Hello. It’s Julia. Welcome back to my weekly newsletter exploring the ways we communicate and connect at work and beyond. I’m SO excited to share the first podcast interview edition of The Switchboard! Thank you Rich Hua for being the first guest. There’s also a written Q&A below.
If you enjoy this interview, consider sharing it with a friend or coworker or posting a learning on LinkedIn. I am grateful for your support to grow this community of caring communicators and connectors. Now, on with the show…
In This Edition
💗 The Power of Emotional Intelligence (EQ): Rich's journey highlights the importance of EQ in personal and professional success.
🌱 Personal Growth and Transformation: His story is a testament to the possibility of becoming better every day to find your path and reach your dreams.
🎓 When Passion and Purpose Align: Pursue your interests and you never know what professional or personal path might result.
About Rich
Rich Hua is a technology strategist and innovation evangelist, and he currently serves as the Worldwide Head of EPIC Leadership at AWS. His mission is to upskill leaders in emotional intelligence and interpersonal dynamics, enabling them to lead with greater Empathy, Purpose, Inspiration, and Connection (EPIC). Rich has spent decades training and mentoring people in leadership and interpersonal skills—from CEOs to aspiring managers to early career professionals. He is the founder of EQ@Amazon which, at 70,000+ members, composes the largest employee affinity group at the company and the largest corporate-based EQ community in the world.
Building on the success of the internal initiative, Rich launched the EPIC program to empower AWS customers with emotional-social skills to augment their innovation capabilities. In total, he and his team have reached over 1.3 million Amazonians and customers. Rich's keynotes and workshops are consistently the top-rated sessions at large-scale events such as re:Invent, ExecLeaders, Imagine for Nonprofits, and Sales Kickoff, and his training content has been integrated into dozens of onboarding, sales, and leadership development programs across multiple divisions of Amazon globally. Today Rich focuses on scaling EPIC skills to customers in every part of the world as part of AWS Innovation and Transformation Programs.
What sparked your path into the field that you're in?
It begins with a story of a young child who was born in Taiwan and came to America at four years old, and nobody would have accused him of having any emotional intelligence whatsoever. That was, of course, me, and when I came to America, I had several things going against me. I didn't speak English, I had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and I was very socially awkward. I had a really hard time making friends. There were a lot of unpleasant emotions that I experienced, and so, at a young age, I decided to turn all my emotions off as a way to cope. I eventually figured out that I was pretty smart, so I decided to focus on my IQ. My goal was to be an “unfeeling genius.”
That plan worked out pretty well for a while. I got straight A's in high school. I got a perfect score on the SAT, got into every college I applied to and studied electrical engineering and computer science. Then, something very personal totally messed up my “unfeeling genius” plan–I got married. My wife actually didn’t care about the genius part, and she really didn’t like the “unfeeling genius” thing. She wanted things such as emotional connection, empathy, and vulnerability–things I was woefully ill-equipped to offer. I realized that I really needed to work on my emotional-social skills.
In another twist, rather than going directly into engineering, I worked as a missionary in the Philippines for 3 years and then served as an evangelist in the U.S. for another 20 years. So from both a personal and professional perspective, I realized that my social-emotional skills would really make a difference, and they certainly have.
What I realized as I matured in life was that ignoring my feelings (trying to be an “unfeeling genius”)was a suboptimal way of living. I was missing out on so many of the things that life had to offer. I was also not performing as well as I wanted to, whether it was on the job or personally, because I didn't have this whole other set of skills there.
To continue the story, I pivoted back into the corporate world over 12 years ago. I would say that I'm surrounded by a lot of really smart people, high IQs everywhere — tech industry, corporate world, all that. And the thing that has differentiated me among many, many high IQ people is EQ. I'm smart enough. They're smart enough, but it's capabilities like cognitive control, grit, resilience, staying cool under pressure, being able to influence and inspire other people, that really have been the secret to my success. And that's what I teach people of all levels of leadership around the world.
What an incredible path you've led. And I love that it's grounded in faith and community and the many directions that you've taken it. You started at Amazon, not necessarily in this role. This was a side project?
What I did was, when I was actually serving as an evangelist, I started teaching people in the community about emotional-social intelligence, because I'd experienced such a benefit in my own life. I'd become a better person, a more connected person, a more successful person because of these “human” skills.
When I pivoted back into the corporate world, I went to Oracle, and I was there for four years, and I started training people in these skills because I saw a lot of people who, again, were very smart with high IQ, but had real gaps on the human, social-emotional side. I thought I could help them be even more successful. So I actually wound up creating programs that trained several thousands of people. Then eight and a half years ago, I came to Amazon. I was first in sales as an account manager, and then I got recruited to be the global business development leader for our cloud database, Aurora.
And it was during that time that it actually just started giving talks about emotional intelligence. I saw the exact same thing, right? Lots of really smart people with varying degrees of EQ. And I thought, I can help my colleagues by sharing what I know. So I started giving talks to basically whoever would listen. It was a few people here, a few people there, and then the big breakout was at our Sales Kickoff (SKO) in 2019!
I submitted the topic of emotional intelligence, which was totally strange to everybody at the time. No one had ever given a talk on this sort of topic at Sales Kickoff before, but some executives said, let's give this guy a chance and let's see if anybody shows up. So they put me in a room for 100 people. What happened was the day before the talk, they called me up and said, “Rich, we're going to have to move you to a bigger room because so many people tapped on your session in the event app and said they want to attend.” I asked, “Well, how much bigger?” They said “We’re moving you to a room that fits 1000 people.”
So I show up, and there are 1000 people there, and it’s standing room only. There's people outside the door who can't even get in. I got a standing ovation at the end of my talk. It turned out to be the most attended and highest rated breakout session of the event. And so I thought, “I’m onto something here.” And it really resonated. Because again, in this tech world, we index so heavily on IQ. Eventually, what happened was people started coming forward and saying, “I want to help. I want to help bring more EQ to my organization, my team.” We formed what was eventually called the EQ Champions, of which we now have 700 all over the world across Amazon. And then others started coming and saying, “I’d like to help deliver these talks like you do— it is amazing. I want to spread the word.” So I started training and certifying people to give these talks, and we now have 100 speakers–we call them EQ Evangelists–who deliver them all over the world. The amazing thing is that they are all volunteers.
I'm really happy to report that this volunteer effort has now impacted over 400,000 Amazonians all across the company globally. Three years ago, I said, you know, seeing how much of a positive impact the EQ training has had at Amazon, I bet our customers would benefit from this too. So I did what we do at Amazon to launch a new initiative–I wrote a six-page doc and floated it up to my VP. I was basically saying, “Hey, I believe we are onto something here that can really benefit customers. I'd like to create a role, hire a team, and offer this to our customers.” I, of course, included a lot of data from internal EQ sessions that indicated that this would be useful for leaders outside Amazon.
He took a chance, said, “Let's do it.” So I hired a team and launched EPIC, which stands for empathy, purpose, inspiration, and connection. It is a program that empowers leaders with emotional and social intelligence skills. When you add it all up, we're now at half a million people served, and we’re on our way to something much bigger. My mission is to bring these skills to everybody I possibly can, all over the world. My goal is actually to reach a billion people.
What a story. This is incredible. I love it. I'm so excited about your path and how much you've helped people.
I really do believe in the idea that if you build it, they will come. And what I’ve found as I've traveled all over the world is that everyone really wants the same things. It doesn’t matter what level of employee you are. You may be brand new to the workforce, a new manager, or a C-level executive. When I ask, “Who wants to be happier, healthier and more successful? Raise your hand.” There's not a single person who doesn't, because that's what everyone wants. And these are the skills that can help you achieve those things. You may be trying to be more innovative, or you want to inspire your team in a new direction, or you are kicking off a new project, or you're just trying to become a better leader. However you define success, every human being inherently has these similar motivations. Helping people actually move in the direction of being happier, healthier, and more successful (and hopefully kinder in the process) is incredibly meaningful for me, and, of course, really beneficial for them.
When you think about the work that you lead, I'm sure so much of it is grounded in values. Is there one value that really drives you to be who you are?
I believe in the meaningful existence of every human being — we're all put here for a reason, and that reason is to experience life in all its wonderful forms, and be able to make a positive impact on the world around us in whatever sphere of influence we have. For some of us, it might be a galactically large sphere, and for others, it might be smaller, but whatever sphere we have, we're meant to make a positive impact.
The book that I would reference is Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. At the core, we all really want that, we all want to live a meaningful life. This value really drives me, and that meaning is being able to take the experiences, the skills, the successes, the failures, all the things that have been invested into me, and being able to benefit others with it. That's incredibly fulfilling to me.
At Amazon, we have this really profound leadership principle, Success and Scale Bring Broad Responsibility. The idea is that as a company at our scale and with the success we've had, we should do something good for the world. And there is a phrase in the leadership principle that says “do better and be better” and really, in many ways leave the world better than when we found it, however we can. That really does drive me.
As you look back at EPIC over the past several years that you've been leading it, is there one project that you’ve been a part of it that's stood out to you? That really left an impact and you would want to share with our readers?
The most meaningful thing has been seeing tens of thousands of people not just get inspired for the moment, but actually have their lives change in a meaningful way as they become healthier, as they learn to be happier. And on their way to being successful, they also realize that being kinder and more compassionate is actually part of the formula. It's not to succeed just on your own.
The internal emotional intelligence and success community that I founded after I gave that big speech at SKO, that community is actually the largest employee group at Amazon with over 70,000 people. They all get an email from me every day with a tip for emotional intelligence and success, they're part of a vibrant Slack channel, and they attend monthly Amazon Talks where we invite luminaries to come in to share their insights and wisdom.
I have this belief that you supercharge your own growth and success by helping others. I see this come true in a big way through our 100+ EQ Evangelists, who have all been trained and certified to deliver EQ talks. Every time they go out there and give a talk, they're increasing their own ability to put EQ into practice — it’s the “See One, Do One, Teach, One” idea. And giving these talks is often the most meaningful thing they do, even though it's not actually their job.
They're not only making this great impact that's scaling exponentially and helping other people, but they are also activating that sense of meaning and purpose. They may be sales leaders, engineering leaders, marketing professionals, product managers — they’re in all types of roles, but they come back and say, “Wow, that was one of the best experiences of my week!” That intersection of skill, passion, and impact has really been amazing to witness. I feel incredibly grateful that not only do I get to do it, but I've been able to help a whole bunch of other people also experience the same sense of joy and meaning that I experience.
Is there a habit or a hack that keeps you going?
I do take time every day to think, to meditate, to calm my mind. I think having time to do that is really important because life is so busy. Too many people think they are too busy to reflect. But our brains were not made to constantly go, go, go. Sleep is part of it — making sure we get seven or more hours of sleep. But “awake quietude” is also so important. I take time each morning to quiet my mind and center myself to ask, “What do I want to do today? What's really important?” I remind myself of my values because there are so many things trying to pull me off center. So this helps me quite a bit.
Then, in the evenings, I take time to reflect. It could just be five minutes, and I think about: “What did I do today that I'm really proud of? What did I do that I’m not so proud of?” Then I ask, “What am I going to do tomorrow? What will I do the same, and what will I do differently?” Taking that time helps me grow a little bit every day. Even if it's 1%, it compounds over time, and I’ve found that to be quite powerful.
Another important habit is having a plan–not only for productivity, but for recharge and recovery. This is key for work-life harmony or work-life integration. It’s knowing what gives me energy and having a plan to replenish that energy. If I'm at work, and I do things that give me energy, then that actually helps me in my personal life. And if I do things in my personal life that give me energy, then it helps my professional life. If we can find the things that recharge our energy and intentionally put those in our lives, it can make a big difference.
As I was getting the EQ program going, I was doing it off the side of my desk while working as the global Bus Dev leader for Aurora. That was a lot of work. It didn’t happen by itself. I was essentially doing two jobs at once. But I was fortunate that both jobs gave me a lot of energy so one buoyed the other. I also have boundaries to make sure that my family and personal life are intact and healthy.
What would your TED Talk be?
It would be something like “How to Start an EQ Revolution.” Revolution is kind of a funny word. It can be either positive or negative, depending on how you use it. But we actually did start a revolution! Before I started talking about emotional intelligence at Amazon, there were pockets of people who’d heard of it, but most people had either never heard of it or they thought it was a bunch of crap. That's what a lot of people think because they don't understand it necessarily.
But then after I started putting it out there and sharing the science and the data, more and more people have said, “Hey, this actually makes sense.” And people started coming out of the woodwork and saying, “I've actually always believed in emotional-social skills, but I just didn't know what to do with it or how to talk about it.” And so again, if you build it, they will come. So I believe anybody anywhere can start revolutions for good. One thing I will say is that sometimes it’s more like an evolution. It's not like you're trying to change everything in the culture or overturn the powers that be. It's more like augmenting the culture, making it even better.
I know that I’ve been able to do what I’ve done because of Amazon’s unique culture of innovation. We have a strong culture of experimentation, trying things, and supporting wild ideas–as long as we think it may benefit customers or Amazonians. I really believe I'm in the right place at the right time with the right idea.
What parting thoughts would you like to share with the audience?
I encourage everyone to work at developing your EQ. EQ is the key factor to be happier, healthier and more successful. IQ is important, but it accounts for a minority of your long-term career success. Dr. Daniel Goleman and others have found that up to 85% of your long-term success is due to EQ, not IQ. Yet you can literally go to school for 25 years and get a PhD and never take a single course on it or read a single book about it.
If you put in the work, you can absolutely have your life changed in a positive way. And I'm pretty sure people around you will also be grateful for it! You can start by reading a book. I highly recommend Daniel Goleman's Emotional intelligence and Marc Brackett’s Permission to Feel. Another excellent one is Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves. These are three foundational books you can read, and any or all of them will help move you in the right direction. I wish everyone out there much thriving and success on your EQ journey!
Well, it sounds like EQ was always in you. Thank you Rich. It's been wonderful to have you on The Switchboard.
I am grateful for your support to grow this community of caring communicators and connectors. If you enjoyed this article, consider sharing it with a friend or coworker or posting a learning on LinkedIn. Signing off for this edition. -Julia
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