Emotional Intelligence Skills with Tina Greenbaum

In this episode, Tina Greenbaum shares her approach to achieving peak performance and handling conflict in high-pressure environments. With over 41 years of experience, Tina discusses emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and mental training, offering leaders strategies to build resilience, foster trust, and navigate complex relationships. Her “Mastery Under Pressure” framework emphasizes calm, insight, and adaptability for effective leadership.
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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Phenomenal You
• 3:17 The Journey of Emotional Intelligence
• 6:37 Mastery Under Pressure: Skills for Success
• 9:34 Navigating Conflict and Communication
• 12:29 The Power of Vulnerability and Trust
• 15:23 Flexibility and Mental Health
• 18:15 Growth and Self-Reflection
• 21:37 Conclusion and Call to Action

Transcript

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (00:00.141)
Welcome to the Speaking of Phenomenal podcast. Tina, I'm so glad you're here. Well, thank you so much, Amy. We had so much fun together getting to know each other and I'm delighted to be here. Shout out to the wonderful Elizabeth who brought us together. And for those of you who don't know, I'm also a photographer besides a podcaster. So we had a branding photography session in California with Tina as most recently as last week. Yes.

Yes, we did. To go forward and like we do with the beginning of the show, I'd love it if you'd introduce the Phenomenal You to our audience. Well, that's quite the introduction right there. Phenomenal You. I think the best way to do this is I had a conversation yesterday with somebody where he has a little test about personality kinds of things and where you fit in the workplace. And he said, you're about the top 5 % of the people.

in terms of your profile, meaning that it's easy for me to talk to people. I learned to be very diplomatic and gracious when I was younger. I like people. I like helping people. And that's really been the thrust of my career. Give me a little bit more about how you translate those great skills into what you are and who you are today. For years and years and years, all my friends would ask me for advice.

And at one point in college, I said, and they would call me mother. said, I'm not your mother. I'm not your mother. But this idea that this information would come to me, I always thought it was just common sense. How could you not know that? You know, it's like right in front of you. But I did learn that common sense is actually now we have a name for it. It's called emotional intelligence. And I didn't learn that that was a gift, honestly, until I was about 30 years old. So that

path of wanting to help people seeing what's available, how you're operating the problem, problem solving is really kind of the basis of it. And so at some point I started out as a teacher and then I moved into being a psychotherapist because if I was going to help people, I wanted to be able to get to actually the root cause of what's actually happening. And that has led me to

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (02:18.755)
you know, like what's really going on here? You know, why is this happening? And so that led me to the neuroscience and the spirituality and the energy work and all kinds of things about how we operate. How do we really operate? So there was a, saying that I would say that every course that I took was how do I help you to change at a fundamental level because the body gets triggered before the mind. And so that was really kind of the, the origin of

of lot of the knowledge that I accomplished. And then I created a program called Mastery Under Pressure, because it's great that you could tell me all about your mother, your father, your sister, your brother. But if you're not changing, what do we need to actually change? so Mastery Under Pressure is all about peak performance and getting into a state of flow. And then I was doing something with my husband. He teaches tennis and I created a program doing the mental side of tennis. And then people said,

Could you take this into business? Because these skills leaders really, really, really need. So I started to move in that direction. And then somebody I respect very much is very wise. said, honestly, what you do is you really do resolve help people resolve conflict, internal conflict, external conflict. But there's a saying called not not, you what is it that you can not not do? And I'm sure if I asked you.

What you could not not do wouldn't have something to do with something visual and photo and journalism and I cannot not get involved Although I've learned to keep back and let somebody actually asked me for permission Or I asked for permission and they give me permission to say yes But so given what's going on today in this world and all the conflict that we have and all the differences and the diversity and

We're all looking at diverse, you know, kind of companies and boards and that's great. Now that you have this diverse group of people, how are you going to manage each other? How are you going to solve the problems? And that's where the real magic comes in. That's where the real challenge comes in. Well, it's such a challenge and I'm so grateful that you're using your skills to help.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (04:40.023)
those of us are kind of like navigate those waters, right? Cause it is a broader world. when it comes to mastery under pressure and some of your core pillars, I like the do more, do better, do faster, maybe, let our listeners know a little bit more about what you mean by that kind of mindset. It's not necessarily get better, get faster. It's being more efficient. So.

Just like any other skill, I ask people all the time, you know, I have one of the slides in my slide deck of a triangle. So how many of you have spent years and years and years getting your education? know, PhDs, master's degrees, know, postdoc, all kinds of everybody raises their hand when I have an audience. Okay. And then how many of you have spent years and years taking this education and putting and strategizing how to take it into the world so that you become, you know, whether it's

your own business or an executive or whatever. Everybody raises their hand. How many of you have spent years and years, an equal amount learning about yourself and kind of mastering these interpersonal skills? All the hands go way down. And yet this drives the train. You know, who we are, how we operate, how we think, how we communicate with one another has everything to do.

with the level of success that we have or don't have. And so I always say to people, this is your competitive edge. You put two people together with the same education and the same strategies, but this one knows how to manage themselves, you know, in difficult situations, having difficult conversations, they're gonna win. Hands down. And with that, I think maybe it's a trade for women in general, maybe just I'm speaking personally, but.

that reserved sense that good girl syndrome that we talk about, like waiting for permission and then translating that into confidence that's received and not pushy bossy, blah, blah, all those things. So, know, I know exactly what you're saying. Yeah. What, what can you say to that? And I think we're going to be seeing more of that. Like how can we be assertive and be heard, not also just

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (07:07.027)
Go out of, you know, read the room too, right? To pay attention. So honestly, we're talking about, I don't want this to sound kind of woo woo in any way, but there is masculine energy and there is feminine energy and we are different. So the masculine energy is very forward. It's much more aggressive. Men are straight to the point. You know, many times I don't want to hear our conversations of how we did this and how we did that. Okay. Well, so what's the bottom line? That's the way that they are wired.

We are wired as to be the receptors. We take it, we take it all in, and then we disseminate the information. And so if we don't learn how to manage this part of us, the boundaries, what's okay, what's not okay, then we become the people pleasers and the approval seekers coming from, I mean, they certainly come from that background. And so,

I was just, just on the conversation with a really good friend of mine and who's had issues in her relationship. And what I learned over time is that what I think and what I feel is important. You're important, but I'm important too. And I matter and you matter. So if we both matter, how do we navigate these waters? And.

I think the most basic need that people have is to be heard. Just to be heard. I hear you. I may not agree with you. I may not see your point of view. I may not do it this way, but I do hear you and I respect your point of view. That goes miles and miles and miles. And honestly, that is the only way that we're going to navigate these waters of the difficulties that we're having because we don't hear each other. We operate like this.

And so you said earlier, you know, I'm a good listener. am a good, I'm a professional listener. I have learned not to talk over people, you know, to wait to hear what they have to say, to ask permission. Would you want to hear this again? These are skills. And I, I can't say it enough, really all the things that we're talking about in terms of personal development is the precursor to all the greatness that

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (09:34.555)
If you watch the great leaders and people that you admire and people that you just kind of want to hang around them, you want to be in their energy. want to. They it's they have learned, they have studied how do I operate within me? And then what are the skills that I need to be able to get my point across? When do I know just when to keep my mouth shut? It's not going to go anywhere, you know, or to wait.

You know, this is not maybe not the right time to say this, but it has to be said. And these are the nuances of reading people. As you said, reading a room, some people are not as gifted as others, a lack of empathy. Empathy has to be learned from the time we're very, very small. I have a three year old granddaughter and my, had a sore foot and my kid, you know, said to me, careful, you know, of my mom's foot. And she comes in, she, she kind of gets down on her hands and knees and she goes,

that's empathy at a very, very early age. And so learning to lick each other's wounds and care for one another. These are the most basic human needs. It's just innate in little children to just the way they care for their animals and nature, you know, and all these things. With what you were just talking about,

So that we're not so reactive. think a lot of times, right. It's like, have that now I have to say something. I have to respond. have to be seen. And to your point about like, watch the leaders whose energy you want to be around. There's usually this air of calm, you know? So what is something that you've learned about how to cultivate that in ourselves, how to present and

and receive information and give information back, in the most productive way possible, I suppose. So one of my favorite stories is I had a client many, many years ago who was extremely anxious. And he would walk into my office and he had a tape recorder. That's how long ago it was. And he would put it down on my desk and he'd say, can I take the sessions? And I of course that you can, they're your sessions. So he walks in one day and

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (11:59.235)
He takes this tape recorder and he slams it down on my desk and he says, I don't know what you do to me. He said, but I walk in here really anxious and I walk out really calm and I cannot find it on the tape. And I said to him, said, so what I do is I work on myself. so creating a sense of calm within starts with the breath. Your breath is the only voluntary operation that you have that can change your nervous system.

So when we're feeling anxious and we can recognize and we're close enough to like what's going on, I'm starting to notice that my shoulders are getting tighter. My stomach is starting to turn and my heart's racing really fast. I'm going to take this because I did this at my TEDx talk. I created this little mantra cut stop, just stop before you say anything before you do anything. Okay. And then reframe. Okay. So what's going on?

You know, I kind of noticed my thoughts and my feelings that are running through my head and my mind. that person just said something to me that really hurt my feelings. Now I got it. Okay. Then now how do I want to respond? So it's cut, reframe, respond. And if you kind of practice that as a little mantra, thinking of like a movie, you know, a movie that's running really fast. And then we kind of break down, you know, the, the frames frame by frame by frame. I see it.

It registers now. And now I can choose my behavior as opposed to just being reactive, which is the most natural thing that we do. I mean, without kind of the education, we do what comes naturally. We do what kids do. If you look at, you hit me, I'm going to hit you back. You bomb me, I'm going to bomb you back. mean, we're operating at such a child level. Really, you know, and so in order to grow up,

We have to go through these necessary stages, these difficult times. go through adolescence and then we become adults and each one of these stages has developmental tasks. Going back to my early roots in psychology, we have developmental tasks that we have to kind of work through and get through. In Judaism, years ago, you couldn't study the Kabbalah, which is the Jewish mystical path.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (14:24.059)
until you were at least 40 years old. Cause you had to have enough life behind you in order to accept the wisdom of what was actually happening. And through education and teaching and growing and learning, we can do a lot better. The information's there. No, I wasn't born with this. had good parents, but they didn't know this. So just studying and practicing and getting your nervous system.

knowing using that breath over and over and over and over and over again as soon as I feel calm. Just so what you did just before we started, right? You said I usually have a countdown, but I have to do my own countdown. Now I'm grounded. Now I can think because this is the problem when we when we get over reactive and go into our sympathetic nervous system. The first thing that goes is this part of the brain. And this is the part that we need. This is our executive functioning for the prefrontal cortex.

It's the one that is the problem solver. But the other part of us is ready for fight, flight or freeze. And the brain goes off offline. So for leaders, again, this is so, so, so important. You know, the greatest times that you need to make really, really important quick decisions and you can't think clearly, you're in trouble. Yes. And with that breath work and getting people to a state of calm, then you can work.

on or in tandem, I suppose, the building trust and resilience. we're again, so now we're getting to this stage or hopefully it's simultaneous. But for some people, like you said, we have to like put in the work to do the soul searching to figure all this out. So when it comes to trusting at at a new level, again, how vulnerable should we be? What

is seen as strong versus weak? I'd love to hear your take on that. So I have a wonderful thing that I learned somewhere along the line that great strength is how vulnerable can you be? So we have this idea that being vulnerable makes us weak. It's not true. Because when we're vulnerable, and again, we're talking degrees,

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (16:47.987)
When you're talking trust, you're talking about safety. And so we want to make sure that we are as safe as we can be with who we are sharing our most intimate kinds of secrets. Again, in this day and age with the media and anything that you could put on could be worldwide in a split second. So you want to watch your words and you want to be able to think about the consequences of if I say this,

Am I prepared for this? Am I prepared for that? Am I prepared for that? Because anything could come your way. As we see that, you know, people that are like us, think we have, you know, everybody's like us. Well, they're not, they're not. So I always like to trust the environment. I like to take like one little step forward. So when I meet somebody, whoever it is, I'm just going to put out a couple of things and I'm going to see how they receive it.

Sometimes, you know, the way they receive it is they're looking around and not listening to what I'm having to say. That may be the end of that relationship very quickly. One of the things that I learned when I had gotten divorced after 34 years of marriage and I was like 57 and like 14, literally, and just going out into the world again, into the dating world, and which had changed so absolutely dramatically, I would kind of take people with their word.

you say you're going to call. think you're going to call. You say you're going to do this. you want me to go with you? great. You know, and then I started to think of, what am I doing? I'm attracting all these people who are not responsible. And what I kind of learned after that was I just wasn't waiting long enough to see how they showed up rather than just taking somebody on their word. Okay. You say you're going to show up. Let's see. And that was a major, major insight for me.

So as you began to show up, then I could give a little bit more of myself. You give a little, I give a little, you give a little. And over time, we build trust. Trust has to be earned. Just because you're my father doesn't mean that I trust you or respect you. But just because you're my boss doesn't mean that I, you know, the same thing. You have to earn my trust. And which that means that you have to say what you, do what you say you're gonna do.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (19:15.289)
and be that person that I feel like I want to have in my life. So you see how it just kind of spreads, Amy, you know, from the individual, the early, you know, how we grow, how we learn, and then how we take ourselves out into the world and how we become as big as perhaps we, our potential allows us and our ambition or desires take us. But each time that we grow, it's another, it's another challenge.

know, companies that I was consulting with one company where they were just, they were a startup, but I think they were also up to about 200 people at that point. And he said, every time we grow, I need to actually refresh my management team, my executive team, because the one who's only managed 200 people is not going to be the one that's going to manage a thousand. And so we have to keep growing.

And with that growth kind of goes back to where we started in the beginning, where you said, you know, one of the things in your professional journey was, working with your husband's tennis coaching and talking about peak performance and training your mind as preparation. So we're no longer just accepting it as well. Here I am today. It's like, no, where do I want to be? had someone on two weeks ago talking about before having children. What?

what her intentional parenting goals were because who do I want to see when this child becomes 18? Going back into the training and being prepared, but also flexible, like anticipating, I would love to, whether it's tips on that for our audience or a key story from something that you've encountered. So I do believe that how flexible you can be is the key to

to great mental health and being able to live in this world. Because when our reality is over here and our expectations are over here, we have nothing but frustration and disappointment in between. So how quickly can I get my expectation that I had and now I'm very disappointed into my reality? Okay, this is where I am today, at this moment in time.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (21:46.131)
Because this is the only moment that we have any control over. So my one little story from this is I was part of a 200 woman chorus. we were going to Ireland from the, from, I lived in New Hampshire at the time we were going to Ireland. Now herding 200 women just to go to the restroom, two buses, stopping in the restroom was a major thing. And the,

And I was the mental health kind of advisor for this group. But the leader had a little thing and she'd go like this. And this meant what was two minutes ago is no more. And we were supposed to go and perform at this one place and the owner or the manager of the hotel actually passed away and they closed the hotel. So we couldn't go there at a certain time. And then we had to make all these changes and

one woman started to complain and then the next woman and then it was like, you know, whispering down the lane. And it's like, okay, done. Done. Here we are today. Okay. And sometimes it takes a little time to readjust as you and I were just talking about, you know, sometimes we need time to grieve and mourn that what we dreamed about is not happening or relationships or jobs or promotions or, you know, all kinds of things have not

materialized. Okay, let's how quick again, this is where we are. And that would be the you know, the and then the other thing that I my my favorite way that I get myself out of a lot of situations is what's in my control? What's out of my control? First question I asked myself, when I start to feel anxious, or I'm losing it or what's in my control? What's out of my control? Okay. If I can't control the external,

Many times I can't, I have to control the internal. How do I respond to this? A situation that I have absolutely no control over or we're going to be instrumental in using my, skills and my wits, to help make a change. So you see, so what's happening all the time, there's all this inner conversation being in the present with what's going on around me. And you asked, how do you manage it? It's through.

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (24:14.129)
the self-knowledge and the intuition, paying attention to my intuition. This doesn't feel really good. I don't know if I could trust this person. I'm hearing things that just makes me uncomfortable. And when we're desperate, we make desperate situations, desperate decisions. And so recognizing I'm feeling desperate right now, I best not make that decision. Or I'm feeling stuck. Okay, I'm really feeling stuck. I need another point of view.

I need somebody to kind of help me walk through this. So that's coming back to being vulnerable. You know, I'm not the be all in the end all. not perfect. I make mistakes and okay. I admit them. I might not be happy with what I said or what I did, but I'm really, really, really sorry. Which brings me to another thing that I think it's really important when I started talking about diversity in groups and teams and boards.

Sometimes if you don't know our own biases, we can just walk into something that would just offend somebody without even realizing it. I don't know if I mentioned this to you, but I was at a meeting and I said something afterwards and I, and afterwards I said to myself, that was a bias of mine. Where did that come from? Cause I could feel myself uncomfortable after the conversation. So then I had to go back to that person and I said, you know, I think I was being really insensitive and I apologize.

And she said, thank you so much. That saved a relationship. We told this line of we have to be as perfect as possible. And that's just not reality. And to everything we've talked about, mean, growth happens with knowledge that we need to change, right? And then that'll get picked up on by those that we encounter. And that little act of

Not little, that huge act of humility going, gosh, I was uncomfortable with this. Here's a bias. was talking about that with some photojournalist students too. Everything that we put in our frame, right, is our perceived bias. So how do we make sure that we take multiple frames so that we can see the big picture? Well, as our time is winding up, I would love it if you have a chart to call the action because maybe...

Amy Boyle (amyboylephoto) (26:40.167)
Maybe more than a handful of us are kind of sitting with, there's more and what is that? So the one thing I would love to offer is honestly a consultation. If you are that person who has great dreams and great aspirations and is feeling a little bit stuck, where you're part of a team, an executive team, and you're feeling like this,

kind of issues going on that nobody's talking about. A dolphin in the room. I'd be more than happy to have a conversation. And so I know you're going to put it on your notes, ways that people can get in touch with me. I do have a podcast, it's called Under the Hood, where we talk in ways of the important things that we're talking about right now. The patterns that are created in childhood impact us as grownups. It's called Under the Hood. Tina at Mastering Under Pressure is how to get in touch with me.

Well, fantastic. And yes, absolutely. Everything will be linked in the show notes for how to get in touch with you, as well as the web link for scheduling a consultation with you. And then this will all be wrapped up in a nice blog post that will come out in a day or so. So I can't thank you enough for making the time to chat today. just, it feels like, like your client said, what do you

through that recorder, you know, I feel I came in stressed out and walking out relieved and thank you for that gift. Yes, thank you. I'll add one last thing. Whenever I get really stressed, I say to myself, the name of your company, the name of your book, the name of your program is called Mastering Under Pressure. It's called Mastering Under Pressure. So I keep reminding myself and that's what we did today.

Absolutely. Well, keep on doing it. Thanks so much. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Speaking of Phenomenal. Be sure to subscribe, rate, review, and even share the podcast, as well as stay tuned for more inspiring conversations. Remember, each and every one of you is capable of extraordinary things. Until next time, take care and remember, you are phenomenal.