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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.

A Shift from Success to Fulfillment: How Dr. Huong Nguyen Found Balance Through Emotional Intelligence

by Maddalena Campitelli

“Instead of being tired all the time, I feel more relaxed. Instead of being overwhelmed, I feel peaceful.”– Huong Nguyen

This month we sit down with Ms. Huong Nguyen, a medical doctor and certified EQ Coach, EQ Facilitator, Practitioner and Assessor who has been working to expand her local EQ community in Vietnam.

Feeling achieved at work is not everything: The need for a change
Huong is a physician by training. She worked for 15 years in a hospital specializing in cardiovascular disease, then worked for 20 years in the corporate life insurance industry, where she rose to a position on the senior management team.

In 2020, she decided to embark on another chapter of her working life and, after 35 years of experience in the healthcare and corporate world, began a career as a trainer and coach. She has been a full-time EQ coach ever since.

Why make the transition to emotional intelligence training and coaching?

After over 3 decades of working in the corporate world, Huong knew that she had achieved a lot, received good feedback on her work, and had many successes. At the same time, however, she always felt tired and overwhelmed. She spent a lot of energy managing a heavy workload, stress, and difficult situations. She therefore felt that something was missing in her life and decided to make a change: she realized that she wanted to better understand how she felt and to take better care of herself – and others

Huong started with self-awareness. From there she realized that the first step was to really understand her own emotions, to know herself better, and then to be able to notice others’ feelings as well and work better in a team. Through her 35 years of experience working with people, she realized that there is no limit to people’s potential. “There must be a tool or a way to motivate and unleash this potential!,” she thought.

That is another reason why she decided to retire from the corporate world and start her new career as a trainer and coach. In the beginning, although she was very motivated and interested in the subject, she did not have much knowledge and needed to reach a deeper level of what emotions were and how they worked. So she started looking for an organization that specialized in exploring and working with emotions and found Six Seconds – The Emotional Intelligence Network. In the network she met Huong Vu – Six Seconds’ country manager for Vietnam – and they have worked together since 2020. Huong felt clear that she needed to involve emotions more in what she was doing, and she already knew about emotional intelligence because she was interested in the topic, so she specifically looked for an organization that could support her in this regard.

How Huong is using EQ in her job and daily life
After she started practicing EQ, Huong noticed a growing ability to correctly name emotions and describe how she felt. From there, she noticed that she would also be able to notice and name others’ feelings more accurately. Paying attention to these aspects allowed her to reflect on the messages that emotions convey, the underlying thoughts that support them, and the consequent behaviors they induce.

As a coach, Huong uses all of EQ’s Six Seconds competencies and also conducts leadership training, since most of her clients are managers, especially those newly promoted to that role. Over time, she has noticed that people come to her because they lack self-awareness. In this regard, she sees a similarity between how she felt before EQ and how her clients say they feel when they ask her for support: they feel accomplished, but tired and overwhelmed. They would like to be effective, but also enjoy what they do and feel like they are thriving

When I ask Huong what Six Seconds tools she thinks are most effective with her clients, she replies instantly: “the EQ Coach cards and the Brain Talent cards!”, which she constantly uses and finds useful not only for coaching, but also in normal conversations in her daily life. She thinks they are very straightforward, handy and easy for people to understand. She doesn’t need to explain the meaning of the questions, she just raises the question and it’s easy for her clients to reflect and answer <Get your own deck of EQ Coach cards here and the Brain Talent cards here>. Huong adds that something she finds very popular and requested among her clientele is the Brain Talent Profile because managers can apply it with their employees and it is very helpful for the whole team.

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Meet Huong Nguyen LinkedIn →

Professional achievements: Huong is an emotional intelligence (EQ) coach, facilitator and trainer. She is passionate about maximizing organizational performance, engagement and transformation through increased self-awareness, enhanced ability to make powerful choices and the development of a purpose-driven future. Huong holds the PCC credential from ICF and the Coach Supervision from EMCC. She is also a Six Seconds Business Development Consultant in APAC and earned professional designations of certified EQ coach, Brain Profiler and Advanced Facilitator. Huong is a medical doctor by training and spent 15 years developing resilience and the ability to make fast decisions in the emergency and intensive care units. After moving to Ho Chi Minh City in 2000 she joined the corporate world as an underwriter in the insurance industry. She has held senior leadership roles in the health care and life insurance industries for over 35 years all up. She was COO at Generali Life and later at FWD Life before retiring from corporate life in 2020 and moving into people development. Huong’s training and coaching style is present, supportive, encouraging, challenging and oriented towards individuals’ transformation. Huong’s coaching philosophy is to create an environment where people can have time and space to find their own answers. Self-reflection is key! She listens, asks and connects – Listening for the underlying issues; Asking powerful questions that expand awareness and provoke new learning; Connecting with the client and connecting the dots to develop the map moving forward with wisdom and insight.  

Favorite Six Seconds Learning Philosophy: “Emotions drive people”

Learn about Six Seconds Learning Philosophy →

Noble Goal: “Nurture mutual Trust and Perceptions”

Learn about Six Seconds Noble Goals →  

Her “Don’t Miss This” Six Seconds tools & courses: EQ Coach cards and Brain Talent cards

How her work makes a difference and transformational stories
Huong says she is someone who likes to be prepared for everything and is constantly thinking about possible future scenarios. Therefore, she always managed to achieve her goals efficiently and get things done, but at what cost? Her attitude required a lot of effort and time, which is why most of the time she felt tired and overwhelmed.

But since she started practicing emotional intelligence, she has changed: now she is able to relax and not constantly worry about the future and try to control it. She says: “I am focused on the present and I am able to let past experiences go. Now I see the past as data so I am more able to release it (…) By practicing EQ I realized that the future is beyond my control, and I’m less worried about it.”. That’s why the big difference EQ brought to her life and work is that she learned to focus on the present, the here and now. This way she can save energy and time, while still being very effective in her work. She says: “Instead of being tired all the time, I feel more relaxed. Instead of being overwhelmed, I feel peaceful.”.

Huong recalls a very task-oriented, results-focused, client she worked with who had achieved notable success at work, including promotions, but felt tired and overwhelmed – much like Huong herself during her corporate career.

After the training with Huong, this person is now able to name his emotions and validate them, to explore the messages behind them, to be aware that there is not just one emotion, but that one can feel several at the same time. He now feels calmer and more patient, which helps him make better decisions. He says the burden of work has become more pleasant, because before he used to focus only on the results, whereas now he focuses on the process. He used to focus on the goals to be achieved, while now he focuses on how to do the work to get there. By focusing on the process, he can now better see the progress he is making, instead of just rushing to get something done. This makes the journey enjoyable!

Another big change for him was to move from a task orientation to a people orientation. Before, focusing solely on the goal prevented him from seeing the other people around him, while focusing on the process allowed him to connect more and get closer to the people he worked with .

When I ask Huong how the changes she sees in her clients make her feel, she says: “I see the power of emotions.” The messages emotions carry and their wisdom is one aspect of it, and the other is the potential. When people know how and what they are feeling, and they explore the message behind feelings, they can find motivation to unleash their full potential. They are then able to see the WHY of what they are doing, the “Give Yourself” – one of the three pillars of the Six Seconds circular model of EQ delivers the “why”-. When you Give Yourself you are clear and full of energy so you stay focused on why to respond a certain way, why to move in a new direction, and why others should come on board the Six Seconds model of EQ>. Therefore, people are also able to find and engage their intrinsic motivation – what at Six Seconds is defined as the energy and drive led by personal values and commitments rather than by external forces <Learn how to Engage Intrinsic Motivation in the Six Seconds EQ model>. Huong clearly realized that wellbeing is essential to her and she managed to shift from well-doing to well-being.

Past, Present and Future
Huong wonders if she would have continued to work in the hospital if she’d discovered emotional intelligence earlier in life – a setting where the relationship with patients and coworkers is so important. Perhaps practicing EQ as a doctor would have made it better, or maybe she actually needed to completely change what she was doing anyway. Apart from everything, she thinks that EQ is important in every job.

Even though EQ was not the priority in the old environments she worked in, one thing Huong surely feels grateful about her past work experiences is that it gave her the opportunity to work in close contact with people and she learned a lot.

When she thinks about the years she has been studying medicine and then the following ones working as a doctor, she realizes that she was exclusively focused on the past – as in order to make an accurate diagnosis of the patients, doctors need to take into account the clinical history. Then while working for the life insurance company she had to focus on the future – making predictions and prognostications on people’s life expectancy . Finally, now she can focus on the present, and enjoy what she is doing, not thinking too much about the past, and not worry too much about the future.

Thank you Huong 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 on Self-Awareness?
10 Tips for Increasing Self-Awareness
How to Enhance Emotional Literacy in the Six Seconds Model of EQ
How to Recognize Patterns in the Six Seconds Model of EQ