Permission to Feel with Dr. Marc Brackett

The Evolving Leader

During this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender are in conversation with Dr Marc Brackett. As the founding director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, Marc is professor in the Child Study Center at Yale, and author of the best-selling book 'Permission to Feel'. Marc’s next book ‘Dealing With Feeling – Use Your Emotions to Create the Life You Want’ is due for release in September 2025.

An award-winning researcher for 25 years, Marc has published 175 scholarly articles on the role of Emotional Intelligence in learning, decision making, creativity, relationships, physical and mental health, and workplace performance. He is also the lead developer of RULER, an evidence-based approach to social and emotional learning (SEL) that has been adopted by over 5,000 schools across the globe, improving the lives of millions of children and adults.

In addition to being featured frequently across media outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Good Morning America and more, Marc is also in demand as a keynote speaker and is co-founder of Oji Life Lab, a corporate learning firm that develops innovative digital learning systems for emotional intelligence.

Referenced during this episode:

‘How We Feel’ app: https://howwefeel.org/

‘Dealing With Feelings’ webcast: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRM-kVGeBRqdXAf7q7ut91HZQlfZSx_VX&si=oLRQ11SXM1GqTEgC

‘Permission to Feel: Unlock the power of emotions to help yourself and your children thrive’ (Quercus, 2019) https://www.amazon.co.uk/Permission-Feel-emotions-yourself-children/dp/1787478815/

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Chapters

1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. Check-in (00:04:33)

3. What was it that started the sense that emotions were so important for you to better understand? (00:04:59)

4. Why are our emotions so important to understanding in the widest context of our lives? (00:06:59)

5. Many employees don’t have the space required to articulate what they’re feeling at any given time. (00:09:48)

6. You point out in your book that emotions are a form of information and how crucial they are to making decisions, so it seems ironic that many leaders seek to suppress one of the very things that would improve their decision making. (00:11:23)

7. When people tell you that they struggle not to react or be cross or angry, how do you help them manage that? (00:14:11)

8. How do you undo some of the less helpful responses and how do people start to make that shift? (00:18:14)

9. What’s the regulation strategy when faced with resentment? (00:24:46)

10. What do you do to counter that? (00:27:01)

11. What role does meta emotion play in this? (00:28:27)

12. What have you learnt about how memory and emotions work together? (00:31:31)

13. How might leaders pay more attention to emotions when facing some of the biggest challenges? (00:34:01)

14. Can we talk about triggers? (00:39:18)

15. Tell us about the RULER system and the impact that it’s had? (00:45:32)

16. What is your perspective on how emotions are being interpreted across different parts of society? (00:50:41)

17. When does your next book come out? (00:55:06)