Once again, I am pulling from the book Leading with Emotional Intelligence by Reldan Nadler. In his book, Nadler talks about “The Perfection Loop” — the fact that success-driven people often set unrealistic goals that set them up for failure or frustration. Today, we’ll break down why people set unrealistic goals, the six stages of the Perfection Loop, some indicators that you’re in one, and how to counter it.

One of my all-time favorite leadership books – certainly the one with the most sticky tabs in it – is Reldan Nadler’s Leading with Emotional Intelligence. I’ve used this resource for other episodes of the podcast, and today I want to talk about tools for building your self-confidence — specifically, Being on Your Side rather than Being on Your Case. Or, as I like to call it, having your own back. While we’re specifically talking about your relationship with yourself in this episode, understand the consequences of that relationship to all the other relationships in your life. If you lead people, you will likely treat them as you treat yourself.

My guest today is Peter Berry, whose leadership experience is varied and fascinating; particularly interesting in light of his undergraduate degree in Fine Arts. Peter is a perfect example of how a liberal arts degree can be a great springboard for moving into leadership roles.

This week, we’re talking about how to position yourself as a star performer. According to the book The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace by Cherniss and Goleman, there are several key competencies of Star Performers. A Star Performer is defined as someone who is in the top 10% of performance. The goal is not to be a Star in every competency in each of these clusters, but to have a good balance of competencies across the four clusters.

Emotional Intelligence has been a hot topic for some time now. To my mind, this focus on emotional intelligence is recognition that it isn’t just what you can do for your employer that is valuable, but rather how you do it. How you show up for your coworkers, your boss, your direct reports, your customers, your vendors. Today we’ll talk about the competencies and how they connect to your work environment with IQ, EI, and technical expertise.