What Is the Behavior Saying?

Monique DeMonaco spent much of her early life being told what was wrong with her. She grew up in rural poverty; both of her parents struggled with mental illness, and she had undiagnosed learning disabilities and petit mal seizures. At school, she was called lazy, not good enough, and unambitious. One guidance counselor told her, “Honey, you’re not going to college.”

At 21, Monique was a divorced single mother. At 24, she went to college and graduated four years later, becoming the first person in her family to earn a college degree. Her story could easily become a story about resilience. However, another leadership lesson is worth examining. We can spend years responding to what we see in someone without understanding what’s driving their behavior.

Coach Monique DeMonaco is an executive, leadership, and career coach, emotional intelligence expert, author, Rapid Transformational Therapy practitioner, and professional speaker. For more than 20 years, she has combined brain science and emotional intelligence to help others understand and change the patterns affecting how they show up. She is also the founder of EQ Wize, an online learning platform.

In our conversation, “How Can Leaders Improve Emotional Intelligence for Better Communication?” coach Monique describes emotional intelligence in one word: awareness. We explore what that awareness looks like in practice, particularly when we are trying to understand behaviors that create conflict, communicate our expertise and build buy-in, and help our teams develop the resilience to respond when things don’t go as planned.

What’s Beneath the Behavior

“There are no problem behaviors. There are behaviors that are a problem, but they’re a coping mechanism or a consequence for what you don’t know that you don’t know.” —Monique DeMonaco

Consider how quickly we can label behavior in an organization. We may label a colleague as difficult, defensive, controlling, uncollaborative, resistant, and not strategic. Once we decide that someone is “the problem,” we stop being curious about what may be creating the behavior.

Our thoughts, beliefs, and past experiences can influence how we show up, often in ways we may not recognize ourselves. Greater awareness gives us more information about what may be driving our response and what we may need to change.

Can you relate? Someone challenges a senior leader’s thinking in a meeting, and you can almost feel the shift in the room as the leader shuts down the conversation. Another leader knows the team needs more ownership yet still struggles to let go. Someone else keeps putting off a difficult conversation, even though they know avoiding it is only making things harder.

When we lead through transformation, implement AI, change operating models, or ask team members to work differently, understanding what is shaping the behaviors can help us address the real issue rather than keep dealing with the symptoms.

The same curiosity applies to us. When the same conflict keeps appearing across different situations or with different team members or leaders, we must be willing to consider our own role in the pattern. Wherever you go, there you are. Look in the mirror and have an honest conversation with yourself.

What recurring behavior or conflict do you keep running into?

Reaching Others

After spending most of my corporate career in technology, primarily in project and program management, working alongside highly technical professionals, I learned that being an expert could only take us so far. As leaders, it’s critical to influence others, especially when we are working across teams, navigating different priorities, and trying to move an initiative forward.

“You can have the cure for cancer. But unless you can effectively communicate that and you can create buy-in, unless you can do it alone, it does not matter.” —Monique DeMonaco

Creating buy-in requires us to reach others, not simply communicate what we know. We may understand the strategy, have the data, or know exactly why a particular approach makes sense, but the other leaders involved are bringing their own priorities, concerns, and expertise to the table. Our ability to understand those perspectives and connect what we know to what matters to them can determine whether an idea moves forward or stalls.

In financial services and other highly regulated industries, that can mean balancing risk, regulation, technology, customer expectations, workforce implications, and business performance within the same decision.

A 2024 study involving 1,210 primary-school teachers and 169 school principals found that the principals’ emotional intelligence positively influenced the emotional intelligence of the teachers they led, which was associated with greater job flourishing and performance. The effect was stronger when the team’s emotional climate was positive.

Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/organizational-psychology/articles/10.3389/forgp.2024.1283067/full

As our responsibilities expand, our ability to execute increasingly depends on other leaders and functions with different priorities. We have to communicate our expertise in a way that helps them understand its relevance while remaining open to information that may improve our own thinking.

Where could purposeful communication improve a decision your team needs to make?

Resilience Changes What Failure Means

During our conversation, Monique described an important difference in how we can experience failure. Someone with lower resilience may take an unsuccessful experience and turn it into an identity: I failed; therefore I am a failure. Someone with stronger resilience can recognize that something failed, learn from it, and move forward without allowing one experience to define what they can do.

Our teams will encounter setbacks. A decision may produce an unexpected result, an implementation may take longer than anticipated, or an approach that worked before may no longer work in the current environment. How we respond to those moments matters because team members also learn from what happens after something goes wrong.

“Confidence is an inside job. So, no one can give it to you. You gain confidence from figuring it out, resiliency from failing.” —Monique DeMonaco

When we step in too quickly to solve every difficult problem, we may take away the very experience that helps a team member develop confidence and judgment. Monique also describes standards as “a vote of confidence.” Holding someone to a meaningful standard communicates that we believe they can meet it, while giving them the opportunity to figure out how to get there.

This becomes even more important as organizations introduce AI, change operating models, and ask teams to work in ways they haven’t before. We cannot prepare team members for every situation they will encounter. We can set clear expectations, provide appropriate support, and give them enough room to exercise judgment, learn from setbacks, and become better equipped for increasingly complex responsibilities.

How is the way you respond when something doesn’t go as planned helping or hurting your team?

What’s Next?

Monique has worked on her own emotional intelligence for more than 20 years and says she still actively works on it. I agree. It’s a journey, not a destination. There is always a next level for EQ.

That connects directly to Continuous Elevation™. As our roles, teams, and organizations evolve, we continue developing the awareness to recognize our patterns, understand how we affect others, communicate across different perspectives, and adjust when our leadership is not producing the outcome we intended.

We invite you to watch or listen to our full conversation on YouTube, “How Can Leaders Improve Emotional Intelligence for Better Communication?” with Coach Monique DeMonaco on The Dr. Ginny Show, where you’ll hear Monique’s compelling story and we’ll dive deeper into emotional intelligence, communication, and resilience.

If your executive team is navigating transformation, AI disruption, or significant change, you may already be feeling the strain. Decisions are prolonged, the same conflicts keep surfacing, leaders are rowing in different directions, or the changes you’re investing in aren’t delivering the ROI you expected. Often, exploring the issues from a different angle and from an objective perspective helps. Let’s connect over a Strategy Conversation. You can always find us at info@executivebound.com.

To connect with Monique and explore her work, including EQ Wize, use the information below. Listeners of The Dr. Ginny Show can receive 10% off EQ Wize courses using the code DrGinny.

About Our Distinguished Guest

Coach Monique DeMonaco is an executive, leadership and career coach, EQ expert, author, Rapid Transformation Therapy (RTT) expert, and certified professional speaker. Her work is grounded in brain science and emotional intelligence and is designed to provide easy-to-learn, easy-to-use tools, techniques, and solutions for long-term, sustainable change. She is the founder of EQ Wize, an online learning platform designed to help employers develop their talent’s emotional intelligence, business etiquette, critical thinking, and more through quick, user-friendly online courses. To connect with Coach Monique, email her at monique@coachmonique.com, visit her websites www.coachmonique.com/contact and www.eqwize.com, and follow her on LinkedIn