In this episode of Women in Motion, hosts Lee Kantor and Renita Manley interview Lauren Sweeney, an expert in leadership and emotional intelligence. The discussion explores how emotional intelligence (EQ) is a vital yet often overlooked skill for women leaders and entrepreneurs. Lauren shares practical advice on developing self-awareness, managing emotions, and building authentic connections—especially in virtual settings and high-stakes meetings. The episode highlights real-world examples, actionable tips, and the importance of EQ for sustainable leadership success, offering valuable insights for anyone looking to enhance their professional impact.
Lauren Sweeney is the Vice President at Rise Up For You. Lauren holds a leadership and community development degree from UC Davis.
Rise Up For You works with clients around the world to enhance company leadership, growth, and personal development through transformational coaching, training, on-demand learning, and educational events.
Their mission is to elevate you and your team’s potential by providing high-quality training and coaching in soft skills- the most needed skills today and in the future.
Connect with Lauren on LinkedIn.
Episode Highlights
- Definition and importance of emotional intelligence (EQ) in leadership.
- The role of EQ in sustainable success for women entrepreneurs and leaders.
- Development and application of EQ in professional settings, including virtual meetings and pitch scenarios.
- Practical tips for reading a room and managing emotions effectively.
- Strategies for leveraging EQ to build relationships and navigate challenges.
- The impact of virtual communication on emotional intelligence and how to adapt.
- The significance of self-awareness and self-management in enhancing EQ.
- The connection between emotional intelligence and organizational success, including employee retention and profitability.
- The use of role-playing and practice conversations to build EQ skills.
- Encouragement for women leaders to develop their emotional intelligence for personal and professional growth.
Music Provided by M PATH MUSIC
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios. It’s time for Women in Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here with Renita Manley. Another episode of Women in Motion, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today’s episode is titled EQ Edge: The Hidden Skill Behind Sustainable Success. And on the show, our guest today, Lauren Sweeney. Welcome.
Lauren Sweeney: Thank you so much, Lee. So glad to be here. And, uh, fantastic to be on the show and talk about such an important topic.
Lee Kantor: Renita, how did this come about? What got you interested about EQ?
Renita Manley: Well, it was actually, um, Lauren who reached out and wanted to be a part of the podcast, and we kind of talked it over a little bit. And after hearing what she had to say, I’m like, you know, I think this is a great topic for some of the leaders that we have within our community. So I am really excited. At first, I didn’t know what EQ stood for. I’m like, it’s this equalizer. I wasn’t sure, but I did a little bit more research and I found out that it’s related to emotional intelligence. So I am looking forward to hearing everything you have to say about that. Lauren.
Lauren Sweeney: Oh thank you Renita. Yes, it’s either EQ or AI. So you’re right. Ai stands for Emotional intelligence, or EQ is like your emotional quotient. And you know, I saw a video recently that said that a boxers or those that you know, like do some type of fighting sport have a high level of emotional intelligence. And I’m getting to how this relates to us as leaders because they have to be able to think and use both parts of their brain. So we have like a logical brain and an emotional brain, and you can actually train both. And for those of us that either are entrepreneurs or leaders or executives in an organization, we need to be able to train both. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
Lee Kantor: So, Lauren, what’s your backstory? How did you get interested in this?
Lauren Sweeney: Awesome. Well thank you. You know, about six years ago, I met our CEO at our organization, Natalie Nasseredine, and it was really the first time that I think I did a deeper dive into emotional intelligence. Our organization, Rise Up for you really focuses on that for leadership development. And I think I was familiar with EQ even in high school. I remember seeing some paperwork, I had done some type of little course in it, and even in college I had taken a course around leadership and there was an EQ component, but it wasn’t really until I started diving into it even deeper. And then now teaching it to executives and entrepreneurs around the globe through Rise Up for You, that I realize it is pervasive. Literally, it is something that we deal with every single day, whether we’re conscious of it or not, our ability to be self-aware and increase our level of self-awareness and then manage that awareness, you know, let’s say, Lee, we’re in traffic. I’m aware that I’m irritated. I’m aware that I would like to do certain behavioral reactions that might not be very helpful for my well-being. And so it’s like I have self-awareness. And then self-management says, what do I do with that? The first two components of EQ are really about me. The second to social awareness and relationship management. That’s about others.
Lee Kantor: Now, um, as the title says, this is a hidden skill. Is it, um, can you talk about some ways where it can become actionable and I can leverage it to for my benefit. Is there something? Is that part of your teaching? It’s not only to just make you aware that it exists, but also how to leverage it for your benefit, right?
Lauren Sweeney: Absolutely. You know, we talk a lot about the rise of AI, and it’s absolutely true that AI is can do amazing things and even will replace some of the tasks that we do day to day or our entire job. However, why I wanted to talk about EQ as the hidden success skill is that AI cannot replace our ability to have critical thinking, our ability to connect with another and have empathy that it won’t take away. And so that’s why we really call it the success skill. It is the most important skills we can develop. Because I want you to think about this. If you’re listening, I want you to think, okay, think of somebody you might have a disagreement with. Or if you have employees, maybe a team member that you just don’t get along with. And I want you to think about why. Is it because they don’t know how to do a job task? Is that what really drives you crazy about them? Probably not. It’s probably because they can’t communicate. They don’t provide any context when communicating. They are defensive and argumentative. Like, those are probably the reasons that that person might drive you crazy. Maybe they take no responsibility or accountability. You see, these are all what we call those soft skills or those superpower skills. And that is why these are the most important skills you can develop. Whether you’re an emerging leader in your career, you’re the CEO of an organization, or you’re reinventing yourself whatever stage of life you’re in. Emotional intelligence in the 24 competencies underneath it are really the skills that we need to hone in and develop.
Lee Kantor: Now, is it something that is primarily focused on when it’s human to human, face to face, in person? Or is this something that translate to a lot of, you know, like a lot of young people, their whole relationships could be, you know, on the phone, texting or, you know, never in person or never even seeing each other 100%.
Lauren Sweeney: Well, to your point, it’s hard to get nonverbal cues, vocal tonality from a text. Same with an email. It’s very difficult. However, yes, you can write an emotionally intelligent email. You can also have AI support you with that. You can also try to write an emotionally intelligent text or and or when you need to have that high courage conversation, you can also ask to, hey, could we could I call you for a couple of minutes? It seems like we got confused here. There’s some kind of missing in translation. Or you could also send an email that’s very short that just says, hey, Lee, uh, it sounds like there’s some things that might be frustrating for you. Let’s say you came to me, Lee, and you sent me an email, and my perception is that you’re pretty upset. And I could then respond by saying, I totally hear you, Lee. Let’s have a brief conversation. So whatever style of communication that you were raised with or that is most comfortable for you, that’s not really a problem as long as it’s conscious. We need to bring consciousness to our communication. And yes, it’s much easier to just send a text, but I would rather send a voice memo over text, maybe with a GIF emoji, so that people could help understand my tone and and what I’m trying to do versus just sending like a straight text or a straight email, or ideally in today’s age where we work all over, you know, we the three of us work in the United States, but I know we probably have listeners from all around the globe.
Lauren Sweeney: So it really is important that if we can just get on the phone or even best over video, if it can’t be face to face, so I can see your head nodding so that I can see your eyes paying attention so that I can feel some sense of warmth and empathy if that’s what’s needed, so that I can connect to you as a human being and not a robot. You know, it was a great example. Right before we went live, the three of us were talking and Renita said something and her AI responded. And it was slightly creepy, right? The three of us were like, wait, wait, wait, we did not ask you to chime in. Thank you very much. It didn’t give you a sense of like, oh, the AI has empathy for how I’m doing today. No, it made you feel creeped out. That is exactly why emotional intelligence is such a superpower. I don’t think we realize how much we use emotional intelligence or don’t use it to our our detriment every day.
Lee Kantor: It’s, um, I guess that phrase reading the room is where this comes in a little bit. And the AI in the case before the show, it wasn’t reading the room, it was just reacting to a prompt. Uh, can you talk about maybe some advice or tips on how to read a room? Is there some skills that you can share that can help a person read a room to kind of gauge the temperature? And maybe who would be somebody they should approach, or somebody that, you know, they could have one of those. I love the phrase you use courageous conversations with.
Lauren Sweeney: Yeah, it’s such a good question, Lee. And reading a room could be on a virtual call, right? Maybe you’re on a teams call. Webex, zoom. That could be how you read the room. Or you could read a physical room, a board meeting, a networking meeting, a conference for webank, whatever the case may be. So first, actually, Lee, before we can pay attention to others, we have to pay attention to ourselves. So I’m going to answer your question, but first I’m going to say how you want to intentionally enter the room yourself. So is your posture open? Are you standing tall or sitting tall? Depending. Again, is it a virtual room or an in-person room? Are you wearing clothing that sounds inviting? That looks inviting. And that might be a confusing statement, but if you’re wearing a really cluttered, busy patterned outfit, it it doesn’t create a warm vibe. If you look at our CEO or myself when we speak on stages in particular, or go to a networking event, we’re often wearing something that’s a bright color, something that evokes an emotion of, oh wow, they must have some level of confidence and I want to get to know them. So that is important how you show up in the room. Even if you’re nervous, you want to have some self-awareness and self-management first, then lead to your question. I can have social awareness of what’s going on in the room. See, I have to expand my capacity first for myself. Then I can pay attention to others in the room so that ultimately I can go into stage four of EQ, which is relationship management. It’s really hard to get to relationship management if I don’t first work on developing myself.
Lauren Sweeney: So that might look like I’m looking at the room. I if it’s a virtual room, hopefully we have some videos on or it’s really hard trying to pick up on cues in the chat. I’m trying to pick up on how their eyes look. This is a fun fact. If you can see my hands, you’re more likely to trust me than if I’m really, really, really close to the camera. And I’m kind of maybe my shoulders are up. That’s right. So she’s she’s scrunching forward. If you can see more of my body you were gonna invoke, you’re going to think, oh, she seems trustworthy. So that’s just a fun fact. Virtually in person. Am I fidgeting a lot with my hands? Are they awkwardly kind of just folded? Oh not good. That does not send a message that like, oh, she wants to meet us. When you enter the room, see what you can do to kind of calm your nerves. It’s normal that we’re nervous in a boardroom and networking any kind of situation. And then just simply pause. That’s one of the best things you can do, Lee, is is to pause, is to notice, oh, so-and-so’s talking to another person. Oh, this group of five is really excited and anxious. They’re kind of jumping up and down. Oh, these four people over here have all all have their arms crossed. I wonder what’s going on with them. Simply pause and observe and then intentionally connect. Depends on the purpose of your meeting as well. But the best thing you can do is to actually increase your level of self-confidence, so that then you have bandwidth to pay attention to others.
Renita Manley: Now you mentioned virtual. Oh sorry about that.
Lee Kantor: Oh go.
Renita Manley: Ahead. You mentioned virtual and you mentioned virtual environments. Um, a lot of us, a lot of us, we all meet virtually and, and even just for family meetings or just hanging out. Um, there are so many different ways to start a meeting. I’ve seen people begin meetings talking about all their problems of the week. I’ve seen people begin meetings talking about their best news of the week or, you know, maybe just sitting there with their hands in their on their cheek. So what are some of your tips for? Um, just like virtual meetings, especially for VBS in the professional environment, what are some things that VBS should avoid and what are some, um, some actions that VBS can do virtually in addition to what you just mentioned?
Lauren Sweeney: Such a good question, Renita. So first, prepare yourself, just like I mentioned before, a virtual or an in-person meeting, get yourself in a space where you’re open. Your intention is to connect with other weebs and then so that when you have your video on, ideally you have your video on so that people can read your nonverbals and then you want to have them be intentional. So a couple things, Renita, as I mentioned, being farther back from the camera so that people can see kind of chest up, waist up. Um, and they also can see your hands. The other thing would be to as much as possible, be there and pay attention to what others need. And I know that there are times where we’re having a bad day and we need certain things for sure, but people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. And so if I can get myself together, so to speak, have maybe my notebook and my pen and just be there and listen to others, it’ll make such an impact. It’ll create lasting relationships that I know so many weepies have had just from being with each other. And also then when we connect at in-person events, it’s like we feel like family because we’ve connected to each other virtually. I think the other thing, and we do this a lot inside of our coaching at Rise Up for you. The company I work for is that most people are so nervous that we’re being judged. We get on a call and we’re worried that you’re judging my hair. Does does my lipstick look okay? I’m worried that you know, Lee, you’re wondering if these earrings match.
Lauren Sweeney: No. They’re not. They’re thinking about themselves. Uh, most people. Yes. In a few seconds from getting on the call, people are judging you. This is like, according to neuroscience. That’s normal. But I don’t say that to make you nervous. I want to remind you that most people are getting on a call thinking about themselves. And never before since Covid, since the last five, six years, have we stared at ourselves more on screen. And it’s not exactly good. We end up staring at ourselves so much. If you think about before Covid, we either had telephone calls or we didn’t really do many meetings virtually with videos on it just wasn’t a thing. Not very much. It wasn’t a culture that we did really. We met in person, or we used maybe some video conferencing, but not as much as we have the last few years. And it’s created this complex where we are like obsessed, but in a bad way. Anyway, that’s a tangent for another day, but my point is that, Renita, to your question, when we get on a call, most people are thinking about themselves and they’re nervous. So see what you can do to come outside of yourself. Don’t worry if it’s perfect. Don’t worry. You know, if you look perfect, get on and connect with someone. See how they’re doing. Show genuine care, empathy. See how you can make connections and support each other. I promise it will uplift you and they’ll get off that call going, oh yes, I met that girl Lauren today. I really want to make a connection with her.
Lee Kantor: Now, Lauren, can you share? A lot of our webs are leading companies, or maybe they’re startups and they are trying to get funding and they’re in a meeting, say a pitch meeting and things maybe aren’t going their way. Is there anything you would suggest on how to kind of turn it around and use some of these strategies to maybe find an ally and bring them onto your side so you can help kind of swing the room in your favor.
Lauren Sweeney: Totally. So I have definitely seen a lot of pitch meetings, uh, with weaves, both in person and virtually and oh, something I see that really kind of makes me cringe a little that I think we could use our emotional intelligence to stop doing is when you find it’s finally your turn, right? Let’s say you’re at a round table virtually or in person, and it’s finally your turn to go. And you don’t connect with, let’s say there’s 1 or 2 individuals from the organization. Let’s say you’re pitching to Exxon or Amazon or Target, and the people from procurement that are there, you’re sitting at the table and you aren’t connecting to them at all. You’re so stressed, understandably, and worried about your pitch that you don’t even breathe. And so you just run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run to try to get through your pitch and the amount of time. And in fact, when it’s when your time is up, you ignore that and you just keep going. That’s shows a great lack of emotional intelligence, in fact. Fun fact I when we had our we Bank West conference in Las Vegas about a year ago, actually won the pitch fest. So that was kind of cool. And I think one thing that I’m able to do is, yes, practice for sure. You need to practice, but then connect with people, connect with each of those in in this case, this was in person. Connect with each of those judges. I know they might work for some fancy company, but PS they don’t own the fancy company for the most part. So for us as Weebs, we want to be prepared but then connect with them.
Lauren Sweeney: They’re real human beings that are just looking to see if your product or service could be a fit in their organization. And PS, they want to give you a chance. So lead to your question what happens when things go awry? A. Pause. And visually, I’m putting my hand on my chest and my other hand on my diaphragm. That’s that area right underneath your ribs. Just pause a minute. You could even say something that sounds slightly awkward, like, okay, well, Renita Lee, I think we’ve gone off the rails for a minute. Let’s bring it back for a moment. I don’t think I quite answered your question. Or you could say something that reminds all of us that we’re all humans, and to make it less of a scary process. I think the more human you can make the experience when you’re as a weebie, when you’re sitting next to procurement, it’s just to pause to connect with them. I promise they will remember that more than they will remember your quote unquote perfect pitch. Connect with what they need and use some humor. Use some brevity. This also works. Lee and Renita, if you’re in any type of meeting and you think, oh, this is not going well, go back to your intention. My intention for today on our podcast is to share some helpful tips about the human element of emotional intelligence. Go back to what you came here for. Go back to the context and how you intended to show up, and that will help get it back on track.
Lee Kantor: Now, when you’re working with your clients, are you doing kind of practice, um, conversations like this to role play? Okay. I’m gonna not give you eye contact or I’m going to be overly friendly or just give me different scenarios to practice in a safe space. Some of these techniques, so they become second nature that I can just, you know, pull them out when I need them.
Lauren Sweeney: 100%. Lee. Yes, we do both group training. We do coaching one on one, and we also do seminars and keynotes. And so. Yes, role playing is a big one because it takes practice. Most of this is uncomfortable and unnatural for us. And the other thing I want to remind us is that our behaviors are not the problem. For example, let’s say you stutter when you speak and that makes you, of course, nervous, understandably, or you just are so nervous when you’re speaking and you just talk really softly and it comes through that you’re nervous. I actually want to propose that that’s not the problem. The issue, so to speak, is the belief. So most of us grew up in households where we were taught to, quote unquote, be humble. Don’t brag about yourself. Bragging is bad. Some level, something like that. And what that does is it does a disservice later in life when we don’t feel like we can self-promote. Did you know that there are nine competencies, according to our research, that rise up for you of confidence, self-confidence, and in fact, most individuals we’ve Weepies included struggle with self-confidence 83%, according to our research. And so if you can bring some self-compassion to that little, you know, girl in you, since we are mostly women or that little boy in you from when you were younger, and you can remind yourself, hey, I’m doing the best I can.
Lauren Sweeney: And we can repattern and think a new thought. So lead. To go back to your question. Role play can definitely help. The other thing too is to move around a little. So before you get in that room, virtual or in person, don’t sit in a little ball because all the nerves will just pull in your stomach. You want to move, jump around, do some jumping jacks, play a little music. No one has to see you going to the bathroom, even if you need to. But you want to move the energy because the body doesn’t know if you’re nervous or excited. It feels the same. And so we want to remind our body. I’m excited. I’m. Write it on your pitch paper, even if you need to. I am excited to be in this room to connect with these people here from procurement and these weepies, because I don’t even know the connections we’re about to make.
Renita Manley: I kind of want to pivot with them. This next question about EQ or emotional intelligence. Do you have any instances of how improved, um, EQ in leadership has led to increased profit for a company?
Lauren Sweeney: Ah, such a good question, Renita. So emotional intelligence accounts for 75% of careers being derailed. 75% of careers are derailed due to lack of transparency, lack of trust, the difficulty to change in a especially during times of turmoil. And so a 100% has to do with the bottom line. There is so many countless studies from Harvard Business Review and other educational institutions that have really showed the detrimental or positive effects of having either a lack of EQ or good amounts of EQ. So yes, 100%. What we find at Rise Up for you is when we work with organizations, and the leaders really work to increase their emotional intelligence, then it trickles down to how they lead, which decreases turnover. It increases profitability due to accountability, due to employees being more seen and heard, and also how many times at our organization, we work a lot with HR leaders, and oftentimes an HR leader will maybe put out a survey and then nothing is done about it. And it’s not really necessarily HR’s fault. Sometimes they don’t have buy in maybe from the rest of the executive team, for example. So any time that we are able to increase our levels of emotional intelligence, Especially as a leader, whether we’re a weeb that’s a CEO of our organization, large or small, or we sit as a leader of the procurement team, or we’re an executive at one of the companies that supports, you know, Amazon or Target or Exxon, etc. it makes such a difference if we show up with emotional intelligence, if we show up with humility, if we show up out of curiosity and if maybe it sounds easy, but it’s not.
Lauren Sweeney: For example, let’s say, Renita, that you’re my boss, you’re my leader. And you, I come to you and I say, Renita, I really I felt negated in that meeting, I felt unheard. You have to have emotional intelligence that fast to a be aware that maybe my comment is bothering you, then you have to self-manage. That’s part two of EQ and then you have to, in that split second say Lauren and show maybe some empathy. I really appreciate you coming and telling me that. Can you give me a little more clarification? Is it every meeting you feel negated or just this last one we had this morning with the board and seek curiosity so that we don’t, uh, burn the whole relationship. Now, as an employee, I feel more heard. I’m probably going to stay with that company longer. People stay with great leaders. They don’t stay with great companies. And so we’re needed to go all the way back to your question is, how does EQ help leaders? We’ve just talked about that. And then how does that lead to greater profits, greater ROI? How does it not when when you have less turnover, when people are more bought in, when you foster an environment of intrapreneurship where people feel like it’s their company and they take responsibility and ownership, it’s a win win all around.
Lee Kantor: Now, Lauren, can you share a story that maybe illustrates how you work with your clients, maybe explain the challenge they came to you with and how you were able to take them or their team to a new level.
Lauren Sweeney: Great question Lee. Yeah, so sharing a challenge of how we were able to take a team to a new level. So I’m thinking of one of our clients that came to us two years ago. And I remember I remember their COO, kind of he was upset. He was pounding on the table and he said something like, you know, every year we make these goals and we never follow through. And he wasn’t upset at us. We were like brand new to working with our leadership team. And sitting around the table was his CEO and his CFO and the HR. It was the executive team. And I remember looking at my colleague, his name is Carlos, going, all right, I think we got our work cut out for us. And over the last two years, our team has worked with this organization. And I can tell you that not only do they have better accountability and follow through quarterly weekly meeting with them to follow through on their goals and to really implement their strategic planning. But they also have high courage conversations they were never willing to have before. They have also, to the CEO’s credit, she’s been able to look at her own leadership and realize some gaps and add to the rest of the executive team. They have humbled themselves to be able to look and go.
Lauren Sweeney: These are the areas where I’m really strong, and these are the areas where maybe I could grow. We do 360 assessments around the 24 competencies of EQ, and we get aggregated peer feedback. And sometimes that’s hard to hear. But through coaching with them, they have really seen some of their blind spots. Because Lee and Renita, we all have blind spots. It doesn’t matter if we’re new to owning our own business, or we’ve been an executive for years and years, we all have areas that we can grow, and it’s hard to see the label, so to speak, when we’re in the jar. And so we need that feedback from each other to help each other grow. And also, Lee, this organization has a board of directors that they have to report to. And I would say the board two years ago was not happy. It was really Dire Straits. It was bad. And now the board can see their growth. They have revamped their entire reporting structure. They actually had an incredibly difficult, terrible situation that happened to them this fall. Yet their ability to be resilient and come together as a team was like nothing they could have done before. And we were honored to be part of that.
Lee Kantor: Now, Lauren, why was it important for you and your firm to become part of the WebEx community?
Lauren Sweeney: Mm.
Speaker7: That’s a great question.
Lauren Sweeney: You know, we being a women business owned organization. So our founder, Natalina Nasseredine, she’s a Lebanese female. And I obviously I am a woman myself. I’m her vice president. And I we have, you know, multiple genders in our organization. But I think that we wanted to do that because we wanted to be able to make more connections, not just with other weebs, but with other larger companies like those that we get to sit in front of through Webank. And we want to impact thousands of organizations to increase their levels of EQ. And becoming a weeb gave us a larger platform to be able to do that, to be able to sit and meet executives from a top bank, which we got to do that we Bank West conference that I mentioned. I was also at the New Orleans, uh, we’ve been National conference getting to sit across from large corporations and get to tell our story when we’re really just a small business. Um, and even though we’ve gotten to speak at Google and we’ve gotten to do some amazing things like have two Ted talks and and be on Bloomberg Television, etc. at the end of the day, getting Visibility is a women owned business, so that we can make a difference in these larger organizations is just part of fulfilling our mission.
Renita Manley: So before we get out of here, Lauren. Oh, sorry about that. Before we get out of here, Lauren, I got I personally have one more question. I don’t know what was going to ask, but if I am a web leader or just a web in general, how do I assess whether or not I need to adjust my professional EQ? And then how can I get started with improving that right away? Mhm.
Lauren Sweeney: Thanks, Anita.
Speaker7: It’s a great question.
Lauren Sweeney: So I encourage you to take our emotional intelligence quiz. It’s free. You just go to rise up for you comm. And right there under free resources you’ll see EQ quiz. There’s also a free masterclass in there as well. And I would say that we could all improve in our emotional intelligence. I teach this stuff every week and I promise you I have a lot of room to grow. So that’s where I would start. Renita is actually just doing a little bit of a self-assessment on that competency quiz. It’s just going to help you assess the first two pillars, which is your self-awareness and your self-management. The other thing you can do if you’re feeling courageous and brave is you can ask a few colleagues. Now, if you’re a weebie and perhaps you’re a newer company or entity, you might not even have employees yet. You might just be you as a solopreneur. And I know that’s a lot of the reason that people join Webbank, because we want to connect with others and it can feel lonely. So if you’re able to connect with a couple of trusted colleagues and ask them, I’m working on increasing my emotional intelligence. And what would you say is maybe be kind, but what’s a blind spot that you see in me that could maybe, if I was able to improve it, help me have more visibility and traction in this amazing brand that I’m growing. So those would be two things. One, maybe do a self-assessment. Again, use our free tool, and secondly, ask a few trusted peers for some feedback. The last option is always getting a coach. A leadership coach. It’s different than a life coach or a therapist or a counselor. All fantastic professions. But having a strategic leadership coach, something that we do in a lot of amazing other individuals do. It can help you work through those blind spots and be able to make a shift. It it’s difficult sometimes for us to grow and develop, but oh, so worth it.
Lee Kantor: So Lauren, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what is the website? What’s the best way to connect with you?
Lauren Sweeney: Thank you Lee. So we love LinkedIn. We’re on other platforms as well YouTube and Instagram for sure. But if you go to Rise Up for you on LinkedIn or rise up for You.com, you can connect with us there as an individual. Maybe you want to work on your self confidence, public speaking, or your leadership as a weeb. Or if you have a team and that team could be small, five people, four people, 100 people. You can find out information there, both for you as an individual and for your team. If you do have a team, we even have a power up assessment right there on the website. You can go to power up and you can assess your organization over 20 questions and it’ll give you instant results. Um, that’s where I would go.
Lee Kantor: Well, Lauren, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.
Lauren Sweeney: Uh, I appreciate you both, Lee Renita and all the movies that are listening. May you rise up for you.
Lee Kantor: Renita. Any last words before we wrap?
Renita Manley: Uh, yep. Um, if you want to know what’s going on at website West, just head on over to our website hyphen w e. Check out our events calendar and see what’s going on. We do have our upcoming, um, conference. I’ll be back. Less procurement conference. That’s happening December 16th through December 18th in Phoenix, Arizona. Um, we’re actually going to have our interim president, president from Webank who’s going to be there this year, which is very new for us. But we are in different times as an overall organization. So we just want to support everybody, support our new interim president. As she comes out and talks to Rebecca West about the future of, um, the we Bank community, and that is it. Thanks again, Lauren, for dropping those nuggets. Those were really helpful.
Lauren Sweeney: It’s my pleasure. Great to be with you both.
Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor for Renita Manley. We’ll see you all next time on Women in Motion.
Speaker3: Help us pick me up when I’m down. Get me.
