These “small” places can hold big lessons.

It’s easy to overlook the little things that truly build culture and connection in the workplace, but this episode is a great reminder that the way teams interact can have a big impact—on each other and on customers.

3 Takeaways from the Diner Experience:

• Community Over Task: The staff worked together seamlessly, jumping in wherever needed. They didn’t just stick to rigid roles—everyone helped out, which created a real sense of community (and made the place run like clockwork).
• Empathy & Intrinsic Motivation Matter: Genuine care for each other and pride in their work were obvious, regardless of pay or job title. These “softer” skills—empathy and motivation—were crucial to a positive environment and high performance.
• Customer Experience is Energy: Because the workforce felt connected, customers left their phones in their pockets and engaged with each other—and even strangers. The result was more than just a meal; it was a feeling of belonging and genuine connection.

In each episode, Jeff and Eric will talk about what emotional intelligence, or understanding your emotions, can do for you in your daily and work life. For more information, contact Eric or Jeff at info@spiritofeq.com, or go to their website, Spirit of EQ.

You can follow The Spirit of EQ Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Android, or on your favorite podcast player.

New episodes are available on the 2nd and 4th Wednesdays every month!

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This podcast was created to be a tool to primarily help you to discover and grow your EQ. Science and our own lived experiences confirm that the better we are at managing our emotions, the better we're going to be at making decisions. Which leads to a better life. And that's something we all want. We're glad that you've taken the time today to listen. We hope that something you hear will lead to a breakthrough. We'd really appreciate a review on your podcast platform. Please leave some comments about what you heard today, as well as follow and subscribe to the podcast. That way, you won't miss a single episode as we continue this journey.

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The SEQ Development Report is an innovative tool that combines emotional intelligence with one's spiritual life, distinct from religious contexts. The report helps individuals understand their connections with themselves, others, and their surroundings. It aims to identify areas in their lives that may need improvement and highlight their strengths, ultimately facilitating better navigation through life. To obtain the report, individuals need to contact Spirit of EQ via email at info@spiritofeq.com and complete an online assessment that takes about 15 to 20 minutes. After the assessment, a debrief session is required to review the comprehensive information provided in the report. Spirit of EQ also offers further coaching to support individuals in their personal development journey.

Hey, Jeff.

Hi, Eric.

How are you?

I'm doing pretty good.

You know, when I was, I don't know when we were talking about it, but. Are you a fan of Diners?

Oh, yeah. I mean, that's the place to eat.

Yeah. You know, I haven't been to a ton of them, but the ones that I have been to, really, really good food. So for our audience, if you think we're getting ready to go in to do a food episode, that would not. You should not feel that way. We are not turned into food critics by any stretch. But I am thinking about who's the guy that has the show Dumps and Diners or Diners and what is his name?

Is that guy. No, not Guy Fieri.

Yeah, sounds right.

Could be. But yeah, he goes to these places.

Which is another reason why you and I are not doing a food episode, because we don't know. But the reason I asked that is because you're talking about this place called Jenny's Diner, which is not. I mean, it's local to where we're at.

But this is an unpaid commercial.

A commercial first advertising.

Yeah. No, it's for our people here in central Ohio. It's on North High street here in Columbus, just south of Morse Road. We've been there about a year and a half. There's a commercial.

Right. So you had an experience there.

So tell us a little bit about that Sunday. Michelle and I, my wife, we went. We're going to go one place and it was closed. And then there's this place around and Michelle never been there before. So let's go to Jenny's. And we got there and walked in and it's a typical diner. If you've not been to an American style diner, you walk in usually on one side there's a row of booths and on the other side is a counter. And then behind the counter they're cooking the food right where you can watch them.

So there's no mystery about what's going on.

It's so amazing to me, Jeff, because my last experience with a diamond was exactly like that. It was set up exactly how you described.

Yeah, it could be the right handed or left handed. It just depends on which way it sits. Yep, that's just what they are. And we walked in, it was just after noon on Sunday and it was very, very busy and all the booths were full and there was a waiting people waiting for booths. And so we sat at the counter and the counter has got a long side and then a short side at the front and we sat on two of the seats in the short side so we could see everything going on except the people in the little waiting area. So that's where we were.

Wow. And you just. So our audience knows. I mean, you had your radar on, didn't you?

Yeah. I don't know why, but I was just very aware of what was going on in there. I don't know if it was just the feeling of the place or what, but I just really started paying attention to what was happening with the people in there and it was really good. And I just observed a lot of things that I thought was really cool.

So let me start with, and I want to touch on maybe multiple people that were there. What did you notice about the people who work there?

They were nonstop, constant, high paced.

Right?

High paced, very friendly. It was really cool to see how they worked together. If they started running low on coffee cups, whoever didn't have something in their hand at that time, went to the back of the place, got the rack of coffee cups out of the dishwasher and brought it up, or hey, I need more pancake batter. So somebody else would go back to the walk in and bring. It wasn't like you're the. You're the people preparing the food, we're the people serving the food and we don't cross.

This is maybe an odd question within that I know you could not possibly know because you'd have to read minds. But did you get a sense that they cared about one another?

Yeah, I did. You could just see how they interacted. If you've not been in a diner and you're behind the counter, you're going to bump into each other. They would bump into each other and they would just laug. You know, just carry on. Nobody was getting mad if somebody did that or got in their way, but you could tell that they enjoyed working with each other. It was just a feeling that I had and you can just see how they were acting.

So. And I don't know anything about this diner as far as the owner and how they pay their people and all that good stuff, but typically you would not expect that these are not high paying jobs.

No.

And I'm maybe coming at this from the back end to maybe dispel the idea that the only way you can be happy in a job is if you're being paid a lot of money.

Well, I think there's lots of studies that say the paid does not directly relate to how much you make.

So through observation and if all that you describe does describe their Feelings toward one another as employees and recognizing that everybody has a bad day, so it's not always gonna be sunshine and rainbows. Right. Do you feel like you got a sense that these are people who truly wanted to be there?

Yeah, you could tell that. I mean, I've been in the workforce a long time and I know when I didn't wanna be there, people could tell. And when I was around somebody that, like you said it, they were just having a bad day that day or something. But yeah, you can tell. Just, just pay attention to the body language and, and just, just watch.

So, you know, one thing. Actually two things come to my mind. I mean, intrinsic motivation as a competency seems to kind of connect here based on what you observed and, and maybe some of the healthy assumptions that these are not necessarily people who are building a long term career of being a waiter, waitress, busboy, bus girl, whatever you want to call it. But you mentioned something about empathy.

Yeah, you could just tell. I think the empathy is when something needed to be done. Okay. The guy at the.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I guess now I'm tracking with you better because I know we talked about empathy before we started recording, but you're talking about this sort of. Correct me if I'm wrong that you didn't have people who are saying, hey, look, I'm the hostess, you got to figure out the coffee cups thing on your own.

Yeah, you could tell that. Okay. I just took food out to some of my customers, but I see we need to do this and I see that you're, you're slammed right now. You've got 20 orders, you're trying to get out on the grill, so. Yeah, I understand that. I feel that you're, you know, so I'll just go get the coffee cups or, or whatever, or, you know, take the dirty dishes back or whatever. You know, if this server was busy and somebody left in their, in their area. Okay, I'll go ahead and take those dirty dishes that.

They're not technically my dirty dishes.

Yeah.

They belong to who? Whoever. And I'm just going to do that because.

So you get a blend of the intrinsic plus the empathy.

Yeah, that. Okay, we're busy. We all can feel busy. So when we feel busy, we can feel stress and everything. So maybe it was a corporate empathy. I don't know.

Well, but you know what, though? I'm thinking about this, Jeff. I mean, and I know that in working with our clients, I really try to emphasize the intentionality of using the competencies. Right. And in the beginning. Yeah, it does Feel clunky that someone might go, oh, this is a place where I should use empathy. And I realized that at some point, as you grow in your practice of eq, these are things that you go to innately because you've built maybe a neural pathway around it. Right. So a la.

And I, again, you didn't do an EQ interview of employees or anything, but thought about it.

But no.

And, you know, let's face it, to a certain degree, you know, you. You might have grown that empathy muscle because you had two parents that made it very clear that it's important. So that's not to say that, hey, if you haven't studied or taken an assessment that you can't be very empathetic.

We've talked about it, that what we do is teach people to use what they have already there.

Yeah, yeah, great point. Great point. Yeah. Because I guess where I'm going with that is that, you know, in that environment, high paced, high stress, I think if you're a listener out there now and you're going, wow, that's a good story. Well, that's really great. How they. Yeah, I could see the intrinsic and the empathy. You can ratchet that up notches by applying some intentionality.

Oh, yeah.

In your own process. Because where I was going to go to, I find it fascinating is that a lot of larger, maybe more formal business environments struggle with what you just described.

Right.

I mean, is there a correlation there that maybe. I don't know. Where would you go with that? I have an idea, but I want to get your answer.

Okay. Thinking about that, I don't know how they treat each other when there's no customers in there, but I've got a feeling that they are developing this community of people that work there, that this is how we as a community, this is how we treat each other. This is how we treat our patrons. And that's what I think it is. It's a practice that they developed. I've never met the owner, Jenny. She could be exceptionally emotional, intelligent, and either through knowing about it or just naturally. And that comes from her.

Who knows where it's coming from? But I think there's something there that somebody that is one of the leaders in that place, whether it's the actual owner, whether it's just. It could be the busboy is super emotional, intelligent, but I think it's a part of a community they've developed.

Yeah. So that leads to another great place to explore. Right. This idea of community. Because most businesses, I think, sort of structure themselves around the business idea. Right.

The product.

Exactly. So you and I develop a fill in the blank, a tool, a technology service. Then we figure out how do we get that out to the marketplace.

Right.

And then we hire people to help support that offering. And as much as that I think is reasonable and to a certain degree. Right. If you're not careful, you might forget that those people, those human beings you.

Hired.

They can turn into just cogs and means to an end. Meaning I hired you, Jeff, because you've got to take care of the financial side of sending out invoices. And that's why I hired you. And that's what I need from you. And again, I'm not dismissing the fact that they needed someone who could do that.

I think they missed the point of when they hire me, they're hiring my family in a way. They're hiring my happy times, they're hiring my down times, your health, my health, all that. I think we forget that when we're hiring somebody.

And please, I am not saying that you should throw out the model of product.

Right. No, no, no.

Sales and marketing support and all that. You do need that. But as we've talked about it, and maybe this is where our championing of the term non dualistic thinking says that the two can coexist.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, I can have a product, I have sales and marketing, I. Operations, finance, I can have all that structured and I need people and I hire people for that. But I can also create a community.

They can coexist symbiotically. I think that's the right word for it. Instead of a parasitic relationship.

Right. And I wonder if that maybe is one of the things that gets missed. Maybe every business, once they've determined what the product is once. What they've.

How to get it out, how to.

Get it out, the support of it, all of that. That they've got to not stop there. They need to build a community. And that community is. Is the company people. Right to. Because I think if you don't do that, I think there's a couple of things that come into my mind that will go sideways. You probably won't have that intrinsic and empathetic workforce.

No.

Right. And more than likely your people are going to feel unseen and unheard.

Right.

Which will more than likely lead to them leaving or.

Just showing up.

Yeah. Quitting but staying. Yeah, yeah.

That's a real thing.

Yeah. Yeah. All right, so let's pivot. The people that were probably most impacted by that intrinsic and empathetic workforce are the customers.

Yeah. And like I said, where Michelle and I were sitting, we could see everybody. Everybody that was getting their food. And it was just really interesting. You know, usually you go into a restaurant, you're at your booth, and you're kind of in a little bubble.

Right.

It just is. And you'll see family members on their phone the whole time, not talking to each other.

Right.

There was very few. Very few people that had their phone out, even just sitting on the table. You just didn't see it.

So was there a pretty diverse customer base as it relate? And where I'm going with that is from an age perspective.

Oh, yeah. I mean, from little kids to people older than us and at different races.

Very few cell phones out.

Very few cell phones out. That area that where they're at in Columbus is kind of a very diverse neighborhood as far as racial, political views, everything. And that's who we're in that this restaurant.

So what would you say. And I know it's a guess based on observation, why do you think this restaurant was so free of cell phone usage? And looking at screen.

I think it was just the atmosphere. You saw people talking, and it wasn't just at your booth. You'd talk to the servers as they went by, or you'd see people leaning over the shoulder and talking to the booth behind them.

Did you get a sense that the customers and some of them knew each other?

Yeah. The fellow that sat down right next to me was a regular. I think his name was Walt. Well, he threw him a curve. He didn't get his regular. He got their chili and a grilled cheese sandwich. And we had a long conversation about the difference of Ohio chili and Texas chili. If you say beans in Texas, you'll get shot.

And if you're getting chilly in Ohio, it's probably going to have beans in it. That's just the difference. And we talked about that.

Okay.

At different things. And so you felt my wife was talking to the person sitting right next to her. So you just felt that this was a safe place to do that, that these hot button issues are not going to come up in here. We're here to enjoy a meal.

Yeah. And I, you know, what you're describing maybe is a hopeful sign because I recently listened to a podcast episode from Scott Galloway. He has his main podcast. And then I think he. This is sort of an ancillary to it, and it's called no mercy, no malice.

Okay.

And it was on the subject of loneliness, and he was just drawing so many conclusions about how that is a pervasive thing. Right. In as much as it's kind of rampant. And he's using comparisons to how much existence is online versus in the real. And he brings out some very powerful points about what it means to be a human being and how we were made and that we were not made to be so involved in a world that really has no intimacy, has no real connection, though it might market itself as that. And when I hear you talking about these customers and I mean, you're illustrating that basic need for social interaction.

Yeah. And I just thought of something. Nowadays you go into a restaurant, they have the QR code to scan to.

Get your, like the menu.

Get your menu. So you got to have your phone out. They didn't have any QR codes.

Right.

They had a menu.

Yeah, well. And you know, in fairness too, I mean, I don't know if it would be interpreted as what we said earlier, that somehow we've been forced to be on the screen so much and on the phone, on our phones, because I think there is an element of responsibility that. Jeff, if I go out to dinner with you and your wife, I owe you the respect of not having my phone. And here's what's interesting. Some people might say, well, I just have my phone out and it's turned over. No, I. To me, it's like my phone should not be near me. It should be either in my pocket and if I'm at home on the counter away from where there is this meal, this interaction is happening.

And I think, you know, we almost. It may just sound strong, but it would be disrespectful to the other human being across from you if you do have it out. And let's face it, Jeff, is there anything that I'm involved in that's so, so important that I cannot allow my phone to just be untouched?

There can be, but very, very, very, very few.

And if you're really concerned about someone being able to get a hold of you, you can always tell your wife or husband or partner, whatever, text me twice in a row and I'll know that I need to check that. And then when that happens, I can say, jeff, this is probably important. I need to look at this. And that is, nobody's going to be in enough for. Because you did that.

So one more thing about the customers. If you've ever been to an old fashioned barbershop, there's no waiting list when you go in. So 15 people in the barbershop sitting around reading their six year old news magazines or whatever, and the barber Goes, who's next? It's up to the customers on an honor system to know who's the next one in line. That's the way they did it here. There was no wait list. There was no little light up hockey puck things. Right When a table was empty, somebody in there would go, who's next? And they would look around at each other and go, I guess it's me. And they would.

That's how they did it. So I just thought that was kind of cool to see that.

Oh, yeah. And. And as our audience knows, Jeff, we're not out here trying to tell a restaurant to determine whether we're a waiting list or not. It's not that at all. It's just, I think this is really a snapshot of. And where I'm going to go next is about this idea about can you have a community with diverse points of view, backgrounds and the like. And once again, I, I know you did not have the power to read the minds of everybody in the room. You couldn't determine how many were Democrats versus Republicans and how many were from a foreign country or from the US and all of that.

But I'm of the mind and I had this conversation with a client last week that, and I'm only basing this, Jeff, on my experience, my lived experience. So it's limited, but that's what I can go by. Whenever I've had the toughest of times, whether it was yesterday or 20 years ago, there's always been a significant amount of compassion and empathy and genuine outreach to me. And when you think about in the United States, where we hear it so often, how divided we are. Right. And I'm not trying to dispute that. Maybe we are to a degree, but it's interesting to me. Okay, you're in a diner and it's a Sunday afternoon in late August, early September.

I had a situation last year, multiple situations, which you're aware of, and so is our audience, where the bottom fell out. So take those as two polar opposites. And it's kind of like, Jeff, I'm not so sure we're as divided as we've been told we are. And I get it. Who you vote for versus who I vote for, who do you think is a good and who. That may differ and more often than not it does. But are we really, or are we really most people just like, oh, here, you dropped your pen. Oh, here.

No, you can go first.

Are we being told we're divided?

And it makes me think that it's part of a manipulation, more Than it is an observation of fact. And that one is not solved on the Spirit of EQ podcast. But it comes to my mind because I think what you're illustrating, there's so many signs pointing to maybe, again, maybe we're not as divided as we've been told we should be or that we are. Thought, thought, thought.

Yeah.

I wanted to mention or ask you something else. In the Spiritual Emotional Intelligence SEQ for short, We. We have this domain called insight, and it relates to our connection to the world at large. Any observations about that?

Yeah, And I don't know if I walked in there with that domain floating around in the back of my mind, but I felt that this was a good example of this insight of. Because.

And.

For me, the insight is. I don't want to say a global thing, but it's where everything comes together. It's how we relate to the world at large. And that's what we were doing. We were not.

Yeah, because these were outside of your one interaction with the guy sitting next to you. This was the world at large because you didn't know any of these people, right?

No, I mean, I'm going to go back because I like the place. So I might be able to get into that belonging domain with some of the staff or if the vault shows back up, but everybody else were part of the world at large.

So for our audience, if you're not familiar with what we're talking about as far as the domains of our SEQ model, Spiritual Emotional Intelligence, sort of the core of that is the domains of life, and I'm just going to use that for terminology. There's the awareness domain, which is yourself. There's the belonging domain, which is those your closest others, your closest community. And then insight, which is the world at large. I wanted to kind of point out this with the diner because some. Sometimes when people think inside the world at large, they think about South Africa and, you know, it's part of it, but it also could be 20 miles away from you in a diner.

Well, this was the world at large that I was a part of at that time.

Yes. And I just wanted to throw that out there.

And I gotta say, I left there feeling much better. Not just because I got a good meal, but I felt energized after we walked out of that place. That's where this episode came from.

So would you say it, you know, you felt more connected to that side of it?

Yeah, I felt more. Yeah, exactly. More connected to this. It was just a good feeling of being a part of this do you.

Think that muscle grows as Cause you mentioned about you're wanting to go back. So more than likely, right? Or there's no guarantees that the guy you were talking to about the difference between Ohio chili and Texas chili would be there. So more than likely you're going to be in an atmosphere where again, they're going to be people you don't know. So I guess where I'm getting to is back to this intentionality thing. I believe sometimes it is an intentional act on our part. If not oftentimes it's an intentional act on our part to engage that muscle. Right. It's not.

I'll connect to the world at large when somebody calls on me to do that. Or if I happen to be in Arizona for a week, it can be, you know what, we haven't tried that restaurant. Or it could be, you know what, let's go to that festival. It's the first time or I haven't been there forever. Whatever the case may be, there is some things you can do from a proactive perspective versus sort of the reactive side of it.

You know, I had no intention of this happening. When we walked in, we were hungry. I knew the basics. Yeah. I knew the food was good. Decent price. Part of the commercial again, Sorry, no. But for whatever reason, this was floating around in my head and I started paying attention to it and it was well worth it.

Not just got an episode out of it, but it was well worth it for my well being at that time. And still today I still feel that.

So you're saying there was a return on the investment? That maybe you wouldn't have known had you not. Yeah. Yeah. That's powerful. Well, Jeff, keep on keeping on with the diner thing and you can check back with us on your progress at Jenny's Diner.

Okay.

We appreciate you all tuning in as well and we look forward to the next time that we're together. Take care.