Humble is People Smart

*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Bill Berthel
Welcome to. The Get Emergent podcast, where we discuss leadership, team and organizational topics and best practices. We like to provide ideas, concepts, and pragmatic experiments to help you develop your potential in your work and your leadership. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone
And I’m Ralph Simone.

Bill Berthel
Humble is people smart. Ralph, we’re going to talk about humility, how that is being more people smart.

Ralph Simone
I love it because I think this is my wheelhouse. Yeah. I was in the half the class that made the top half possible, and so I was never accused of the high IQ.

So I started paying attention to people. So I think that let me be a little less than humble. I think I am pretty people smart. And I do think humility, though, paying attention and really knowing that we don’t know drives people. I think makes us people smarter, actually.

Bill Berthel
Yeah. No, I like that. And I think it’s one way to cultivate more emotional and social intelligence or being more people smart is through humility to see that we may not know exactly what, someone might be feeling or thinking in that moment that we can connect through lowering not just the confidence, but maybe sometimes a little arrogance comes in this space for me personally, where I can cultivate a little less judgment and be a little bit more people smart in the moment.

Ralph Simone
There’s a line that’s coming up for me from a classmate and a teammate of mine in college, and he said there’s one thing that you’ll always know, and that’s that you’ll never know. And you really never can know what’s going on for people. And so when you are humble and when you could admit you really don’t know, that helps create connection. That helps you become people smarter. No question. I mean, when we’re quick to judge. I’ve seen that before. You’re leaving a lot out. So I do like this connection to, humble is people smart. No question about that.

Bill Berthel
The humility, I think, allows us to pay more attention in the moment. It allows us to be perhaps a little bit more, not just open, but aware to what’s more accurately or really going on, what’s.

Ralph Simone
Happening and curious to learn more. Right. to learn more about what you don’t know or to what you might misread or to get curious about what you think you are reading into either validate it or not.

Bill Berthel
Yeah, absolutely. Something to be looking for. Not just the fact that we have more openness or more awareness and the opportunity to be seeing more, but this idea of congruency can really help us with people’s smartness. If that’s a phrase.

Ralph Simone
Let’s explain what we mean by congruency in this context.

Bill Berthel
Yeah. Congruency is viewing either the alignment or the potential gaps that there are for someone. And we’d like to suggest observing congruency in three different areas. Three different spaces. One is the people we were working with. Their language is that in alignment with or congruent with then their body language. So spoken language, second body language, their posture, how they’re holding themselves might add their energetic presence in that. Are those aligned also with what you’re picking up as their emotion? Their sensing, their feeling their emotion. We can look for congruency there or the gaps. Where might there be gaps? That creates more people smart. We’re tuning in to three different levels of that other person or those people’s being, how they are.

Ralph Simone
And it seems as if we are tuning in at that level. It would lead us to ask a question as opposed to draw a conclusion. If we were sensing any areas of incongruence.

Bill Berthel
I think not just a question, Ralph, I think we’re going to ask questions that are really mattering in that moment that are important or significant. I think it’s going to have us tune in to a deeper level of significance so we can ask meaningful questions.

Ralph Simone
How do we help the person? I’m just quick. I can quickly assess, and I know, and I don’t need to. I just net it out. Come on.

Bill Berthel
And you might. I mean, I think some people are truly gifted, right? Some people are truly gifted in this space where they get a quick read and they’re right. I’m not sure that’s the humble part of the people smart. So being right or being accurate, that’s cool. That’s good. I think slowing down a bit. I think having the openness and willingness to, I’m going to say self-test, is my initial read right, or correct? And then how am I using that read? If I’m just speeding to. The finish line, is that people smart? I’m not sure.

Ralph Simone
Well, I think one way to figure it out is it creating connection or disconnection? And when you quickly size somebody up. And let them know what’s wrong with them,

Bill Berthel
Yeah.

Ralph Simone
I don’t think you’re creating connection in those instances. To me, you can actually get a good metric of the level of your people smartness by whether you are creating connection or not.

Bill Berthel
Yeah, absolutely. And I’d suggest it’s a process, not an event or not a finish line to get across I think we need to stay tuned in. Not just get tuned in with congruency but stay tuned in with that individual. I think that’s about the connection. What’s the purpose of the connection? Is to stay connected so we can continue to ask meaningful questions, relate to that individual. Does their body language stay aligned with their spoken language and their emotion? Are they starting to demonstrate some different emotion as the conversation unfolds? It’s a continual process with that person. Not just a one and done, not a box of check off.

Ralph Simone
Very dynamic.

Bill Berthel
Dynamic. And yeah, there’s meaning in that connection.

Ralph Simone
I think it sounds like what we’re talking about with this connection of humble is people smart. We’re talking about emotional intelligence.

Bill Berthel
We are.

Ralph Simone
We are really talking about being tuned in to our own emotions, but then tuned in to the emotions of others in a way in which we can assess the situation, ask some questions and make some connection.

Bill Berthel
Absolutely. There’s that social awareness that’s embedded in emotional and social intelligence. This is similar, or maybe it’s the same as empathy, really tuning in. It allows for recognizing that we don’t know what the person’s completely experiencing, but we can lend an understanding. That keeps us humble. That we can tune in to lend an understanding is a great exercise in humility. We can learn more about how they might be experiencing something then.

Ralph Simone
So it seems like we have to have a high degree of empathy, and we have to be tuning in not only with our ears, but with our eyes and with our heart. Right. Really kind of tuning into the whole person. And when we tune into the whole person, we have a greater chance of understanding where they’re coming from and creating that level of connection.

Bill Berthel
So Ralph, I love that. That might be the mutual congruency that’s going on in being people smart through humility is that our listening, our empathy, and our understanding of that other individual is congruent. It’s through our minds, our eyes, our hearts. We’re full, we’re congruent, we’re aligned in that too.

Ralph Simone
I was thinking of a story that I think I shared with you the other day. I had the attention that I was going to shift people’s energy all day long. And in order to shift it, I really needed to be humble about. I don’t know them; I don’t know what’s caused their energy to be where it’s at. And I went into a post office, and I walked in to deliver a package, and I walk in on an argument between a customer and the clerk over a stamp that this woman is requesting. And so I’m observing it, and I want to remember my intention of shifting energy. And then I go up. And he goes, you got a problem? And I think the humble part is don’t get hooked. Don’t be offended by someone else’s energy. Be people smart. I said, well, no, I said, I need this padded envelope. And I explained my situation and I was just checking to see that the book fit in. He’s still not shifted. And then I go to the transaction, and I want to pay for the postage and the envelope at the same time. And he wants to do it separately. I said, would you mind doing it together? He reluctantly. And then I engaged him. I asked him a question because I was a little confused about the zip code. And then his energy shifted dramatically because he was now dispensing his expertise. And we had a friendly chat. And I got to tell you, it wasn’t the same. It was the same guy, but with a much different energy. And I think it was just because I was curious about what was going on, you know, and he never told me. I mean, who knows what was actually going on?

Bill Berthel
Sure, sure. What I love about that is I think you asked him for his knowledge, his expertise or his help in that moment. And most people want to be helpful, so they’ll shift their energy to be helpful. I think it’s something really important when we’re leading folks that if their energy isn’t congruent with what’s occurring, if their emotion or their language or they’re not quite congruent, we have an opportunity to shift that energy with them. Asking them, asking them for their help or their expertise in something, their knowledge will so often do that.

Ralph Simone
In the first people you have to be smart with is yourself. And this is where I think the humility comes. You’ve got to know how easily offended you get, or you got to know how you get hooked and if you can recognize that. Right. Be people smart about yourself, that self-awareness, you can show up differently, but that requires, I think, a great deal of humility. What’s the, I was going to call him Tug McGraw. That’s not his name, that’s his father’s name. Tim McGraw. Tim McGraw song be Humble and Kind.

Bill Berthel
Be Humble and Kind.

Ralph Simone
And I think part of that starts, I might say be kind. And if you’re kind, it allows you to be humble. I might reverse it a little bit. Probably doesn’t make for a good song.

Bill Berthel
It’s what’s important though, perhaps in order right there. I think it’s also akin to organizational awareness. I think this can go out beyond just a one-on-one relationship or somebody that we might be working with as a direct report or so forth. But I think we have to understand context that’s going on in the organization as well. Not all situations are equal. What situation is being presented currently with me or in front of me. And when that’s put together with empathy, we might be able to be even more helpful. We might be able to really get into something that’s a deeper issue or a deeper problem in the organization that’ll make a bigger impact.

Ralph Simone
Well, you’re connecting the dots. So you have, you’re tuning into the individual and you’re also tuning into the organization and you’re looking at it more holistically or more systemically. And I think that’s a lot more scalable and impactful.

Bill Berthel
I think if we can look up for a moment as a leader, take that view, we can be even more effective and create bigger impact.

Ralph Simone
I like that image. Look up. Sometimes just looking up in paying more attention allows us to strengthen our people’s smartness. So where would we suggest people start tying being humble to being people smart?

Bill Berthel
I think you used the word earlier of cultivate and I like that idea. Because I think most all of us are doing some of this, but cultivating to me conjures up those images of getting it even healthier and letting it grow even more better. I, think a great way to do that is to start at home. Where will you become more aware of your own congruency in language, the embodiment of that, what your body language is like and emotion. I think it’s an inside job first. So start at home. Pay attention to your own congruency in how you are speaking, holding yourself and is your emotion aligned. As leaders, that gives us permission to be authentic. It gives us permission to, if something’s frustrating, I think there’s an appropriate amount of frustration we can demonstrate and show that we’re human. When we’re thrilled something happened, let’s high five our coworker. Let’s celebrate it. Let’s dial it in accurately.

Ralph Simone
In fact, it’s the lack of congruence, it’s the incongruence that can make a leader appear inauthentic. Or uninspiring. So when we’re upset, if we’re pretending we’re not, that can look or feel inauthentic. And when we’re really excited, but we’ve dialed it down, it may feel uninspiring. You know, it was interesting. Language. a couple things I thought of. We were talking. Language is generative. Pay attention to what you’re generating. Our physiology affects our psychology. So tune in to your body, your posture, and then be truthful. Be honest about what you’re feeling, what you’re experiencing. And that transparency, I think, also creates connection.

Bill Berthel
Absolutely. That’s first. Then seek outwardly. Right. Who will you observe and learn from? Who else is doing this really well around you? Maybe ask them for some of their advice or their mentoring and then be watching for this with others. Because as a leader, we get to interact with people day in and day out. There’s going to be no shortage of examples and opportunities to practice this. We can start practicing it with our teams and with our coworkers.

Ralph Simone
I think a key thing, though, that requires a level of being humble.

Bill Berthel
Absolutely.

Ralph Simone
Because that suggests there are other people out there doing everything I do better. And I want to find out who they are, and I want to learn from them.

Bill Berthel
Love it. And I think back to Tim McGraw. I think it’s be humble and kind.

Ralph Simone
Really nice, Bill. Thanks.

Bill Berthel
Ralph, Thank you. And folks, thanks for listening. You can listen to a new podcast two times every month here at GetEmergent or wherever you listen to podcasts. This is where we bring you contemporary leadership topics and ideas. Balanced with what we hope you find our better practices that you can apply to your work and your leadership. Thank you.