In busi­ness envi­ron­ments where col­lab­o­ra­tion, empa­thy, and effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion are traits that often dis­tin­guish future lead­ers, devel­op­ing one’s lead­er­ship poten­tial through the lens of emo­tion — and access­ing ​“emo­tion­al intel­li­gence” at work — has become an increas­ing­ly rel­e­vant skill.

In a recent ASUG Com­mu­ni­ty Con­ver­sa­tion, pre­sent­ed by ASUG Col­lec­tive and held vir­tu­al­ly in June, com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers explored prac­ti­cal strate­gies for devel­op­ing ​“EQ” to influ­ence lead­er­ship, team­work, and per­son­al well-being. Along­side guest speak­er Yush Sztalkop­er, strate­gic coach, con­sul­tant, and founder of Neu­roSpark, atten­dees reflect­ed on how emo­tions impact deci­sion-mak­ing, as well as lever­ag­ing their emo­tion­al aware­ness to strength­en rela­tion­ships and achieve pro­fes­sion­al success.

“What I’ve learned is that the most pow­er­ful lead­er­ship shift doesn’t come from learn­ing some­thing new,” explained Sztalkop­er. ​“It comes from chang­ing how we show up, espe­cial­ly when things are at their most challenging.” 

Sztalkop­er opened the ses­sion, titled ​“Ele­vat­ing Your EQ: Build Emo­tion­al Intel­li­gence for Per­son­al and Pro­fes­sion­al Suc­cess,” by posi­tion­ing the pow­er of Pos­i­tive Intel­li­gence® (PQ®) as an essen­tial tool for per­son­al devel­op­ment and pro­fes­sion­al lead­er­ship. The PQ frame­work was devel­oped by Shirzad Chamine, and helps indi­vid­u­als strength­en emo­tion­al intel­li­gence through dai­ly men­tal fit­ness practices.

She empha­sized that emo­tions work like ​“an intel­li­gent sys­tem” that, when under­stood, can help you iden­ti­fy two impor­tant forces in your per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al life: the ​“sabo­teurs,” or forces that keep you stuck, and the ​“sages,” or intrin­sic per­son­al tools for mov­ing past your limitations.

The Pow­er of Inner Work

If EQ is know­ing how you want to show up, PQ is the prac­tice that gets you there con­sis­tent­ly, even and espe­cial­ly under pressure.

“Just because some­one knows about emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to access that wis­dom in a stress­ful sit­u­a­tion,” Sztalkop­er explained. It’s one’s com­mit­ment to doing ​“inner work” that ulti­mate­ly gen­er­ates the lead­er­ship skills and pro­fes­sion­al con­nec­tions need­ed to authen­ti­cal­ly build emo­tion­al intelligence.

“Inner Work = Out­er Impact” is the guid­ing phi­los­o­phy and tagline of Sztalkoper’s prac­tice. It reflects her belief that mean­ing­ful lead­er­ship starts with how we lead our­selves — and that when we shift our inter­nal pat­terns, we cre­ate more inten­tion­al, sus­tain­able impact in how we lead others.

The goal of inner work is to shift neg­a­tive thought pat­terns and enter more pos­i­tive, resource­ful states of mind. In the con­ver­sa­tion, Sztalkop­er laid out the fun­da­men­tals of PQ, encour­ag­ing her audi­ence to reflect on how each one can guide indi­vid­u­als toward deep­er self-knowledge.

“While I don’t always name it explic­it­ly, my approach is ground­ed in lived expe­ri­ence —  and shaped by a brain that’s wired a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly,” shared Sztalkop­er. ​“That lens nat­u­ral­ly informs how I design and deliv­er emo­tion­al intel­li­gence work. The PQ frame­work has been a foun­da­tion­al part of my own per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al growth. It’s not just some­thing I coach —  it’s some­thing I’ve lived and prac­tice every day. It gave me the struc­ture to inter­rupt long-stand­ing men­tal habits and lead with greater clar­i­ty, inten­tion, and compassion.”

The core fun­da­men­tals of PQ® revolve around:

• Men­tal Fitness
• Sabo­teurs
• Sage
• PQ Reps (Pos­i­tive Intel­li­gence Repetitions)

The first core PQ prac­tice is to ​“catch your sabo­teurs.” Sabo­teurs can man­i­fest as voic­es in your head, Sztalkop­er explained, that reflect neg­a­tive emo­tions as you han­dle every­day chal­lenges. Demo­ti­vat­ing you and keep­ing you trapped with feel­ings of stress, anx­i­ety, self-doubt, frus­tra­tion, rest­less­ness, and unhap­pi­ness, these sabo­teurs can impact your per­for­mance, well-being, and relationships.

Meet Your Inner Saboteurs

The uni­ver­sal sabo­teur, the Judge, is a con­stant inner crit­ic that fix­ates on flaws and part­ners with oth­er sabo­teurs to fuel stress and self-doubt.

Oth­er com­mon sabo­teurs include:

1. Avoider – delays the inevitable
2. Con­troller – over­man­ages every detail out of fear some­thing will go wrong
3. Hyper-Achiev­er – over­works to feel worthy
4. Hyper-Ratio­nal – pri­or­i­tizes log­ic over empa­thy, hin­der­ing connection
5. Hyper-Vig­i­lant – lives in fear some­thing will go wrong, lead­ing to paralysis
6. Pleas­er – over­com­mits due to an inabil­i­ty to say ​“no”
7. Rest­less – con­stant­ly looks ahead, avoid­ing the present
8. Stick­ler – per­fec­tion­ism leads to stress and inefficiency
9. Vic­tim – stuck in neg­a­tiv­i­ty, focus­ing on what’s wrong

“These sabo­teurs shift and change depend­ing on the sce­nario — espe­cial­ly between work and home,” Sztalkop­er explained.

Sabo­teurs tend to be at their strongest when some­body is going through a hard time. Sztalkop­er empha­sized the impor­tance of prac­tic­ing what she called ​“Sage brain” acti­va­tion when you’re emo­tion­al­ly in a good place, so you can access that same side of your brain more eas­i­ly under stress.

The Sage pow­ers Sztalkop­er out­lined were:

• Acti­vate – Act with focus and pur­pose to turn insights into real-world impact.
• Empathize – Con­nect with your­self and oth­ers through com­pas­sion and understanding.
• Explore – Approach chal­lenges with curios­i­ty to uncov­er root caus­es and new insights.
• Inno­vate – Gen­er­ate cre­ative, mean­ing­ful solutions.
• Nav­i­gate – Make deci­sions guid­ed by your val­ues and long-term vision.

The most suc­cess­ful lead­ers can build their emo­tion­al capac­i­ty to focus on the pos­i­tive by par­tak­ing in ​“sen­so­ry prac­tices,” Sztalkop­er explained. These can be as sim­ple as notic­ing the feel­ings you have while brush­ing your teeth or ask­ing your­self what went well at work today. These micro-moments can add up, help­ing to rewire your brain.

Sim­ply notic­ing the reac­tions you have to stress­ful sit­u­a­tions, anx­i­eties over con­trol, or self-doubt can enable you to bet­ter reg­u­late them, and assess­ing what kinds of sabo­teurs align with those reac­tions can also help you to redi­rect your emo­tions to acti­vate your inner Sage in the future.

Encour­ag­ing lead­ers to prac­tice a ​“pause and shift” before react­ing, Sztalkop­er not­ed that ​“when we react fast, it’s often because our ner­vous sys­tems are in over­drive.” Tak­ing a few deep breaths before respond­ing can help calm the ner­vous sys­tem and cre­ate space to reframe a chal­lenge. Then, lead­ers can ask them­selves, ​“What would be the most Sage response in this moment?”

Sztalkop­er shared an exam­ple of a leader being placed under exec­u­tive pres­sure to nav­i­gate unclear expec­ta­tions. Respons­es from that leader could often lead them toward stress, self-doubt, and blame. Access­ing their inner Sage, that leader might take a moment, iden­ti­fy the stres­sors that they’re deal­ing with, con­sid­er how to nav­i­gate those stres­sors with inten­tion, and ulti­mate­ly lead with empa­thy — all by ask­ing, ​“What can I clar­i­fy now to pro­tect my focus and still deliv­er value?”

Sztalkop­er con­clud­ed the ses­sion with action­able tips for suc­cess: cel­e­brate even small mind­set shifts, prac­tice uncon­di­tion­al self-love, and focus on strengths. ​“This is all with­in you,” she said. ​“It’s about unlock­ing what is already there.”

To bet­ter under­stand one’s per­son­al sabo­teurs, take the assess­ment here. For lead­ers seek­ing to improve team dynam­ics, a com­pa­ra­ble team assess­ment is avail­able here. Watch the full ASUG Col­lec­tive Com­mu­ni­ty Con­ver­sa­tion here.

For more ASUG Com­mu­ni­ty Con­ver­sa­tions from ASUG Col­lec­tive, reg­is­ter to attend ​“Effec­tive Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Pub­lic Speak­ing: Influ­ence, Inspire, and Inform with Con­fi­dence” (Sept. 25; reg­is­ter here).