The Digital Project Manager

What NATO Taught Me About EQ in High-Stakes Transformation

• Galen Low

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Emotional intelligence has always mattered in project work—but in the age of AI, it’s becoming a differentiator. In this episode, Galen sits down with Nadja El Fertasi, founder of Thrive with EQ and former NATO leader, to unpack how EQ shows up in high-stakes digital transformation—and why it may be the most overlooked risk mitigation strategy in your toolkit.

Drawing from nearly two decades inside NATO’s cyber and digital transformation initiatives, Nadja shares how stakeholder engagement, influence, and emotional resilience directly impact everything from project delivery to cybersecurity. As AI accelerates automation and amplifies both opportunity and risk, the real question isn’t whether EQ still matters—it’s whether we’re investing in it fast enough.

Resources from this episode:

Galen Low:

Does EQ really matter anymore? And even if it does, will that continue to be the case?

Nadja El Fertasi:

When we think about the workplace, what is the biggest challenge for leadership is people to people relationship, right? That scenario now has artificial intelligence. Hey, I don't have to feel my emotional discomfort anymore because I can get AI to reply for me. So it's an opportunity, it can replace that discomfort that is needed to build relationships.

Galen Low:

Is there an element of engineering that you and your team would sort of take on as part of the stakeholder strategy?

Nadja El Fertasi:

There is influencing and then there's manipulation. Influencing is when you leave people better off. Manipulating is when you do something that's not in their best interest. Yes, we all do social engineering, but are you coming from a place that leaves people better off or worse off?

Galen Low:

I wonder if we can overlay AI now, how you are overlaying AI onto emotional intelligence and emotional intelligence training.

Nadja El Fertasi:

It'll require an ego debt.

Galen Low:

Welcome to The Digital Project Manager Podcast—the show that helps delivery leaders work smarter, deliver smoother, and lead their teams with confidence in the age of AI. I'm Galen, and every week we dive into real world strategies, emerging trends, proven frameworks and the occasional war story from the project front lines. Whether you're steering massive transformation projects, wrangling AI workflows, or just trying to keep the chaos under control, you're in the right place. Let's get into it. Alright, today we are talking about the role of EQ in digital transformation, especially when facilitating change across diverse groups of people of varying nationalities, cultures, and neuro types. We're gonna be diving into how digital transformation has been done at organizations like NATO, and we'll be also stepping through a few examples of EQ driven leadership. With me today is Nadja El Fertasi, founder of Thrive with EQ. Nadja spent 18 years at NATO facilitating high stakes digital transformation on a global scale. But she recognized that in our rush toward automation, we risk losing our most valuable asset, our human connection. Today, through her Thrive with EQ ecosystem, Nadja leads a broader mission of culture transformation. She helps leaders move from autopilot to EQ driven defense, building emotional firewalls that don't just protect against social engineering, but safeguard our humanity in the age of AI. Nadja, thanks for joining me today.

Nadja El Fertasi:

Thank you. And thank you for the amazing introduction. I was like, who is she?

Galen Low:

I mean, I, I don't need to do anything with it. Your credentials are very impressive. I'm excited to dive in. You've done nearly two decades with NATO. You've got your own business now, Thrive with EQ, focusing really on human connection, focusing on those emotional firewalls. We'll get into all of that. I've really enjoyed our chats leading up to this, and I'm pretty sure that we're gonna zig and zag throughout this conversation, but just in case, here's the roadmap that I've sketched out for us today. So to start us off, I just wanted to set the stage by getting your take on one big hairy question that my listeners want to know the answer to, and then I'd like to unpack that and talk about three things. Firstly, I wanted to talk about your involvement in digital transformation within NATO's cyber division and why EQ became a passion for you. Then I'd like to explore how leaders in tech and other sectors can benefit from EQ driven defense mechanisms and emotional firewalls. And lastly, I'd like to get your perspective on the role that AI could play in actually helping us understand and navigate our emotions better in our increasingly tech-centric future. How does that sound to you?

Nadja El Fertasi:

It sounds amazing.

Galen Low:

I know it's ambitious, but I'm like, I'm so interested in your background. I wanted to get into it. Maybe I'll just start with one big hairy question. So EQ, also known as emotional quotient or the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions has been a critical skill in human collaboration in a professional and personal context forever. But in the age of AI where humans are sometimes interfacing more with AI than they interact with humans, does EQ really matter anymore? And even if it does, will that continue to be the case?

Nadja El Fertasi:

Yes. That's a great question. And let me start by first highlighting why do we use EQ and not EI? Right? I get that question a lot because emotional intelligence, E-E-I-E-I. Sounds less succeed in eq, but emotional quotient is how you measure someone's emotional intelligence, right? It's measurable, but it's used interchangeably. So when I say eq, my company is named eq. I mean ei. When we think about the workplace, gaan, what is the biggest challenge for leadership? What has always been the biggest challenge is people to people relationship, right? When we are happy, when we feel safe, when people feel comfortable. We tend to go along and comply, but when we don't agree, when we feel discomfort, we go into our primitive mode, into our kind of survival mode and we, there's resistance to change. There is not constructive communication. There's a lot of conflict and everyone has a different style. Some people are right, un confrontational, other are avoidance. Some leaders are more engineers and technical, they don't want to deal with the people stuff. So there's a whole mix. Now, that scenario now has artificial intelligence. Hey, I don't have to feel my emotional discomfort anymore because I can get AI to apply for me, so I can get rid of it. Or I can ask AI, how do I deal with my boss in. A, B, C, or D. So it's an opportunity because it can help people pause and reflect on their interaction, or it can replace that discomfort that is needed to build relationships. So that is the thing with artificial intelligence, it can take away. Our ability to feel uncomfortable, our ability to hold space when there is conflict or when there is emotion. Our ability, for example, if you use AI to do all your conversations and all of a sudden you have to face the person face-to-face, you haven't dealt with that emotional discomfort. Now, I like to explain emotional intelligence. You gave a perfect scientific explanation for it, but I love to use this metaphor. I came across. Imagine you're driving a car and you're going to a certain destination. That is your vision. Now you have your offspring in the car. They are toddlers, two, three years old, toddlers, and they're throwing such a big tantrum. You can't put them in the trunk because they're gonna suffocate. You can't give them the steering wheel because they're gonna crush. So you have to keep them in the back of your car where you can manage them. Maybe you will discipline them, maybe you will ignore them, whatever it is. Now, imagine those toddlers are your emotions, and as a project manager, you need to have deliver certain outcome, business outcome project outcome program management outcome. But with any change management, you're gonna have challenges and obstacles, and then the tantrums are going to get louder. So you can't outsource AI. Managing your emotions to AI can help you, right? To think, to reflect, to pause. But when we talk about one of the most critical skills in project management is that trust building is the stakeholder engagement that comes with emotional discomfort. That comes with the ability to. Hold space to listen to different points of view, to understand how they impact your project, to understand who are your allies, who your enemies, who care, who don't, who have power, who don't influence, and how to build those relationship with. So this is how AI can actually add to opportunity, but also add to complexity that many people are oblivious to.

Galen Low:

I love the call out that actually discomfort, that emotional discomfort is part of relationship building. And as much as we may wanna abstract it away because it's uncomfortable, like that is a thing that is a mechanism that is developing that trust, that's building that relationship. And yes, you know, you just described like many of my projects, right? Feels like all my stakeholders is stuffed in the back of the car, not the trunk, not the driver's seat, right there in the middle, just kind of out of reach, chirping or confused about where we're going or when we're gonna get there. And it's a lot to manage. And it's uncomfortable. But I do like that idea that AI's here, you could, you know the example you gave, I really like that. Of like, okay, well gimme some options. How can I tackle this? Even though I'm gonna embrace a discomfort, I'm gonna deal with it myself. I'm not just going to have you draft an email, hit send to send it into the void and hope I never meet that person face to face. I'm gonna use it to kind of coach me. I really enjoy that. I wonder if maybe we could zoom out a bit, because you were at NATO, like the NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for nearly two decades acting within its communications and information agency, and specifically your role was related to working with stakeholders within global digital transformation initiatives in their cyber division. Can you tell us a bit about how NATO approaches digital transformation, and is that where your passion for EQ driven leadership comes from?

Nadja El Fertasi:

Yeah, so you can see I'm a well conserved dinosaur. Two decades.

Galen Low:

You started when you were two. I get it.

Nadja El Fertasi:

Exactly. I won't share my real age. Funny thing is people think that I must have like special magical creams or, 'cause I don't look my age and I tell them the only thing I manage is my emotions and less stress. If you manage your inner world and don't have much stress, really it shows outside that is your magic cream. NATO seems like another lifetime for me now. It's in 2019. So I worked in one of the two biggest agency, the NATO Communication Information Agency, which was basically in charge of NATO's digital transformation. And it also was managing the cyber operations center, right? So it wasn't only cyber operation, it was the whole life cycle on how to transform digitally in a safe and secure way. So think about when cyber was adopted as an operational domain. That came with several work strengths and culture was a big one. When NATO's agencies and military operations went from legacy systems to cloud computing, they had to deal with secure information, especially how do you communicate? In the field between military and civilians, between different nations, interoperability. So I've been working in that domain since like 18 years, but the last six or seven years was really dealing with which I loved stakeholders. So NATO is now I think 30 or 31 member nations. When I was at NATO, I knew it by heart, but now I may be a little bit off. But every member nation has a delegation within the headquarters. So they have a person responsible for several portfolios, several strands of work, and they come and they talk, and they dialogue, and they meet and they collaborate. I think this is what people underestimate the importance of dialogue, the importance of stakeholder engagement, of relationship building, because that is what actually drives the policy. It's the relationship. So when it comes to cyber, especially when we move to the new building, one of the most exciting times was in my last position at NATO, is how do we get political stakeholders, high level military stakeholders? Understand that it is not a backdrop, it's not an afterthought, it's not at the end of the supply chain. It's our nervous system. Especially political had the last decision making. How do you make decision when you have so much data? How do you decide if a missile is launched and you have eight seconds to decide whether to counter launch or not? Which is not under the authority of a military leader, right? It's political and you have to exercise this. So we were always exercising and using technology, even artificial intelligence, to be prepared 'cause we're either in conflict or being prepared to be in conflict. I noticed in my last position, I dealt a lot with lobbying and stakeholder engagement and preparing the ground, preparing our general managers meeting at the North Atlantic Council, which was the highest decision making body. I wasn't the ambassadors that called the actual, such as the people who worked for them. Everyone wants to show their peacock feathers and go cares the peacock feathers of the big boss. But that's not true. Stakeholder engagement. You need to go to caress the peacock feathers of those who work for the big boss, right? You have to understand where lies the true power. And I loved building relationships. I, we actually got so much done as an agency that was seen as at the end of the supply chain because of the stakeholder engagement. And fortunately, or unfortunately, the time, but fortunately now I succumb to burnout in 2018, which for me was a wake up call is like, okay, I need to do something different with my life. I am, I, the entrepreneurial spirit was awakened. In any institution, you can't achieve a lot of change in the institution. Outside. Yes. So I decided to go solo and build a humane world in a digital age.'cause I foresaw that technology will challenge humanity in ways we're not prepared for.

Galen Low:

It's such a good perspective on something that I don't think a lot of people have a general familiarity with all those things you said, right? We talk about it in projects on a different scale where we're like, yes, stakeholders, we gotta do the right analysis. We have to understand who knows what, who like influences these decisions. And then you take it up to the political level, and then you take it up to the level of global defense like capital G, capital D. It's really interesting that so much of it is relationship driven and that you enjoyed it. You were fascinated by it. It did send you to burnout because I think it's just, you know, there's a lot of work as an overwhelming sort of role and capacity to be operating in for a sustain period of time, but I find that really interesting. I'm curious because in some of your work, you use the word social engineering and guarding against it. Right? And of course in cyber, I'm imagining we're talking about bad actors trying to, you know, get information from somebody by manipulating their trust. But I also wondered if some of the tactics that you employ to kind of get stakeholders aligned to get people in dialogue from various different nations, various different cultures. Is there an element of engineering that you and your team would sort of take on as part of the stakeholder strategy?

Nadja El Fertasi:

Well, do you know Christopher Nikky, who was like a master social engineer and who wrote several books about social engineering? In one of his books, he explained it perfectly. He said there is influencing that a lot of people are using. When we talk about marketing psychology, how we know we use influencing tactics to get people to buy stuff. When we talk about relationship building or lobbying, we use influencing skills. And then there's manipulation also using skills, emotional intelligence skills to get people to do something. But he made it very clear. Influencing is when you leave people better off, you do something that's in their best interest. Manipulating is when you do something that's not in their best interest. So coming back to your question is, yes, we all do social engineering, but are you coming from a place that leaves people better off or worse off?

Galen Low:

I love that distinction.

Nadja El Fertasi:

Yeah, and that is very important distinction because now the challenge when it comes to social engineering, I mean, we dealt with it at NATO because of bad state actors and geopolitical environment at that time and still now. Now you don't even have to be a criminal to try to get money off someone, right? It's like it's a very cheap business model, and unfortunately we live in a world where money is more important than our dignity or integrity for many people, and not judging people need to pay bills, right? But it seems like an easy way out. So the level of scams and fraud that is happening. It's beyond comprehension, not only money-wise, like billions projected, I think more than 400 billion in 20, 26 to 2030, but the mental, when we look at one of the causes that I'm very concerned about is our kids. Kids who don't have that level of emotional intelligence. People at work professionals are overloaded, so they use the path of least resistance, people's emotions to either get them to act on fear, pressure, or anxiety, or connection, trust, and empathy, because you want to help. So that's why one of my core pillars of Thrive with EQ is building emotional firewalls to not allow emotions to be used as a weapon.

Galen Low:

I love that. I'm actually maybe a really good segue because you know, your material is the first time that I've come across the turn of phrase emotional firewall, whereas I do think it kind of, you know, is somewhat self-explanatory. I thought maybe we could kind of dive into that because. You've built an entire business around helping leaders in tech and other sectors build these emotional firewalls and what I've kind of described to be like an EQ driven defense mechanism. And I know that shows up in your material as well. Part of it is so that they can build up like intentional resilience and you've got your Thrive with EQ. It's an academy. It's like a toolkit. It's a community. Could you talk to us about what it means to build an emotional firewall, why that's important, and how Thrive with EQ helps?

Nadja El Fertasi:

Yes. So first of all, a little bit about Thrive with EQ to put it in context, because I am a proud neurodivergent, I see the world differently and a kind of a multipotentialite. So for years I've been struggling. I'm like, I care about social engineering, I care about leadership and I care about employee wellbeing. How do I make it fit without. Being, you know, how do you say it? Jackass of all trades. So those were the areas that passionate and that I saw as big societal problems because they're all linked. So I came up with the idea to build my business around an ecosystem, which is Thrive with EQ, which is basically kind of to group for the holding based on three pillars, the academy. So to use AI to skill our knowledge, our expertise, not to use AI to teach, because then it's going to be the same everywhere. So how can I use AI? To have what I have in my head, my expertise, and then work with others to scale it, to gamify it, to deliver it in a way that is useful, that organizations don't have to hire people all year round, but they can scale it across all continent in an easy way and teach people emotional intelligence. How can we build emotional firewalls? Both for businesses B2B, but also for communities and people. How can we teach them that? Emotional intelligence, yes, is used for influence, but it's also used for manipulating, right? Getting you into romance scams, getting your kids onto sextortion scams, social media scams, cryptocurrency, huge one. And how can we use emotional intelligence to use them as firewall? If we use technical firewalls to manage what comes in and goes out, we can do the same. I shared my newsletter today. Someone last week tried to scam me and try to use pressure. Now if you pressure me, I go all the other way around. My emotional firewall is activated and then I push back and I'm very relaxed actually, but I taught myself this, right? So it's at the level of vigilance. How do we teach people to heal, to, you know, the personal challenges? You mentioned burnout. It wasn't only because of the work, but it was also because I never knew how to heal my past. Unresolved emotional issues with trauma, you know, life challenges, then you carry so much emotional luggage that you take into work, that you project on people. It affects your performance, it affects how you know your energy levels. So all these three pillars. They feed into building a humanity that thrives in the age of AI, not just survives. We safeguard our humanity. And those are emotional firewalls, you know.

Galen Low:

I love how you explained the emotional firewalls, right? Like from a technical standpoint, it's like what do we allow in and out to keep ourselves safe? And you know, earlier I was like, okay, yeah, it's kind of self-explanatory, but it's more than that. It's a way of allowing yourself to be. Affected by what is important and not necessarily getting yourself into a tailspin so that you can remain calm, so that you can continue to be relationship focused so you can do things that are constructive and not destructive and sort of regulate in that way.

Nadja El Fertasi:

It's a learning journey, right? It's helping become aware of, okay, what is my fear around money? If I have high levels of fear, then scammers will exploit that. If they get a chance, okay, now I have an awareness that I have fear around money, how do I develop an understanding to manage it? Here comes the EQ strategies, the emotional firewall strategies. Then you have to build that emotional muscle, that memory muscle, because a lot of people are teaching and reading manuals and going to seminars. But when you are in the moment and you feel that intensity of fear, you're not going to react based on reason. You're going to react based on the impulse. Unless you trained yourself to self-regulate activated emotional firewalls, this person is using my fear against me, even if it's false alarm, even if it is your boss, and this is the biggest cultural challenge. How are you going to teach people, challenge leaders if you have a culture that is high power distance, right for management. Face these challenges when they need to communicate bad news or admit to mistakes early on in the projects. And if they are fearful, you're gonna put it under the rug and then that problem becomes a full-blown crisis and all the leadership now is concerned and now it's a much bigger a kill this heel.

Galen Low:

And then as project managers, we get stuck holding the bag sometimes, even though we were trying to do Right.

Nadja El Fertasi:

Exactly.

Galen Low:

I was wondering, can we go through some scenarios here? Can we go through a few examples? Like, I love this delineation between influence and manipulation, and you raised one really good one that I hadn't even thought of, which is like. I always think of, you know, external stakeholders. You know, there's some folks who are sly, they're trying to get their interests to be a higher priority than somebody else's interests. Or they're trying to, you know, maybe manipulate things so that, you know, they look better than their peer. But the boss thing was a really interesting one. Maybe you could take us through your framework, like if we aren't equipped with the right tools and mindset and framework to handle some of these things, versus if we did, and that example of just like, okay. Your boss, you know the person that you report to is a person of authority to you and you're meant to sort of do as they say, but they are manipulating you using power and your fear of it to get something done that just doesn't sit right. Yeah. Can you step us through, you know, what could go wrong there? We kind of talked about it, but also like how it can go right.

Nadja El Fertasi:

So when I talk about emotional firewalls, it is linked. But when I talk about emotional firewalls, is to prevent the and mitigate cyber risk, right? Data breaches. But here's the thing. In every organization there is office politics. In every relationship in the workplace, people use manipulation techniques. They're not even aware of it. It's part of how things go. Imagine you're a project manager and you have your senior. Representative of the project that has high levels of assertiveness, high levels of authority, meaning when you communicate with them, they tend to fly off the handle. They tend to be very fearful. So if you are someone who has low levels of assertiveness or low levels of emotional self-awareness and self regard, you fear communicating to that senior representative if there is an issue. So if you don't use your emotional firewalls or emotional intelligence strategies, then you are going to perhaps decide not to raise a project, exceptional report, because you fear the reaction of that senior representative, which from a business perspective, from a collaboration perspective, from a project outcome perspective. Can lead to a lot of project delays and errors and more exceptional reports because nothing is moving forward in the way it was attended. And then there's conflict, and then you have the project management running out. The other risk though, using the same dynamic if someone is impersonating. The senior representative. This happens with CEO frauds or what we saw in Arab, the manufacturing company, that employee wire $25 million because someone presented to be the CFO. So if you have that same level of insecurity or fear, you are not going to question your boss. So what leaders need to understand in today's culture, project managers, senior leadership businesses, is that people's emotional intelligence is not only a risk for project management, for project results, but especially this is where I come in, cyber risk data breach. Think about when you're working in high feasibility project mega projects where a lot is on stake, you need to have people with a certain level of emotional intelligence that are able to use emotional intelligence to challenge their authority in a way that is acceptable, which means you need to include emotional intelligence in your best practices. How are we communicating? Before you start any project, you have a stakeholder engagement plan, right? Who needs to be monitored, who needs to be engaged, who needs to have a good close relationship? So you need to have people skills and you need to talk about this and you need to leverage because then when you have a good relationship with people that matter the most for your project, you are able to say, Hey, and people at that level, even they can get mad at the time, but better that they get mad at you for challenging them or ruffling their feathers. And having avoid a 25 million ransomware extortion. And these things can be exercised through tabletop, through training to awareness, to speaking through gamification. Here's where AI comes in. So the challenges that organizations face that project managers face day to day when it comes to stakeholder engage, they're engaged in collaboration, not only represent a well-known risk of poor project management, poor program management, but now they have an additional risk. Of data breaches of ransomware because scammers and cyber criminals using motions to hack people, to hack companies, they're not going to try to hack a very secure system. They're gonna hack the person who has access to that secure system.

Galen Low:

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Nadja El Fertasi:

This is the nice thing about emotional firewalls. You kill two birds with one stone. That is an expression, right? Because not only are you building that resiliency against cyber risk, but you're also getting higher quality of people, right? Better leadership.'cause often we blame leaders, but they're not even aware that they're doing it. So for the person that is leading by fear, they may have lower levels of emotional self-awareness. Meaning for them, they're just. Talking in a way or leading in a way that seems normal to them, but they are oblivious to how it impacts emotionally, their team or their people around them, especially when they're under pressure. So then you would help them build emotional firewalls of emotional awareness and impulse control to understand how are those measured within their leadership capacity and how does it impact. Their team. For someone who has, for example, project manager who has low levels of self regard, meaning they are filled with insecurities because they have to manage, they can be a confident person, but anyone can have low levels of self regard. When they need to manage the project, they need to manage the stakeholders. Now they have to become a cyber security expert and IT expert. They need to scramble for resources. It's a lot of pressure. It makes you doubt yourself because you don't have that energy. I would work on self regard, right? Understanding that they're doing the best that they can and staying grounded. I would work on assertiveness. If they have low levels of assertiveness, they're going to feel very uncomfortable communicating bad news or uncomfortable news. So it's easier to sweep it under the rug or think it'll go away, and then it blows up. So then you would activate emotional firewall of assertiveness. So I'm working with an established model that is already being used for like two decades, three decades, to help people lead better and perform better. Just using this model in the context of cyber risk, context of social engineering, to help people become more aware of how it's used for manipulation. So you can use specific markers. To help people become aware, and here's where AI comes in. People don't like to feel that something was wrong with them. If I would tell you, for example, this is just for the purpose of this podcast, right? I have no idea, but just to give you a specific example. I say Callan, I think you have low levels of impulse control. You really fly off the handle. You are not gonna like that. You're like probably gonna say, who the heck does she think she is? Where does she come from judging me? Me. Low levels of impulse control. Or you're gonna say you have low levels of self regard. I'm very confident. I'm very, I mean, look at how we present ourselves on LinkedIn and all the certificates we have. It's also society a little bit that pushes us this way. So we derive our identity and our self worth based off these external things. So they're not going to be receptive. People are gonna be defensive. And when AI comes in, what I use is gamification scenarios, using other personalities. And then people are like, ah, I recognize that. Ah, I didn't know. Oh, I can try that. But it's not related. They become reflective in a fun way and a non defensive way. If you force people, if you tell them you should do this, or you have done this, or you should work on your assertiveness skills, most people will say, I don't have a problem. You have a problem. It's, it has been emotional discomfort to be self-aware and to evolve and to grow. Very uncomfortable. How do you teach people to become comfortable being uncomfortable?

Galen Low:

I want to dive into that gamification idea, but you know, it strikes me now that it's not an emotional shield. It's an emotional firewall. Stuff does get through. You have to choose what does get through. It doesn't mean it's gonna feel comfortable. So in my head I'm going, okay, like part of the training a, I really like that idea that like the culture of an organization. Needs to have this training so they can build awareness and start, you know, being reflective on themselves and sort of realize where there are areas that they can improve because it actually mitigates risk. Like, and I really like that angle. And then I'm thinking through like, okay, well if I do not have, you know, a lot of self-worth, if I'm not really somebody who will assert myself, it might be a matter of, okay, well let it in. You're going to get yelled at probably. We haven't gone through everything yet. This leader is not yet necessarily aware or willing to change at this point. So you're gonna take that hit, but it's gonna be. You're too

Nadja El Fertasi:

busy for an emotional intelligence training.

Galen Low:

Yeah, there you go. Well then, I mean, maybe we'll come back to the gamification there, but in other words, what we're saying is, okay, let's get some training to almost like take that bullet, not to, you know, weaponize it too much, but you're going to accept that yes, this is going to happen. You're going to, you know, prepare yourself. You're going to talk through. Your rationale for raising this, you're not just being, you know, some silly idiot, you're actually trying to protect your project. You're trying to protect the organization you're trying to protect, like the outcomes for everybody involved, all the stakeholders. And that might mean yes, you're gonna get a sort of a flying off the handle type response, but if you steal yourself for that and you're working on it, then that is probably going to be the right course of action to let that through, have that conversation, accept that discomfort.

Nadja El Fertasi:

Exactly, and that is going back to intentional resilience is the ability you can't control someone, not lashing out on you, right? Or someone not projecting their emotions, or you cannot control their emotional state if they hear bad news. Some will have a level of emotional maturity that they just take it and then reflect about it. Others also have emotional maturity, but their ways is to kind of project immediately. You can't control that. What you can control is how you respond. So is to stay grounded. With the discomfort, sit with it. Allow them to empty their garbage, because when people are upset or emotional, their brain turns into size of a peanut basically. Not really, but it's a great way to visually understand you can't resonate when someone is emotional. So allow them then to kind of go back to their prefrontal cortex to place where we reason. Then you can have a conversation and if you're uncomfortable with people's emotional discomfort, then you are going to sway, adapt, high lie, maybe unintentionally in order not to feel with the discomfort. And people who tend to have high levels of empathy to codependent, to sensitive HSP, for example, then they're going to make it their mission to make the other person feel good. But leaders don't want to feel good. Leaders will, you know, be angry, lash out, but they want someone who tells them the truth because the truth they can do something with you can prevent, you can manage, you can mitigate. And one of the reputation I had, especially in my last job, I was not always necessarily very likable by my like the biggest bosses, but when they needed a reality check, they always called me in because they knew I would be Dutch. I was very. Respectful, obviously, right? But I wasn't someone who was like sucking up to the boss. Or trying to sugarcoat things. I call a shark. A shark, and I call grass is green, right? And I tell it what it is and they said, this are your options. I will support you anyway. But now you know how it is and they appreciate that, right? So don't seek to be liked. Seek to be leveraged for your skillset, and that is a very important skillset in this age of deception.

Galen Low:

That's what I love about it. Because you said something earlier, you said it's not about being likable, it's about telling the truth and then winding that all the way back to the beginning. Some people would equate being likable to being comfortable, and what we're saying is that. When stakeholder groups and groups of humans are in a state of comfort, they're gonna make better decisions. When they're in a state of duress, they're gonna make more primitive decisions, probably not necessarily good ones. We're in like survival mode, but it's not the same as be likable, like be liked all the time. You know, don't rock the boat. It's this like level of, it's this balance between comfort and discomfort that gets to the truth. That allows people to make decisions in a state of comfort, quote unquote comfort, not necessarily in a state of like sycophantic, you know, lies, where it's like, oh, don't worry, I'm gonna sugarcoat it. Everything's gonna be fine. That's not the goal. The goal is actually to set up your emotional firewall, to have your intentional resilience so that you can have. Conversations in a state of comfort which might actually be uncomfortable.

Nadja El Fertasi:

Exactly.

Galen Low:

And not necessarily be the one who's liked telling them what they want to hear, but actually having the resilience to tell the truth.

Nadja El Fertasi:

Yeah. So first of all, sometimes I get like Nadja, but I was honest and it cost me my job or cost me the relationship. And I love the honesty as a character skill, right? You can overuse it. You really blunt, or you can underuse it, which you don't use it at all. It's understanding how to leverage honesty in a way that fits the culture, that fits the context. You have to have cultural intelligence as well. You're not gonna say to your boss, Hey jerk, this is not how we do things. Right. You may think it.

Galen Low:

You're wrong.

Nadja El Fertasi:

Yeah. That's gonna get you probably fired, but you can say, I understand where you're coming from. I understand why you would. Go with this way, A, B, C, and D. Let me offer you a different perspective for your consideration. And even if you're someone who is just cuts to chase and you don't like this kind of talk, but if you're dealing with a senior stakeholder that has a fragile ego or is overloaded or whatever, people have personalities, you need to be able to understand how they make decisions and how to speak to them. So you can use honesty, but you just tailor it and you're not being less honest, it's just in the way you deliver it. A lot of people think it's communication is verbal. No it's the way you sit, the way you speak your energy. If you're gonna come raising in with anger, I'm gonna teach this, you know, he doesn't know. Project manager have this tendency, they don't know what we're going through and we have all the details and they're just sitting in high up somewhere, all that energy. You think they're gonna be recessive. We're gonna say, Hey, who's this guy? Or who's this woman? And the other thing is, you can make good decisions on the pressure. If you train people, if people are not trained, they're gonna make poor decisions. But if you learn people to stay cool, then their brain is not going to add the stress and know exactly what to do, when to do it, even if there's no protocol. When people stay present. And grounded in the moment. A lot of times people with low levels of stress tolerance, which is another emotional firewalls, they project, they go into worst case scenarios. They're not focusing on the next five step and next five step, so their brain is causing more stress and is impacting their decision making ability. But if you teach people to stay calm, cool on the pressure, then they will know what to do from a highly tested decision making capability if they will sense. The third thing I wanted to say is when you're working with people who have fragile egos, then that is a problem. That is a risk if you don't teach them, because they're going to do everything to preserve their identity, their sense of self at the cost of the business, at the cost of the project, because it's no longer about what is good for the business, what is good for the project, it is about what is good for. People's perception about me, and some egos are beyond repair, if I can say, but most it is just giving them the toolkit because we all have insecurities, we all have, and even I have fragile egos from time to time, but toolkit to manage it in a safe way, a safe psychological space.

Galen Low:

I really like that. And also I'm reminded, and don't quote me on this, but I feel like some fighter pilots, part of the training is that you're flying a training mission and someone is yelling at you the whole time. It's so that you can kind of learn. I like that idea that you can train yourself to be presence even in situations of high stress by not letting your own stress compound internally until you can't make good decisions.

Nadja El Fertasi:

You know what the best training is? It's for free.

Galen Low:

Being a project manager?

Nadja El Fertasi:

It's offspring.

Galen Low:

Oh yeah.

Nadja El Fertasi:

Being a parent to an offspring.

Galen Low:

That's fair.

Nadja El Fertasi:

I, my son, bless him, but he has like taught me the last skills I needed to stay calm. When you have a little T-Rex going at you

Galen Low:

Yeah. That definitely requires presence and good judgment.

Nadja El Fertasi:

Exactly. That's fair.

Galen Low:

I wonder if we can overlay AI now, maybe we can round up, we've talked about some tactics. We've talked about the value of training around emotional intelligence, not for one individual, but organization-wide, because it will address risk and it will, you know, solid project outcomes. You mentioned AI, you mentioned gamification. I'm thinking through a whole bunch of things like, for example, one of my favorite tools. I think it's by a group called the Goblin Tools. It's called formalize. It's you take that raw, unfiltered thought, the email you wanna send, and then AI rewrites it into something more professional. Talking about that sort of, you know, the cultural nuances, your understanding of not just being honest and brash, but honest and professional. But I wonder if you could talk to me a bit about how you are overlaying AI onto emotional intelligence and emotional intelligence training. Can you tell us a bit about the gamification aspect of things and then maybe we could like look out into the future of like what can be possible that can help us navigate our emotions better? You know, three to five years from now.

Nadja El Fertasi:

So if you're someone like me, like you didn't use AI, you had fears around AI, it'll require an ego debt. So you can read, I think it's Ryan Holiday's book about ego debts if you like, but you have to be prepared to die. Ego. Right? Right. Because a lot of people have these fears that, oh my God, AI is intelligent, or it will become intelligent to the point that what is my purpose in certain areas? So. Actually how I overcame this, it's like it's not as intelligence yet as we may think. It's intelligence in way how it manages information, how it translates information, and how it takes all this information that we have been building for decades, right? But it's not necessarily creative in the sense the way people are creative. So this is how I use AI for my business. I start with the basics. It's like it. Don't touch technology. First, I think about user experience and you can get very creative with it. And then the third or fourth step, then you use AI. Well, how can you build it? And here's where AI is magnificent because it can become so creative, so flexible, so adaptable. One of the biggest project challenges is how do you report in a way that every stakeholder understands it. Some stakeholders like to read 15 pages. Other stakeholders want three sentences. One stakeholders just wants a voice note, so all they have different needs, and you need to manage all those needs. Well, here you can make one report, but the way it's diffused, it's using AI to diffuse it in different ways that meets the stakeholders needs.

Galen Low:

I like the word diffuse from a distribution standpoint, like a tailored personalized communication standpoint. I think that's like a brilliant use. I think it covers a lot of bases. A you know, we started out by talking about the fact that sometimes your stakeholders are gonna be, you know, a ragtag group of individuals. Sometimes they're out to get each other, sometimes they. I feel like they're toddlers in the backseat, you know, like fighting and is impossible to manage them. And then we're talking about, you know, the ideas of like, different individuals want to receive information different ways. You know, their sense of ego is different. You know, their aversion to risk or their aversion to the hard truths might be different. And you can actually sort of build this framework for yourself to tailor communications based on what you know about people knowing that. Not everyone you know has the highest level of emotional intelligence. It's still a spectrum, not everyone's, you know, getting this training. Like you mentioned, sometimes it's the C-suite and the managers who don't get this training and therefore, you know, could perpetuate some of the sort of cultural downfalls that are preventing their business or their projects from running. Well, and then I like this idea that it comes from you, right? And you can kind of like. Compile sources. It doesn't have to start with talking to AI to help you learn emotional intelligence and you know, get better understanding of yourself. But it could start with something like a mind map about yourself and, you know, training a bit of a model to understand you better so that you can look at yourself through that lens and so that you can sort of disseminate. Project information and communications in a way that's going to be impactful, and also use that as a way to be self-reflexive as well, and just look at that and go, okay, yeah, I see how that will land better than what I was probably going to say in my rawest form.

Nadja El Fertasi:

And here's where emotional intelligence comes in. Because now the risk with AI is, oh, I don't have to think. If you'd look at Carl Jung, one of my favorite psychologists, it, his thinking is hard. That's why we judge. So when I get creative before I have a breakthrough idea, I get very uncomfortable. I get stuck in my head. I over, it's not in fun process all the time. I know I'm hitting somewhere because discomfort, when we learn, when we use our automated responses. You talked about this beginning autopilot, it's because it doesn't require a lot of energy and a lot of leaders, a lot of project managers, they are on fire. Mode, all the fighting fires. So thinking something new, learning something new requires presence, requires energy. That comes with a lot of discomfort. If you don't have the space for that, you can't be in both parts of the brain. If you read Daniel Kahneman's Nobel Prize winner thinking slow and fast, so understanding and emotional intelligence key for upskilling people and their creativity so they don't become machines or they think the way machines do. Is huge in the culture in the years to come. Even now, how are you going to make sure people have discernment skills against manipulation? How are you gonna make sure people think creatively of new ideas that are authentic? Now, when Shachi PT came out, everyone was excited and everyone was. Prompting and showing how to use shachi PT to write, to do everything for you. Now people are like, we want authenticity. We want something real. Right? We don't want everything as you know, tapestry. Yeah. Because now people start recognizing, right, and I'm not saying not to use SHA GPT, I use it as well, especially I how I use it.'cause I just write everything myself and then I tell, I use Google Gemini, I say. How is this going to land?

Galen Low:

There you go.

Nadja El Fertasi:

And then I decide whether I am bold enough that they, to have it land the way I intended to, or maybe to tweak a little bit, not to waffle too many feathers at the same time.

Galen Low:

I like that sounding word for nuance.

Nadja El Fertasi:

Exactly.

Galen Low:

Maybe we can end where we started. At the beginning I asked you, does EQ even matter in an age of AI now and in the immediate future? After sort of this conversation, you know, I think I know where you stand, but I wonder if you could paint for us like an optimistic view of what emotional intelligence looks like in the future as AI grows and develops. You know, you mentioned things like, you know, we're already recognizing and voicing where we want AI to be and where we don't want it to be. How do you think that sort of. Plays against the idea of emotional intelligence when your kids are older and the role that technology plays, not just creating more risks that we're vulnerable to, but maybe even helping us build that sort of intentional resilience.

Nadja El Fertasi:

I think we need to be aware first on how AI impacts our humanity. It's a question, especially AI startups don't like to go in because implementing AI now is based on instant gratification. Speed to market, you know, fast fast. Disregarding the ethical. For example, you already have startups that are using human-like avatars to do the human interaction, which for me is like a total red flag, right? Are we replacing actual people? So we need to understand how is AI causing us to have an identity crisis? And we need to have that identity crisis to then say, okay, how do we reinvent ourselves as a humanity in the age of AI, where we embrace the opportunity and the technological advancement that AI is bringing without letting it harm us. So what is that vision for you as a CEO for you, as a project manager, for you as a parent, for you as a community leader, for you as a government as well? What is that? Vision and emotional intelligence. Your EQ is your implementation tool. Is your tool to help people get to that vision. Right in a human way. If you want people to be more creative and more empathy and more trust building in AI, more big data analytics, you know, the cognitive ability, then you need to invest more in emotional intelligence because the biggest skill. That will separate anyone in the age of AI is their ability to self-regulate if someone is projecting their emotions, right? How can you self-regulate to not react If you feel very uncomfortable because you're learning something new, because uncertainty is the norm, how do you self-regulate so you don't come from a place of fear, stress, or survival? That is what you need to teach people, and this is why emotional intelligence is the bridge. To where you are now to achieve that vision. If you're leading without a vision, then you're just building on sand and when a sandstorm comes your business, your family, your relationship will just sink. So the risk I see now is a lot of people are building on sand. We see this build your website in five minutes. Hello. You're gonna build a website of five minutes and then how is your data secured? What is the backend you are using? How are people, you know, managing the security policy? How are you ensuring that your jet hub or whatever backend you're using, all these things that there are not five minute things. They will give you, maybe if you get people to pay for an application you developed in one weekend and then their data gets stolen or your application crashes, now you're off the business for years because your reputation is gone, which is why I took a risk and I took my time to develop these and to really make sure that the structure is well taught and how I use data in order to minimize and this takes time. So this is how I see. I think we cannot move forward without a vision of what humanity looks like in the digital age. We can fear among all we want, I'm not for or against AI, but we know what we don't want. But what does humanity look like? How does a project manager that uses AI workflows to replace business processes look like? Are they AI savvy, emotional, intelligent, trustworthy, empathic influencer? What does it look like? And that is something that every project manager has to understand for themself that comes from an identity crisis. Okay, this is going to change, but who am I in three years? And then now you have something to work towards.

Galen Low:

AI is the identity crisis we need so that we can examine ourselves and look at ourselves once again.

Nadja El Fertasi:

Exactly.

Galen Low:

You know, that might be a good place to leave it. Nadja, thank you so much for spending the time with me today. It's been so much fun. Really insightful. Always love our chats. Well, I've got you here. Where can people learn more about you?

Nadja El Fertasi:

So connect with me on LinkedIn. You just can find me Nadja El Fertasi. I post a lot of content and you can check out the ecosystem thrivewitheq.com. Very simple. And whether you are a leader looking for emotional intelligence or a family protecting your family or an individual who wants to heal with emotional intelligence, everything is there.

Galen Low:

I'll include all those links in the show notes for folks who want to easily click through. And Nadja, thanks again.

Nadja El Fertasi:

You're very welcome. Thank you for the opportunity to being on The Digital Project Management podcast. It's amazing.

Galen Low:

Alright folks, that's it for today's episode of The Digital Project Manager podcast. If you enjoyed this conversation, make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening. And if you want even more tactical insights, case studies and playbooks, head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.