I'm so honored to be here today for Women in Tech conference. There's already an amazing lineup. I already saw some sessions yesterday and it's just an honor to be here um Personally as well because this topic, emotions and technology.It's something that I never thought I'd be able to talk about. But um I love it and I'm really excited to be able to bridge this together and share a little bit of my journey on how I got into this topic. And um yeah, so thank you for joining my session to how to develop youtube for tech companies. My name is Richland Tan. I am a California girl. So I come from San Francisco. Maybe some of you have been there and uh maybe it's still on your bucket list. I hope that after Corona, this whole pandemic stuff that you're able to go there and check it out and see it, I can totally recommend. Um But for those of you who have been there, I can imagine, you can remember all the hills, you can remember the trams or maybe even the sea lions at the pier 30 nine. But for me, what I remember is building and bonding with my dad. You th the thing is my dad was a contractor. So, since I can remember, I've had a hammer in one hand and a nail in other hands and we've built homes together. We've tiled floors, we've built walls.

I mean, even now today, I would say I'm a Diy queen. And um, but what was so special about this time in particular is that I got to really bond with my dad. I got to have quality time with him. I mean, I was so much like him that on the job site. A lot of people used to call me Junior. I know I'm a woman but still they would call me Junior because I looked like him. I talk like him. We had very similar humor and, um, you could say we were really close. I mean, during these times on the rides to work or home, we would have long talks and just talk about everything. I mean, he was my hero in a lot of ways. And then in 2013, everything changed. It's a year that I'll never forget. It changed everything in my life. It changed my whole family and it was the year that my dad decided to leave our family, he got on a plane and not only left our family, but he left the country and pretty much cut us off. So as you can imagine, or maybe some of you have experienced as well. There's a lot of emotions that come with that.

There's so much to try to wrestle through and to try to process in this time and maybe some of you can relate, but I didn't know what to do with all those emotions. I mean, iii, I knew I was angry. I knew I was upset but I had no idea how to navigate all those things. And then on top of that, I had my mom to think about my brother and they had their emotions already. So long story short, I just felt like I didn't have time for this. I didn't have time to have these emotions. I didn't have time to go through it. So I thought, you know, the right thing to do. But I was really conscious of this or not, was to numb myself. I thought being strong meant that I feel anything. I didn't let it bother me. And this is how I wanted to one. But little did I know that I was running away from the very thing that actually would be the key to my freedom. The key to my success. I was running away from emotions because I didn't like this word. It was such a black box to me. It was such a mystery to me. I didn't get it. But today I can really say that emotions and emotional intelligence has been such a key to where I am now and learning about this.

It's been a key to, to bringing me to a whole different level of life today. I'm based in Berlin. I know a lot called that in San Francisco, but it's all worth it because I get to be with I allo and work with this awesome team. Not everyone's pictured here, but um it's amazing. I'm a team lead of international product and technology. And although that journey with my dad seems kind of random or separate from this, it bridged the way for me to be able to, the way that I do with emotional intelligence.

So today I wanna talk about the power of emotional intelligence in the tech field. I wanna talk about practicalities that you and I can do or companies can do to be able to cultivate the culture. And of course, I'm gonna talk about what it is. Um because, you know, we feel it every day, we see it every day. As a matter of fact, I have an amazing study that I wanna share, but we'll get to that in just a second. So right now, what I'd like to do is kind of play a little game with you. Uh So I hope you're ready. So this next slide I'd like for you to just look at this facial expression, look at the emotions. I'm sure some of you actually have a smile on your face without even really thinking about it. Just seeing this space makes you smile and um the emotion here, I guess happy. Oh Different emotion. I'm sure some of you like me maybe backed off from the screen. Quite aggressive, quite angry. Yeah. And what about this next emotion? Oh I know the emotion here is probably sad. But for me, all I feel right now is empathy. I just wanna grab him and hold him and cuddle and just make sure that the world is OK. This little lip here just always gets me. And you might be thinking, why are we going through this experiment? Well, the study that I mentioned earlier is a study that comes out of the University of the Netherlands.

So they put their candidates just as an experiment like us, they show them facial expressions on a computer to see what their reactions would be. But the special thing about these candidates is that they had cortical lesions, meaning they had some brain damage in the back that led to blindness. Although the physical eyes work and the optic nerve work, they still were essentially blind. However, when they looked at these facial expressions like you and I, they also reacted, they also smiled when they saw a smile, they also frowned when they saw a frown. And these scientists were thinking, how is this possible? How are you, do you see something? You know, how did you know to smile and, and the candidates, the participants would say, well, just a hunch. Just I don't know, I, I didn't think about it. I just felt something and did it without thinking. So these researchers were fascinated and they decided, OK, let's go into the brain. So hang on tight. I'm gonna explain a little bit of what's going on in the brain. So, first of all, um as you're listening to me, now you're getting information fed into your brain through the stimulus. This is, this is the back of the brain and then this information travels into the limbic system, which is the emotional center.

So this means that before you process information, you're feeling this information and with the candidates earlier, although their information being received through their eyes, the object nerve travels in the middle to the back of the brain. So that's why their brain found alternative routes for them to feel.

And that's why they could still make racial expressions even though they couldn't see. So they felt although they're not seen. And the next part of the process is that it travel, this information travels from the limbic system to the cerebral cortex, which is logical thinking.

And this is where emotional intelligence functions, it functions between the o limbic system, the emotions that we have and the cerebral cortex, the meaning that we give those emotions and those feelings for logical reasoning. And this is important to state because we all feel but we just understand these uh feelings on different levels. So another example, I can give you is, have you ever walked into a room and you just felt the energy? You could just feel something going on. You could feel the vibe, you could feel the atmosphere even if you couldn't put your finger on it. So some of you might be thinking, no, never. And some others of you might be thinking, yeah, all the time. Everywhere I go, I'm always feeling what's going on and this is a, this is a sign of look, we're all feeling. That's one thing we cannot deny that we all feel these emotions, however, understanding them differently or under uh noticing them differently. So um this means that we do have different levels of emotional intelligence. So those who could feel the room probably have a high emotional intelligence and those who don't normally notice maybe have a lower emotional intelligence. Now, the question might be, can you grow an emotional intelligence?

Well, I'll get to that later. And for those of you note takers who really need a definition. This next slide is for you feel free to take a screenshot as well. So the definition of emotional intelligence is the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those and those of others discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior and adjust emotions to adapt to environments.

I'd like to break this down just a little bit further. It's basically emotional intelligence is personal competence which is self awareness, self management and social competence, which is relationship management and social awareness. To break it down. Once more, basically, emotional intelligence is handling the emotions that I feel and handling the emotions others feel. So you see back in my journey again, I felt so many emotions, but I didn't have the understanding of how to handle those emotions. But I have to admit the thing that got me the most was actually the emotions of others that I didn't know what my dad was feeling, but I didn't see the signs, you know, although we, you know, live together, we've worked together, we were together all the time, we had conversations about everything and yet I still missed what he was feeling.

I still missed what he was going through. So I actually wanna take this moment to ask you what are you doing right now? And really how are you doing? And are we aware of those around us in our world in our workplace? Are we really aware of how others are really feeling and what they're going through? Especially through these hard times, you know, separated remote, do we really know? Yeah, it reminds me of another story that happens in my team where uh in my, with my developers, we obviously always have, you know, pull requests to PR s and we always get some kind of review, we always review each other's cook. This is quite normal for us everyday. Business except there was this one particular day where one of my guys was asking for a review and looking for a reviewer. But he was so frustrated, I could just tell in his voice and his body language and although it was only through a computer screen, I could still tell him something different in the way he was acting. So I just decided to form, you know, into another meeting and just ask, hey, I recognize that, you know, you're asking for reviews and he goes, oh, all good. I already got somebody, don't even worry about it. I said, no, no, all good. I just have a question.

I just felt like you were mentioning this and you're frustrated, but it seems like maybe there's another layer of your frustration. Could that be? And you kind of, you know, thought about it and you said, yeah, maybe so we went through a series of questions, you know, personal competence, going self-awareness, asking questions about himself. And then we got to the point where he said, you know, actually, you're right. I wasn't just frustrated about the abuse. I was actually frustrated about how it made me feel. It made me feel humiliated to have to keep asking for this stuff. It made me feel less than my colleagues because I needed to chase them and say, look, my time is also important and he hated the way that made him feel. Now, just imagine if we never got to that route. Just imagine yourself, if you had to do something that you makes you feel humiliated all the time, day in day, out, week after week, month, after month, you would probably leave or you would try to do something else. And, and so getting to the root of these problems is also a huge thing here in the technical field. So sometimes we neglect the emotions and we say, I don't know that doesn't belong here. We, we don't talk about that stuff.

But again, imagine if I never got to the root of that problem and how much that would create in our atmosphere of negativity that would get in the way of trusting colleagues that would get in the way of projects, it could escalate so easily if we didn't ask that question. But again, in the technical field, why this doesn't come up is because typically when we recognize someone with high IQ, we assume the stereotype that they're probably low EQ and that's just it or maybe it's their personality where we just say no, no, no, they're not the type to have emotional intelligence.

It's just their personality, they just keep to themselves and they, you know, or maybe a little bit socially awkward. Um But the thing is, it's not the case, the IQ and personality, these are things that the neurologists call crystallized. So these are things that are fixed.

So if you're typically introverted as a kid, you're probably gonna grow up introverted. However, with EQ, this is what neurologists call um plastic or it has plasticity, meaning it can grow. So my question from earlier, we have different levels of understanding. But the great thing is we can grow on our emotional intelligence or just like the candidates before who had blindness, they were able to still feel because their brain made alternative routes in order for them to feel and how we can cultivate eq in our, in our um world in our daily life is through creating the eeq culture.

So culture is a set of values that we agree upon. A group of people are agreeing upon. And when we value emotional intelligence, here are some things that you're gonna get, you're gonna get empathetic leadership. So I'll give you two examples of two different leaders. You can either have one leader who basically um lashes out at you because they don't have the self-awareness. They don't treat you like a human being because they think of you as a number and they give you work and they just want you to get the job done or the leader that says, look, I see you, I value you. I know that you have personal life outside this job. They also have the self-awareness that even when they're frustrated about a project not going through, they're not just lashing out because they have a self awareness. They have a self management of their own emotions I'm pretty sure I know which one you would choose because I would choose the same one, the empathetic leader. Um And leadership is a whole another keynote. I think that they influence um you know, the culture, they're the ones cultivating it. They're setting the example of what it can look like, sound like and feel like. And uh hey, people don't care how much, you know, until they know how much you care.

So, empathetic leadership is definitely gonna lead the way in creating this EQ culture, which is gonna lead to a positive work environment. If you have colleagues that are empathetic and understanding, of course, you're gonna have great relationships with them because it's a place where you feel like you belong. It's a place that you feel like you're accepted, which goes into increased performance and productivity when you have great relationships and then you've got people who are self-aware, they're gonna know about their own boundaries. They're gonna set healthy boundaries for themselves.

I'm gonna get into some numbers about this in just a second and this last one year is priceless. See, we're not just offering our tech, um our tech employees, just coffee and snacks and all these really great gadgets. We're offering something that is priceless because we're emotional beings.

We don't just leave our emotions at the door. When we get into the office, we bring it with us, it affects everything. And if you're giving them a way to be able to understand themselves and understand the people around them. This is something that's priceless. And here are some of the numbers that I wanted to talk about when it comes to job performance. So, Travis Bradbury, um, an author of Emotional and did a study in University of California where they wanted to see how many supervisors and CEO S required, eq what percent of their job required. EQ where they accumulated about 60% of their job, which is people management. You know, they, like I said, self awareness, they're understanding what they're able to do themselves. And then they measured top performers. They said, OK, how many top performers are also high in EQ? And they cut up to 90% of their people who are top performers were also high in the queue. And they also measured the low performers and they said, OK, how many low performers also were high in EQ? And it was a little over 25%. But what's the point of the slide is to say that, look, if you want to climb this ladder, even in the technical field, you're gonna need high emotional intelligence because it's people management, you're getting more responsibilities where there's more interaction and the more responsibilities you have.

Look, your emotions are gonna flow into everything. It's gonna go into how you deal with stress, it's gonna deal with. Uh it's gonna go into how you speak to people, how empathetic you are how aware you are of those around you and of yourself. And as we are talking about you at this moment, it starts with you and these are practical ways that you can increase your own eq So my journey, I started also off with reflection. You know, when my father laughed, I had to reflect on how does this make me feel and what definition can I give that feeling? And it was my own personal definition and I encourage you to do the same. You don't have to do this alone. I I did this with also loved ones. I got in there into the emotions and that was kind of a mystery box. I, I got the questions I needed to be asked. And this is also helpful to have a therapist as well to be able to reflect some of those things and then also getting practical. So I don't know about you. But for me, feelings was something that I just felt like. Oh, it's just too, yeah, too. I just understand it. So practicality helped me because I understood emotions as information. So I thought practical by when I say test myself or test yourself.

I mean, there's all kinds of resources where you can uh you know, understand your personality, you can take an emotional intelligence test as well. Or there's other resources like I mentioned earlier, emotion and emotional intelligence by Travis Bradbury or Daniel Goldman, right?

Resources to understand there's all kinds of videos online or even the five day EQ challenge where you can say look Monday, I want to do something reflection. I wanna be really conscious of what I'm gonna do. Uh Tuesday could be, I wanna be really conscious of those around me and really ask the question, you know how they're doing, get into their world. And speaking of other people, communication is a great way to learn about emotional intelligence because although you can read everything about a bunch of people and how it works and personalities just asking somebody like, hey, you know, how are you feeling and what, why, you know, what do you think um causes them?

And what do you think? Why do you think that that is um it's a great way to be able to understand yourself and others and on another level, how it works in a company, what we've been able to do at EPA O specifically in my team is first of all, this whole emotional intelligence and emotions only really starts with trust.

So personal safety, uh courage to ask some important questions and honest feedback. What that basically looks like is me and you sitting in a cafe, no distractions around knowing that whatever you say or whatever I say, we're gonna be safe, we are accepted. We can be real. We can be honest, I can ask important questions, you know, like how are we really doing what's really going on? And we can have a dialogue. And then there's also practical tools where we did something with um G trends finder. We gave this test to each of our team members and we also gave them an individual coaching of the results. So G trends finders is basically a way for you to figure out what are your strengths, what are you good at? Why are you wired, the way you're wired? It's a self awareness, personal competence. And we gave the coaching to help them understand those results. And then we also did it team coaching. So each of the team were able to vocalize, hey, this is my strength. This is how I learn. These are my needs and this also increased our social competence. So this was another practical tool. It is also 16 personalities. There's a lot of tools that I didn't list on here, but there's so much resources online and then lots of examples and opportunities.

So remember the empathetic leader that I said earlier, they're gonna be the ones setting, the examples um and opportunities would look like in our one on ones through coaching, learning paths or relationship building activities. Again, going to people, real life, people and being able to understand, hey, this is how a relationship works. This is how communication is, this is how it feels to belong, this is how it feels to be accepted. So today we went through quite a lot of topics we went through. What is emotional intelligence and that's basically handling your own emotions and the emotions of others. We talked about how in the tech field, we sometimes have a stereotype of their high IIQ meaning a low EQ and they can't grow. But that's totally a lie that you definitely can grow in your emotional intelligence. We talked about um how in an EQ culture affect your whole workplace and the benefits of having empathetic leadership improved um performance, uh positive work environment and offering something that is priceless. We even got practical and gave some examples for you to reflect, to do practical tools or to communicate with others.

And then we also talked on a company level, what a company can do to offer an EQ culture and increase the emotional intelligence in the room and to wrap up, I, I'd like to also finish with the fact that but if you start this journey or already have started, I understand that it's not easy.

It wasn't easy for me either to go through what I went through with all the emotions that I had travel and understand myself. It was hard, but it was so worth it. Seven years later, I was able to reconnect with my dad and I was able to be empathetic towards him and understand him. But that wasn't easy. Like I said, it takes time to be patient and it takes time to work, but it's so worth it. So I'd like to end with this quote. It's very important to understand that emotional intelligence is not the opposite of intelligence. It's not the triumph, the part overhead. It is the unique intersection of both Doctor David Russo. So thank you very much for joining my session.

I will be at the Edao booth. You can find us in the exploit area. I'm open for question and answer as well there or just dialogue. I also have a fireside chat on June 10th at 150. We'll be talking about how I got into leadership as a tech leader. Um We'll talk about, you know, how to lead teams, even if you're not the expert. And lastly, I'd love to connect with you. My linkedin is uh put here below. So feel free to shoot me a message. I'd love to get connected again. Enjoy the rest of this conference. It's gonna be amazing and thank you very much, appreciate you.