Helping leaders motivate their people to a higher level of performance through strong human relations, team building, and goalajiving. This is the seven Minute Leadership Podcast with your host Paul Fello Aledo.
Hello everyone, and welcome to the seven Minute Leadership Podcast. It's episode five forty four. Today. I want to give you something that will change how you lead starting today. It is a simple habit, A lens you can carry in your pocket, and once you start using it, you will never look at your conversations the same way again. I call it emotional return on investment. You already measure the return on investment of money, time, effort, and resources.
Leaders do that all day long. One thing most leaders never track is the emotional return they leave behind after every interaction. This one idea explains why some teams thrive while others crumble, even when everything else on the surface looks the same. Here is the question to ask, after every conversation, meeting, email, hallway, chat, shift change, or coaching moment, did I leave this person more energized, less energized, or neutral? That is emotional ROI and it is one of the
cleanest mirrors you can hold up to your leadership. Let me tell you how I learned this Many years ago. I was leading a project that was running hot pressure. Everywhere. People were tired and stretched. I started noticing something strange. There were two employees who always walked into my office with the same body language, shoulders slightly forward in a quiet hesitation, like they were bracing for impact. I kept thinking it was the project. Then one day I stepped
back and tracked my emotional ROI. I asked myself the same question I'm asking you, what did they get from me? After each interaction and every time, I realized I was giving them urgency without clarity, intensity without reassurance, and feedback without any direction. My energy was costing them confidence. That was the return I was giving. The moment I realized that that was what was happening, everything shifted for me. Emotional ROI became a habit. Then it became second nature.
Then it became a standard. I hold myself too every day. And here's why this works. Patterns appear. You start to see who you elevate, who you accidentally drain, who you stay neutral with, and most importantly, what those patterns say about how you show up. Leaders love to think their intentions matter the most, but emotional ROI exposes the reality how did they feel when they walked away from you? Because that feeling becomes the story they tell themselves about
working with you. Enough of those stories stitch together creates the culture of the team, and that is why emotional ROI becomes one of the best culture scorecards that you could ever use. So let me show you how to use this at a practical level. You don't need a long system. You need a note on your phone or a page in your notebook. After every interaction, put a quick mark beside one of these three letters E, D or N, Energized, drained or neutral. It takes two seconds.
At the end of the week, review it. That review is where the gold is. Maybe you'll see that you energize your top performers but drain your new hires. That tells you your coaching style needs more reassurance. Maybe you will see that you stay neutral with peers, which means your communication style feels transactional. Neutral feels safe, but it rarely inspires. Maybe you'll see that one specific person drains
you every time. That means you have an unresolved issue with them that you have not addressed and it is starting to leak into the culture. Emotional ROI exposes these things so you can fix them before they grow. Now here is your action move In every one on one conversation, give one piece of energy, rich feedback, recognition, clarity, or purpose. Pick one and deliver it in a clean sentence. Recognition sounds like I saw how you handled that situation yesterday
and it made the team better. Clarity sounds like here is the outcome I need from you next, so you know exactly what success looks like. And purpose sounds like what you were doing here matters because it directly affects the experience for the people we serve. Those sentences cost you nothing, and they give people fuel that lasts for days. That is emotional ROI in action, because you are intentionally sending someone out of that conversation with more energy than
they came into it with. And if you do this for one month, something big will happen. People will start walking into meetings with less tension. Team conversations will feel smoother. You will see fewer defensive reactions. You will notice people volunteering ideas instead of protecting themselves. That shift is not luck, It is leadership math. The more emotional ROI you put in,
the more energy the team produces. Leaders who ignore emotional ROI always wonder why their teams crumble slowly without a visible cause. Leaders who track it understand why their teams stay resilient even when things get tough. It always comes back to the energy you circulate. So here is your challenge for the next seven days, your emotional ROI and commit to one energy rich sentence in every one on one.
Do this and watch the patterns reveal themselves. Patterns tell the truth and once you know the truth, change becomes easy. And before we wrap up, I want to let you know that my YouTube channel is now home to leadership content from the show. I'm adding leadership short videos built from the strongest moments in each episode, and I will be uploading select full video interviews too. So if YouTube is your platform, head over to my channel and subscribe.
Link is in the description of the show and on my website. Your support there helps push this message to more leaders who need it around the world. This has been the seven Minute Leadership Podcast, and I thank you for listening.
For more Paul Fell of Alito Podcast, visit Paul Fell of a etail dot com