The Role of EQ in Leadership with Blair Carey

**SPEAKER_2** (0:05)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Zacash** (0:22)
Hello, and welcome back to the show. Did you know that organizations where emotional intelligence or EQ development is a priority are 22 times more likely to be high-performing?
We're diving into EQ today with our guests and how it can elevate leadership, your sales team, and transform the workplace. I'm Stephen Zacash, here again with Mike Luski. We are live. So if you have questions or comments, bring them along. Mike, introduce our guest today.

**Mike Luski** (0:56)
Hey, thanks, Stephen. I really appreciate that, and certainly we are excited to welcome Blair Carey, the managing partner of InsideCRO, to our show today. A little bit about Blair. So Blair has over 25 years of experience in building and leading data-driven sales organizations. For all of us, this is certainly an area that we can always improve. So I'm sure we're going to benefit from his insights. He's worked with companies across a wide range of industries, from startups to really large established enterprises. This has helped him really be able to drive a sustainable growth model by blending that emotional intelligence that we're going to talk about today with data driven strategies. And beyond his business experience, Blair's also pretty passionate about hockey and golf, which can keep him grounded and connected. And I can certainly see Blair how hockey and golf can do that to you. They're pretty good at keeping us grounded. And so with that, Blair, we're thrilled to have you on the show. Welcome to our show.

**Blair Carey** (2:05)
Thanks very much. I really appreciate it. I'm really looking forward to the conversation.

**Stephen Zacash** (2:10)
Blair, so let's kick us off talking a little bit about your background in leading sales teams.

**Blair Carey** (2:18)
Sure.

**Stephen Zacash** (2:18)
Maybe you can share how emotional intelligence became parts of your leadership and your sales work. What sparked your awareness of its importance?

**Blair Carey** (2:29)
So up until I would say 2010, I was what I would call an individual contributor on the sales side. And that means that I was responsible for sourcing my own deals and really interfacing and interacting with prospects and managing customers throughout that entire period of time. I didn't really have to manage anybody or have to be responsible for anybody else other than myself. But it really wasn't until I sort of was handed and was handed my first real team that I really started to understand what that was. And unfortunately, because I had spent a decade or so in competitive rowing and became a high performance coach in competitive rowing, I had a little bit of information or inclination as to how that actually worked and how I could actually become a leader of a group of people who really had no idea about what they were doing. I had a specialty where I was what we call the development coach. So I would take primarily kids, whether they're 14 years old or 18 years old in college, teach them how to row and teach them how to become and learn how to become an excellent rower as well as being part of a team. I was able to translate that into the business world. When we think of a leader in a sales organization, we typically think of what Anthony Iarino calls a direct leader, someone who is specifically directing people and telling people what to do. And what I found is that a leader who is open to ideas and open to concepts and realizes that people are people that you move forward a lot faster than if you're constantly telling people what to do. Because as anybody who has teenagers, and I have a few in my house, telling teenagers what to do doesn't really accomplish the outcome you're trying to achieve.
And so we hear a lot about getting people buy-in, getting your team to buy into your vision or your ideas. The reality is that the vision needs to be a shared vision, and not just one that comes from the top down, even though it is what I call top influenced.

**Mike Luski** (5:03)
Yeah, so one thing, Blair, that we know the audience always loves is examples. And so I was kind of curious from your experience when it comes to EQ, because it plays a really big role in being able to foster that trust, as you were just sort of indicating, indicating an empathy within the team. So, you know, can you share maybe an example with us where perhaps applying that EQ helped improve the team dynamics and maybe address like a major challenge or issue that you were faced with?