Without question the last 2-3 years have lit a fire under businesses, brands, governments and individuals with regard to how to think of and interact with diversity. In fact, the acronym of the early 2020s has to be D-E-I … Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity.
While that refers to far more than just race, a good portion of the conversation around DEI circles around people of color. In the influence marketing space, that conversation has driven progress around the pay gap from white to black or brown creators, representation in influence marketing campaigns and sensitivities for businesses and brands to ensure they are not just checking a box, but changing behaviors.
Without question, the conversations have led to progress. And that’s a very good thing. As an aside, if you don’t think progress in this category of our world is a good thing, I’d rather you didn’t listen to this podcast.
Still, there’s much more progress to be made. I’ve made it a point to come back to the topic of diversity, equity and inclusivity, the conversations around race and how we can collaborate and cooperate more than not. Why? Because these conversations are what will continue to move us forward as an industry, a community and a species.
Monique Russell happened upon me recently. She’s a dynamic speaker, trainer and communications guru who hosts a podcast of her own that focuses on diversity and inclusion and understanding black cultures. Her perspective is that it is incumbent upon us all – regardless of color or race – to do our own diversity, equity and inclusivity work to build unity.
The show is called Bridge 2 U. It is now a member of the Marketing Podcast Network and a sister show to Winfluence in that regard.
As such, I asked my new podcast partner of sorts to join us on the show. Today we’re going to talk to Monique Russell about communications, including the practice of influence marketing and marketing overall, through the lens of diversity.
And you know me … I’m just dumb enough to ask the hard questions in hopes we land at an answer that bridges those gaps.
This episode of Winfluence is presented by CIPIO.ai, the community commerce marketing platform. Download its free eBook The Marketer’s Guide to Community Commerce Marketing today and learn how to turn your customers, fans and followers into top-performing influencers to grow your brand. The guide is a blueprint to identifying the influential voices in your own brand community, engaging them to advocate on your behalf, and managing an end-to-end strategy to do so. Download the guide for free here, or just click on the banner below.
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Monique Russell Transcript
Monique Russell FINAL VIDEO
[00:00:00] Jason: Hello again, friends. Thanks for tuning in to Winfluence the Influence Marketing Podcast. Without question, the last two or three years have lit a fire under businesses, brands, governments, and individuals with regard to how to think of and interact with diversity.
In fact, the acronym of the early 2020s has to be DEI, diversity, equity, and Inclusivity. While that refers to far more than just race, a good portion of the conversation around DEI circles around people of color. In the influence marketing space, that conversation has driven progress around the pay gap from white to black or brown creators.
Representation in influence marketing campaigns and sensitivities for businesses and brands to ensure they’re not just checking a box but changing behaviors. Without question, the conversations have led to progress, and that’s a very good thing. As an aside, if you don’t think progress in this category or our world is a good thing, frankly, I’d rather you didn’t listen to this podcast.
Still, there’s much more progress to be made. I’ve made it a point to come back to the topic of diversity, equity, and inclusivity, the conversations around race and how we can collaborate and cooperate more than not. Why? Because these conversations are what will continue to move us forward as an industry, as a community, and frankly as a species.
Monique Russell happened upon me recently. She’s a dynamic speaker, trainer, and communications guru who hosts a podcast of her own that focuses on diversity and inclusion and understanding black cultures. Her perspective is that it’s incumbent upon us all, regardless of color or race, to do our own diversity, equity, and inclusivity work to build unity.
The show is called Bridge to You. It is now a member of the marketing podcast network and a sister show to Winfluence in that regard. As such, I asked my new podcast partner of sorts to join us on the show. Today we’re gonna talk to Monique Russell about communications, including the practice of influence marketing and marketing overall through the lens of diversity.
And you know me, I’m just dumb enough to ask the hard questions in hopes we land at an answer that bridges those gaps. Monique Russell is coming up on the show.
This episode of Winfluence is presented by cipo.ai, where you can create a consistent flow of authentic user-generated content to fuel paid, earned, shared, and owned campaigns that set your content marketing on fire.
One of the main methods of doing that is by shifting your influencer marketing focus to a community Influence marketing one. That’s where you discover the influential voices in your own community of customers, fans, and followers, and partner with them to create authentic content that recommends your brand.
We’ve published a brand new e-book called The Marketers Guide to Community Influence Marketing. It’s a step-by-step manual that shows you how to do it. The result is a more cost efficient way to engage creators and drive word of mouth marketing while capturing better performing content for your paid and owned social media efforts.
You can download that free guide by visiting getcipio.ai/guide. For those of you watching on the stream, I’ll throw up a handy QR code you can scan to get there here for a couple of seconds. And folks, this isn’t just a two to three page quick guide. This is a fairly hefty ebook written by yours truly detailing how you can leverage community influence marketing to drive growth in your brand.
Getcipio.ai/guide, download the free ebook and start engaging your community today. We’re looking at communications with a lens for diversity. Monique Russell of Bridge to You is next on Winfluence. Monique, it’s such a delight to have you on the show. I’ve been binging your podcast a bit over the last few weeks, of course, as you’ve joined the marketing podcast network. I just love what you’re doing there.
[00:04:26] Jason: Before we dig into that topic, which I think will lead to the majority of our conversation today, let’s start at the beginning. I think you’ve spent much of your career as a trainer, educator, coach, I believe. Take us through the journey a little. How did you get to where you are professionally?
[00:04:42] Monique: I think it started when I was eight years old when I had my first speaking engagement in the beautiful islands of The Bahamas where I grew up. And I had a hundred people, it was in church as you can imagine, and I was a little bit nervous but I was excited to be there. So that began my journey of communications, speaking, training, being in front of people.
And then I went off to school. I left the beautiful islands of The Bahamas, went to Minnesota, and it was extremely cold as you can imagine. It’s a big jump. But what it did is it threw me firsthand into navigating Minnesotan culture and having people to navigate my culture in terms of not even knowing where the Bahamas was. So I studied journalism, I studied marketing, I studied public relations and advertising. So three degrees by the time I finished one undergrad, two grads in marketing, communications, advertising and journalism.
And so from there I got right into the corporate workspace because I wanted to get into a job for my field, but it was too much. I applied and I didn’t get into, I think I might have applied to over a hundred jobs. I think I got two responses and those were pitiful. And by then I already had a kid and I needed to get to work and I started working supporting executives with their administrations, with their communications, with their team engagement.
And over the journey where I am right now It’s running running my own global company, doing trainings, teachings, all in the science of communication. Between all of that stuff, I taught at the university for seven years. I became a subject matter expert in the communications space. I did a lot of volunteering, a lot of different training, and I learned what I loved and what I didn’t like about having a communications freelance business.
[00:06:52] Jason: That’s pretty interesting. I’ve done quite a bit of speaking myself over the years, but I’ve shied away from the corporate workshop’s, angle of things though. I’ve done a few, you have to really have to enjoy being on for longer periods of time and like a one hour keynote, don’t you?
[00:07:10] Monique: Well, I think it’s all about integration. So anybody who’s doing any type of training or work, I think of it like a doctor. A doctor, they are preparing for the time when they’re in the theater or they are on, their rounds. And so there’s a certain amount of preparation that goes into this is my shift, this is how long I need to be active. I take breaks in the back when I don’t have my patience.
So in the same way for trainers, it’s a lot of energy, but you prepare for it, you build up for it just like Navy Seals, just like the military. And yes you should enjoy what you do. Now, I will say I have moved away from that long eight hour traditional day of training. I don’t do it. I don’t recommend it. People’s attention spans just go out of the window and so do yours. As a trainer, there’s only so much you could cram into somebody’s head, really.
So my thing is, best practice two to four hours. That’s your max. Get it when you can get it, and then just keep it moving.
[00:08:15] Jason: So obviously, you’re training and communications are big words and, big spheres. So give us a sense of what you do through clear communications. Tell us what you do for whom, what types of companies, et cetera?
[00:08:28] Monique: Okay, so right now I am really excited about my global management consulting clients because they have advisors and principles and people who are just working on so many different types of projects. So for me, it’s very exciting because I get to help them think through how to come more prepared for their clients because their client customer is changing.
And So how to be more prepared, how to have different questions to engage them, how to be better at listening and executive presence. And so that’s one of, one segment that I really enjoy. Other segments are also the tech companies who are very innovative and they’re already world class like Amazon and Google, and then they just really want to help their employees get better at what they do.
Some companies I work with, they’re simply looking for ways to keep their employees engaged because engagement right now is really low for a lot of companies and people are looking for fulfillment, especially top talent and what I’ve moved away from in the past when I first started working in this space, I was really like, I’m here to save everybody.
And I was like, you know what? If you having trouble in your team, if you have conflict, if you have all of this stuff, let’s get you communicating better. Jason, we ain’t singing that song today, okay. It’s about if you have someone who is engaged, they’re already engaged, but they might need a different way to increase their engagement, they may need to be supported.
A lot of times as leaders, we tend not to pay attention to those who are engaged because let’s face it they’re doing the work, they’re getting the job done. But right now, 30% of people are leaving their organizations to find better work and for entrepreneurship, quite frankly. So how do we make it a win?
How do we make, the organization win? How do we help the top talent to stay engaged and fulfilled? And how do we help the customers so that this whole business ecosystem continues to thrive?
[00:10:34] Jason: Well, I know there’s far more out there in need than, take you up on it. So it’s a fertile market, so keep up the good work there for sure.
[00:10:42] Jason: Okay, now I want to turn, now to your your podcast ‘Bridge To U’ is not about life coaching or team facilitation, I think it serves a greater purpose. Tell us how the show started and what your mission and goal for it?
[00:10:56] Monique: So many people had told me, I’m gonna say PC, pre Covid, cause we talking pre covid and post Covid. So before Covid, people would always say, you should start a podcast. And, Jason, I don’t do things just because people say I should do it.
And so for the longest time I dismissed it, but I would have these conversations. So I told you I’m from The bahamas. I grew up in The Bahamas. My mom’s from there, my dad’s from Nigeria, my husband’s from Togo, I live here in the US and I love to travel. So Multicultural intercultural communication is my life. It’s my 24/7 life, my real life. In addition to me being able to put into practice what I’ve learned and help other people to get better at communicating.
So here’s the thing. In the black cultures, there’s been this misunderstanding different cultures from Africa, from the us, from the Caribbean and there’s always been this inferiority, superiority complex, us versus them, the same things you would see in a lot of different tribal conflicts or ethnic conflicts.
And so I would have conversations with people, many behind the scenes talking about some of these things, and also talking about ways that we have transformed our views of each other, me include it. When I grew up in The Bahamas, we have to think about culture and how culture is transported through media.
We’re watching movies, we’re watching videos. We’re seeing different news clips that are transported from the US from Africa. And so what we see and learn of a different country is just what we have consumed, but it’s actually not the real thing. So like when I went off to Minnesota, people would ask me, do you guys live in trees?
And I’m like, yeah, we live in trees, you know, but they don’t know because they hadn’t been, they hadn’t been exposed. And it’s so funny because I just got back from Kenya a few days ago in East africa and one of my business colleagues, we were just talking about, preparing for a retreat and how many people that are coming from the Netherlands who come to the retreat.
You have to go through this long list of questions on what to expect because. They don’t really know that Africa is not jungle and poverty everywhere and skyscrapers. So some of the questions that have been asked are just because of ignorance. It’s not because anyone’s bad, it’s just because you don’t know, you’re not informed.
So my mission with this show was to have conversations with individuals who went through that process of having a biased mindset towards a particular sector, a group of people, and how they work through changing their mindset so that they are experiencing an awakened way of living as black people.
And I wanted to highlight those stories and also couple it with their businesses of entrepreneurship and to show how through that process, how that actually helps to accelerate your mission, your purpose, and your business in the world.
So lot of the guests that I’ve had the privilege of interviewing several people. Wode Maya is one that I will always come to the top because he’s a Ghanaian YouTuber, over a million subscribers now, and he has impacted the world tremendously with his new narrative storytelling of multiple countries in Africa. But before he got to that point, when he lived in China, he had experiences where he didn’t even wanna identify with being an African, that’s who he was.
But he didn’t wanna identify and he had some encounters and experiences where he learned in the language that African meant dirty, it meant dark, it had these sinister contexts and that propelled him to want to change the narrative. His personal experience propelled him to discover more. And through his discovery, he went now created this YouTube channel, which now has over a million subscribers and impacting so many different people. So that’s pretty much the way the show got started.
[00:15:31] Jason: That’s fantastic, I hope he gets a billion subscribers. That’s amazing. good work there for sure and congratulations to you for being able to talk to him. I’ve, listened to one of your latest episodes, Dr. Lorenzo Hughes. I got a ton out of that conversation. He talked about how to create inclusive work cultures, that’s really just valuable stuff.
[00:15:54] Jason: Okay. Rolling through that theme, that topic a little bit, I wanna look at diversity, equity, inclusivity and talk about those topics both through the lens of communications. Now, I know you don’t necessarily claim to be an expert on those topics, but I want to mine your opinions and learnings from the conversations you’ve had. But let’s take a quick break before we dig in. We’re talking to Monique Russell from the ‘Bridge to U’ Podcast in Clear Communications. We’ll dig into DEI and communications next. Don’t go away.
[00:16:25] Jason: Welcome back to Winfluence. Chatting today with Monique Russell from Clear Communication solutions and the ‘Bridge To U’ podcast. Monique your show focuses on diversity, inclusion, and understanding for black cultures. I’m gonna ask the dumb white guy question on behalf of those out there who don’t fully understand, at least I have an inkling of the answer but when you say your show is about creating unity among black cultures, there is a division that exists within black cultures, that I don’t think many non-black individuals are even aware of. Tell us about those and how they perhaps create friction in the black communities push toward equity, inclusion and diversity?
[00:17:14] Monique: Sure. So I would say, let me just give for an example where I grew up in the Bahamas. And I will even just give my own personal story. So I met my dad when I was eight years old. My biological father, who’s from Nigeria. No one told me that I should have a negative perception of him being from Nigeria. But at that age, I remember meeting him for the first time and I was waiting for him to come sit in by the window. And when I saw him and he was pulling up and he was wearing an african print shirt, and I was like, no! In my mind, I don’t want him to be my dad.
That’s not my dad and where did I that from? I got it from somewhere. And so many times in the Caribbean we’re not really connected to African culture because we’ve been consuming content that portrayed Africa as some poverty stricken, children with the flies on the face type setup. And so it creates this sort of, inferiority, superiority complex.
On the flip side in some African cultures, when you think of the conversations that are had for people who are African American. There’s this misunderstanding in terms of, what are they complaining about? Why can’t they just take opportunities that they have in the land of the free and the home of the brave? And so you’ll see a lot of immigrant people come into the US and accelerate but they are not aware of the struggle of the African American person.
And so because there is this misunderstanding, vice versa, you might see African american people who are viewing, there’s a guy on my podcast, Kelly Blackman, and he talked about, he grew up in chicago and he talked about how an insult was calling somebody an African booty scratcher, okay? And so when you think about what has been viewed or portrayed all from a lack of understanding and lack of awareness really, we now have this opportunity to create new media, new storytelling and create more information on how to facilitate connection.
So if I am looking at someone as superior or inferior. If I’m looking at them as different, or I’m looking at them as, ungrateful, lazy, then that creates a disconnect. It creates a disconnect that is unnecessary and it stifles progress. So on the outside looking in, you said you’re asking the white guy questions. So a lot of times you’ll find that a lot of white people they don’t know. They don’t know and they may lump everybody who looks black in the same category.
So there is code switching and there’s code switching, and even within the black community. So someone who is maybe from another culture might have an encounter with someone who’s a white person and they wanna make sure that they know, they’re not African American, I’m from somewhere else, because there’s also a negative perception from some white people towards African Americans.
But if they know that, okay and I’ve actually heard it said to me like you’re a different type of black person, okay, whatever. So let’s just face it. It’s the real reel and it’s no shade over here, but just understanding that this is the reality and how do we now create awareness amongst each other to prevent this type division. So yeah.
[00:20:58] Jason: So it makes sense. It, well, it makes sense then. That the listeners of your show, I think the intended audience for your show is primarily people who are of color. And so that further begs the question for me because I’m getting a lot out of the show, frankly.
But I want to know from you how can folks like me, so I am someone who considers myself I guess an ally and a friend, but I recognize I have a lot to learn. I know systemic racism has conditioned all of us to behave and think as a matter of habit in ways that can be hurtful to one another, even though we don’t intend that to be.
[00:21:33] Jason: How can someone like me find a place in that audience and maybe how can we, the collective of folks like me contribute there?
[00:21:43] Monique: Absolutely just like what you’re doing, having conversations like this, consuming the content. I liken it to an example of, your daughter, if a
daughter, a niece or someone who is a female, you don’t have any specific experience with her menstrual cycle, you have no idea. But if you learn about mood swings, if you learn about, pain, if you learn about, different things to make it better for your daughter or your wife, you’re now more informed and you can be more supportive and more connected because, you have inside information.
So in the same way I say for people who are allies and who are supportive, definitely consuming the content and having conversations and not being afraid, being curious and being courageous to say, okay, I listened to this podcast and I heard this, what’s up with that? Start to have the conversation and be open to say, I know I’m gonna make a bunch of mistakes.
Everybody’s gonna make a mistakes, that’s the starting point. The starting point is we gonna make mistakes about each other because we have our own lens perspective of how we’ve been raised, how we’ve been exposed, and we don’t know everything.
So for anybody, yes, the show has been niche towards black people, but it’s definitely for everybody to learn more, to be aware and to be able to have more productive conversations. So if you’re in a work environment and you see, there’s some black on black racism going on, then you could say, hey, what’s up with that? You can call it out just like Dr. Lorenzo said in his episode, if you’re noticing or observing, call it out.
[00:23:38] Jason: For sure. Well, and for the listeners out there and the viewers, I’ve asked that question as someone who actively listens and learns. I know that the show isn’t necessarily intended for me, but I take a lot from just hearing the ideas being shared and it makes me feel more informed. So there’s great value there for perhaps a broader audience than the show is typically intended for. And that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have you here.
So I’m gonna tell everybody out there listening or watching, go subscribe to ‘Bridge To U’. You can find it wherever you get your podcast. It’s on the Marketing Podcast Network also at marketingpodcasts.net. You can also go to moniquerussell.com. Bridge To U. It’s the number two in the letter U Bridge to you. So search for that wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe as well. And we’ll have links obviously in the show notes too.
All right. Let me move on to the more broad topic of communications. You teach it, I’ve taught little portions of it here and there, lots of people do.
[00:24:34] Jason: What do you think the difference is in teaching communications? and teaching communications with the lens of diversity and inclusivity in mind. What are the differences there?
[00:24:48] Monique: There is no difference at the core of communication is listening. At the core of diversity and equity is listening, the skills are the same. So listening, having courage, getting your message clear, taking time to get your message clear. Being able to have a flexible
mindset, so exposing yourself to new perspectives, just like what you’re doing, in consuming different content, becoming a tourist in your own hometown. Sometimes people haven’t experienced their own hometown or their home countries as a tourist, and so they feel like, oh, there’s nothing of value here, but that’s another way to expand your perspective. I think the core skills are the same. It’s just how you present that information, that influences the diversity lens, the diversity perspective.
The examples that you use, how they’re relevant to your audience, and then what type of activities or exercises that you create in order to get the audience to see what you’re trying to teach. So I really don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference. You know, I know diversity, equity and inclusion it’s a big rave. I know I told you when you said, let’s talk about it, I’m like, I’m not a DEI person. I don’t wanna be branded as a DEI person because even that comes with negativity, people tend to shut down very quickly when I say, diversity, equity and inclusion versus talking about communication.
So it’s all about the audience. And then there’s been so much lip service in the category of diversity, equity, inclusion, that it’s like, yeah, you don’t really want to align or brand yourself that way. I give kudos to everybody that’s out there doing that work, cause it’s not easy. But for me, my focus really is those underlying skills. And we get to diversity, equity, and inclusion through the core of communication.
[00:26:51] Jason: Well, with that in mind, I’d love to ask this question too.
[00:26:55] Jason: Where do you think we’ve made progress? Maybe through and post, Black Lives Matter, though I hesitate to say we’re in a post BLM world. It’s still relevant and important to think that but what headway have you seen in communications and marketing and society that we can maybe celebrate and use as inspiration to keep going?
[00:27:15] Monique: Well, the fact that we’re having conversations, I think a lot of conversations have been hidden, right? this is huge. This is huge. 20, 30 years ago people weren’t talking about these topics or they were not as, didn’t have a space on the global stage or the world stage or the national stage. So from that communication standpoint, I think we are moving in the right direction.
From a marketing standpoint, people are now being more aware that inclusivity and diversity is necessary in marketing because our world is changing. I think the data was what in 2025? One in five will be multicultural. We have many different backgrounds and so even if you don’t have multiculturalism in your personal family, you might know
someone who does, or maybe your kid got married to someone who does or maybe your client is someone who does, because our borders have been opened to do so much work virtually that we’re not just limited and now here comes with open borders, the challenges of intercultural communication and how do we connect with our customers in a way that we don’t offend, that we don’t like lose money.
So marketing for sure, I think definitely has made progress in terms of being more, more inclusive for providing, information imagery context that actually represent the audience. And also I would say companies in the past, I’ve seen a few companies who, they would do whatever they want make some gaffs
in marketing and it’ll just be like, just another regular day.
Now we’re seeing people really experiencing bottom line impact, where folks are pulling their dollars away, artists, celebrities, sometimes I think it can be overboard. But we are seeing that there’s immediate impact in marketing and in visual representation in that area.
[00:29:25] Jason: Well, thank you for entertaining my questions here. I think some people feel uncomfortable asking frank questions from, and I’ll say it very plainly a white man to a black woman. But I think it’s important to ask these questions if for no other reason than to show people you can. And it doesn’t have to be confrontational, it doesn’t have to be uncomfortable. So I appreciate you being here and entertaining these queries.
I feel like as you’ve echoed in our conversation today, I feel like it’s important for us to just have the conversations, ask the questions, get the topic out there in a way that people can absorb and understand, because I’ve always felt like, institutional racism is something that most people, especially white people, don’t think exists or can’t get their head wrapped around what it is and how it manifests itself. And they won’t until they voluntarily become part of the and voluntarily become part of understanding it. And so I’ve just made it a point to bring it up from time to time, and I appreciate you entertaining the conversation .That brings me to…
[00:30:28] Monique: I appreciate you too.
[00:30:30] Jason: Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
That brings me to another topic I know you’re quite the expert on being able to have this conversation with big, stupid uncle Jason takes a lot of emotional intelligence, which you have in abundance. I know you speak about that and coach folks around it.
[00:30:45] Jason: For those who don’t know, tell us a little bit more about what emotional intelligence is. And how it comes to life in people so that we can all recognize it, aspire to have more of it, because I think we all need more emotional intelligence in our lives?
[00:30:59] Monique: Okay. So my view is everybody has emotional intelligence and we have varying levels of emotional intelligence. It is so broad but I’ll use, Travis Bradbury’s definition in that fact that there are four quadrants of self-awareness, self-management, relationship management, and social skills. Let’s use that as the backdrop.
In my professional opinion, I believe that these categories just encompass a whole mix of psychology. They are a myth of sociology and a mix of public speaking to be honest with you. Self-awareness is really being able to understand yourself, have an idea of why you do what you do, and I’m talking about from understanding your chronotype, your sleep type, are you a morning person? Are you an evening person? Like your peak energies? Seriously, really getting to the granular of who you are, how you make decisions, how your family tree has influenced the things that you do, your career aspirations.
There’s a lot of self-awareness pieces in that segment. And then the self-management is really about regulating your emotions. Self-management, meaning in terms of, do you even know your style of conflict? What do you normally do when you are responding to conflict. Like do you avoid, do you compromise? Do you collaborate? Do you withdraw? These are things that will help you when you are working with people or when you’re within your family, or if you are having extreme emotions.
Some of us, let’s just say, for argument’s sake, everyone has this meter of emotional capacity. Some might start, let’s say it’s zero to 10, and some might have a level five and some might be at a level eight and based on their past and influences.
And let’s say you are constantly at a level eight, I’ll put it to me. Let’s say I’m constantly at a level eight and you’re constantly at a level five. Something happens, ticks you off. Because I’m at a level eight, my response just naturally is a super huge response where you’re looking and you’re like, it’s not that serious girl. What are you doing? But that just helps me to understand how I respond, what my emotional capacity is, how to connect with others. And then your relationship management skills is really getting along with others.
How can you observe the behavior? It’s observing body language more than 80% of our communication is non-verbal. And so I always tell people, you wanna learn how to read body language. Go to the busiest airport, sit down and have some coffee, okay, and just watch. Just actually, that’s what I have done with some of my clients. We go to different places, we observe, we assess, we make assumptions, we sometimes validate those assumptions of how behaviors exhibited, connect to communication. So being able to read the room, I think that’s what a lot of people like to say.
Read the room and assess if my customers in a bad mood today, am I gonna go forward with that presentation where I need him to say yes, probably not. So just relationship management. And then the last is the social skills. And that means that you are being able to connect with others, you’re being able to present. That’s the public speaking portion that I say is mashed up on into it, so you’re being able to have clear messages. I don’t care how self aware you are, if you can’t get your message clear and people don’t understand what you’re trying to say, good luck and nobody’s gonna want you to be on their team.
They’re gonna have a difficult time even just having basic conversations with you. So the emotional intelligence I know people wanna hear it in one, two sentence sound bite, but it’s really very complex set of skills, that we are developing constantly and everybody has them, we just have different levels.
[00:35:13] Jason: I think the way that I’ve tried to explain it to my kids when I talk to them about emotional intelligence, it’s just having the ability to as, and you said all of these things in which your answer was having the ability to understand yourself. In your emotions plus the emotions of the people that you’re communicating with and being able to navigate that so that you can still have successful communictions.
That’s not easy to understand. It’s not easy to do. It takes a lot of experience and maturity. I’m still, if I get, like this morning actually recording this podcast today is helping me with a conflict because I got an email this morning from someone that was a little confrontational and I’m like, I don’t have time to respond to this right now because I have to talk to Monique, so I’m gonna respond to that later.
But now having this conversation, it’s like, okay, I’ve had some time to calm down, consider their perspective. So my response will be very different than it normally would be, which is me firing off a Yosemite Sam, kind of response, which is not healthy for anybody. So that’s another way to think about it.
[00:36:19] Monique: I got one of them emails too. Don’t worry.
[00:36:22] Jason: Well, Monique, I could not have asked for a better conversation today. Thank you so much for your wisdom and guidance here. It’s an honor to have you on the show. I’m super excited for our community of listeners to know better and know you better and know who you are now. So thank you for spending some time with me. Where can people find you, the company, the podcast and such on the interwebs?
[00:36:45] Monique: Yes, you can find me at clearcommunicationssolutions.com, moniquerussell.com. LinkedIn where I hang out a couple of times a week. You can find ‘Bridge To U’ on the Marketing Podcast
[00:36:58] Jason: That’s right. Marketingpodcasts.net for that. Of course, we’ll make sure all those links are in the show notes. Monique Russell, thank you so much again for your time today.
[00:37:07] Monique: Thank you to jason.
[00:37:09] Jason: I sure hope you got as much out of that as I did. We will continue to have conversations like this one here on Winfluence because I just think it’s important for us to do so. It may not seem like there’s a direct connection to influence Marketing, but having a more informed opinion and experience with people of other cultures and backgrounds makes those of you on the brand and agency side better at what you do.
It makes you creators out there more open and collaborative. It’s just a win-win all around. So I hope you take as much away from these chats as I do. I just feel it’s important for us to pay attention to it. Again, we’ll make sure Monique’s links are in the show notes.
Just go to Jasonfalls.co/moniquerussell to get to that page on the website and be sure to connect with her and listen to Bridge to You wherever you get your podcasts. Speaking of podcasts, if you enjoy Winfluence, do help us grow and tell someone about the show. You probably know someone who might wanna know more about Influence Marketing.
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Winfluence is a production of Falls and Partners and presented by cipio.ai. The technical production is by MPN Studios. Winfluence Airs along MPN, the Marketing Podcast Network. Thanks for listening, folks. Let’s talk again soon on Winfluence.