yesterday who I was talking about, the fact that we were talking. And he said, Tell me about resentment, a feeling of resentment. What? What? What is going on there? How would you what's the the regulation strategy around when you feel resentment towards others? It's

Marc Brackett:

funny you say that because I did this podcast with Brene Brown, and we talked about this exact thing, same thing. And she was like, it became her like thing everywhere she went. I had this epiphany talking with Marc about resentment, and so let's think about let's just unpack it for a minute. So when we are resentful, it's some combination, most likely of anger and envy. You know, envy, in its purest form is, you know, I'm envious of, you know, your bookshelves, your Gosh, you've read more than I've read, or I'm envious of your gorgeous home, or your fancy watch. It doesn't mean I hate you. It means maybe, you know, I actually envy has been a motivator for me, because I watch other people give presentation like that. Tommy was freaking great. I'm going to figure out how to incorporate that into my presentations. My envy of one of my philanthropist funders homes. I'm like, I'm going to work harder. I want that pool, and so it's not such a bad thing. However, when we're resentful, we hate the person for having what they have, right? We're angry that we don't have it, and we feel it's an injustice that we don't have it, and we also feel envious. So it's a combination, which I think is is more dangerous, you know, and oftentimes I think it comes from deep insecurity. So what's

Jean Gomes:

the move? What's the move that you when you recognize that's the awareness piece. What do you do there to kind of try and counter that?

Marc Brackett:

If I do sometimes feel I don't feel that way as much anymore, because I feel like, you know, maybe because I feel like I've made it, but I think a it's got to go back to kind of really unpacking where is this coming from. Like, why is this about me, or is this about the other person? You know, what's really going on here? Marc, is this, is this my insecurity? You know? Why am I so insecure about this? Am I not actually working hard towards that goal? And I just feel angry that the other person has gotten it, Marc, you a pretty good life. You know, you're not going to get everything, and so why don't I just take a moment and realize, like, compared to many people in the world, you're living a freaking fantastic life. And so maybe take a moment for some gratitude. I think the gratitude piece is way overlooked, and people think of it as cliche, and I think it's the antidote to much of our anger in society.

Scott Allender:

I agree. I'm curious about the role of meta emotion in this. So, you know, thinking about permission to feel and welcoming emotions, right? Like I know when I've had anxiety surface in the past, I almost feel shame about feeling anxious, right? So is is a meta emotion?

Marc Brackett:

You're a dude.

Scott Allender:

I tell them that all the time. Anybody? Yeah, I didn't feel shame until Jean got to hold me me no. But is that an in? Is that indicative of like, if can we pay attention to our meta emotions as an indicator of how much we're allowing ourselves to just welcome the primary emotion and accept it for what it is? Does that play a role? It

Marc Brackett:

does huge and sometimes it's some of the self unconscious, you know, that we need to really sit with and ask ourselves the question is, you know, is the feeling driving, you know, my behavior right now, or is it the feeling about the feeling? And I think oftentimes it is the meta emotion, you know. So going back to the you know, very related to your story. You know, as a kid, I was really badly bullied in school, like terrible stuff, like extortion, beaten up and spit on it was terrible, but because of my parents and my father in particular, and I was embarrassed. I was being bullied. I was feeling hatred and fear and all the other emotions too, but it was my shame and embarrassing. Embarrassment that I was feeling afraid because my father wouldn't like my father wouldn't be afraid. He would just punch back. Well, that's not in my DNA, and so that, I think was what prevented me from talking about the feeling, you know, or the experience with my family, I just kept it inside, because the shame and the embarrassment kind of took over. And so being aware of that is critically important. Obviously, we need strategies. And I wanted to say something, you know, as we're talking about this, one of the things that I think is so important is that, especially, you know, with younger people, is that we have to the onus should not be on the individual, especially a younger person who's being bullied, to figure it out right. The the onus is on the adults who are raising and teaching kids to be aware of what the hell is happening and be supportive. You know, I think that's and that's the same thing, by the way, the workplace, right? And when, if someone is feeling that way at work, they're feeling like their boss, you know, is unappreciative, or it's the job of the boss just to check in and say, Hey, how much gratitude do I show the people you know in my office and or how am I speaking to people you know that they don't feel seen or heard?

Jean Gomes:

Can we talk about the work you've done with how memory and emotions work together? What have you learned about that particular aspect of your work,

Marc Brackett:

yeah, I mean, that's, I don't do so much research in that space anymore, but just the basics of it, you know, is that there's something called mood congruent memory, and it's an interesting Phenomenon. And so, you know, if you our memories are are tied to our emotions. So, the example I have of that, I did this project with the with the singer Lady Gaga, about 10 years ago. You know, it was a big deal like it's, you know, Marc Brackett, psychology professor, doing with some pop star, you know, at Yale doing a presentation. And, you know, it was interesting to think about, like, I just talked about it right now, and, boom, go back to the experience, right? I could, it's amazing how, you know how memory works, but it's tied to the elation, you know, and the fun and all that that I was having, you know, in that moment, I think giving a more extreme example would be maybe helpful for some people around a traumatic experience. And so the way our brain operates with trauma is that when we have a very strong, intense, scary thing happen, certain neuro chemicals get released that imprint the experience in our memory system, In our hippocampus. And that's intentional, because it's it's preparing you for future instances where you might need to prepare better for those situations. And so it's a really good example to me of the adaptive value for emotion and memory. However, it also can be very maladaptive if you don't have the strategies to deal with it. And so that's how trauma, you know, if you don't have the skills to identify, you know, the thing that's activating you around the traumatic experience, it's just going to, you know, it's going to keep you in that trauma cycle. So it's both adaptive and maladaptive, depending on the skills.

Scott Allender:

Can we come back to the role of emotions and decisions? I'd like to, I'd like to get into a little bit more in terms of our leaders listening right now and sort of thinking about how they can pay more attention to the role of emotions in facing some of the biggest challenges. You know, as the world feels more uncertain than ever and more polarized, and people are bringing a whole lot with them to the table every day. And as you said earlier, there's still this sort of stigma around leaving emotions at the door and how that's going to leak out sideways and cause all sorts of harm. So there's a lot in there. But I mean as as people themselves, as leaders, need to pay attention to how they're feeling because of the state of the world and how they might be feeling in it. They've got team members who are experiencing a vast array of different opinions and emotions. Feels like there's a lot coming to each coming with people to each boardroom table, etc. So how do leaders think about all of that?

Marc Brackett:

I mean, a lot. There's a lot to think about, but I don't want to make it complicated either, you know, because that's not helpful. I think the first thing is that every leader should ask themselves, are they an uncle Marvin or not? And you know that made me people think, Oh, this. Roll their eyes at me right now, but I didn't get to my other research, which is that people are much more successful, much more productive, have much better skills at regulating their emotions have better purpose in life, or higher purpose in life, much greater life satisfaction. Are better, healthier, happier. The list goes on. When they see either their parent or their leader as having those three characteristics, it's actually in my own like, humility here, I'm blown away by how much I've replicated this. And like, literally, I've done 60 studies in the last three years, six zero. I have not run a study on the characteristics of those uncle Marvin's in terms of, did you have one, did you not have one, or do you have one at work, or don't have one at work? And found that it predicts life satisfaction, job satisfaction, etc, etc, etc. It is a big deal. People are sick of feeling judged. They want to be seen, they want to be heard, and they want to know that they're a leader or their teacher or parent cares about them. It's really just that much. It's that straightforward. Now, I think the problem is that people get really like parents. For example, one example, I give this speech, and this mom, she's like, you know, I've had an epiphany, and I have two kids, and I know my son has the uncle Marvin, but my daughter definitely doesn't. And Marc, I am leaving here today, and I'm gonna find my daughter her uncle Marvin. And I'm like, lady, it could be you

Jean Gomes:

don't out source the deal.

Marc Brackett:

And you know, the same thing applies in the workplace. It's like, Fine, you know, go see your therapist. This is not about therapy. Remember, it's not about problem solving. It's not about fixing, it's about being present. It's about creating the conditions where people feel like you care. And so what's the barrier? Well, the number one barrier, people say is time. I don't have time, like you don't have time to be non judgmental. Give me a give me let's talk about that one. Give me a break. I mean, if you really get into the nuances of the brain, it's more metabolically demanding to be judgmental, it's more draining, right? Because you're just constantly thinking, Oh, they're not good enough. I'm smarter than they are. You know, they are, like, that's effortful. It's not effortful to just be non judgmental. Like, I mean, listening does take effort. You know that showing compassion is deliberate. The second barrier, however, which is the big one to me, is fear. People are afraid because they think they be stepped all over if they're actually non judgmental, compassionate and empathic, or they fear that they're not going to be to handle what comes at them like it's, I'm not a therapist. I'm not you know, why am I going to be give someone permission to feel because then they're going to just want to, like, tell me all their problems, and they're going to think I have to fix them, and I have to constantly remind people that nobody wants to be fixed. Nobody wants you to solve all their problems for them.

Sara Deschamps:

If the conversations we've been having on the evolving leader have helped you in any way, please head over to Apple podcasts and leave us a rating and a review. Thank you for listening. Now let's get back to the conversation.

Jean Gomes:

Can we can we talk about one of the hot topics in emotions, which is triggers people. You throw this word around all over the place, and a lot of the time, as you said, they use it as you're triggering me, as opposed to the fact that this is something that's happening within me. Can we talk about what you've learned in this area? I

Marc Brackett:

mean, I think you know, if you take a constructivist view of emotion, you know, if I went like this to you right, or if I say Fu, right, the same tone, the same energy, the language of fu was more think he is the middle of. Like Marx a lunatic, and so it's all appraisal. And I just think we have to understand that it's the appraisal process that causes us to have feelings. Nobody makes us feel anything. It's our interpretation. If I have is someone on the street who I don't know at this on the subway here in New York, says to me, you know, like you're blank, blank, okay, like whatever, if my father, if my husband, if my wife, if my whoever says that, it has a different meaning, because it's an interpretation. So what that means is that we can have a different relationship with our triggers if we take a step back and kind of go back to that appraisal process. So I think that's key. Number two is that our responses or reactions to those triggers are learned, which means we can unlearn if we learned it, that means we could learn new things. And so if your automatic habitual response is to retaliate, I'll give you one. I This is like a simple one, but when I got overwhelmed, my mother had this. She just always said, I'm having a breakdown. Like that was just her way of, like, escaping anything that was going wrong in the family. And she just, like, lock herself in a room and, like, knock him out for a few hours. And I would be like, I remember thinking to myself, I'm the one being bullied. Why are you having a breakdown? Wrong model here. But anyway, shouldn't have an emotional education. So I have empathy for that. The I have empathy for it as an adult, not as a kid. Now, my point here is, I was on a business trip, I don't know, five years ago, I'm on this flight. Everything's going wrong. It's canceled. It's weather. Then we got in the flight, it was turbulence. I had to prepare my presentation. The internet didn't work on the flight. And I was with a colleague, and she was, are you doing right? I'm like, I'm having a breakdown. You know? I'm like, shit. I became my mother, and it was like, automatic, like I just my, you know, you know. And I learned that I started having these go to strategies for myself when I was either irritable, not in the mood, or overwhelmed. So at work, I would always have this thing, I'm tired today, but it always, I was always tired when people were asking me difficult questions, and I'm like, All right. Marc, do you realize this pattern? Like you're overwhelmed, you're having a breakdown, you're tired, you know, you're kind of not in the mood. So you tell everybody you're tired, Like my mother. In life, I tell this story all the time, but during the pandemic, my mother got locked in her house, but she didn't get locked in our house. She's from Panama, and couldn't go back to her home because there were no flights to Panama. And it was she came for a wedding, and everything shut down for seven months. She couldn't go back. And it was not easy. I love the lady, but like, seven months is a long time, and we had a big falling out one night, and I decided, like, Marc, you're the freaking director of the Center for emotional intelligence. Like, how could you be so dysregulated? Not cool. You got to be the role model. How would, how would, if the, if the real director of the Center for emotional intelligence, you know, was there in that moment. What would he have done? And that's what I thought about when I went to bed at night and then came down the next morning. I'm like, That's the version of the self that I want to be from now on. Now it's hard when you get triggered, but what you can do is then I go to work or take a walk, I come back into my house. I didn't know she'd be sitting there just getting ready to annoy me. I would put my hand on the door now, take a deep breath and say, center director, you're trying to come out. Come on, baby. Where are you? You're gonna and that's who entered in the room. And it made a huge difference. So my point is that it has to be cultivated, practiced, you know, refined, and you got to make it permanent. In terms of the habit.

Scott Allender:

Can you talk just about the ruler system that I mentioned in the intro? What is it and the impact it's had?

Marc Brackett:

Yeah, thank you for asking, since I spent 30 years of my life working this thing called ruler. So importantly, ruler comes out of two things. One is my deep relationship with my uncle who was building a feelings curriculum in the 1970s but with the school teacher who didn't have a PhD, he didn't have, you know, a lab, but he didn't have, you know, access to a lot of resources, but had a lot of brilliant ideas, and I was blessed to have learned them. And then, as I was working with my uncle to write a curriculum, I decided marketing like no one's gonna like, who wants to talk to a 23 year old about this stuff, like, who has no degrees and no background, you need to get some credibility, so I'm like PhD in psychology, and it learned who these kind of major theorists were, and wrote to them, and some of them didn't write me back and but nevertheless found my way to get my PhD with one of the founders of theory of emotional intelligence theory. Then did a postdoc with the second one, and blah, blah, blah. But ruler is both, you know, a model for teaching the skills of emotional intelligence, but it's also the skills themselves. And so it comes out of the practice piece of my work with my uncle, and it comes out of the scientific piece of my, you know, many years of research on the science of emotion and emotional intelligence. So there are five skills that I call ruler skills. And again, these are directly an outgrowth of the theory that was first written by Peter Sullivan Jack Mayer. So first is recognizing emotions. So like, I'm watching you nod, right now, Scott, I'm thinking, like, is he interested, or is he patronizing me? The second is understanding emotion. Like, okay, is it what I said, or is it Scott? Like, where's it coming from? The third is, you know, what is the actual feeling? Do I know what the feeling is? My own feeling, your feeling. The fourth is expressing emotions, knowing how and when to express emotions, understanding there are a lot of cultural nuances. And then the fifth one is regulating emotions. So ruler takes those five skills of emotional intelligence and embeds them into systems. I work a lot in school systems, but my work, along with your work, it's, it starts with the district level or the local education authorities, if you're using, you know, UK terms. It starts with leadership, because you cannot have an emotional intelligence curriculum in a school that will have lasting results unless the leadership also buys into it and makes people accountable for delivering it. It just will not work. It'll be a, you know, I did that workshop. I can't tell you I went to a workshop on emotional intelligence. I'm like Mazel Tov, yes. Like, all right, and so Where has your behavior changed? This is life's work, which is why, in ruler, it's preschool, elementary school, middle school, high school, and then college and and on. I mean, it's a big piece, you know, we I right now, really do a lot of work on kind of the mindsets of emotional intelligence, not just the skills of emotional intelligence. And so you need to apply a growth mindset to the principles or the skills of emotional intelligence, because you are going to fail, you're going to make a mistake, you're going to mislabel someone's feeling you're going to make someone feel bad about themselves. You're going to be dysregulated once in a while, and you have to ask yourself, you know, what was that? And how could I do better tomorrow? And I'll tell you, you know, part of the reason why I worked, I have a new another book that's coming up, called dealing with feeling, which was that it was funny, because I, you know, it's very proud that my first book did well. It's been translated into 27 languages, but I got all these emails like, Thank you for giving me permission to feel. But now what the brink do I do with my feelings? And then the pandemic hit, and then all of a sudden, I was like, I thought I was the director of the Center for emotional intelligence, and. Then. So my mother was there, and I'm trapped at home, and then we go, everybody's hybrid, and then there's masks and no masks, and yelling about masks and vaccines and no vaccines, and everybody's freaking out about everything. And so I decided to do, like, a lot of research on what was getting in the way of people regulating and what were the evidence based strategies that we knew would help people to regulate and there are real strategies. The one that showed up in my research, as I shared earlier, as being the most important was this idea of just sort of like, I know I'm having this feeling it's okay, that kind of permission to feel acceptance. Piece

Jean Gomes:

we're living in a very unusual period of history where we've got so many things going on at a cultural level around the topic of of feeling, identity, politics, uncertainty, you know, everything that's going on at the moment, the intergenerational stuff, the things that Jonathan heights been writing about in terms of the coddling of the American mind and so on. What is your perspective on how emotions are being interpreted by different parts of society? How's that formulating up to permission to feel? Yeah,

Marc Brackett:

it's funny because I have a chapter in my new book called seven reasons why nobody knows how to regulate. And I give you like the sneak preview. I think the first is, if I can remember my own work at this point, Funny how that happens, right? But a we don't value emotions period. It's like I said earlier, emotions are weak. B, nobody taught us anything about this at home. C, we didn't learn it at school either. You know. D is we all just want the quick fix. I mean, let's be real. So much easier to just drink an extra beer, take an extra pill, you know, and now it's cold plunges. That's this that's going to save your life, you know, look at you. Look at the look at the tree for five minutes a day. Prefer you're going to be happy. I mean, these things drive me. If there's one thing that's driving me crazy today, it's the quick fix thing. It's the social media influencers who have the strategy that's going to, like, you just do this one thing and like, you know, call people you love twice a week. Okay, what if I don't have people I love? You know, you know, my partner's grandmother would be 109 without ever doing a cold plunge. I just think these things are ridiculous, and I think it's hurting people. The fourth or the E, I guess it is. The fifth is we'd rather spend a lot of money on expensive interventions than be prevention focused. I think that's a big one. It's like, we don't want to invest in the building of people's capacity. We just want to wait until they are have suicidal ideation, you know, major depression, anxiety, and then do treatment. And if it only knew how much more expensive it is to treat and how much more effective it is to build the skills as kids develop, you know, we'd have a much better society. The other one is that I said people don't value emotions. We don't get taught this stuff. But before that even is, do we even, like, appreciate that emotional intelligence is a valuable skill, you know, the whole soft skills, like soft skills. And then the big one, I think, related to what you were saying, is, and this is my vision, which I know is going to take a lot of work, and I need all help I can get, is, does government, you know, do the larger institutions make space for this kind of thing? So if I had it my way, every policy maker before they, you know, finalized whatever policy they're creating, they would have a review process that would say, is this going to be helpful or harmful to children's emotional development? And if you see what people do in terms of detaining kids at borders and separating from their mothers. We know from research that is the worst thing that you can do to support a healthy child, but somehow another we get away with it, and if only people understood child. Development and cared. I think the world would be a very different place.

Scott Allender:

Marc, I want to keep talking for like three more hours. There's so much I love the work that you're doing. When does your when does your next book come out that you mentioned?

Marc Brackett:

September? Yeah, so I just got the cover. You want to give you a sneak peek. Yeah, I don't know if it's going to come up in the reverse, but,

Scott Allender:

yeah, excellent. So

Marc Brackett:

I'm excited about this. This is, like, it's rare, you know, part of the way I learn is just by kind of, like, escaping and, you know, thinking and writing, and I feel my I have a theory about my own development, which is, I don't know anything until I can explain it well. And so the I felt the need to just really ruler as a whole, or recognize, understand, label, express and regulate. But where people struggle is in the regulation piece and but I think it's also it comes after the basics of permission to feel like you just like building your vocabulary. I just want to share one other thing, by the way, with you guys, two or two things. One is I developed this new web series. It's called dealing with feeling. Which are interviews that I do with leading experts like John Hite, Angela Duckworth, just a bunch of well known scientists and other people like musicians like doth McKagan from Guns and Roses and Jewel, the singer, where I talk about emotions and the skills that they learned, and kind of pull out of that. And the second is an app that I built with the founder of Pinterest. It's called the how we feel app, and so we have put a lot of big investments that app, and I'm proud to say it's available for free on both Android and iOS.

Jean Gomes:

There you go. Yeah, I've been using this for, I don't know, since it came out. Actually, that's cool. Yeah,

Marc Brackett:

we're gonna build more features. It's really, it's cool, it's funny. I just, I met with the head of HR for our university few weeks ago, and it's like, I've been using that for two years. I taught myself four times a day. I'm like, You're a little, you're you're crazy, like, you're really into this. But it was a great conversation about what he's learned about himself, and now he wants he and I doing a talk for the university, to get everybody to use it. So that's exciting, but it's a great tool, you know, to get back to the basics of, you know, we started this conversation with the question of How you feeling, and I'll just say that a lot of us don't get asked that question very often. We usually say, How's it going, Yeah, what's up? You know, we don't say, How are you feeling. And I think that gets back to that fear of intimacy, you know, fear of what we're going to hear. But truth is that even when we're asked a question, what do we say? Fine, fine. We're not really granular. And so I think the first step in the process is just that self awareness. And then, as I share in my work, the labeling piece actually is a pathway of choosing better strategies for regulating. So that's another conversation for another day. Yeah,

Jean Gomes:

well, if you're up for it, we'd love to have you back to talk about our book.

Marc Brackett:

I'd be delighted. Thank you.

Jean Gomes:

It would be wonderful. And we're going to put details, both of the app and the web series and the book, which is definitely worth reading. That's a UK cover, but it's well, you like, you don't like that

Marc Brackett:

one, fine. It just is amazing how every country of it, you know, yeah, they just design their own cover, which is fine.

Jean Gomes:

Excellent. But we'll put all the details so that listeners can get access to those things.

Marc Brackett:

And I'll be over in the UK for some presentations this summer, so maybe we can have a coffee.

Jean Gomes:

That would be wonderful.

Scott Allender:

Marc, thank you so much for joining us today. I've thoroughly enjoyed this. I so appreciate the work that you're doing in the world and for giving some of some of your valuable time to us today.

Marc Brackett:

My pleasure. Thank you for inviting

Scott Allender:

me and folks in a world where you could be anything be an Uncle Marvin.

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Jean Gomes

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Scott Allender

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