Enhancing Leadership and Influence Through Love and Emotional Intelligence - Eri Cardos

Can love truly be the secret ingredient to effective leadership? Eri Cardos, founder of Relearn Love LLC and leadership coach, joins us to unpack why love is more than a romantic notion—it's a strategic tool for professional success. Drawing from her experiences at Amazon and with high-profile clients, Eri reveals how nurturing personal relationships can actually amplify one's influence in the workplace. Together, we explore the often-overlooked connection between personal vulnerability and professional clarity, challenging conventional views on leadership skills. Eri's insights provoke a deep reflection on the rarity of truly successful long-term relationships and the necessity of dedicated coaching to achieve this success.

In today's world, where emotional intelligence is becoming a critical leadership skill, we discuss the integration of emotional skills and body awareness into personal and professional development. Eri explains the growing trend of companies adopting holistic practices, such as yoga and meditation, to foster well-being and address varying levels of trauma that might impede growth. With highlights from her bestselling book, "Relationship Agreements," we uncover how clear agreements can reduce conflict and enhance intimacy in all types of relationships—from romantic partners to colleagues and friends. This episode promises valuable takeaways on setting expectations and building trust, transforming how you approach both leadership and personal connections.

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Chapters

• 0:04 Love and Leadership
• 13:16 Emotional Skills and Relationship Agreements

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hello and welcome listeners to Pleasure Principles with your host, sana, where we dive deep into the art, science and sometimes messy reality of creating fulfilling relationships, leadership and pleasure-filled lives. Leadership and pleasure-filled lives. Now, today we have a truly electrifying guest for all of your listeners Eri Cardos, the founder and lead coach of Relearn Love LLC. Now I'll just share a bit about Erin with all of you. Erin is not just a powerhouse speaker and coach. She is a game changer for leaders looking to amplify their influence in the boardroom by first deepening their connection in the bedroom yeah, you heard it right. And her science based methods help leaders melt away conflict, reignite passion and transform relationships into their secret weapon for success.

Speaker 1: 1:11

From TEDx talks and global retreats in Bali to relationships into their secret indoor coaching Hollywood celebrities and Fortune 500 executives, aries Wisdom has created ripple effects worldwide. So everyone get ready to learn why love isn't just romantic. It is strategic. Buckle up, because this episode is going to inspire, challenge and maybe even redefine the way you approach love and leadership. So, eri, welcome to the show and it's an absolute pleasure having you with us today. Thank you, sana, I'm so excited to be here. So, eri, you often say that love is the ultimate leadership skill. So can you unpack that for us, and how does improving personal relationships impact? Professional influence.

Speaker 2: 2:00

Sure, and to answer that, let me rewind time a little bit and give you a little bit about my history. So I was on the leadership development team at Amazoncom for many years and as I was supporting our executives, I found that with time and trust, that my leaders began opening up more and more to me and I started learning about challenges happening outside of work at home. And I started learning about challenges happening outside of work at home and there was this sense of loneliness. Whether people were single and they were feeling lonely, or they were in relationships and they're feeling lonely, things just weren't working out. And there were these stories of look at me, I've climbed the corporate ladder, I've become successful in the world, and yet why are matters at home, matters of the heart, so challenging? Why can't I communicate with my significant other better and or find love and keep it? And so there was just a lot of inner turmoil and I had been trained in coaching already and I asked consent if I could please work with them on matters of the heart as well, and I began coaching people about their love lives, and what I found is that when things were good at home, when things were good in the bedroom, not just around like sexuality, but around matters of the heart and vulnerability and intimacy of all kinds. The leaders would come to work feeling more alive, more clear, more focused, more driven, and it would have a ripple effect into their teams, which was incredible. So I watched entire organizations shift just by how we were taking away the challenges at home and bringing this happiness into their world. And you know, great communications at at home translate into great communication skills of the office.

Speaker 2: 3:48

What I found next was that people were referring me out to their friends. Soon I was coaching executives at Google, microsoft, boeing, spacex, relativity and then Hollywood actors went beyond. What I found is it didn't matter what you're good at in the world went beyond. And what I found is it didn't matter what you're good at in the world. We all struggle at some level with okay, but what is really healthy when it comes to love and relationships and how can I have this thing that I desire that I probably didn't learn how to do very well growing up. So that shifted a lot of what I was doing and why I wanted to do it, and I decided to eventually leave Amazon and pursue making changes in the world through helping people relearn love, and I wrote a bestselling book called Relationship Agreements and have been speaking at different conferences all over the world, and very soon you'll be seeing my TEDx coming out, so I'm very excited for that too. So hopefully that gives you a taste of that leadership shift and how much it can impact your career.

Speaker 1: 4:49

I 100% agree with you. 100% agree with you Also. What does relearning love mean, and why is it such a critical concept for leaders and lovers alike?

Speaker 2: 5:03

Sure. So I love to ask this question. I'll ask all the listeners out there and to you too, sana. I love to ask how many happy, healthy, long-term couples do you know Happy, healthy, long-term couples? However you want to define it, it doesn't matter, and I've asked this question to thousands of people and I've taught, and what I find is that the majority of people sadly I wish it was different, but the majority of people that I meet can identify between zero and three happy, healthy, long-term couples that they actually know.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Yeah. And then yeah, All the traits don't match together. I know long-term couple, my parents are there, but to be honest, happy, healthy it's too far-fetched.

Speaker 2: 6:02

Right. And yet, at the same time, we have this social shaming that occurs where you're supposed to be good at it, even though we don't have models of this right. So if I said, sana, I'm going to start a new business today and I'm going to hire a business coach, you'd say, ari, of course you're going to. You're going to learn from them very quickly. You'll be making money faster. You'll learn from their mistakes. You don't have to repeat them. This is going to be fantastic. You're going to have strategies that work. And if I said, okay, sana, I'm going to learn how to play tennis. I hired a tennis coach, he said, yes, of course you did, ari, you're going to learn how to play properly. You're not going to screw up your shoulder, you'll have a good form, you'll be playing better and faster and you'll be playing at more advanced levels of ease, so much sooner. You're going to have a lot of fun.

Speaker 2: 6:43

And if I said I don't know, I'm going to hire a relationship coach or a therapist, most people respond with oh, I'm so sorry, things must be really screwed up. It's just baffling. It's like where is this line of it's so beautiful and supported to have personal development? But when it comes to matters of the heart, you're just supposed to naturally be good at it, even though no one we know, or very few people we know, are naturally good at or doing it well. And we didn't learn these skills, like really healthy skills, when we were growing up. Most of our parents weren't relationship researchers with the cutting edge, you know know-how. They were just humans repeating what they saw modeled around them, and it's generation after generation of things that don't work. So we did learn love. We learned something that is quite unhealthy in most cases, or ineffective or just not going to get us what we desire. And then we're under the pressure not to actually learn the skills and the science of love but instead just to figure it out on our own. And there's shame in getting support, which is really sad because we I mean I cannot tell you how many leaders I know who will admit in the quiet moments as we're talking they'll admit that they couldn't focus in their meeting because they kept checking their phone to see if their spouse texted them after the fight they had last night. You know it's. It's so real, it's so personal for all of us and I just really invite people to lean into the idea that there's new possibilities.

Speaker 2: 8:23

And what you learned we all were modeled love before the age of seven. It was ingrained in our nervous system and what it was is these messages that don't work. It's kind of a lose-lose game that we were taught. Instead, we get to change the game and we get to choose to relearn love, learn the actual art and science of love. We have so much great research out there. It's no longer a guessing game of how does great love, how does great pleasure, how do great relationships work? What's the recipe? We know this, we know these tools and we just need to become more socially accepting that we can go out and there's pride in learning and growing and we can support each other in this and how we really learn love. It will impact our entire world, from how we are with our children, how we are with our parents, how we are with our colleagues. It just shifts everything when we have a different mindset around what is possible.

Speaker 1: 9:28

You well explained. Ari would argue that, blending love and leadership, it could blur boundaries or make people vulnerable in ways that aren't ideal for the workplace. So how do you address this concern?

Speaker 2: 9:50

I love this question. Yeah, when I'm working with my clients, I speak at large corporations like Amazon and Microsoft, and I do a lot of private work with singles and couples, and what I find is that there are differences in how you're going to show up in your loving romantic relationships than how you show up at work. There's a different level of vulnerability romantic relationships than how you'd show up at work. There's a different level of vulnerability. However, there's a lot of crossover that people really struggle with, where, if you can master it with your trusted significant other, then it will translate into the workplace and help you become a better leader.

Speaker 2: 10:33

For example, one of the main things I hear people complain about is they don't know how to set boundaries. How do I set a healthy boundary for myself? Well, if you can test it out and learn it with your beloved, with your significant other, and you can learn how to identify what you need, identify what your boundaries are and learn how to communicate those in a compassionate way, it translates that when you go into the office, you have more confidence in how do I set healthy boundaries with my colleagues? How do I help them set healthy boundaries for themselves? Because we all know that burnout is real and it's a huge challenge, and it leads to all sorts of problems, including recruiting problems, right? So, for the good of the company, for the good of your team, learning a skill such as boundary setting can have a huge impact on your deliverables and your ROI.

Speaker 2: 11:30

Now, boundaries is one area. Communication is another huge one. Most people don't know how to communicate effectively. They're using old tools or they're trying to dictate or control without learning how to connect and inspire and communicate with what was really at the heart. There are ways you can be vulnerable as a leader. You don't need to expose everything that you would expose your beloved right, but learning how to communicate and still tap into humanity is such an incredible skill set that I think we're going to need more and more of as we move into the world that is supported by AI. We need to tap into our humanity as leaders if we want to stand out and be different.

Speaker 1: 12:21

Sure sure to our humanity as leaders if we want to stand out and be different. Also, you have, in your coaching, focuses on science and also somatic-based methods. So what are some surprising, or I would say rather counterintuitive, discoveries you have made about how the body and brain shape intimacy.

Speaker 2: 12:42

Yeah, that's a great question also, I love your questions. I would say most I'm going to come from the angle of leadership first. You know, for me, I earned my MBA at one of the top business schools in the world and the things I learned there and in Amazon and just working in the corporate space, we're so focused on developing our cognitive skills which is wonderful it is. You know, iq is so important. At the same time, there wasn't very much addressing emotional skills or, and even less, talking about the body. And I think now, like things are beginning to shift and you'll see more progressive companies bringing things in like yoga or, you know, gym memberships and talking about health and talking about being in your body and meditation. Right, we're starting to see more and more of this more holistic shift in what is leadership and how do we take care of ourselves. But there's still so much left untapped or undiscussed around how our bodies remember everything. You know there's a wonderful book called your Body Keeps the Score and we just talk about how our bodies lock in trauma and I know trauma is kind of a buzzword these days, but it's important to know about.

Speaker 2: 14:05

When I say trauma, I mean there's two main types of trauma that I'm referencing One. There's trauma with a capital T, that there are terrible things that happen to some people, like war or rape, that cause PTSD. And then there's another kind of trauma. That's a lowercase t trauma, where we all have this. We collectively, all have lowercase t trauma. And it could have been something as simple. As you were an infant laying in your crib and you were crying, your mother walked towards you to pick you up, but then the doorbell rang and she decided I'm going to get the door first and then come back for the baby. And you didn't have the context, you didn't have the tools for coping with this. All you knew is that your caregiver walked away from you in your moment of need, and that causes lowercase T trauma in our nervous system.

Speaker 2: 14:54

So then we grow up, creating all these amazing defenses, all these ways to protect ourselves, and while these are helpful for us as children, as we turn to adults, they oftentimes are the exact same things that are holding us back from achieving the thing that we want, because we have these fears, we have these insecurities, we have these stories that we've created and our bodies remember and they're like no, we are going to keep you safe. We're going to keep you safe. And while they're really well-intentioned and I believe that these protectors are here for us at the same time they often are the things that prevent us from going to the next level in our career, going to the next level in our leadership, going to the next level in love and really connecting deeply with the things we desire. So in the work that I do with my clients, and even in workshops, when I teach them, it's a lot about how do we connect all of it, how do we connect all of you here? So it's not just the brain.

Speaker 2: 15:52

We're bringing the brain online, the heart online, the body online. It doesn't have to be super woo-woo, right? Well, we can tune in and feel that all of this is you and all of it matters, and we can learn how to be with our breath and we can feel when we have different sensations in our bodies, when we're feeling lonely. We can learn to tune in to how the pain in our neck and shoulders may actually be a messenger for us about something that is causing emotional disconnect or is causing stress in your life. We get to really bring ourselves into a state that's considering all the messages and gets to do a more holistic sense of understanding and healing, instead of just trying to analyze our way out of everything which doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 16:47

That is interesting, interesting. And also, how do relationship agreements you know it's outlined in your bestselling book Auxiliary? How does it create a framework for reducing conflict and boosting intimacy? You know, can leaders adopt similar principles? You know aligning to these at work.

Speaker 2: 17:10

Great question. So you know, as I mentioned before, in my past life I was at Amazon and a lot of the things that I supported teams with were under human resources and my father is a lawyer and a hospital CEO and I just learned so much from watching them looking at the importance of having written agreements. And you know, in most of these cases it was contract, formal contract, legally binding contracts, but they made everything so clear. So, from a business perspective, the clarity people had gave people a sense of reassurance and trust and there were no more assumptions and expectations. Everything was laid out ahead of time.

Speaker 2: 17:54

And then we look at relationships and what causes so much stress in romantic relationships, but not just romantic. I mean challenges with any deep relationship with your best friend, with your colleagues, with your kids, with your parents. When we look at these, so much of the suffering that occurs is because someone in the relationship had an expectation or an assumption and it wasn't discussed clearly ahead of time. And then when the trespass happened, probably unintentionally by the other person, then there's hurt, there's pain and we don't know how to talk about that. We don't know how to address it. It just feels almost like betrayal so much of the time. So when I work with leaders, both at home and in the office, usually we'll begin. Most of my clients come to me to begin at home and then we translate things into the office, which is really fun. I love it. So we'll begin at home. We'll say, okay, like, let's just begin with looking at your family dynamic, what is happening, what is? Without making any assumptions, if you could start with a blank slate and create the relationship that you really desire, what is it that you want? What would your roles around the house be? How would you handle finances? How do you be really conscious about your intimacy and when and how you're connecting and going on dates and who's in charge of the date? Right, there's so much here we get to talk about and, you know, maybe I've even had little things like who does the dishes, and maybe for years one person's been doing the dishes but they've been holding resentment around it and then we begin to just talk about it and turns out the other person kind of misses doing the dishes and that used to be really meditative for them, but they don't want to say anything because they believe their spouse loves doing the dishes. And we just start to uncover these stories that we hold that are keeping us stuck and building resentment, and we get to create something new that works for everyone. So everyone wins.

Speaker 2: 19:57

When you have these skills at home and you are, I really encourage my clients to write them down. We create what I call a living document, right? So this is not a legally binding contract. We're looking at how do we just get clear and talk through and use this as a connection tool to go deeper in our agreements and our relationship, and we can always change them whenever we want. We can change them, but we change them as a team and we don't trespass. We don't cross any of those boundaries before we first make a new agreement and change it together. So we're never going to intentionally hurt anyone agreement and change it together. So we're never going to intentionally hurt anyone.

Speaker 2: 20:32

Once we can practice this at home, it's really wonderful to take this into the workplace and you're going to make a different version of the workplace, especially if you're leading a team, but getting really clear on what are our team agreements, what is our vision, where are we going, what are each of our roles in this and then, without making assumptions, checking in on the health of your team and saying what is inspiring you, what do you want to be doing in this year with your life and your career, what would light you up and where do you want to be developed more Great?

Speaker 2: 20:59

Now we know where you want to go, what is draining you and exhausting you and bringing you out, and maybe we can see if somebody else would be excited to be doing that work. Let's not make assumptions that just because we have a certain job title, that that is necessarily the right way to pursue this year and develop us as a team in a way that's going to really get the most out of us. And this comes from making clear agreements, and this can also help you set deadlines and be really clear in how we communicate with each other and clear up any old stories that are there. So it's a wonderful tool both at home and in the office, and I just see when we can shift into a mindset of curiosity. There's so much more as possible.

Speaker 1: 21:43

True, that's true, and I think communication is very, very, I think it's the most crucial. Communication is very, very, I think, the most crucial. What I realized, um, you know, because, uh, in our childhood we are not taught much to communicate effectively and clearly, or maybe, when we are saying something you know enunciate or you know, uh, so that there is no miscommunication while expressing our thoughts or feelings. So I think that's a very, very important ingredient, one of the most important ingredient. It's like salt, it's so good. Yeah, um, it's a really, really a good explanation area. And before we wrap up, of course, uh, if our listeners, they would wish to connect with you and understand, explore more about how they can leverage love in their professional and personal lives, in developing good leadership skills, and also, if they want to check out your book, how they can.

Speaker 2: 22:42

Yes, of course. So the easiest way is go to my website, which is relearnlovecom. I'm also on Instagram at CoachAriKardosh that's Coach C-O-A-C-H, ari E-R-I Kardosh, k-a-r-d-o-scom, or on Instagram, and I just love to stay connected. So when you go to my website, there's a lot of free offerings. There's a free masterclass for singles or people in relationships, and then from there there's so many other resources, including links to the audiobook version of Relationship Agreements and the Amazon book. I also lead a singles group every couple of months. The next one starts very soon, and I do private coaching for people all over the world. It doesn't matter where you are. Our family is based in Bali, indonesia, but we travel all over, usually run speaking tour for about four to six months every year, so we'll be coming to your neighborhood soon. So come to the website, check me out, send me a little message. If there's any way I can support you, or questions I have, or questions you have, or you're in search of resources, just ask. I'd be delighted to point you in the right direction.

Speaker 1: 23:53

Absolutely, absolutely. So, listeners, we'll have all the details mentioned in the show notes for all of you to reach out to. Eri and Eri. Thank you so much for opening our hearts and minds to this possibility that love is more than just personal. It's a leadership strategy and a career amplifier, and also a path to greater joy and fulfillment in life. Thank you so much. Thank you. So, to all of our listeners, I would say that relearning love doesn't mean you are broken. It means you are evolving you, you are growing. So, to learn more about eri and her transformative work, check out the show notes along with this episode. And and those of you dreaming of tropical, tropical retreats and relationship breakthroughs maybe bali is calling your name. So this has been pleasure principles with your host, sana. Until next time, keep leading with love and loving with purpose. See you soon, thank you.