8 Domains: Practicing Emotional Literacy

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (00:02.002)
like we are officially live. Welcome everyone to the eight domains of human potential, a podcast designed for professionals committed to elevating their well-being and success as a whole person. Your co-hosts today are myself, Laurel Elders and Howie Adams. We're with the Institute for Integrative Intelligence where it's our passion to elevate human potential through the art and the science of masterful coaching.

We offer level one and level two ICF accredited and CCE programs. Howie and I are thrilled to have with us today, Dan Newby. Dan is a champion for emotional literacy and works with leaders, educators, and coaches worldwide. His passion is helping emotional literacy become common sense and to use emotions as a tool daily. He's authored four books on emotional literacy.

Dan Newby (00:55.823)
you

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (00:57.376)
and its application to coaching. He regularly leads his course, emotional centered coaching for coaches and people who support people, including leaders, therapists, educators, faith leaders, and parents. He's worked with leaders in the U S Germany, Italy, El Salvador, Mexico, Slovakia, UK, Singapore, and Canada across the globe. And he's joining us today from Spain. Welcome Dan.

Dan Newby (01:21.743)
Thank you. Delighted to be here. Thank you for the invitation.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (01:24.898)
Yeah. Great to have you. So for those tuning in today's topic is covering the emotional domain. We've covered some of the other domains in the past episodes and we're really gearing this topic towards practicing emotional literacy. So before we, we unpack what that means, Dan, I'd love to hear more about

What prompted you to really focus and hone in as a coach on the world of emotions? Because some people would put emotions in the therapy realm and you have entered it as a coach.

Dan Newby (01:59.659)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Well, I was trained as an ontological coach, so I learned about language and the mechanics of language and how that works.

and I learned about emotions and I learned about somatics or the body. So all of these were part of my training as a coach and what I found was that the language piece, the intellectual piece was really the simplest piece and that made a lot of sense, that was easy. For me, one of the things that was quite challenging was the emotional domain.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (02:22.167)
Thank

Dan Newby (02:35.939)
And what it allowed me to do was, think fundamentally, just understand myself much better. Like, why did I do what I did? What were those emotions about? What were they trying to tell me? How could they support me? And as a coach, I realized that all of our stories, everything we speak, comes from emotions.

And so I began to see them as more more fundamental in coaching. And because most people that I coach and you coach don't know very much about emotions. So they probably know they have emotions and they're aware of emotions and they know about emotional intelligence. But in my experience, they haven't yet seen emotions as a tool that they can use every day. They've not quite yet seen emotions as normal in the sense that, you

they're just part of being human. And so I think that it, working with emotions opens up a lot of possibilities for coaches because one of our beliefs that most of us grew up with was that the solution to our problems is intellectual, that there's some answer. And if we can just figure out the answer, then everything is gonna be okay. But what I find is that a lot of the challenges we face and my coaches face have to do

with their emotions. They're stuck in an emotion or they don't have access to an emotion or they're ignoring their emotions and they actually once they begin to shift into that emotional self-awareness they recognize that it's not really an intellectual problem that they're trying to solve it's an emotional question and once they do that then they're able to see new possibilities which is what we do in coaching.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (04:22.232)
Yeah, fascinating. And can you just give a short definition of ontological coaching for those that aren't familiar with it?

Dan Newby (04:29.935)
Sure, absolutely. So, ontological coaching is built on the idea that every human being operates and learns and knows in at least the three domains of language and that's what we use to access our intellect, emotions, and the body. And that these three are dynamic coherence and so when we shift one, we shift the others. And so we can work as coaches, we can come in through the body, we can talk about

what's happening in somebody's body and their predisposition or their movements or lack of movement. And we can also come in through the emotional domain to explore that. And we can use a more typical approach of looking at language and conversation and how a person processes information intellectually.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (05:25.802)
Thank you. Yeah, and they're so integrated.

Dan Newby (05:29.251)
They are absolutely there. We all have them. They're all integrated. And it is completely true in my experience that when we shift one, we shift the other two. And so the question often in coaching is, well, where is the coachee most comfortable entering and what do we see might be have the greatest impact for them?

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (05:32.334)
Thank

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (05:57.63)
And I'm just curious, what societal myths have you seen serve as around emotion? So I know I kind of entered in with the, some people place emotions in the therapy world or the counseling world. And in coaching, we see, well, that's not necessarily the case.

Dan Newby (06:08.609)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dan Newby (06:14.18)
Yeah.

If you look a little bit at the history of how humans have interpreted emotions, we've always tried to make meaning of them. We've tried to understand them. And the Greeks had their way, and the Romans had their way, and every culture has their own way of interpreting. And we, in the modern age, live in something I would call a psychological interpretation, meaning that we tend to do exactly what you said. When we think of emotions, we place them in the domain of psychology. And that has a history. The reason we do

that is because 150 years ago when we were dividing up the world into sciences we had to put emotions somewhere and so we thought well psychology that's where we'll put them and although I think that has served a lot and it's very helpful and has led to therapy and counseling and lots of other methodologies that are extremely helpful what it doesn't do is it doesn't place emotions as a life skill it doesn't help us see emotions in a practical way and

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (07:12.419)
Mm.

Dan Newby (07:14.993)
And that's what I care about. So you talked about practicing and practice-based. And I consider myself a practitioner. So there's lots of great theories about emotions. There's lots of research into neuroscience. And I think that's all wonderful, but that's not me. That's not what I do. it's not that I don't care about it, but I don't find it practical. And that's what I'm really interested in is how do we develop emotions as a practice? And I think one of the first things is what you just alluded

to what are the myths we're living with that keep us from seeing that? And one of them is, well, we think that there are positive and negative emotions. And I would argue that's not the case. I think every emotion can help us, but every emotion can also be a barrier, depending on the situation. So if you take fear as an example, well, fear keeps us safe, right? It keeps us from going places that are dangerous or doing dangerous things or crossing the street without looking. Well, that's pretty good.

But fear can also be a barrier to doing things that we're passionate about or we care about. So is fear a good emotion, positive, or is it negative? And I would say, well, it depends on your situation. So in the coaching, the way we approach that is to not talk about them as a good or bad or positive or negative, but simply to talk about what emotion is the person experiencing and is that serving them in that situation or not.

it is fantastic, then there's nothing else we need to do. But if they say, well, not really, that emotion is really a barrier in some way, then we can address it and we can look at the possibility of shifting it. But there's lots of other, I work with about eight or nine myths that I see show up with people I work with everywhere, that we can control emotions. And in fact, we need to control our emotions. And I would argue that's not possible, we can't.

And in fact, I don't think it would be very helpful because then if I'm uncomfortable with anxiety, I would try to not feel anxiety. I would control it. But anxiety, again, is an emotion that gives us lots of information about possible dangers in our lives. There's a story, of course, in business that, well, this is not a place for emotions. Leave them at the door. Don't bring your emotions here. But every business I work with,

Dan Newby (09:44.621)
wants passion, they want honesty, they want integrity, they want compassion, they want affection, they want, I mean, they want all of these emotions as part of their organization and the culture, and yet they say that about emotions. And what I've come to conclude is that, well, they don't want the emotions that make them uncomfortable, or they don't want the emotions that they see as a barrier to their business. But in fact, we're all human.

we all have emotions, so we can't just leave them at the door. So my approach is more to say, well, we all have emotions, so maybe if we learned about emotions, we could be in choice about the ones that would help us achieve what we want to achieve, and we can also learn how to navigate the ones that are problematic for us. But we embrace them in a way. We don't dismiss them. We don't try to get rid of them and say, well, they're just part of life, just like

you know, every human being has to eat, so he created lunch breaks and every, many human beings, me included, love coffee, so we have coffee breaks. So we've taken those things, which are just part of being human, and we've integrated them into our work rhythm or our work structure, and we can do the same with emotions, and for me, much more productive. So there's about eight or nine of these that, you know, show up regularly, and when people begin to

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (10:49.485)
Thanks.

Dan Newby (11:14.225)
question them, most of the time they say, no, that's true, that doesn't really make too much sense. That's what I learned, that's what I heard, but as I look at them, I can see a different way, a different interpretation.

And the last one I'll share is that people sometimes think that emotions are random. They just show up when they want to show up. Or that they're capricious. And that they're illogical. So I don't know if you remember Dr. Spock on Star Trek, but this is what he always said. And I think there's confusion because I would say emotions are irrational. They're not just of reason, but they're actually quite

logical. They have a structure, they have a pattern, their predictable reactions to experiences. So when you lose something you care about, you always feel sadness. It's just logical and it never varies. So we can begin to trust emotions and begin to see that, there's this pattern here and if I learn to listen to the emotion and what it's trying to tell me or what it's trying to show me, that they're a great source of information

It's still up to us to decide, but they give us information that we can't get in any other way.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (12:38.424)
That's such a key point, almost like a whole language.

Dan Newby (12:43.407)
It is, and often when people are starting, they say, oh, well, I know these words. Like, I know the word contempt, but I can't tell you exactly what it means or exactly what it feels like. So we begin to build our emotional vocabulary. It is learning a new language. And that's a piece that we have to invest the time in. There's things we just have to memorize. We just have to remember, just like in

any other discipline. But the more we do, the more connections we see, and the more logic, and the more relevance, and the more practicality we see. So for me, well worth the investment in learning those. It also makes us...

It gives us the ability to understand ourselves better because there's more nuance to what we're noticing about ourselves and how we're naming it. And it also helps us understand other people better. And this was the magic for me. I realized, well, this helps me understand me better. And suddenly everybody else made a lot more sense. Why they did what they did, how they did it, the things they said. Suddenly it wasn't quite so mysterious because

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (13:51.904)
Thank

Dan Newby (14:00.201)
I understood that, I know what would drive me. I know what emotion would have me do that. I wonder if it's the same emotion for them. And many times, I think it is.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (14:15.5)
I appreciate what you were saying too about the practice part. I was a couple of years back, I was like, I've, I've learned all this amazing stuff, know, integrative coaching, integral coaching. And, and then one day I was like, wait, why am I still struggling? And I was, I realized, I'm not practicing.

Dan Newby (14:19.407)
Hmm.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (14:38.326)
I had intellectualized and thought, I've learned it, but it's in the practice that brings it all to life. Right. So.

Dan Newby (14:39.843)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Newby (14:44.749)
Yeah, there's a distinction I work with, the difference between knowing about and knowing how. And the knowing about, you know, I know a lot about soccer, or in Europe we call it football. I mean, I know a fair amount about it, but I don't know it as a sport. Like, as an adult, I haven't played soccer. So I know about it, but I can't go out and do what a soccer player can go out and do.

And this is true about lots of things. we watch lots of cooking shows, let's say, well, we know about cooking.

But if we want to learn to cook, we need to go into the kitchen and we need to cook. And we need to make mistakes, and we need to make discoveries, and we need to burn things, and we need to have our successes. That's how we truly embody learning. It's the doing. It's the practice piece. So this is what I invite people to is let's practice. Let's explore. Let's play with this. So in the courses I teach, there's always this element of self-practice where you track your emotions, you reflect on your emotions, you reconstruct your emotions.

because if you can do it for you, you can do it for your coachee, but you have to learn to do it for you from the inside out, is that you can't just approach it theoretically because it's missing this whole element of practice and the experience of it, which is what you get through the practice. So it's really embodied learning the way I think about it.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (16:17.198)
appreciate that. Howie, what's coming up for you as we explore this?

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (16:20.74)
a lot of things. One question, Dan. Dan, you use the word emotional literacy, and we hear so much about emotional intelligence. How did you come to use that language rather than emotional intelligence, for example?

Dan Newby (16:28.527)
Hmm.

Dan Newby (16:39.343)
Well, again, it comes down to practice, I think. And what I realized was that, you know, when children are young and we want to help them take advantage of their intellect, what do we do? We teach them the alphabet.

often the alphabet song. We help them learn to read and write. And through that, two things happen in my view. One, they get access to the intellect they already have. And two, they have a tool to augment that intellect, right? To build it, to strengthen it, to build knowledge, to grow. And the realization for me was that there's something absolutely parallel with emotions, is that we need to be

able to first notice our emotions and then name our emotions and understand, no, understand the structure of the emotion and what it's trying to tell us and the impulse and the purpose. And we need to be able to distinguish it from other emotions. And once we build this information, then we can do something I call

navigate. We can use our emotions to navigate life so we don't need to control them. It's more like dancing with them. It's more like listening to them, responding to them, paying attention to them. So for me, emotional literacy made a lot of sense. So recently though, I've been working with a partner on creating an emotional regulation assessment so that we could take an assessment, a standardized assessment, and it would tell us several

things. One, what's our level of emotional intelligence, which is our native capacity plus whatever we've learned experientially, it would tell us our level of emotional literacy, like what do we know in the way I'm talking about it, our level of emotional resilience, how good are we at balancing back, our emotional agility, how good are we shifting between emotions, and overall, what's our capacity for

Dan Newby (18:51.919)
emotional regulation. Because this is what I think we really are looking for, even if we're studying neuroscience, even if we're studying emotional intelligence. What I think most of us would like to have is this ability to regulate, to choose our emotions, to shift our emotions, to be able to select those that would be most helpful to us in any given situation.

So for me this whole idea of emotional literacy has led to I think a broader conversation about emotional regulation and emotional literacy is a key part of that and one of the things that we've discovered through what we're developing and also through the use of this assessment that I've done with some coachees is that sometimes we can have a coachee who's very emotionally resilient. They can bounce back from things their whole life

they've had to do that for whatever reason, so they've developed this skill. But they still may not have much strength in emotional literacy. So what does that tell us? Well, to be emotionally resilient, we don't have to know about emotions. We can develop that independently. And just because we're emotionally literate doesn't mean we'll be emotionally resilient. But the way to strengthen our ability to

regulate emotionally is to develop all of those. So I think that what it allows us to do is be much more focused on, okay, it's not just learning emotions or learning about emotions, but which area is going to help me the most? Is it more emotional literacy? Is it more emotional agility? Is it greater emotional resilience? It's a wonderful opportunity because for me it's no different than, you know, we take standardized tests and we say, I

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (20:25.305)
Mmm.

Dan Newby (20:51.565)
work on my math, I could work on science, I could work on language. It helps us see where we would put our attention if we want to strengthen that domain of emotions.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (21:08.237)
Laurel, I do have another question, if I may. So Dan, I wonder if you could take all that you've offered and put it into an example, if you will. You're in a conversation with a client. They either ideally mention, not so much ideally, but they mention an emotion per se, or you reflect that I am observing that. How do you integrate that conversation of emotional literacy

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (21:10.988)
please.

Dan Newby (21:31.533)
Mm-hmm.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (21:36.535)
with your clients in a coach and conversation. How do you practice that?

Dan Newby (21:39.855)
Well, a lot of times when we ask, first of all coaches have this habit of asking coaches how they feel.

And for me, that's a little bit vague because sometimes we ask people how they feel and they say, I feel like it's going to rain today. Or they say, they tell you something intellectual. They give you what they're thinking rather than what they're experiencing emotionally. So the first, I know that they're doing their best. That's my presumption. But as an example, many times somebody will say to me, well, I'm feeling really nervous.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (21:49.527)
Okay.

Dan Newby (22:14.819)
Well, nervous for me is an energy in our body, but it's not a specific emotion.

And the reason I say that is because think of all the emotions that could produce that experience of nervousness. Anticipation, could be apprehension, it could be anxiety, could be uncertainty, could be fear. So there's lots of emotions that might produce that experience for someone. So my approach is to say, great, let's acknowledge that. You're feeling nervous. And I can ask them, like, where and what does that feel like? But the real question that I...

want the answer to is can they tell me what emotion is producing that experience for them.

Now, many times people will say anxiety and the reason they'll say anxiety is because it's very common, because that's a word they know and they don't think about other things like dread or apprehension. So if somebody says an emotion like that, let's say they say anxiety, the question I ask them then is how do you know it's anxiety?

And they'll often say, it feels like anxiety. OK. So tell me what you're thinking. What are the thoughts going through your head?

Dan Newby (23:30.007)
what do you believe? What's your story? What's your narrative? Because I want to hear a very specific narrative that for me reflects anxiety. And for me, what that story is, is that I feel like there might be some danger, but I don't know what the source of it might be. It's kind of like when you walk through a parking lot, right? You stay vigilant for the possibility that a car might back out and not see you. So that for me is,

a good example of anxiety and it keeps us safe. Because what I find is that as we explore these and if a koshi can't name another emotion, then I might invite them to consider. I might say, well, okay, so how would this experience you're having be different from, let's say, excitement or anticipation? well, because I don't think anything good's gonna happen. okay, great. So now we're narrowing it down. And then I might ask them,

Can they identify some danger that maybe they're experiencing? Or what's their energy level? So again, lots of investigation and curiosity. But in the end, what I'm hoping to get to is one, maybe two core emotions that they're experiencing. Because you know those maps you see if you're in a city you don't know, the downtown area, and you walk up and there's a red dot and it says, you are here.

That's what I want emotionally. I want them to be able to identify where they are.

They may not want to be there. They may not like being there, just like you might not like being where that red dot is, but to go anywhere, you need to know where you're starting. And I think emotionally too. So I invite them to take a look. So could we identify specifically what emotion this is, and then to the conversation about is it serving you or not? Here's a fascinating thing I've discovered is that with a person like that, they might say,

Dan Newby (25:36.139)
I don't know what emotion it is. And if I begin to name emotions that I think it might be, when I name the one that it is for them, they will know it. So if I say, well, is it anticipation?

No, that's not it. Is it fear? No, it's not really fear. Is it dread? No, it's not dread. Is it apprehension? yeah. Well, tell me more about apprehension. And so what's fascinating is that emotionally, I think we have wisdom, but what we lack is the language.

We don't know how to call up the articulation of it. We don't know how to name it from scratch, let's say. But we do recognize it when we hear it or when we read it. So you could likewise give your coachee a list of emotions or emotion cards or something where they can begin to explore. Because when they land on the emotion they're experiencing, they know. And I don't know how they know. It's quite mysterious.

to but it always works. And so I invite them to just consider and look and I get too worried that they're going to not get it or get it wrong because my experience tells me that they will. They'll recognize it when they see it. And then that gives us a lovely beginning point and then we can explore further and then we can move to the conversation about is it serving them or not? Would they like to shift the emotion? But I think one of the really important pieces

for coaches and to support our coaches is to set aside judgment and to set aside that question of good or bad or right or wrong or should I or shouldn't I feel this emotion. If you feel an emotion, you feel an emotion, period. It's not that you should or you shouldn't, you do. And so we need to be able to acknowledge that because many people, they, I shouldn't feel fear. Well, I'm a big, strong guy. I shouldn't feel fear. Well, but if you feel fear, you feel fear.

Dan Newby (27:41.73)
If you feel uncertainty, you feel uncertainty. If you feel jealousy, you feel jealousy. Unless you can acknowledge that, you can never get to the starting point.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (27:55.736)
However, you're on mute.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (28:00.078)
Still on mute.

Dan Newby (28:03.576)
You

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (28:03.97)
There we go.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (28:04.185)
Thank you. So I'm curious, how do you then integrate that? spoke earlier about the coherence of language and the body and emotions. What would be an example of how you begin to integrate their literacy, their somatic awareness with their emotional awarenesses?

Dan Newby (28:12.697)
Thank you.

Dan Newby (28:16.75)
you

Dan Newby (28:23.567)
Well, if you think about these three pieces I talked about in ontological coaching, we have our story, we our language, we have the emotion, we have the body. I see the body as the container for the emotion. And the reason I say that is because if you see somebody slumped over, if you see somebody looking at the ground, if you see somebody who has a very, what would we say, expressionless face,

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (28:29.721)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Newby (28:50.889)
you say, my gosh, look, that person's disappointed or in resignation or they're sad. So that body speaks something. And in fact, that body is supporting the emotion. And the other part of the equation is what are they thinking? Because if they're thinking, my gosh, my girlfriend just left me and...

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (29:02.773)
and

Dan Newby (29:16.463)
Wow. So, okay, maybe that's sadness. They lost something or someone they care about. But if their story is, nothing I do will make any difference, so I'm not even going to try. I would say, oh, well, that's the story of resignation. I just give up. Now the body may look quite similar, but the story will separate and tell us which one of those it is. And likewise, the other way, when we want to shift to a different emotion,

We need to first of all, or as a primary piece, we need to think about, well what's the narrative, what's the story I'm going to tell myself? You know, if it's optimism, you know, those of us who connect with optimism, what do we always say? We say, yeah, but every cloud has a silver lining. Well that's optimism.

And you know what? Well, tomorrow's another day. Well, maybe that's hope, right? Because things can be better in the future. But we also need the body. We have to shift the body because if we're in the body of resignation, we can't feel optimism in the body of resignation. So we need to invite them to show us. OK, let's say they want to shift to optimism. So our question is, what do you need to be thinking?

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (30:36.313)
Hmm.

you

Dan Newby (30:42.091)
what's the story, what's the narrative that you need going through your head in order to connect with the emotion of optimism. And they will probably be able to tell you something. And then the question is, and show me the body of optimism for you.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (30:57.272)
and

Dan Newby (30:59.681)
And this is lovely because many people would say that they don't know and I would argue that they do know, but you have to invite them to do it. have one of the things, one of the emotions I work with a lot is dignity. And dignity means worth, worthwhile, that I believe as a human being, I have worth, inherent immutable worth.

is that nobody can take it away from me. I am worthy as a human being. That's my belief. And when I see people sitting, you know, going, well, yeah, and they're telling me about what's going on in their lives, the moment I say, well, so tell me about dignity. It's fascinating because they always do this. They always sit up.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (31:47.022)
Yeah.

Dan Newby (31:48.503)
and then they start telling me about dignity from the body of dignity. It's fascinating. And so people know much more than they think they do. I think our job as coaches is to invite them to explore and to find for them because exactly the way I hold my body in an emotion is probably not exactly the way you're going to.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (31:53.166)
Hmm.

Dan Newby (32:13.805)
The thing I'm thinking that helps me connect with an emotion is probably not going to be exactly the same for you. But if you can tell me, then it's clear to you. Then you know exactly what you need to do to engender or embody this other emotion. And then it's simply practice, just like in all coaching. When, how much, how often, what support do you need, how will you remind yourself, what's your commitment?

practice this shift between emotions. And so that piece is exactly like every other coaching. We're just inviting them to find the way that's simple for them to make the shift and to sustain the shift and make it habitual.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (32:58.947)
Beautiful, I love that. I I felt the excitement as you were integrating emotions with the story and the body and everything. I could feel that in myself. So thanks, Dan, I appreciate that.

Dan Newby (33:07.462)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, lovely. And you can do it the other way too. Let's say you're happy and then, I don't know, you get news about something that's not so good. Well, you do the same thing. You shift your body in the other direction. Your brain, your story is now filled with,

conversations about concern or uncertainty or something else. So you went from, you know, a lovely sunny day where you were, you know, full of energy to now you're sitting back and go, wow. So we do this, I think quite organically. We all know how to do this. We do it all the time. But what's missing for most people is being able to do it intentionally, understanding that, I can choose that.

And that piece, when people learn it, is incredibly empowering because then they're in charge. Now, that doesn't mean that if I'm feeling devastated because of something, I can suddenly shift to joy. No, but what it does tell me is I have a lot of latitude in the emotion I'm experiencing. And if I truly say this is not serving me, then I have a path.

I have a path out of there. I might need some help. Might help to have a coach, of course. But the more we do it, the more we practice, the easier it gets, the more fluid it gets. And I would say we get more fluent with our emotions and our ability to regulate emotionally.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (34:44.784)
Thank you.

Dan Newby (34:45.935)
Thank you.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (34:48.514)
Okay, so I'm really curious if we can go back a moment to you said that something about like anxiousness or I think it was nervousness may not be the starting point. How do you distinguish between what might be a core emotion or starting point versus a, I don't know, it's like a secondary maybe.

Dan Newby (34:50.145)
Okay. Sure.

Dan Newby (34:58.339)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dan Newby (35:11.703)
Yeah, well there are certain things that I think of as not quite emotions or emotional indicators. So when people say something like, I feel overwhelmed. Well, I would say that's not a specific emotion because the reason is fundamental to your question. Can I think of more than one emotion that would produce that experience for someone?

And if I can, then what do I see? Well, we're not at the root, we're not at the core, we're not down to an individual emotion. But if I tell you something like regret, I feel regret. Well, are there other emotions that can make me feel regret? I can't really think of any.

But I can think of many for overwhelm. I can think of I could be overwhelmed with urgency, I could be overwhelmed with joy, I could be overwhelmed with obligation, could be overwhelmed with fear, terror. So there's lots of emotions that can produce the experience that someone might call overwhelm. But the same with stress, the same with lost. If you have a coach who says, I'm lost. Well, what emotion is lost?

And I would say, well, it might be uncertainty, it might be ambivalence, it might be confusion. So there's several emotions that might be living there that they haven't identified, but they're describing their experience to you. And your job, in my view, as the coach, is to help them see that. Okay, lost, fantastic. You feel lost. Let's talk about feeling lost and what emotions for you produce that.

sense that you're lost. And often when they can name the emotion, it's hugely relieving to them. If they can say, well I'm ambivalent. Okay, let's talk about ambivalence. What's ambivalence? Well it means I could go either way. Ambient, both, right? Directions. And what does it mean if you take a look at it? It means that I'm faced with a decision between two things that both are important to me.

Dan Newby (37:27.011)
They both might have positive outcomes in my view, or they might both have negative outcomes in my view. They're both important to me. And I'm unsure which way to go. Right? Do I take a job in New York City, or do I take a job in South Africa? Wow. They're both appealing. They're both interesting. They both give me possibilities. And so for the moment, I don't know. I'm a little bit lost in my decision making.

between those two possibilities. But on the other hand, you know, I need an operation because I'm ill, but I don't like operations, so I can either stay with my illness and hope for the best, or I can have the operation which I dread having. So I'm ambivalent about what to do. Yeah.

And ambivalence is one of those emotions. But when we can name it, when we can see it logically, then I think it helps us enormously to decide, okay, what do I need in order to break that gridlock that shows up in ambivalence? What would help me? What would help me be clearer about which decision would be of most value to me? Yeah.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (38:46.2)
Thank you for sharing that. That's really interesting. Gives me a whole different perspective on emotional literacy, for sure. I'm curious, what transformations have you seen this work provide clients?

Dan Newby (38:50.157)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah, good.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (39:01.657)
Hmm.

Dan Newby (39:03.343)
I think the biggest one fundamentally is they will tell you that they feel much more peace and they feel much more confidence in the sense that

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (39:15.38)
Mm.

Dan Newby (39:23.737)
they trust themselves more, I think, in their decision making and in their choices and in their, you know, when they solve problems, for instance, or make decisions. So I think they would tell you that in general, that they often feel much more peaceful. There's an expression that we use a lot when we say, somebody is, seems like they're really comfortable in their own skin.

And I think that applies a lot because what happens is you begin to align emotionally but with your values, with your beliefs, with your preferences. And I find that people judge themselves far less. I think particularly when we work with dignity, they feel much more empowered. They feel...

stronger. So I think it depends on what we're working with exactly, but I would say that the shifts I see

are generally quite profound in people is that they see themselves differently. They learn about a part of themselves that they really didn't know very much about before. And often it gave them trouble. It was uncomfortable. And sometimes they were suffering because of the emotions that they were experiencing, but they didn't know what to do with them. They didn't really understand what they were. They didn't know how to shift them. They might not have even known you could shift them. And so it gives them, you

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (40:47.075)
Mm-hmm.

Dan Newby (41:00.065)
toolbox, whole set of possibilities that they could use to resolve their own challenges in life. And I think that, again, this is what we want to do as coaches. We want to inspire and empower them, enable them to, you know...

live their lives in the best way that they can figure out. So if we can help them with that, I think working with emotions is a tremendous place where we can.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (41:33.368)
Thank you. So we're almost at time, I would love for you to share a little bit more and I could continue. I have so many questions. But you have a new book coming out. I'd love for you to share more with the listeners about that work.

Dan Newby (41:44.687)
Yeah, lovely. Well, the new book coming out is called Dignity in Leadership. And it's based on the idea that we're all leaders. I mean, we all lead something. And when we're leading and people are following us is that emotions are a key part of that. And we talk about lots of them. We talk about respect and we talk

passion, et cetera.

But dignity, like I said, a, I always think of it as a kind of uber emotion. Because when we feel dignity, then we can access all those other emotions. Why? Because we're worth it. We're worth spending time on. So we can take care of ourselves. We can set boundaries. We can say no, et cetera. And one of the unique things about dignity is that I can't be in dignity if I don't simultaneously extend dignity

others.

It's an aspect of dignity that I don't see with other emotions. It's quite unique in my, as far as I can discern. But what it means is that as a leader, if we truly stand in dignity, we will extend dignity to others. And what does that mean? Well, it means we treat them with respect. It means we are compassionate. It means we are curious about them, is that we treat them as worthy.

Dan Newby (43:17.173)
human beings and not that we're better and they're worse or they're better and anybody else is worse just simply like we're all in this together so how are we going to make the best of it so the book is really a very practical and pragmatic approach to understanding emotions one but other themes to like perception like how do we perceive ourselves how do we perceive other people

The topic of trust which is huge for leaders huge in organizations Imposter syndrome where we believe we're not worthy and so and that lives in some very very Talented successful leaders also feel unworthy to be in that position and so all of these things add up to it's a kind of guide to not

I mean, I'm sure top CEOs could read it and get something from it. But my co-author and I approach it more from the perspective of there are millions, of leaders in this world who are not. They're managers. They're front line managers. know, they have small teams, small organizations. Sometimes they're just parents running a family, but they're still leaders. And these are people that we can see could

benefit from taking a look at it in a very practical way like, what could I do to be more of the leader I would like to be? And what we did was we approached leaders we know and that we found to write

a story for the beginning of each chapter, so about how what they learned from that chapter helped them as a leader. And these people are all over the world in all sorts of professions and lead at all different levels. And their stories are wonderful because they're truly the stories of leaders and how, for instance, they've had to come to terms with imposter syndrome. They've had to develop dignity because they didn't have it before.

Dan Newby (45:30.095)
even though they were earlier. And there's, the end of each section, there are reflective questions for you to ask yourself and to...

think about, or journal about, but also there are practices. for that, like trust, what could you do to strengthen trust as a feature of your leadership, whether it's people trusting you, or you trusting others, or creating trust in the organization? So the idea is it's really a very practical, I think quite easy to read book about, okay, how can I become more of the leader I want to be?

And how does dignity figure into that?

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (46:11.084)
info.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (46:15.182)
Thank you so much, Dan. Howie, thank you. This has been such a pleasure. Definitely expanded my concept of emotional literacy. So I appreciate that. For those tuning in, we're going to put links to Dan's work in the notes. So if you'd like to connect with him, you can do so through those links and learn more about the work, the amazing work that he's doing in the world.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (46:15.769)
Beautiful.

Dan Newby (46:16.953)
Thank you.

Dan Newby (46:27.597)
Wonderful.

Laurel Elders, MCC, CEC (46:41.536)
And we hope that today's discussion has been a true lantern for your evolution as a business professional, coach or leader. You can learn more about our ICF accredited coach training and leaders coach program by visiting us at integrativeintelligence.global. Until next time, thanks everyone.

Dan Newby (46:59.257)
Thank you both for the invitation. It was delightful.

Howie Adams, NCC, PCC (47:02.893)
Thanks, Dan. Great to be with you.

Dan Newby (47:04.653)
You too.


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