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Why do people choose to develop emotional intelligence and why do they turn to Six Seconds for their path? In “Voices from Six Seconds Network,” we introduce you to people in the network who share their experiences, personal journeys, and how they embrace EQ in different areas of their daily lives.

Voices from the Network: Marcelo Alvisi De Paula

by Maddalena Campitelli

“I don’t believe there are people with such hard hearts or hard minds that emotional intelligence cannot soften it. It’s just a matter of time, it’s just a matter of practice.”. – Marcelo Alvisi De Paula

This month we’re sharing the story of Marcelo Alvisi De Paula, a senior business leader who has spent decades creating exceptional business cultures with emotional intelligence.

Marcelo’s journey with emotional intelligence began in 1996, when he read Daniel Goleman’s bestselling book: Emotional Intelligence: Why it Can Matter More Than IQ. Even though he wouldn’t come across the topic again for many years, it planted a seed of interest. That seed found the perfect conditions to grow when, in his role as Director of People Development for a hotel chain in Dubai, his supervisor wanted to develop the team’s emotional intelligence and introduced him to Six Seconds. Over the coming months and years, Marcelo felt the impact firsthand of emotional intelligence and found his calling – unlocking people’s potential with EQ.

Marcelo has had the opportunity to do exactly that in a range of industries, from hospitality to aviation to healthcare. “I totally believe in Six Seconds’ philosophy of ‘Emotions drive people. People drive performance,’” Marcelo says. “It’s true in any business context.”

Your flight is delayed

When Marcelo joined an aviation startup as Senior Manager for Leading Culture, Leadership & Learning, things weren’t going well: only 23% of planes were leaving and arriving on time, creating a lot of unhappy customers. Even worse, the OTP (on-time performance) meetings often spiraled out of control into blaming and finger pointing, led by the OTP team lead who joined the company around the same time as Marcelo.

That leader was bringing forward a command and control leadership thus creating a culture of intimidation, Marcelo says, because that is the norm in much of the Middle East. “In a business environment, many people don’t know any other way of doing meetings, requesting things, or engaging with others” he told me.

Marcelo saw his colleague’s frustration due to the lack of results as an opportunity to talk to him about EQ as a possible solution. He had him take the Six Seconds Emotional Intelligence assessment (SEI) and introduced him to the Six Seconds Model of Emotional Intelligence. Through this process, the leader began to see how his typical reactions (getting frustrated and angry, raising voice, blaming others) were not serving his goals, what alternative actions he could take (responding intentionally versus reacting on autopilot), ad how he could connect that response to his bigger goals (improving business performance by creating the right environment for people to freely discuss and come up with new ideas).

The results?

Marcelo witnessed an incredible cultural transformation. In only 7 months, they managed to go from 23% to 95% of planes being on time.

Google’s research Project Aristotle showed that thriving and performing teams are fuelled by psychological safety – the sense of comfort that makes employees freely give voice to their opinion and feel that they won’t be punished when they make a mistake. This is what Marcelo tapped into at the aviation startup. Psychological safety creates an environment where people know they can share ideas that challenge the status quo, a superior’s idea, or even a company’s current direction, which is a culture that values inclusion, honesty and reasonable risk taking. At the heart of psychological safety is trust, which Six Seconds’ 2017 Vitality Report found that predicts a whopping 62% of performance < For a macro look at trust in organizations and its impact on performance, check out this research summary >

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Meet Marcelo Alvisi De Paula LinkedIn→

Professional achievements: Marcelo is a Senior Business Leader with more than twenty-five years of international experience in a range of industries, from hospitality to aviation to healthcare. Born in Brazil, Marcelo lived most of his life in London, but through a career in Learning and Development he had the opportunity to work in different cultural contexts in over 20 countries including the UK, India, Hong Kong, France, the UAE and now Saudi Arabia. He works to build a great business culture using EQ and advocating the role of emotional intelligence in shaping a world-class organization where people genuinely care. Marcelo thrives on change, challenges and variety with a recognised ability to deliver transformational learning projects that translate into market leading solutions.

Favorite Six Seconds Learning Philosophy: “One of the learning philosophies I love the most is ‘Fish don’t talk about water’ because it made me reflect on the things that “I am not aware of not knowing” enacting a domino effect of reflection and awareness which made me feel more clear and centered. Another Six Seconds learning philosophy I really like is ‘One, two, three, pasta!’meaning ‘When do I act? It’s now’ – I felt the urge to put things into the right place and I’ve seen a great benefit ever since.”

Learn about Six Seconds Learning Philosophies→

Noble Goal: Marcelo is grateful he can fulfill his purpose of ‘unlocking people’s potential’ because helping people brings him joy and inspiration. “I remember leaving home at a young age to go abroad and feeling a bit lost but I already knew I wanted to be a trainer and help people to learn (…) Helping people it’s deeply meaningful to me. It’s not about wanting to change people, but I feel I can help them to see ways they can change, new possibilities to create an environment where they can grow, and in this process I learn a lot myself as well.” He deeply believes EQ allows creating an emotionally intelligent culture where people care about each other’s growth.

Learn about Six Seconds Noble Goals→

His “Don’t Miss This” Six Seconds tools & courses: Overall, Marcelo found great benefits from the UEQ as an introduction to emotional intelligence language and framework, and he got extremely interesting insights from the Vital Signs tools, especially the Leadership and Team Vital Signs <Learn more about all Vital Signs Tools & Assessments, Vital Signs Model and its framework to build strong leadership, healthy teams, and vital organizations>. Marcelo reports that most of those employees attending the courses are so excited about wanting to go on with their EQ journey: “They come to me asking if they can have their family members go through the same training as well, which is a clear sign that it works and resonates for them”. In the end, he says that he often brings up the EQ topic during meetings asking the team ideas on how to embed emotional intelligence in the discussion, how to be more intentional and how to connect to a purpose – “Rather than me talking about EQ, I often act in an emotionally intelligent way so that people can grasp the difference.”

Prioritizing the care in healthcare

Marcelo currently works for a big retail pharmacy business in Saudi Arabia. With the support of the company’s leadership, the goal is to have all 10,000 employees practicing emotional intelligence by 2026. Marcelo says the work starts with employees working with him and taking Six Seconds’ certification courses to start building a common vocabulary and understanding. With junior employees, he starts with the Unlocking EQ < UEQ Profile, a great way to introduce emotional intelligence and its impact on business performance. For more in-depth training, Marcelo uses the Leadership Vital Signs assessment with 6 to 12 months of 1:1 coaching. The company is in the final stage of having a group of people qualified on the EQ Performance Management – Leadership Vital Signs and Team Vital Signs – tools from which they had great insights.

“I feel very lucky to be in an environment where people really believe in emotional intelligence and therefore it’s possible to get great results with it” Marcelo says. “It’s the key to improving the human and relationship side, which is particularly important in healthcare, where empathy is a key factor. We want an empathetic team on board that has great self-awareness, clear intention and care when they are interacting with customers.”

How to respond in challenging situations

What can you do when not everyone in the team is aligned and open to embrace a culture of emotional intelligence? Marcelo believes that while some people are not inclined to talk about emotional intelligence as a science which can provide data, they still all have emotions and everybody interacts with their emotions in one way or another. For this, he believes everybody is like a stone which needs to be polished and shaped so it can shine.

He recalls those times he came across a few challenging situations at work with people who struggled with emotional intelligence, and the way he found to approach those struggling or being skeptical about EQ is suspending judgment and being curious to know what’s going on with them, asking the right questions, and really playing according to their rhythm and muse. Rather than him wanting to impose what he thinks and believes, he goes further to understand more about them. He says it’s very rare that he doesn’t “win the case” because when he approaches people that way, he manages to build a relationship and is able to make people understand a little bit more about themselves. He concludes: “The thing about emotional intelligence is that from the moment you show the benefits and the impact it can have on a person’s life, is amazing. Our primary focus is not just results for the business’ sake, but the people. If we can positively impact one life, it’s already a great result for us because this person is going to impact everybody around them.”

Thank you Marcelo for sharing your EQ journey with us!

If you would like to share your story and be featured in future newsletters please email [email protected]

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Want more resources about organizational performance?

• The Inside Path To Change Management​
• Why change efforts fail. And how to use emotional intelligence to make them more successful
• Collaboration at Work: 5 questions that predict how well teams connect, create and collaborate – and emotional intelligence tips to implement them with your team

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