Red, Blue, EQ

hello everybody it's great to be here i'm a huge fan of b-sides since i met b-sides uh just about six years ago now uh any organization or humans or individuals willing to provide access to really important training at no cost or low cost i'm happy to support it anytime even a saturday on a beautiful fall day i hope all of you are having a good time and getting a lot of great knowledge and i hope you also get to get outside and get some fresh air it's a gorgeous day that being said we've got an important topic here we've got an hour together to talk about uh you and us as humans and how uh important

uh eq is to our careers and uh really our happiness levels so i'm gonna dive in i'm going to dump a lot of data on you a lot of great stories my content comes from uh you know a long quest for understanding and always analyzing why humans uh do what they do meaning what behaviors they place into society on a daily basis ever since i was a very young girl i thought about uh why would somebody do that and uh and it's been a part of my journey throughout my whole career too so uh now know that not only have i studied this topic because i've been fascinated with it and as i majored in sociology

and criminal justice and i also um do a lot of thinking about this topic because i'm responsible for so many people and have been in my career mine since a very young age responsible for other humans and luckily i was trained by very high emotional intelligence uh individuals i worked for them for 21 years and got to work across three different companies and uh and so i get how rare my story is too and uh and so i really uh seek to give uh to you all because uh as we know not only at work but all around us where there's a lot of upset uh in people being emotionally upset and it's not a lot of fun and so

much like rbg we all can have the skill of persuasion through verbal and written communication we can it is a skill it is absolutely a skill and it is as important as your hard skills your iq skills that get you your technical skills your your ability to understand compliance and law and and um you know the inner workings of uh the technology that we use and that's very very important and it's really never about one or the other it's really about understanding that uh eq you know our ability to really understand how we think feel and perceive and how others think feel and perceive is critical for happiness it's critical for uh teamwork in completing projects

and uh it's critical for the ability to create equality which is a quest that humans have not conquered in any capacity yet and yet uh each year believe it or not and certainly since the since the uh era of um farming and access to food and water and a greater capacity our brains have developed our um part of the of empathy and the care for others and so i firmly believe that should we choose to keep our conscious minds understanding that we have an obligation to a skill set of of emotional intelligence we can create stronger cultures we can create uh teams that stick together and enjoy work love work of course this content works at home too

it is uh universal and yet you know i tend to speak a lot more towards the workforce considering it's been a passion of mine uh since i got into the workforce building teams uh enabling teams for high levels of success doing that with high levels of love you know money and love that can happen yeah yeah it really can actually and so uh so that's what we're gonna get into today and uh my ask of everybody is to um take this very seriously uh the the the fact that this is a skill it's not a desire it's actually not uh even just a concept it's uh very factual skill set that falls under emotional intelligence

so let's own it right all right so if my if my uh ask of you to own it for humanity so that we can all live you know uh happier uh more togetherness more equality well then um understand that capitalism is also saying you must own this meaning the uh stock market um you know has determined that uh organizations that have high level of emotional intelligence skills are more successful and therefore they will do better and therefore more money is put into those organizations it is now a known fact that the treatment of humans matters to the level of production that happens it doesn't mean that production can't happen without being nice to other humans it

means that best case scenario is when people are nice to each other work well together encourage each other support each other's mental safety that more creation comes and so uh your incomes are tied to your emotional intelligence there are plenty of studies that show how much more money people make that are emotionally intelligent as you can see here in this study um uh done by uh google that uh the more successful ie the more high more higher ranking individuals that's more money right with more responsibility comes more money have higher emotional intelligence and and and that came out by you know more equity in terms of how they treated people equally more generosity more curiosity

more empathy right uh and so my point is to say that um capitalism has realized whether we like it or not we're playing in capitalism uh our our careers while we are cyber security lovers we we get paid to do uh what we do and so uh from that perspective people want more organizations want more out of all of us from the emotional intelligence piece and yet there's not a whole lot of training going on i mean how many of you how many of us have got sent to training of this capacity uh it's pretty rare and that's a problem that's a big big problem because we're working in an era of more and more

teamwork you know i remember in the early 90s when i graduated college and getting into tech and uh on the staffing side of things and you know the question was you know does this is this person can interact with anybody like that was a question is this person going to interact with anybody is it meaning like the majority of the time they don't but maybe your job's different let me check was how i was trained at 22 years old uh that that that question is ridiculous today and granted that was 30 years ago that you know how ridiculous of a question and yet i can tell you that one of the things that we hear

right off the bat from almost every client is i want a good communicator i want somebody that can communicate well and uh it's you know who doesn't you know who doesn't and so that's why i'm saying to you all take the time recognize that not only is it good for you uh it's also good for organizations to uh empower emotional intelligence skills and skills training and participate in it get it meaning ask for it get you know ask to be put in those types of training situational leadership's a good one just even understanding myers-briggs is a great one in terms of you know how you and others in the organizations um you know ought to be thinking when

interacting with each other i mean there is training to be had um and i and again to iterate even more why we must do this i mean look at these statistics i mean i tell people all the time uh i'm about retention and yeah i own a staffing agency and yeah that's what we do for a living and yet i don't need everybody changing jobs every 18 months to make a living i don't need that i don't recommend that i wouldn't wish that upon anybody i'm not saying it's bad i'm saying that changing relationships you know every year and a half or two years is a lot it's a lot of emotional distress finding the job having the breakup with

the organization in general whether it be a layoff or a quit or a just a a a even worse situation it's not fun and these statistics tell us that we're not really enjoying working together and and that bothers me again as i mentioned earlier having the luck of finding these two serial entrepreneurial men who hired me out of college and trained and promoted me within their organizations over a 21-year period and it wasn't just me that was their program they are the founders of rapid seven which is where i got into cyber security in 2007 and yet you know my point is that this kind of treatment of training and promoting from within or just training

in general is not high out uh you know in the industry although i'm banging that door and i'm gonna make sure that people listen a little bit more about succession planning and training not a little bit more a lot more certainly they are we're seeing some progress and yet this is still the the statistics and so uh we've got to say well you know what can we do all of us whether we're in a management seat or we're not in a management seat you know in my organization i i say everybody's a leader you're a leader you're entry level i just hired you or you're at the c-suite and you just joined you're a leader

but a manager is different than a leader a leader ought to act you know um powerfully positive and i'm ought to you know a manager has to because a manager is creating these statistics meaning uh people typically leave people not not typically the jobs uh and it's all about how people are being treated and so if you're responsible for my career then then uh that's a that's a huge responsibility and therefore we really have to measure managers intensely on personal competency social competency in the workforce it is not okay to be a manager again defined by responsibility of the success of somebody else which we all know that you know whoever one reports to there is a lot of power in that report

structure and so it it can't be taken light lightly by organizations and it can't be taken lightly by anybody who's in a management seat and that's my message to you please don't be in a management seat if you're not interested in the well-being of others if you're not interested in a mentorship type relationship if you're not interested in really thinking a lot about how others feel and how they think and how they perceive if that if that doesn't interest you well then don't don't get into a management so you can still be a leader in an organization by the way you carry yourself and you can still have great jobs great jobs subject matter experts are

leaders to be responsible for others is is really a serious thing and so i i ask us all to take to take this very seriously at the management level and think about and be self-aware such that you can self-manage there is no such thing as perfection and yet there's also a you know a high possibility of being pretty close to perfection in terms of how we treat others i mean there really aren't many excuses other than i'm human and so once in a while i'm not on my game that's you know really about it for me that exists and so that means yeah i have to make sure that my brain is being powerfully fed

that's everything down to what i eat to my exercise and my meditation plans meaning i have to care for myself if i'm going to care for anybody else am i i learned this the hard way i was believe it or not 28 years old making ridiculous money smoking two packs of cigarettes a day 310 pounds and barely exercising high level position of vice president of sales and all of a sudden my health was not my friend and i said to myself wow how can i keep going how can i show up for everybody if i can't take care of myself and i really went into this place for others thankfully and for me i do more you know

i do things because i want others to respect me more than uh you know sort of it's healthy meaning what was i thought to myself what am i saying to all these folks that i'm mentoring and training and developing if at 28 my health is so yucky that it's impacting my ability to show up and i thought and smoking cigarettes i'm killing myself and this is what i'm bringing so my point is you know when we really care to show up for others and we understand that they're looking up to us because we we're in control a pretty big piece of their livelihood then then there's a there's a there's a you know just a responsibility to

care for yourself to have self-awareness for yourselves so that you can show up for others and you can give what they need because a lot of what management is teamwork is well you know whether they're you're managing people or not it's to show up in a way that allows for them for for for people to feel mentally safe in conversation in discussion to get to project you know completions and and the results that everybody wants and that's not easy to do we're going to talk about it in a few minutes in terms of you know what it's like to make and manage measurable agreements out in business it's it's there's a lot there's a lot to

that that will allow us to manage our emotions uh better meaning if we can um you know manage agreements at a high capacity then we're gonna have less fallout less less trouble so so so you know when i look at personal competence social competence you know social competence is in business too it's not it's not your social life it's interacting with society it's interacting with others right so how do you interact how how do you interact and caring about that is good caring about how you are perceived by others is good caring about how others feel about you is good not caring caring doesn't mean having anxiety over it or or beating ourselves up up over it or

having guilt while we all are capable of having those emotions i encourage you to recognize that they're not powerful and that those emotions can slow you down and that your eq is is ever evolving it actually doesn't cap out uh iq caps out as the brain fully develops eq actually can continue it can continue your entire lifespan so instead of beating ourselves up or feeling bad about a situation let's own them let's learn win-win communication in making and managing measurable agreements let's let's own that that that in itself will allow us uh to learn and um and also you know sort of succeed at the same time meaning the learning doesn't have to be that we

you know the the stove's on fire you know like it doesn't it doesn't have to be the worst case possible that that got us to the learning experience and so i want to talk i want to move into this segment of making and managing measurable agreements because the number one thing i see and i've seen throughout my entire career and again working with tons of organizations over the years of building teams you know what i do i uh i see that 90 percent of the time when there's an upset when there's um a breakdown in relationships which is people moving jobs typically you know or dealing with projects that didn't go the way they were supposed to go

there's always always a lack of making a measurable agreement or managing the measurable agreement that was made weeks months prior and so i find myself talking about this all the time because i think to myself wow if we can eliminate this breakdown then the harder stuff the stuff that um is a little bit more of our programmed mind and con unconscious bias minds we'll we'll have more time to spend there we're where uh we can um really work at bringing in uh equality and and equity into the workforce in terms of how we treat people so so i i say let's let's let's take this off the table so that we can really own relationships

so what do i mean here so just about all of us on a regular basis we're making agreements i shouldn't say just about we're all making agreements on a regular basis there we go and uh let's let's recognize that when we're making agreements uh at work that um typically it could be an email it could be a drive-by conversation it could be a sit-down meeting where we're making agreements my point is we're making them all the time and sometimes we don't even know that we just made an agreement and so i'd like everybody to really think about when your work in the when you're working and somebody asks you to do something how you're responding to that

and where does it fit into your other agreements that you've already made because the worst thing that we can all do is break agreements meaning i told you i would have x y and z done by x y and z date and i didn't do it that's not a good place to be it's not something that's respected highly in business but the interesting thing is i hardly ever see that and you know why i hardly ever see that it's because the agreement isn't measurable it's pretty rare that a human knows i'm going to be responsible i'm responsible for this yes i've accepted it i yes i've accepted it for this day and then that date just comes and oops

i forgot it's pretty rare humans you know we don't show up to work to fail it's not our goal i remember being very young in my management career in fact my first trainee ever uh and we had had a you know an instance in the office where uh he wasn't listening and i got really frustrated and uh it was an open bullpen environment so of course my my mentor heard the conversation and later that evening you know we were having a drink he said listen nobody comes to work to fail so figure it out he's uh you're training him why wh where was the disconnect why wasn't your message getting through what were you doing let's think about it

let's look at it like nobody comes to work to fail so uh thank goodness that human said that to me at such a young age because it's never left me in that i got it yeah right like who comes to work to fail i mean uh and and i'm training this person and it was my communication that wasn't landing and it's my job to have the communication that lands and it was a great learning experience so if we make agreements measurable we probably won't have a misunderstanding is sort of the moral of the overall story that i started and that i don't see most agreements measurable so let me give you an example somebody asks you to do something i'll try to do

i'll try to do that i'll try to get that done this week well as you're going to hear later in my talk the word try is such a terrible word that um i'd like us to eliminate it from our vocabulary because sometimes that statement of i'll try to get that to this week get to that this week means i'm gonna get to that this week or i did get to that this week and sometimes that statement i'm gonna try and get to that to that this week is i tried but i didn't get to it and um and depending on you know who's saying it when it's happening and all these things that could be a problem

if somebody interprets it as i'm expecting that this week and so we really got to eliminate words or situations that keep us from making a measurable agreement and uh stop ourselves slow ourselves down a bit to recognize that we all sort of rely on each other and so if we're making an agreement it needs to be really clear so that everybody can move and make their moves and how they need to move around the project and that that is a skill and it starts from getting how much we rely on each other and then it and then it goes to you know being successful at work in general really requires us to care and so i i

i would love for you all to you know even put your thinking caps on for a minute and think about these last few weeks at work i bet you you can find a situation whether it be with yourself maybe somebody that works with you for you around you and um seen an an upset that happened and see if you can chase it back to an un measurable agreement i think you're going to see that that's 90 percent of the time and uh that's not easy to make a measurable agreement i'm not sitting here saying that's a super easy thing to do and it actually has nothing to do with ego it has to do with uh you know

things that we don't know you know we can't the the unknowns we we uh make an agreement and we think we know everything and then we start working within that agreement and all of a sudden we think you know what i don't know i actually not gonna make that date or um you know i don't think it's possible well it's at that moment that one must uh inform the others that are part of that measurable agreement that there's a concern about the dates that there's a concern based on having learned something new and this is where it really matters meaning look we're all taking on big projects you know i i just heard somebody on my

team say to say to his team last week uh you know how long will it take you to get me this and uh the response was six weeks and his responsibility i wanted him too and it's like we we can want things all day long is it possible you know and and if they agree to the two weeks and they get two days into it and they know it can't be two weeks well then at that time they need to speak up because they agreed to the two weeks even if it's five days in even if it's seven days in it doesn't matter we may think that we all made good agreements again i don't know if they

accepted that agreement um but uh you know we all make these agreements and then we go do our best and we think yeah we could do this in two weeks instead of the six and and then we go do our best and but during that process of doing our best we know we know that date's not possible that's where we must speak up and when we do we can eliminate so many challenges when we wait till close to the date or even right before the date it's not something that people like i don't like it why because i know i know there's no way you just figured it out the day before now if there is a situation like that of

course great but it's not very often that happens that we're sort of figuring out the day before something's due that we're not going to have it do so my point is to say do you have measurable agreements is your job function measurable because if it's not what ends up happening is politics egos finger-pointing blame and the most powerful wins and i say you know like let's just be gone with those days so if you don't have measurable agreements with those that you work for make them you know it's one of the things i love most about situational leadership is that it really teaches us all and this situational leadership's been around since the early days of

manufacturing a very uh talented sociologist a doctorate of sociology and that's brilliant it's a bit it's a brilliant program i encourage you all to check it out uh it but what it really teaches the ability to manage up and and it it teaches a lot of these things that i'm teaching and it says if you're not getting that from above then you bring it above too and i couldn't agree more we i came into the same sort of training with those the folks that i work for out of college and for 21 years and so um you know this is uh not necessarily easy in that to make something measurable it requires time it requires thinking it requires quiet

to really think about you know getting something done along with the other some things we have to get done on a regular basis that's that's a lot of time management understanding understanding distractions understanding what things could get in your way and could come in and oh yeah by the way it's coveted and a lot of people have kids at home right i mean like you really have to think about these dates and you have to plan for sort of some unknowns and that's a skill in itself right and then and then we're all working within a capitalistic environment which means hurry hurry hurry hurry things faster faster faster like my i wanted in two weeks even though you told

me it would take six you know uh you know example and uh and it's and i literally was trained to to you put the wings after you jump right and so i know and i do i put the wings on after i jump i am that entrepreneur and yet i can still make measurable agreements with one caveat if i can't make a measurable agreement i make a measurable agreement to make that something a measurable agreement when we can meaning i get that there are sometimes it's particularly in starting something anew making a measurable agreement is during the research process could be um not possible so make a measurable agreement to sit down and make a

measurable agreement after the research in terms of what that date is or what have you you know what i mean ultimately this comes back to you high level of communication with the people you're in business with the people that you're on a team with the people that rely on you every day and you rely on them those people you must own the ability to make measurable agreements and then manage measurable agreements okay and this will take 90 percent of the chaos out so i encourage you to spend the time i encourage you to uh you know ask for these types of training like i mentioned situational leadership to have it be brought into the organization i

have it brought into mind and you can do the same thing and it's worth it it's absolutely worth it all right so i mentioned this a little bit earlier which was we're going to talk about some words i talked about the word try because when i think about emotional intelligence and i think again about the upset that's going on and and how people are moving jobs so often due to just everybody being on the same page at one moment and then not being on the same page at an at a very another moment that's not too far on the on the time spectrum which i i think is not good for society a lot of what comes

down other than measurable agreements is how we speak together our actual words are actual words and so while we'll have some fun with these five words that i tell people just eliminate them from your vocabulary like eliminate them uh they bring no value really um beyond you know having some fun with these words fun meaning it's quite interesting when you actually when we actually talk about them and we will but really we want to be thinking about all of our words all of our words so i can't make you feel anything necessarily meaning your mind chooses your emotions this is the most powerful thing i learned i learned it when i was 33. from that day forward i wished i had

moved it when i was 3 or 13 you know or 23. you know you picked the number anytime earlier would have been lovely uh and the reason being is that i grew up in this as i'm sure many of you did that you know my relationship with you is 50 my responsibility and 50 your responsibility and i really believed that and it wasn't until i really sought training and having some difficulty in relationships that i was told that's that that's not the way that it works it's not 50 you 50 the other person it's 100 you meaning it's 100 my responsibility to have a relationship with you it's if i want to have a great

relationship with you i can have a great relationship with you if i don't then i won't meaning like that's your that's your power i can't make somebody else have a great relationship with me and yet i can create a great relationship with you isn't that crazy so here's my here's what i'm saying if i want to have a powerfully positive relationship with you then i would choose my words so wisely that i could and that's the name of the game that is the name of the game you know uh when i first heard of rbg it wasn't too long ago in my life just just um shamelessly to say you know three years ago maybe

and and then i studied her furious furiously fiercely because i realized that of course she's an amazing amazing woman you know fighting for equality and certainly for women but what i really found fascinating was how she used words and i started listening to her her cases and certainly the ones she presented to the supreme court justice and it's very clear and of course that is what you know sort of litigation or law is it's words it's literally words and so while i can't necessarily make you feel something there's enough knowledge in society that based on the words i choose i can pretty much create an emotion that i want right i mean isn't that what's happening with

social media right now isn't it isn't it true that that like button brought us all joy and then over time it brought sadness but you know what i mean like it's addictive it's addictive that feeling that good feeling well you you know creating a good feeling is something that a human can do with words for another human it's very true and and it's the same with a bad feeling and so what i'm saying to you overall is i believe words are the most important uh weapon that we have and when i say weapon i say it because i think we use words mostly to the negative in um in in terms of creating environments that give people you know

mental safety it's not a lot of that that goes on so while these words may you know are are kind of uh trivial to the game there's other words and and how they're put together that are much more serious and so i'm asking everybody to really think about their words own their words you know this words um not really mattering anymore you could call that fake news right words being put out into the world whether they're verbal or digitally creating something fake that's um that's a you know a real serious issue for society and so what i'm out you know just begging the world prior to you know sort of these last four years even

is to take words seriously because they start wars and they end wars they can be used for good and they can be used for extreme pain and and should we choose there's the word should because there's only one the only time you're supposed to use is when you want everybody to do it for sure is should we choose i'm hoping you choose to think about your words at such a level that you're literally making time in your day to think about how you're going to speak to others and uh and that's that's required to have a good eq skills is the time to actually think about how and what what you're gonna say all right so let's

have a little fun with these words and then we'll get into um some more skills in uh eq uh uh i want us all as conscious as can be about skill or words all right let's let's finish try we i gave you the examples earlier you know but one of the best ways to ex to illustrate how useless the word try is is just drop a pin on the floor and try and pick it up you know you either pick it up or you don't pick it up there actually is no in between and this is why the word try just brings a lot of headaches to the workforce there's a lot of people say i'll try and do that i'll

try and do that okay so let's just get rid of try um should is an interesting one because a lot of you are in security operations and there are emergency situations and that is the only time and that's what i was referring to earlier where the word should ought to be used is an emergency situation a training dictating situation that everybody needs to do this otherwise using the word should really stifles people's ability to think and look at a situation at a 360 degree view and what are all my options one of the places that this is error the most is somebody who is a manager somebody who is a mentor a parent you know you should do this you

should do this you should do that that's not helpful well i know that people think it is and while i know that people have the best intentions that doesn't mean that the best result is created meaning if i look up to you and and and you're telling me i should do something as it pertains to my career or something in life that we're discussing and i don't want to disappoint you that's a burden that's a burden especially uh you know being that typically a mentor has you know is much older and you know sort of has been through much more it's hard to to to say may go go against that or even a parent

i mean how many people i've met over the years that my degree isn't really what i wanted i did it for my parents or you know um same thing with just sort of career advice you know and so what i ask of everybody is is instead of telling people what they should do tell them what they could do you know offer options help everybody you know sort of look at and understand all their options because there's lots of them we all can do whatever it is we want to do that is the truth the reality is that humans can do whatever they want to do so you can be in one division of security and get to another one yes

you can if you want to yes and um when we empower humans with options and the ability to think through them and what would that option create and what would this option create and certainly hearing from our mentors or our parents or our friends and what they think without the burden of you should which implies that if i don't well maybe i made a mistake and that's not we don't need that in the decision making process we don't we don't need to put that on people while they're making very important decisions in life right we need to empower them with knowledge and options and and if we'd like to share our own thoughts about um

why the one path or another seems you know smart to them you know yeah carefully carefully but really if you're providing all options you don't have to be persuasive you know it isn't true that we know everything all of us it's true that when people can look at something and see all of the options they make really good choices so let's let's let's go with that all right but but is the the worst word on the screen if you choose to eliminate one word please eliminate the word but so in that training and i told you i took you know back now quite some time ago uh almost 20 years um this was the second thing that i

realized when we were in the language portion of these these trainings which by the way it did for years um understanding how much the word but changes uh the the sentence to actually have no value or no meaning was mind-blowing and it bothers me every day it's one of those things like i'm so glad i know that i know it and yet i see it everywhere all around all around our our political leaders are mentors leadership you listen to them speak in the word but in the middle of a lot of sentences a lot of sentences i'm sure by now even though i haven't said it you've figured out what i'm talking about because you

stick the word but in the middle of a sentence you are negating the beginning of the sentence and it is the most common way to not be authentic to not be accountable to hide to lie and it is the subconscious mind that does it the most and we have become a butt society and and it's bad it's super bad so um i want to empower us all to a recognize this like listen listen when people speak listen to when the word but comes and say to yourself huh the first half of this sentence was this the second half was this they're the opposites of each other because that's exactly what it is and so how does one really know what's the

truth of what that person feels holy moly that's terrible it's a terrible thing and it plagues us and i see it i see it out in the world and i see it in business you know uh way too much so let me give you a a small example i just finished a presentation and i'm standing in front of the group of you know team that i'm giving a presentation my boss is in the audience and my boss says great job deidre what happened to the part where you're gonna give us our seo numbers do you think i heard great job no no because if if that person wanted me to hear a great job the

sentence would have went like this deidre great job the sentence would have been over would have made eye contact it would have been a smile great job thank you great job and then you know let that land let me let me know that you actually thought i had a great job otherwise don't tell me i did a great job when i didn't because i missed your seo stuff otherwise just say i'm really disappointed i thought this presentation was about uh seo or had the majority of it was gonna have seo content where is that at you know that would help me more than than sort of like this this feeling for a second of good and

then oh or oh my gosh what happened you know and wait is it good not good not bad you know again this is very m you know sort of um you know to highlight how easy it is to send a a mixed signal just by putting the word but oh would you say great job daydre that was awesome what happened to the seo data like if it was really awesome and i just left something small out great okay it's on my mind i'm a leader right if i'm the up on the you know my leader sitting out there listening to the presentation dj did a great job that's awesome but why i wonder why she didn't

put that seo stuff in there i was actually really looking forward to see that but that but they really thought i did a great job then all they had to do is say great job peter that was awesome thank you that's exactly wanted um uh i noticed the seo content was wasn't in there do you have that do you have anything you can share there you know like that's gonna support me in knowing that i did a great job otherwise don't tell me i did a great job okay so the word but is used a lot and um unfortunately because the word but is used people in in general don't really know where others stand and they get

disappointed often i thought they i thought they thought they believed this and then they did this and it's like no you just had a sen you heard something that had the word but in the middle of it so you really didn't know which one it was so this is a fun one um you can um you can send me at any time any examples you get because i always love hearing them and i'll tell you when you're watching politicians and leaders listen listen for it it's pretty mind-blowing and let's uh let's teach ourselves and others to just lose it lose the word but all right obviously i chose obviously to make in terms of my

my top five because the word obviously when used in business meetings is probably the the most electric word that one can use and i laugh because even for myself if i'm sitting in a meeting and somebody says the word obviously it actually makes my body sort of wake up never mind has it already sort of attacked my mind uh meaning like what why is this person saying the word obviously what what just happened you know like that means you know that they're smarter than or that they they think something is um you know should be obvious every meaning like you can see it in a room when someone when people use the word obviously others take it

as a pretty negative experience and so um again what value does it have you know even if something is obvious why start a sentence with obviously i don't i don't i don't see what value it brings if anything it's gonna possibly turn somebody off from listening at a great capacity or caring at a great capacity because it's um you know not not a positive sort of way to start a conversation you know i get that there are times where the word obvious is needed again obviously is much different than obvious obviously assumes you should have known something you didn't know or i'm going to tell you something you definitely you know probably don't know or or you

should know but i'm thinking you don't know i mean it's just it i i can tell you that i've had many of complaints of people over the years of if that person says obviously one more time so part of it is it's a filler word in communicating and part of it is a bit of an ego thing so whatever it is it doesn't bring good good feelings into meetings i can tell you that so it's by the reason it's on my list here all right the word fine uh this was the fun one to learn um meaning so so i was i was trained that the word fine if i ask you how you are and you say fine

it it's really the sign that you're not interested in engaging me and giving me something to work with some something to uh communicate back and forth i mean you're not you're not really interested in a conversation and um and when i first heard this i thought huh that's interesting i really hadn't thought about that and then i started really paying attention to at work when people say i'm fine and i realize that the majority of the time if not all the time or somebody says when i say how are you doing and again what in one of my cultures you know hey how are you how's it going when somebody says the word fine it typically means something's

going on and and they're they're consumed by it and they're stressed by it and they're not fine they're actually not fine and i'm sure you know that uh that's not all the time and people are rushing and what have you it is a high percentage and so um the reason i say eliminate it from our vocabulary is because it really causes us to disconnect to not connect not share and when you find yourself wanting to say it just like in any of these other words i encourage you to find another word it's not it's to it's to allow yourself to communicate in a way that will really get you the most powerful experience so you're going to replace these words with

another word and it is true the more we can connect with the people we work with and connect with people in general the greater capacity we have to create the greater capacity we have to enjoy life the greater capacity we have to affect others and ourselves positively so so you know by saying eliminate these words if you you're about to say i'm feeling fine or thanks i'm fine maybe that will trigger your brain to think huh how come i didn't want to connect with that person how come i didn't want to engage them more what's that all about you know uh and and and really that's the message overall of all of these words and words in general

why'd you use it why are you using it you can use lots of words choose your words wisely care that your words uh can affect others such that you're creating the most powerful win-win conversation you can all right we're counting down on minutes here i've got about three or four minutes and then we'll take a couple of questions here i want to end with this so eq emotional intelligence are skills these are these are the emotional intelligence skills that i train on have been trained on continue to train on created lots of them material uh and and and what we talk about in our organizations and that is um to recognize that these skills take just as much practice

as your your your height your hard skills your technical skills your your legal skills your compliance skills right these skills have to be worked at and so in our organizations we have these trees printed out with dishonesty you know meaning like keeping it conscious our conscious minds are a very par small part of what we do every day and so you got to keep your conscious mind awake otherwise you're just going to rely on all your old skills and let's create new skills let's keep them growing that's your conscious mind so visuals super important have visuals around understand that these are skills like it's a skill to have a positive attitude meaning life's hard there's

i'm super in tune with society and i i every day i i know i have to be positive and yet i see the most negative stuff all day right in in the world it's meaning i i stay in tune with that stuff and yet i come to and i show up with a positive attitude that's a skill i've worked at it i've trained at it i was told when i got hired out of college that it was my job that i was being paid an entry level salary to bring a positive attitude every day to bring in being interested at attitude every day and to implement the training that i was given and those three things were

measured of me and and and think thankfully so thankfully so they gave me a great foundation to work from because everybody loves positive attitudes right everybody loves when um you know uh they they can they can um show up at work and there's a positive vibe that the culture is positive like we all want that we in fact we all want the same things which is kind of crazy that we haven't created equality in society meaning who doesn't want to be treated with respect everybody wants to trade with respect everybody wants to you know make equal income everybody wants training everybody wants you know to be to be uh treated uh fairly everybody wants equal

opportunity you know opportunity to grow and progress and so if we all want those things then why wouldn't we make sure that those of us in power make sure that others have them well there's a lot of reasons as to why and yet it doesn't mean we have to accept it we need to do we need to change that right willingness to confront others is on here as a skill that's a that's a skill like you know um probably most of you were brought up like me to think confrontation was bad well guess what it's not bad it's actually love like to confront somebody which means to actually talk to them that's all it means to engage them to

talk to them to to share with them what you're struggling about to to let them know you're upset or or what you got going on is actually love because if you're willing to engage somebody then we can actually create solutions if i'm not willing to confront then nothing can happen no nobody no solutions can can be created and so it's actually the the lack of confronting that is that is the problem and so we must be willing we must be willing to talk to people even when it's uncomfortable and to engage conversations meaning we must be willing to externalize our internal communication must be willing to put it out there so that it can be um

dealt with in a in a in a way that allows us to prosper and grow and and move forward and we only learn by doing it so on that note i am out of time here i'm going to uh say to you all if anybody wants my eq tree please and put it up in your office please do there's anything i can do to help you let me know i'm super involved with a lot of organizations supporting diversity in cyber security i've made a slide here with a lot of them i encourage you to get involved by getting involved with our community we can create change faster and so please do and i've also i know a

lot of people come to b-sides maybe getting into jobs for the first time into cyber security and i want to say to you all that there's a lot going on in government jobs and i encourage you to apply to them and so i made a slide here of where you can go find those jobs and even if you're not entry level i apologize even even not being into entry level there's great jobs here so please do check them out all right and here's some resource links of great organizations that i love and adore in training and here's my contact information thank you all so much and let's see if we've got some questions here from our lovely moderator room moderator

perfect thank you so much dj for the presentation it was awesome and greatly informative um we do have a few comments in the chat here especially regarding uh words that empower us so a few comments here absolutely right about the word should demonstrates lack of vision and context a lot of fantastic points to consider bring back to my work thank you for the great talk um i actually had a few items myself um that you spoke about that really resonated with with me and i thought was really interesting um a few of those points eq doesn't cap out like iq does over time i found it very interesting people people typically leave people not the job where they are working

i think that really resonates with with people as well i really like this point you made if you don't have measurable agreements make them and if you can't at that time have a date for a date um that's fantastic um uh words are most words are the most important weapon we have um and this one is always interesting people with higher eq uh make more money um that's a a great comment there yes yes absolutely uh actually i did have a question for you um you know just personally over the years um within uh employment um i see you know even browsing in linkedin and number of individuals working at jobs for one to one year uh maybe even two years if that

uh and moving on to a new position outside of their current employer um do you believe this is due to you know from from what you've seen um in in your company and workings do you see this as individuals seeking to you know kind of leapfrog to uh have higher compensation or do you see it's more so relatable to their workplace environment causing uh the talent to leave yeah it's such a great question and i'm so glad you asked it because really everybody needs to know it's not the money it's not the money nobody comes to us about money nobody starts conversations with us about money meaning when we're pitching them jobs it's not like well

what's the money it's what's the job what am i going to be doing and what has happened is a couple of things one is cyber is uh has not caught on to the succession plan planning train yet you know like all other departments typically have and that's because there's a lack of budgets and um so because of that people have to move to can i keep their careers going because there isn't this succession planning in most organizations and then the other piece is yes the people it's just not a place where they're enjoying working it's one of those two things and sometimes it's both and that's what's so horrific now i will tell you this

at the offer stage once the offer it comes down to the offer time of course everybody wants more money like it's risky to make the move it could be the same problem even though they say it's not in fact the majority of us the more we move in our careers we realize huh i need to dig you know check this more like are they really have what i need am i really going to be able to grow like the last company said so and then it wasn't true so now i'm going to dig more and so you know the reality is of course it's risky to make a move and so everybody wants a raise

as a part of that making that move um and they usually get the rates and so that those statistics can consider be like oh it's the money no no no no i'm telling you it doesn't i it doesn't matter what the money is if they don't think the people are awesome and that the job is a good fit for them and people aren't going to make a move for that and so there's there's a lot of hope that it's a better place you know and the problem is the problem is it really hasn't been and it breaks my heart i mean if you think about it if the chief information security officer is changing jobs

every 18 months is which which is what the statistics are showing well then how much chaos is underneath there it takes a year for a ciso to find a job that's eight months they're on the job and they're not loving it and they're looking so how's that like what does that create not and i don't blame them because they're usually told that they're you know they're going to get to have you know build a security program and then they can't you know so i don't it's not like i don't blame them i'm just saying like imagine what it's like how much chaos that creates so we got work to do my friend that's absolutely very very valid points

especially from a c-level perspective and even you know junior analysts as well you know the time frame that it takes to to wrap up a replacement is is is crazy um we have another minute or two um before the next speaker um joins i i do have another question for you um in terms of the words that you talked about that disempower us um what are your thoughts about saying sorry on emails for example um i've seen tons of times where uh work just gets so busy and you know individuals may not be able to answer to an email within a day or two maybe even three at some times and i consistently see folks say sorry

in emails do you think this is a word that disempowers us you know i think that sorry disempowers us when we're using it and we could have avoided having to say it so for instance that making a measurable agreement and then managing it if i knew ahead of time and i could have told somebody and then i wouldn't have had to say sorry you know or if i if if i'm saying sorry and i could have avoided saying sorry it's not genuine it doesn't land and it's just not a good idea because it just becomes this habit of a way to have an excuse for myself but if i'm genuinely sorry then maybe and and for me i'll tell you what

but i don't respond to an email in 24 hours i'm i'm usually like sorry like i feel like i'm behind you know and even though the person may not be expecting it from me i might say sorry to be so behind because i'm feeling it like i'm i'm sharing that i'm feeling sorry that i didn't respond to her so you know i i think that it really comes down to are we saying it to cover up not being responsible or are we genuinely saying it because you know sorry for not getting to this sooner i made a mistake like i did i made a mistake or i'm late and then in my example i i say it you

know sometimes because i am like gosh how am i so behind even though i didn't expect it you know abs absolutely thank you so much um it looks like we are out of time now um but thank you so much for the the great presentation um resonates with myself and i'm sure many of the others on the call here um so thank you very much for the time and the presentation dj absolutely