The Role of EQ in Leadership with Randy Wootton

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
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.

**Mike Lusky** (0:17)
Yeah. So Randy, I think that is a good idea. Reporters will want to look at what topics you talk about. We used to have portfolio managers that talked about emerging markets or China or technology.

**Randy Wootton** (0:30)
So yeah, I think that. Look, everybody's doing it in terms of trying to come out with thought leadership, original thought leadership and use to promote it. And I think if you're contracting with people to be authors on your page, give them the credit. We're also trying to get a broader executive team to be writing content. So it's not just the marketing people or just the CEO. And I think having the author page helps. So if people like their articles, they can go see what else the person has written. So yeah, I think it's a great idea.

**Steven Zakash** (1:01)
We are live, everyone. Hello, welcome back to the show. We are talking emotional intelligence, EQ in leadership with our guests today. I can't stress this enough, but it's one of the key elements if your organization's collective consciousness is going to take a leap to the next level, you've got to focus on this. I'm Steven Zakash, here again with Tulio Saragusa, Mike Lusky and our special guest. We are live, so if you have questions or comments, send them along and we'll try to get them in the mix during our conversation. Mike, introduce our guest today.

**Mike Lusky** (1:35)
Thanks, Steven. Happy to. Again, we want to welcome our guests. Our guest for today, Randy Wootton. He's currently the CEO at Maxio. It's a leading provider of billing and financial operations solutions for B2B companies. If you're a financial professional or a CPA, CFO working with those organizations, I think you'd be quite impressed with what you find at Randy's company and what they do. But Randy himself, his career includes key leadership roles, including serving as CEO at Percolate and Rocket Fuel where he drove transformative strategies and growth. Prior to that, Randy held senior positions at Microsoft and Salesforce, leading teams in marketing, sales and services. Beyond his impressive corporate resume, we know that you as our followers are keen to know that Randy also brings deep experience in scaling organizations with emotional intelligence. That's a key factor really in navigating fast growing and dynamic business environments. In fact, we found that from Harvard Business Review, they state that leaders with high EQ contribute to over 70 percent fewer conflicts in their teams and fostering smoother operations leading to that collaboration and growth. We love that he's a big believer in leadership. That's not just about KPIs and data, but really understanding and connecting with people. We're thrilled to have him with us today to discuss the role of EQ in leadership. With that, Randy, big welcome to our show.

**Randy Wootton** (3:12)
Oh, thank you very much. It's a real pleasure. I just want to make super clear that learning about the value of EQ is an ongoing journey for me. It's something that I had to get beaten about the head and shoulders earlier in my career. I think if you talk to a lot of people on my team, they'd say, but Randy is all about KPIs. I look forward to the conversation to talk more about how to frame the two.

**Steven Zakash** (3:34)
Yeah, let's start there. You've had impressive career leading organizations through various challenges and massive transformation. How has focusing on EQ shaped your approach over that time, and how has it changed over that time?

**Randy Wootton** (3:50)
Well, let's back up just a little bit. I love telling the story that you think about when you go through high school and college, what is valued as IQ? Your ability to do well on test effectively. Maybe in today's world, there's some project work that needs to happen, and so you got to be able to work with others to be successful. I know when I went to business school, there was a premium placed on that. But really, IQ. Then I was in the military and it was just get stuff done. It wasn't until I got to the corporate sector where it turned into this world of, it wasn't about lead follower get out of the way, it was lead follower, let's talk about it. I was like, what do you mean, let's talk about it? You make the decision, I make the decision. It was this real come to Jesus moment of, how do you work more collaboratively with people and figure out the better together? It was a journey in terms of thinking about becoming more emotionally aware myself. I went through a bunch of different programs, all rooted in Jungian psychology, Myers-Briggs, Insights Discs, all of those different types of programs to help you better understand who you are, how you communicate, how you like to be managed, how you like to manage, and have just incorporated that into my own management style. As I become a leader with each company I go to, we roll that out as well. But I do think emotional intelligence to your comment, Mike, around overall effectiveness of creating high-functioning teams, especially in the world that we live in today, a hybrid model is critically important. because I tell everyone that I work with, software is a people business.