340. What You Don’t Know Runs the Show: The Power of Emotional Intelligence with Monique DeMonaco

You’ve probably had this moment: something small happens, and your reaction feels bigger than the situation. That gap between “what happened” and “what I told myself it meant” is where so much leadership, stress, and conflict is born. We sit down with Coach Monique DeMonaco, founder of EQ Wize and an emotional intelligence and change expert, to unpack why awareness is the first step to any sustainable change and why fixing behavior alone rarely works.

We get practical and personal, moving from childhood messages and limiting beliefs to the inner critic that talks to us in a voice we would never use on a friend. Monique breaks down the brain-based drivers that sit under so much human suffering: the belief of not being enough, fear of rejection, the need for connection, and the sense that what we want is not available to us. We also explore how memory and interpretation can shape present-day workplace culture, from tense feedback conversations to the way we read a manager’s tone.

You’ll hear actionable tools you can use in real time, including Monique’s “delete delete” pattern interrupt to stop spiraling thoughts and replace them with something true or at least neutral. We also talk confirmation bias and the reticular activating system, the brain’s filter that decides what you notice, and why that matters for communication, empathy, and better decision-making. We close by connecting emotional intelligence to the modern hiring landscape, including the skills employers keep asking for: EQ, business etiquette, and critical thinking.

If this sparked an insight, subscribe, share the episode with someone who would benefit, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

🌐 Connect with Monique:
• Website: https://www.coachmonique.com/
https://eqwize.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moniquedemonaco/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecoachmonique/

Transcript

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Mick Spiers: 0:01

How often are we reacting to what actually happened, and how often are we reacting to the story we've created about what happened? Today, we're joined by , founder of EQ Wize, an emotional intelligence and change expert who has spent more than two decades helping people better understand themselves, their patterns, and the beliefs that shape their behavior. And Monique challenges us to think differently about change, because when we see a behavior we don't like in ourselves or in someone else, our instinct is often to try to correct the behavior. But what if the behavior isn't really the problem? What if it's simply the visible expression of something happening underneath? In today's conversation, we explore why awareness has to come before meaningful change. We talk about the stories we tell ourselves, the limiting beliefs we inherit and reinforce the inner critic that can quietly shape our behavior and the way our interpretations of past experiences can influence how we see the present. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. Got a

Monique DeMonaco: 1:14

Well, thank you for having me here today, special guest with us today. Monique is a Change Management Expert, an Executive Leadership Coach, and she's the author of a book called "Most People Don't Need Therapy.They Just Need a Change" which is really interesting. I think that's going to come up in our conversation today. But she's also the founder of EQ Wize around emotional intelligence, and she's got a fundamental belief that emotional intelligence is not a soft skill, it's a life skill, and that's what we're going to be unpacking today. The what does this really mean? What is this life skill of emotional intelligence, and what does it mean when it comes to setting the culture in our teams and in our organizations, and what fundamental role does this play? It's one that we have spoken about on the show before, but it's really fundamental to everything. So the more conversations we have, the more perspectives we take about emotional intelligence, the richer we all will be about how we can be more aware of our role in setting the culture in our organizations and being able to bring emotional intelligence to the fore. So, without any Mick. It's just I love all things emotional intelligence, further ado, Monique, I would love it if you would say hello to the audience, give a little flavor of your background, but most importantly, I want to know what inspires you to do what you do as an executive leadership coach, and this focus on emotional intelligence and the creation of EQ Wize. so when I get to share it with someone and have conversations, it just gets me so excited. So thank you. Well, what really started me on my path was I grew up in rural poverty with abusive parents, learning disabilities that were undiagnosed and undiagnosed epilepsy that presented as staring spells, and so I got very negative messages all my life, including a guidance counselor who said,"Oh, honey, you're never going to go to college." So I had this idea of myself that was pretty deeply ingrained, and I worked through some of that in my 20s. But on Christmas Day, when I was 30 years old, there was a book there that inspired me. I've never had an interest in personal development, and we had gotten our son a computer with this fad thing called the internet, and so internet's still around, right? But I did an early Google search before Google, and I started showing some interest in looking at things, and that started off a 10 year journey of self discovery. And I would say the end of 10 years, I wouldn't have recognized my old self if I passed her on the street, and so I started just intuitively developing a course. I taught that first course to seven women on a Pilates studio floor, right? And for the next two years, my business just really started organically, and almost every opportunity I got was tied to one of those seven women, so then I decided to go into coaching, or was I going to become a therapist? And I decided I wanted to do coaching, and I wanted to specialize in emotional intelligence, often referred to as EQ. So I did life coaching very successfully, and then I work with a lot of multi generational families, and they would ask me to come in and do trainings, kind of the family, the business components, and then I started getting corporate requests. And because I didn't have corporate experience, and probably still a little bit of my own insecurity, I decided to go and get an MBA, and focused on innovation. So the emotional intelligence and innovation really came together. And today we have a thriving private coaching business, but there was something that happened last year with one of my twins that really made me question if we're in this business, we need to do something to help. So he was standing in the kitchen with 11 of his closest friends, all high achieving. Was a very good school within a very good university. Two of them had jobs six weeks after graduation. Both of those young men had those jobs because of family connections, and everyone, including my son, was working, getting a job as a full-time job, and so I remember thinking, if we can't help these young people, like, what are we doing in business? So we started digging around what's going on, and the Gen Z unemployment rate is twice the national average. Why is that? You know, looking at those questions and looking at what are organizations hiring managers saying, and speaking to some in person, you know that I knew and had connections with, and just doing the research, and there was there's a big skills gap for Gen Z and young professionals, but the truth of the matter is there's a skill gap in the general population, and that is around emotional intelligence. And the three things that employers are specifically looking for are emotional intelligence training, business etiquette training, and critical thinking, which are just as you know spokes on the wheel of emotional intelligence. So I'm very fortunate. My team, Olivia, who works with me, she's 25. The twins were 23, 24, and Henry graduated this year from a university that does six month co-ops. So he would work for six months and not be a student. So everybody had very different experiences, but there, who we were trying were trying to help with EQ Wize, so it's my expertise. But we would say it's for them, by them, so that they understood how Gen Z and young professionals would be most receptive to the information. So that's how EQ was launched, and it's been very well received among people who are trying to build their resumes. We are internationally accredited, so it's when you are building your resume, just like we say, Microsoft and Google are hard skills. EQ Wize is to soft skills what Microsoft and Google are to hard skills, and we even titled the courses specifically to what hiring managers are saying, so they're not just designed; they're titled. You know, business etiquette, critical thinking, how to unlock your emotional intelligence. So that differentiates on a resume because that is extremely rare at this point, and we're hoping to make it a lot more common because your EQ is a bigger indicator of your success than your IQ. And our work is based in brain science, emotional intelligence, and the psychology of happiness. And everyone's got a brain, and brains run our lives, our families, our worlds.

Mick Spiers: 8:18

Yeah, really, really interesting, Monique. There's three threads that I picked up as I was listening to you there. First of all, your own formation. I'm going to call it that for the time being, and then I'm going to contradict myself in the second part. So your own formation. So in your early life, with those signals that you're getting in the environment that around you, they do start forming. I'm going to say listening to you and watching you start forming you an identity of who you think you are. But you had the ability to then. This is the part where I'm going to contradict myself a little bit. You had the ability to then work on your own self awareness to challenge that and start doing a bit of deep. You could have easily that first counselor that said, "You're never going to be X." It doesn't matter what X is. We have those signals around us, and and we are the creation of all of our experiences, the people in our lives. The, the societal expectations, all of these things, nature and nurture building to who we become, but what you then said, Mick, this is the thing that I loved, was that the person that came out the other end of that journey of self-discovery was very different to the person that went in. And a little side story, I turned 53 last week, and I have a little funny thing that I tell my wife and my friends that version 5.3 of Mick Spiers is very different to even version 5.2 because, and I like to hope that I'm getting smarter and more emotionally intelligent as, as I go, and I hope that the software release version 5.3 doesn't have too many bugs in it, right? So every one of us is a work in progress, is what I'm trying to say, and then the third element. This is really interesting. What you're onto here, Monique, and as someone that employs a lot of people, I do have questions about whether our schooling system, our universities, whether they are giving the skills that really make a difference. There's a certain element of core skills that are needed that I think are table stakes to be successful and to get that first job. Yes, you might need some technical skill, but yes, you're 100 right. EQ is a more accurate determinant of whether you're going to be long-term successful than than IQ, and yet where is this in the schooling system? Where is this in the schooling system? So now I want to go back to the the first part, though. Let's unpack this a little bit. That you know, we're all we're all work in progress, right? So we're all we're all developing us individually, but guess what? Everyone around us is not static either. So, where does this learning and growth come into how we can show up and be the best version of ourselves and connected to the ecosystem and the organism that's around us, Monique?

Monique DeMonaco: 11:16

Well, I often am quoted as saying, "What you don't know that you don't know is what runs the show." You can't do something about something you're unaware of. So when I have to say, if there's one word to describe what I do, that one word would be awareness, because it's only when you become aware. So, for example, in the change management space, there's a relatively low success rate because most change management programs look at the behavior do more of this less of that stop this do that right and we say that there are no problem behaviors there are certainly behaviors that are a problem but they're always a coping mechanism or a consequence of what you don't know that you don't know. So we have something, Coach Monique's conceptual model for change. And if you can envision it, it's awareness, behavior, creating change. And we define awareness as your thoughts, beliefs, expectations, and interpretations of past experiences. So even from a neurological perspective, the human brain doesn't really have the ability to think critically and logically, and that starts around anywhere between nine and 11. That's why it's easy to believe in Santa Claus when you're seven, but at 11, you're starting like we don't have a chimney. Like what's going on? This doesn't make sense because the ability to critically think. I like to say before that age, we're like sponges. We accept direct and indirect messages. We don't question it because these authorities, or our parents, or teachers, or our religious organizations that we're taught to just trust-they know it all-and sometimes people grow up with full-on abuse at home or at school or wherever. But oftentimes, it's the subtle

things: 13:13

is there one event that changed your life? Was it a pattern of behaviors through someone else? You know, I've worked with people who have been affected by one incident on the playground. I had a woman who was affected throughout her life. She was eavesdropping on her parents. They thought she was in bed when she was like seven or eight years old. And what she took away from that was that they never wanted her. And she went back and talked about this with her her her mother, and she was in her 40s, and her mother didn't remember the specific conversation that night, but they had talked about where she had been an unplanned baby, and there had never been a greater gift for them, right? But when the initial news came out. It was a little bit shocking, right? And you know, people are don't know what's going to happen. But you know, I told her like over half of the world's live births were unplanned pregnancy, but the vast majority of them have parents who love them and would give a kidney and a liver for them, right? I always say two kidneys and a liver. So you know, it's the stories you create. It's not what happens to you. It's the stories that you create. And the first time I had that experience, I was actually the very first personal development I did. I'll never forget. It was in a hotel conference room, and one of the things that they talked about first and foremost was not only should you question your thoughts, but you can't. You can question your thoughts, and you should. And then they went on break, and I remember walking down that hall with the smell of chlorine from the pool. I can see the pattern on the rug, and my. Life had already opened up with just that. You know, I grew up with a father who was a Vietnam Marine. There's only one way to do it: being told, "I know what you're thinking. You have to think the way we think. So the idea that I could question it and that I should question it was like the earth moved under my feet, and that was the beginning of the 10 years, that day was the beginning of the 10 years.

Mick Spiers: 15:24

So that itself is is very interesting that you had that pivotal moment for for yourself to have that realization to stop and think, well, it doesn't have to be this way. That's very interesting. What I love in the story that you're sharing there, including I can say that I was an unplanned baby, so you know I think there's lots of us out there. But and I felt very loved, but so the two don't always have to equate at all. But the the thing is, is that what we're talking about here is we are the the sum of our experiences and the environment that we're around, that is around us. We might talk about organizational culture in that regard, where where the sum of all of those micro experiences. But it's more than that. We're the sum of our perception of those experiences. The perspective that we took, it didn't even have to be real. It had to be how we interpreted what happened around us or to us, and quite often we think it happened to us. That's where some of the trauma. You know, why did this happen to me? Why? Why me? That's a perspective. It might not have even been about you, but you took what you took away started to form your view of who you are and what the world is about, the sense making, the critical thinking, the sense making is your sense making. It's not. It's not actually 100% accurate. How does that sit with you? Does that make sense?

Monique DeMonaco: 16:55

It absolutely does. And when you say right that we're a formation of these things that have gone on in our lives, when someone mistreats us, and this is particularly important for children to understand and for us to understand that, you know, as we look back and we try to heal, is when someone mistreats us, it never says anything about us; it says everything about them. And how this ties in is the other thing I say, "If you do not heal your demons, they will raise your children." And so it's parents, you know, who are doing their best, whatever they are-mentally ill or on top of their game. Right? Everyone is doing their best, but they have their own things that they're not aware of. What are their stories and their experiences and their beliefs, and it just goes on and on and on. And what was that of their parents and their grandparents? So, breaking the family paradigm is very important for people who grow up in dysfunction, even if the entire family wasn't dysfunction dysfunctional, but maybe there was an important segment that was. For some people, it's religion, and that they feel like they grew up in a really loving family. But there's something, you know, there was some abuse or something there. For other people, it was in the family business, right? It's just, you know, wherever that plays a part, even if it's not pervasive, and when you understand that, that creates the pivot where then you can heal, and you can decide who you are. Like I didn't go to college until I was 24 years old, and I literally, for the first semester, every day lived in fear that they would recognize they made a mistake and come and ask me to leave because I was still playing that story. So right as as we begin to examine our stories, where are they coming from, and then that's the only place you have power. Like what are these thoughts? And I firmly believe that any long term sustainable change has to start at the level of thought. Everything starts as a thought. So if you don't dig deep into your thoughts and what you're making those mean, it's going to be transactional, focused on the behavior. The only way it can be transformational, whether it's a leadership or a new anything that you're doing, whether it's at home in the business, right in your organization, has to start with a thought, and it has to make sense from there, or the behaviors will not be successful in the long term.

Mick Spiers: 19:36

Okay, really interesting, Monique. Let me share with you what I'm taking away from that. Firstly, I fully agree with you that you know what there are some bad actors in the world, so we better say that there are some people that do some either malicious things or some unintentionally damaging things. So we can't we can't ignore that. But I agree with you that it it speaks more about their character than it does about you when someone does. Something like that, so it's always a good thing for us to remember. The second part there is then how we hang on to it, and I see this in the workplace a lot, and I know it happens in everyone's personal life when you walk away from a conversation that you're replaying in your head thousands of time going. What? What is? You're trying to unpack it. You're trying to make sense of it, and you're taking it away. And in your case, taking away almost a bit of a. I'm not going to say identity crisis. That's too strong. But this element of this person said that I'll never make it to college, so therefore I don't belong to college. You're still thinking about that conversation years later, the person who said it forgot about it 30 seconds after they said it. So we hang on to these things and we're replaying it. And in the workplace, I can tell you this: this is where bosses will say something with poorly chosen words unintentionally, and their team member then walks around having a bad day for the next three weeks, and the the boss forgot about it 30 seconds after they said it, and they didn't even intend it the way that the person interpreted, which gives me two frames here. One is sorry to quote Stan Lee here for a second in Spider Man, but with great power comes great responsibility. So as leaders, we need to be more careful with our language, and as human beings, the team member, we need to do a bit more critical thinking skills to go. Well, that that was my perspective of what I took away from that conversation. But are there three other explanations of what the boss could have meant. So the challenge, do I know this to be true? You're you're walking down the carpet conversation of no. I don't have to accept my first interpretation of that event as being the true event. How does that sit with you?

Monique DeMonaco: 21:58

Absolutely. And then if you think about it, from my work is based in brain science, right? And so we look at things like there are four core reasons why people suffer, and I've talked to 1000s of people over 20 years. I firmly believe these are the four, and the first one is the belief I'm not enough, and I think about 97% of the population struggles with that, and sometimes when I say that, someone will raise their hand right away and be like, "Yeah, that's me." And other people aren't sure, but if we dig down deep enough, there's at least an element of there that for most vast majority of people. The second one is the belief that what I want isn't available to me, even if others can have it, and that can be anything from a healthy relationship, the white picket fence in the suburbs, right, to the sea level suite position or a successful business, whatever you want it to be, you know it's possible, but you think that there's something about you that it's not available to you. The third is the fear of rejection, which is comes from the primal part of our brain. So as a species, we're not really that old, and it wasn't that long ago when the world was a dangerous place. So being rejected from your tribe meant that you were much more likely to perish. So when you talk about these conversations, just off the cusp, where somebody doesn't word it right, oftentimes people will report having a physiological response. Right, they'll feel tingly, or they'll have that fight, flight, or freeze. They're tossing and turning three days later about this conversation. Right, and they may even think it wasn't that big a deal. Why am I still doing this? Right, and the fourth is the need for connection. We are designed, wired, and built for connection. We even have neuro neurotransmitters in our brain. Right, that that's why if one person smiles, the other person is much more likely to smile. If you've ever fed a baby and you're trying to get them to learn to eat off a spoon without thinking about it. The vast majority of people will open their mouth, right? Those are the mirror neurons playing out. That really ties into what I

say: 24:11

is you don't know what you don't know. So understanding those four core reasons and being able to say, "Hmm, I'm feeling this way because I'm feeling threatened by this person because I don't feel good enough, or I'm having this rejection experience." And then when you have, you can label it, and you know what it is, and you can work through it. That greatly minimizes the issues then related to it.

Mick Spiers: 24:38

So the elements I'm picking up there is elements of identity, like do I belong? Do I deserve this? These kind of elements, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves, then the element of you know acknowledging that our brain's number one job is just to keep us alive, and because of the way that we're wise. It fears loss more than it appreciates gain, and the biggest fear is fear of mortal fear. And the mortal fear, you know, back in the day was social rejection and social isolation led to perishing because we couldn't survive. We we would either starve or you know, dehydrate, or we'd get eaten by a predator, right? And and that we haven't evolved from that. So now in the workplace, social rejection and social isolation the, the chemical reaction in our brain is identical to I'm getting tossed out of the tribe, I'm going to die, and we don't know that. It's a unaware biological response that we're having at the time, and we don't necessarily know how to deal with that unless we have the awareness. And so, this is going to come back to your key word, Monique. So, not only the awareness of this happened, but why did I have that thought? So, I'm going to share a small snippet of my model of emotional intelligence. When I go through it, I go, "Well, what is this emotion? And I try to interpret it accurately because sometimes it is inaccurate." It could be,"I'm not angry, I'm hungry. I'm not frustrated, I'm hungry." Right. So we've got to be careful. So what is this emotion? Why this emotion? Because I believe that emotion is in information that's trying to draw my attention to something. Why this emotion now, which is the trigger, right? So, which might be a trauma response similar to the things that you're experiencing. And do I know this to be true? Do I know this to be true? So, what is this emotion? Why this emotion? What is it drawing my attention to? Why this emotion now? And do I know it to be true? And if we can do that, I mean, you don't want to get into an academic conversation of going, "Oh, it's clear, my my amygdala just fired because I'm feeling like I'm getting rejected." No, it's it's not an academic, it's not an academics. You're not going to do a a neuroscience psychological evaluation of yourself on the spot, but just to know, yeah, why did that thought just pop into my head, and then to do something with it, and the final part to close it out, what response is going to serve me, and serve the others around me well right now, based on that process, that critical thinking process that I've just been through. How does that model sit with your model of awareness?

Monique DeMonaco: 27:31

I think it's the same thing, just a different right approach, a different language. Like I will tell someone, you know, who has a lot of anxiety, maybe, or a lot of fears about around being rejected, even if they didn't understand that's what it was before, and now they're learning that. It can be extraordinarily powerful to name that voice in your head, whatever you name it. Right? Okay, Ginny. Thanks for your input. I know that you're just trying to keep me safe, but I've got it.

Mick Spiers: 28:02

Nice, I like that.

Monique DeMonaco: 28:03

And so that gives you like, okay, you're creating some distance from that. That voice isn't you, right? That voice is a part of you, but people overidentify that voice is me. So everything the voice says has to be true. Well, you can literally have the thought that it's raining literal cats and dogs. That does not make it true. And so, right, the labels, the processes that people can go through, the tools that you can give them, help them to you know become aware and say, why am I why am I feeling this way, and what can I do about it? Do I agree with this? Does this make sense for me?

Mick Spiers: 28:44

That power of thought's really interesting, and I mentioned before the story that we tell ourselves about ourselves. If we if we don't challenge it, we start believing it to be true, right? We start believing it to be true, and that can be a powerful thing. By the way, it can be a powerfully positive thing. You get to hold the pen, and you get to decide what story you tell yourself about yourself. But if you leave it on autopilot, it might defer to something that is not serving you well, and and you're not checking in on it. The other

part that you got me thinking: 29:15

this this is not just from what you just said, but just some of the threads that you've put into this conversation, Monique, is about trauma, and I'm going to throw something else out there about trauma, and that is what we now know about memory, and that memory is extraordinarily fallible. And there was a lot of psychological research at one point about the concept of repressed memories, and a lot of people believe that to be true. And I'm not going to say that it's not true. But what emerged from that work is reconstructed memory, and reconstructed memory is shows us that you can you can seed thoughts into someone like a bad actor here. Potentially malicious intent. You can see it enough thoughts into someone's brain for them to be fundamentally believe that something that happened in their life 20 years ago happened, but it didn't happen. It's a reconstructed memory. So we're having. So why am I bringing this up? We're having all of these trauma responses in our life that show up from time to time, and it could be anything that's triggering you-the smell of chlorine. All of these things can be triggering some kind of memory, but your memory is fallible anyway. It's only your reconstruction of what you believed happened, coming back to perspective again.

Monique DeMonaco: 30:39

Absolutely, and scientifically, we know there's no such thing as time or space, right? Those are man-made constructs that are very helpful, but you can, with your mind, your mind makes very little distinction about what's happening in real time and what's being vividly recalled, right? So you can take people, and I do. I'm a rapid transformational hypnotherapist, which is a very special specialized kind of hypnotherapy, and so you can move people forward and backward in time very easily. You have to be very careful about how you do it. So if there are repressed memories, oftentimes they're back to childhood, and they seem very innocuous as an adult, but at the time when you were four years old, it was life changing, you know. And so, because it's subconscious, because you consciously forgot about it, you don't understand that it's still running your life. I had a client who was hugely successful had done something with criminal law that had never been done before, it was amazing, and he was very successful in any measurable way. But he would say to me, "I have a fear of things being taken away, and it had affected his personal life. He wanted a partner, and so you know we talked through this, and nothing was really coming up. So I did an RTT session with him, and what came up was that he lived in a very close knit community with a lot of family members nearby. So they were always in and out of people's yards and houses. And he had another cousin. He was four years old. He had another little cousin who was four years old, and they were leaving for the summer or something. He didn't even remember all the details, but this little cousin had a blue plastic baby pool. Here in the states, you could buy them like in the pharmacy for 999, right? Just plain old pool. And so they gave the pool to my client who was staying because the other little boy was leaving for the summer. And when the little boy came back, the grandmother took the baby pool from my client and gave it back to his cousin. And so, in his mind, at four years old, the message was anything could be taken away from you, because that blue baby pull was very, very important to him. So he didn't consciously think about it at four. He just developed this belief, and so he was still living. I think he was 44. Like anything could be taken away. Don't get too attached. I really like this woman, but maybe I'm getting too attached. I want a partner, but you know, and the behaviors, the subconscious behaviors that lead to that, so it's very important when you do that work to not drop in suggestions and how you ask questions, so that people can uncover things that are mostly from childhood and much of the time are innocuous things that, as an adult, they say, you know, wow, this is why I'm struggling, right?

Mick Spiers: 33:43

Yeah, really interesting. Okay, so I don't want to try and bring this to something practical. So I think a lot of people are going to be listening to this and going, and they're probably thinking of things of examples where it could be true for them, and it most likely is, by the way, because we're all human beings like this. What I want to summarize is that what we're experiencing? Is we have these reconstructed memory and perspective of things that happened to our past that are now subconsciously framing what's happening in front of us, and the two may not be connected whatsoever, but somehow something hasn't been processed, and it hasn't. We've not let go of that subconsciously, and now this new experience is in evolve is unfolding in front of us, and we've got this thing in our past that is leading us to look at this experience in front of us in a in a way that maybe isn't serving us as well as it could because of this reconstructed memory and remember, it's just a perspective of what happened back then. It's what we took away from it, and now we're letting it, we're letting it subconsciously impact the way that we see something that's in front of us. That might be a beautiful experience, but we're going oh, and in your experience, oh, but. But I might be I might be hurt from this, right? So, how do we then turn that knowledge that that's how our brain works? Unfortunately, how do we turn that knowledge into something that we can apply in real time, Coach Monique?

Monique DeMonaco: 35:16

So I think by the tools, for example, like the conceptual model for change that I talked about, right? Not focusing on the behavior, focusing on the story about it, asking yourself, right, is it true? Because everything starts with a thought. Well, we developed the delete delete technique, which is a founding of the foundational technique to our coaching, because the mind works in stories and pictures. That's why TED talks, for example, are so life changing and amazing. Because it's how the story is told. You can take anything, you turn it into a story, people remember it. They're not going to remember your stats. They're going to remember your story, right? So when I say to someone, "I'm going to teach you the delete delete technique. The mind is already creating a picture, and some level, because when we developed it 20 years ago, everybody was on keyboards then, and today everyone's on device. And when you hit the delete button on any device, what was there simply goes away. So we're starting with that, and then we teach people that when you catch yourself having a thought that isn't serving you, right, or that isn't true, or that's creating angst for you, you simply say out loud or to yourself, "Delete, delete." Your mind knows what to do with that, and you drop in a positive or at least a neutral, and you can do that about small things, right? Getting caught in traffic. So let's just say you're sitting in traffic, you're going to be late, and you're fussing and fussing about being late, and you're telling yourself, beating up on yourself, you should have left earlier, you should have known, you should have had crystal ball, right? Delete, delete. I'm doing the best I can. You go from that stressed to a totally different perspective that brings the heat down, right? If it's something larger and more traumatic, delete delete. I'm okay right now. So I have some oncologists who will refer people to me simply because maybe they are coming to the end of their life, and they want to manage like some of the stress and fear. And until the very end of our lives, at any given moment, we are okay. So, being able to drop a suggestion, delete, delete, I'm okay. Anxiety is about future tripping. What can be future tripping five minutes from now, five hours, five days, five years, but where you are in this moment, you're okay. And so, having the tool to be able to course correct, being aware, and then course correcting it to something that is most often truer, or at least neutral, and it gives you that sense of power and control.

Mick Spiers: 38:02

So, what I'm taking away from that, Coach Monique, is awareness of our thoughts, so that we're not just on autopilot and we're just letting someone else steer the car. Let's call it to keep the traffic metaphor going. So, actually, be aware of that thought, and then the pattern interrupt, and for you it's delete, delete, and I'm going to say the other part was. Do I know this to be true? First of all, delete, delete, and what's another explanation? And what can I do with it? Not just let it take over me, and now all of a sudden I'm, I'm the kind of result of that thought, what am I going to replace it with? What am I going to replace it with, and what can I do with what I have from where I am instead of letting it dominate my thought?

Monique DeMonaco: 38:52

Asking, you know, is it true? And I would never say if we if we go back to the traffic right. If you know you're going to be late, saying delete delete, I'm going to be on time is ridiculous. You're just lying to yourself in a different way, right? But delete to lead. I'm doing the best I can. We are all doing the best we can at any given moment. So having that ability to be a little bit easier on yourself, giving yourself the space, mostly being most honest with yourself. So every moment of our lives, even before we're born, there are billions of neurons wiring and firing. And Hebb's law says that what fires together wires together. So the more you have a thought or a belief or a memory, the more you are encoding and building the network. Like attracts like more of it, right? So interrupting the pattern. The average person is having about 65,000 thoughts a day, and unfortunately, for the vast majority of people, they're not thoughts that serve them. When you take out just the thoughts to get through my day, most thoughts are the same thoughts we had yesterday, last week, last year, all of our lives, and are often not even our own original thoughts. So the delete delete helps you to interrupt the pattern. So you're taking that thought, you're interrupting it, cutting the pathway, and then you're able to drop something else in there. And the more you use it, the more common it comes for you. And so I will tell clients when we teach this, like for the next three hours, I just want you to use it when you think of it. Don't police yourself about it because that just creates stress. But put up a few notes or something that remind you to do it. In three hours, you will start to notice a change in your thought because people don't question, they don't interrupt it, right? And so they start to go, oh my God! And I've had so many people say to me, they'll come up to me or send me an email and say, you know, I always saw myself as a really positive person. It's actually embarrassing how many negative or nasty thoughts that I have, because you're not aware of it.

Mick Spiers: 40:56

That's so true.

Monique DeMonaco: 40:57

You're not supposed to be aware of every thought. If you were, you'd be rolled up in a corner somewhere, not able to function, right? And but just but our thoughts are like gravity. It doesn't matter if you're aware of them or not. You're going to be impacted by them.

Mick Spiers: 41:13

Yeah, really interesting. That inner monolog, which you gave it a name before. I think you said Jenny. That was interesting. That inner monolog is like an inner critic, and we talk to ourselves inside our own brain. And for all those listening, we all do it. It's okay, you're not crazy. We all have this.

Monique DeMonaco: 41:31

Yeah, we all do it.

Mick Spiers: 41:32

We all do it. We all have this inner monolog, and it's an inner inner critic. For I'm going to say the majority of the time, not always, of course, but it's an inner critic that talks to ourselves in a way that you would never talk like that to a friend or to even your worst enemy. You wouldn't say some of the things that.

Monique DeMonaco: 41:52

You would not.

Mick Spiers: 41:53

You're so useless at this, and you know things like this. We we do it all the time. I want to add another layer. Just test this. What role then does confirmation bias play in this? So it could be the even just use the traffic metaphor for a second. If you've got that story in your head of I never leave home on time and I always get stuck in stuck in traffic, confirmation bias is then going to lead you to remember all the the times that that was true, and you don't even remember all the times that it wasn't true. How do we build? I'm going to say some kind of code to break confirmation bias in your patent interrupt that you've got. You'd whether it's delete, delete, or whatever it is that we're going to do to patent interrupt. How do we stop going down this track of confirmation bias of seeing all the things that confirm what we believe and ignoring the contrary evidence.

Monique DeMonaco: 42:48

Well, that is a great question because there's actually a part of our brain called the reticular activation system, the very small part of the brain, and its sole role is to filter information, and everyone's reticular activation is customized uniquely to them. It's calibrated to each individual based on their thoughts and their experiences, right? And so we feel like we live like if we thought about it, like we're taking everything in. But the truth of the matter is, is we are disqualifying more things that are coming in because if we really were taking everything in, we'd be overwhelmed, right? So that reticular activation system is calibrated, and it allows in what's a match. It's much more likely to let that in, and something that's not a match, right, tends to not let it in because it doesn't confirm what we're already our operating manual that we're using, and so being aware again that there's a part of your brain, there's a reason why it's doing what it's doing, but also recognizing there is a downside to that and giving you the tools to counter that, right? We are wired to notice difference, which makes us all biased, right? If you pass someone, for example, if you don't have someone in your life that has fire engine red hair, and you're walking down the street, and most people look more like you than not, right? You're not thinking about, oh, well, this person looks just like me, but then you pass someone who's got fire engine red hair, or who may be a different race, right? And suddenly you notice them. There's a bias to that. Biases are natural. It's what being aware of your bias and what you make it do, what you do with it.

Mick Spiers: 44:40

That's a good one, so that we can all be. I'm going to go a little bit more self-compassionate. Bias is a natural thing, it's what you do with that bias. And I'm going to say it needs the same thought pattern. Oh, why? Why did that thought just come into my head? What was it trying to draw my attention to? Oh, nothing. Okay, go on with my life. Right. So, what do we do? That bias, yeah, that's really interesting, Monique. Look, you've confirmed exactly what we started with, Monique, which is that emotional intelligence is a life skill. It's not not a soft skill, it's a life skill because everything you're sharing with us today about being aware of our thoughts and then challenging our thoughts. These will all make us a better leader, yes, a better team member, a better father, a better mother, a better son, a better daughter, a better friend, because we're going to be taking control of the steering wheel and going. Well, no, my thoughts don't need to own me. I'm the owner of my thoughts, and I can challenge my thoughts, and I can decide how I'm going to respond, which is then where the behavior comes out, and it's that behavior that then impacts the world around us because we're now an actor in a bigger system, right? So our behavior impacts others, their behavior impacts us. We're all relying the connection. We're all relying on each other, but if we're in control of that connection between thought and behavior, forgot that pattern interrupt, we can choose a behavior that serves us and serves others better around us, and that's a life skill.

Monique DeMonaco: 46:14

Truer words were never spoken. It's absolutely spot on, true. And when you look at managers, right, and everyone should do this, but when I talk with leaders, drill this into them, you speak with the intention of being understood, and you listen with the intention to understand. So that who's the person, who's the audience, how are they best going to be able to hear this. Stay out of your own head and turn on your ears. What are they really saying? What did I really hear? Learning how to effectively communicate to be able to say this is what I'm hearing, right? But you have to have a level of confidence. You have to have a level that you are entitled to that to be able to ask those questions, that you have to have the confidence to be vulnerable to ask the question.

Mick Spiers: 47:07

Very good, very good. Okay, all right, excellent. So I'm going to draw us to a close in a moment, but I want to I want to give you the floor on something else before we do that, and that is about EQ Wize. We've been talking about this in very clear ways that can impact all of us in terms of our life skills. This EQ Wize is interesting for me in terms of bridging how someone prepares for the workplace. So, just in the next two or three minutes, tell us more about what this means, how we can prepare people better so that they are ready for the workplace and they're ready with these skills. Not that I know how to program, I know how to do my spreadsheet, I know how to, all the way through to you know whatever profession. I talk a lot about software engineering, so I should throw a few other ones in. A nurse that knows how to put a cannula in. We all know that better nurses are the ones that have got more of these life skills that we're talking about, putting the cannula in is the is the table stakes. You know how you need to know how to put the cannula in, but the better nurse is the one that's got the empathy, the emotional intelligence, all of these things that we're talking about, Mick. So how do we prepare? How does EQ Wize prepare someone for that transition.

Monique DeMonaco: 48:23

Great question. I just want to piggyback a little bit. A lot of these certifications and technical skills and trainings are obsolete, sometimes in months or certainly years out.

Mick Spiers: 48:33

Oh, that's true as well yeah.

Monique DeMonaco: 48:35

Right. So your emotional intelligence, and that's one of the things when you bring it into the workforce, you get really positive feedback, and it creates buy-in because people understand. Yes, my team is getting this training for business, but I take this home, and this makes me a better parent. This makes me a better leader in my community. So, what we do with EQ Wize is, and you're probably like this as well, Mick. You know, I'm a self empowerment junkie, right? Personal development, professional development. We love those spaces, right? But the average person, that's not their passion. What they want is the tools, the education, the strategies to be successful. And there's not a lot of people out there who are providing working knowledge? People want working knowledge. If they want expertise, EQ Wize isn't for them. They can come for coaching, or they can do something else, right? But this is not for them. This is for the people who just need to know what they need to know, and they're interested in personal development, or they want a certification to list on their resume. They want to better be a better employer or a better candidate. And so, how EQ Wize works is we've taken 20 years of tools. We have 13 trademark tools, and we've taken these tools and we've found a way to configure them to make them. Easy to learn, easy to use, immediately relevant, in under 90 minutes. With what is it? Why is it important? Here's the tool. Here's how to use it. Pretty formulated, and there are assessments. And so you know, most of the time it's 80% unless an organization is requesting a different, and then you immediately have your certification to list on your resume. Download it, you know, frame it and put it on the wall in your office. Whatever you want to do with it, and so you've done two things. We like to think that the priority is learning, but you've also built your resume or built your CV. And when we really kind of started this, and there's still some of that going on, is we're targeting Gen Z, right, and young professionals. But the feedback we're getting is, oh no, our middle managers need this as well. Oh no, everybody needs this, right? And that was shocking to me. Like I was doing a speaking engagement, and there were going to be quite a few young professionals, so I was kind of questioning about where I was going to go, and you know, I you worry about like insulting people because when you live in this space, right, it just becomes so natural, right? And so where you know who's my audience, and they looked at me and said, "Oh, everybody can use this." Don't differentiate. You know, we have people in their 50s who are going to benefit from this work.

Mick Spiers: 51:25

Yeah, really good many.

Monique DeMonaco: 51:26

Right. You have to know that it's out there, and so helping us to give people the tools and the resources that literally changes your life. And I know that it has changed my life, and I've worked with thousands of people over 20 years, and they've changed their lives using these tools. So it it's a calling.

Mick Spiers: 51:46

Yeah, very good. And I can see the purpose that that it drives you as well, Monique. That's an observation to make as we go. I just want to say congratulations on the success, and thank you for bringing to the world something quite practical. I love that it's a practical toolkit. I was having a little chuckle when you said about, yeah, I'm a junkie for all of these things, all of these development, and I want to know the deep science behind it. Not everyone cares about the deep science; they just want something that works, so.

Monique DeMonaco: 52:15

Most people do not.

Mick Spiers: 52:17

Yeah, exactly. Okay. All right. Well, that well done, Monique. Thank you so much for for sharing this today. I want to take us now to our rapid round. These are the same four questions we ask all of our guests. So, what's the one thing you know now, , that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Monique DeMonaco: 52:35

That it always works out. That it always works out. There are a few instances, very, very, very finite few, but for the vast majority of people, the vast majority of the time, it always works out.

Mick Spiers: 52:51

Yeah, it works. Oh, sorry, we're going to go back backwards here for a second, but we over factor the fear that it won't, right? And despite the contrary evidence, and I'm going to go with the statement we use. Do we know that to be true? No, no. Okay. What's your favorite book?

Monique DeMonaco: 53:07

My favorite book. Oh, and I read thousand. Is actually a novel, "The Midnight Library." And the reason I love the book, it's not a very long read. It's about a woman who's really at a crossroads. She actually is considering ending her life, and she has a lucid dream where she goes into a library, and there are thousands of books. And it turns out that each book represents a decision that she made, where she thought she made the wrong decision. I shouldn't have broken up with this guy. I should have taken that job, and then she gets to read about what would have happened if she had done that, and that's a powerful story. And I've actually given copies of that to clients and to people who are struggling, because what the story we tend to make up is, oh, well, that's where I really went wrong. If I'd have married that guy, right? If I would have had that child, if I would have taken that job, if I had said no to this project, we somehow believe that all our happiness was with that decision, without having any idea of how that decision could have been. So I think it's a powerful story for people because, to some extent, we all do it.

Mick Spiers: 54:20

Yeah, really. Okay, I love it. Okay, what's your favorite quote?

Monique DeMonaco: 54:24

What is my favorite quote? My favorite quote is my own quote. "It always works out."

Mick Spiers: 54:31

It always works out. Okay, that's a good one for us to take away, all of us today. And finally, Coach Monique, there are going to be people going, "Wow, I feel like I've just been diagnosed live on a podcast here." Everything that Monique said, I do that every day. If people want to know more, if they want to know about EQ Wize or or just your work in general, how do people find you?

Monique DeMonaco: 54:54

Well, for my work in general, my coaching, whether it's executive, career, life, coachmonique. And you can schedule a discovery call if you look at the information and it speaks to you. And we offer those. We say 30 minutes, but it often runs longer. And then EQ Wize for the course is, is wize with a z.com, and you will see that the main website talks a lot about what hiring managers write and Gen Z and those kinds of things, but there are tabs at the top. We do offer professional development. We work with nonprofits. We work with organizations. And the beauty of our work, one of the aspects of the beauty of our work, is we can take the same work and customize it to your audience. So if your audience is underprivileged high schoolers who need these tools, we're going to present that differently in a way that connects with them than we are with someone right who's in college who has come from a certain level of privilege, and all of our stuff is generated through experience and our work and our techniques-none of it is AI, not one piece of it. So when you come to EQ Wize or you come to Coach Monique, it's that connection, it's that authenticity.

Mick Spiers: 56:15

Excellent. Well, well, thank you again. Thank you for the gift of your time, of your wisdom, your experience, and for bringing very practical toolkits that we can use to interrupt these these patterns that we that we land in. And if if we're not a if we're not don't have that awareness, we just start repeating these patterns, and they they don't have to be that much for everything you've shared with us today, Monique. I feel richer for the experience, and I know that the audience will as well. Thank you.

Monique DeMonaco: 56:46

Thank you so much, Mick, for having me. It really is wonderful. And I also wanted to let you know, for your listeners, for anyone who's interested, we have two codes for you, and the code is leadership project. And if you go to EQ Wize, that's 10% off any of the courses. And if you use that during the discovery call, we work in packages of eight in the coaching. So there's an additional package. Your listeners would get nine sessions rather than eight.

Mick Spiers: 57:20

Oh well, thank you so much for that gift as well. Thank you, and we'll put those codes into the show notes as well. Thank you so much.

Monique DeMonaco: 57:26

Well, thank you again. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day.

Mick Spiers: 57:32

What a fascinating conversation with . There is one word that keeps coming back to me from this conversation, awareness, because we cannot change what we don't notice, and so often we focus on the behavior. Why did I react like that? Why do I keep procrastinating? Why does that person always frustrate me? Why do I keep falling into the same pattern? But Monique challenges us to become more curious about what sits underneath that behavior. What was I thinking? Also, loved the concept of creating a pattern interrupt. What did I believe? What expectation did I have? What Sometimes change begins with catching ourselves in the moment, noticing the familiar thought, the familiar story, or the familiar reaction, and interrupting it before it meaning did I give to what just happened? And perhaps most automatically becomes behavior. So here's my challenge for you

this week: 59:16

notice one moment where you have a strong emotional reaction, and don't immediately judge it or suppress importantly, do I know this to be true? I think that's a such a it. Just get curious. Ask yourself, what story am I telling myself right now? Do I know that story to be true? And powerful question because our first interpretation of a then, what response would serve me and the people around me best in this moment? That little moment of awareness might create more choice than you realize, and you might be able to regain situation isn't necessarily reality, it's an interpretation, some of that control over your emotional reactions. So thank you again to Monique for such an open, thought-provoking and once we have an interpretation, our minds can conversation, and join us again next week when I'm joined by Uma Subramanian. Uma challenges us to examine the limiting beliefs become remarkably good at finding evidence to support it. that can quietly define who we think we're capable of becoming. We remember the moments that reinforce the story. We notice You've been listening to The Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work the behaviors that confirm it. That doesn't mean our emotions editing every episode, and to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible. None of this happens without them. Around here, we aren't real, they absolutely are. But perhaps the invitation believe leadership is a practice, not a position, that people should feel seen, heard, valued, and that they matter. That the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for is to become more curious about what the emotion is drawing our curiosity, and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app. And if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and attention to before deciding what response will serve us best. explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing. Until next time, lead with curiosity, courage, and care.