A conversation with James Gallagher on emotional intelligence at work, personal relationships, and living a life aligned to your values

James Gallagher is the Founder of Ei Collaborative, an emotional intelligence consultant, and a Certified Facilitator of the Search Inside Yourself (SIY) Program. James has facilitated SIY for teams and leaders in corporations including Toyota, COX Communications, Grubhub, Zillow Group, Zscaler, Bishop McCann and SCRAM Systems; and in nonprofit organizations and educational institutions across the United States.?

James is also a Certified Co-Active Professional Coach; trained in the theories and practices of the Co-Active Training Institute. James understands the complexities of leading in organizations and institutions amidst our rapidly changing professional culture and the broader challenges of our evolving? world. He supports leaders, teams, and individual contributors towards achieving a fulfilling, balanced, and catalyzing personal and professional life.??

Prior to founding Ei Collaborative, James was the Vice President of Education for Aspire Public Schools; a large nonprofit organization operating K-12 schools in California. In this role, he designed and facilitated professional learning for teammates across Aspire, including the Executive Team; and led Aspire’s Emotional Intelligence initiatives across Aspire’s 40 schools. James holds a BA in Pre-Law & Philosophy from Binghamton University and a law degree from George Washington University.

James and I sat down in early 2023 to discuss his journey, current career, and personal growth. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I’m excited to have this conversation with you, James. Let’s start with a question I ask most of my guests: Why do you do what you do?

I do what I do because it’s an opportunity to be my authentic self. It allows me to explore and teach what I’ve been fascinated with my entire life: an exploration of the human condition and connecting with others on their journey. I feel fortunate to have the opportunity to do these things as a vocation, even though it often doesn't really feel like work.

Years ago, I heard about this idea of living an aligned life and I didn’t fully understand what it meant. Over time, as I began deconstructing the concept, it revealed to me what I was seeking: living a life aligned with who I am, my values, my interests, and passions. Once I realized that, I couldn’t unlearn it. Doing anything else felt like a digression. I’m grateful to have a constant sense of direction and purpose – always moving forward.

That’s a remarkable insight to have. Tell me about your journey. You started out as a lawyer – what brought you from there to where you are now?

It was a winding and twisting path. The summer after my first year of law school in the mid-90s, I clerked, like every good first year law student. I was clerking in a criminal courtroom in Washington DC, and it gave me quite literally a front row view of the criminal justice system. My eyes were opened to the dysfunction and inequities present in the system. Six feet in front of me, I watched young men tangled up with drugs, guns, and violence get prosecuted because of the system they were in, but not necessarily because they were bad people. After a few months, I realized being a lawyer wasn’t aligned with my values. I decided if I wanted to be in service to other human beings, I wanted to engage with, in this case, young people, at a different point in the timeline of their lives – certainly before they were tangled up in a system that reinforced centuries old prejudices and did not administer justice in an equitable way.

From there, I began a slow transition into education, largely driven by my wife, who is also an educator. As I started experimenting and teaching, I began to see education for what it is: an opportunity not only to share knowledge but to learn as a teacher, all while impacting the lives of others. And I loved it. It felt familiar, natural, and purposeful.?

As I moved through different roles in my education career, the best parts of whatever I was doing at the time were teaching and learning. Always.

After teaching for two years in Boston, my wife and I moved to Oakland, California and I began teaching at a nonprofit, Aspire Public Schools, an organization running and opening schools across the state. I had aspirations around compensation, title, and opportunity, so at some point I decided I wanted to transition to help lead and grow the nonprofit. I ended up teaching for about six years before I made that transition. Looking back, it took that much time because I was closest to living my values when I was teaching and learning in the classroom. But I had this other narrative driving me that I needed to “do more.” Over the course of my 15 years with Aspire, I took on several positions, a majority of which were leadership roles.?

You’ve used the terms “teaching” and “learning” together a few times. Could you explain the connection between the two words??

I like to use a visual in my mind to think about teaching and learning: two interconnected gears. For me, learning is something I do introspectively, like reading books, taking courses, or getting inspired by new concepts or ways of thinking. Often, I get so energized by what I’m learning that I become driven to invite others in to learn with me – and that's where teaching comes in.?

Early on, I taught high school students. I spent a great deal of time learning the subjects I was teaching, like US History. It was generative because it offered me new insights into everything I had just learned in law school. Through the process,? I discovered that how my students made sense of the content amplified my own learning. It’s this beautiful, reciprocal cycle that was and is so incredibly inspiring and allows me to deepen whatever I’m interested in or passionate about at the point in my life.

That's beautifully said. Shifting to your career transition, we met in 2018 during a Search Inside Yourself teacher training. What was it that drew you to mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices?

Ten years into working at the nonprofit, I was no longer in the classroom – I was leading and managing others. I had two children under three years old at the time. My career was moving quickly and I was helping to lead this amazing nonprofit and feel a sense of ownership in the organization. And then I began to encounter challenges as a leader, specifically around realizing how people, particularly those who you manage, experience you. And, of course, it’s quite often different than how you THINK you are experienced by others. It brought me to my knees.

I have a vivid memory of spending time with my young daughter at the time and trying to simply play with her. But I had a moment of awareness and realized my mind was not truly WITH her. My mind was on the email I needed to send or the conversation I was avoiding at work – my mind was everywhere except for where it should have been – in the present with my daughter. When I noticed it, I became incredibly humbled and realized I needed to develop tools to help me be more present with myself, my wife, my children, and others across my work and life.

So I dove into leadership, management, and team building books and came across this thing called “mindfulness.” Having been raised in Long Island, I didn't have a lot of exposure to mindfulness, and I certainly had some resistance to the idea. But I warmed up to it and started to experiment with it on myself. I say, without hyperbole, even in the early days of practicing, it transformed my life as a parent, as a partner, and certainly as a leader.

For several years, it was a closeted practice. However, eventually, mindfulness became more pervasive in the education sphere, and as did emotional intelligence. In the education context, it's called social emotional learning or SEL – essentially emotional intelligence for young people. When I learned about Search Inside Yourself, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to deepen my learning of these topics, and just as importantly, teach and learn, starting with students in the nonprofit’s school system.

However, as the adults in our system began to learn how these tools and practices were being introduced to students, our teachers, principals, and leaders said to me, “Increasing self-awareness, learning tools for self-management, and cultivating empathy across differences? These sound great – how can we learn these skills, too?” So I had this incredible opportunity to take what I learned from Search Inside Yourself into the nonprofit for our educators and leaders. The experience was so energizing that after 15 years in the nonprofit, I realized I needed to do this work full-time.

By that time in my career, I had worked my way up to Vice President of education, helping run 40 schools across California. It was a lot to walk away from. But I didn't feel I had a choice. I wanted to do this work full-time and explore the ways to deepen my own practice and skills? and offer them in support of others.

One of your primary offerings with the Ei Collaborative is emotional intelligence (EI) consulting. How do you describe EI consulting and why would a company need it?

My organizing principle for life is emotional intelligence. Being an EI consultant is offering the EI lens to what a leader is navigating. I map whatever their problem or their challenge is to emotional intelligence. It can be either the intrapersonal EI skills of self-awareness, deepening their strengths, intuitions, areas for growth, or enhancing self-management by improving how they navigate stress or triggers from colleagues or clients. Or, they may need coaching on enhancing their interpersonal EI skills such as increasing their sense of empathy for colleagues and clients; or improving decision making and relationship management skills. To me, all of life really fits into these categories.

Earlier you used the phrase “Embodying what you're teaching.” How do you do that? And how do it in a way that’s authentic to you?

I love this question because it brings to mind my children. Being a father is the purest opportunity to embody what I'm learning and teaching – including the humility of how often I get parenting wrong. And my children – they’re 11 and 13 – tell me when I get it wrong.

They know what I do as a vocation; they know what I espouse. And they catch me when I stumble, as I inevitably do. I embody the work by being vulnerable with them, and then sharing anecdotes of being a parent or a partner to my wife when I teach. It could be with a sales team at a Fortune 100 company or a small independent business. The common denominator is authenticity. Every single person I interact with is a parent, a son or daughter, and often they can relate to what I share. I try to show up as my full authentic person through a place of humanity.

And I love that this approach isn’t narrow – it has universal application. You want to be better with clients? You want to be better with your colleagues? Better with yourself? Or when you cross the threshold into your home with your family? These tools will help.

It means taking down any barriers of all corners of my life, regardless of the context I’m in. And doing so vulnerably and with transparency.

I love that. I find when I share something personal with others through my teaching or writing, it feels really good. It opens the door for connection.

I agree. It’s the only way I know to be in alignment. To me, to be in misalignment is to be inauthentic. I could map this to points throughout my life. I could have been a lawyer. I could have punched a ticket to ensure a middle class lifestyle, but I would've been out of alignment. That feeling pushed me on this path that was pretty unorthodox at the time – I guarantee that my parents and many friends thought so. “You have a law degree! You're barred in New York! …and you’re gonna be a high school teacher?” I couldn't articulate it clearly then, but I was feeling the dissonance that comes with being inauthentic, when I’m out of alignment with my values. I couldn't live that way.

Tell me about your leadership philosophy and personal values. What’s your approach to leadership?

I'm going to borrow a phrase that writers use: “You write what you know.” As an EI consultant, I can only consult or coach around what I know. My philosophy is authentic leadership and showing up in my full humanity and inviting people to shed some of their personas and the “shoulds” – “I should be this way as a leader.” It’s the clinging to being something other than who you are. I invite people into the exploration of who they already are and how to best leverage their inner strengths. It’s not about changing much about yourself.

It has proven to be the faster, more impactful path of development. It’s unearthing people's authentic essence that’s already there. It's a very strength-based approach.

Would you say your work as a coach helps leaders develop self-awareness? How do coaching and EI come together?

Cultivating a leader’s self-awareness through coaching is primary. It’s sometimes as simple as helping someone figure out what they want. It’s been remarkable to see how many incredibly successful people, by many metrics, have spent little time identifying what they want to make their lives meaningful. The opportunity to partner with another person and help them realize and articulate what they genuinely want has been so rewarding. I cannot think of another way of showing up in the world.

What’s one thing somebody reading this can do to build emotional intelligence or become a better person?

Spend time identifying and getting clear on what you want in life.

We’ve talked a lot about growth and learning. Who and what do you surround yourself with to continue developing yourself?

My spare time is the same as my professional time, meaning, I listen to people interested in the same inquiry into the human condition that I am. I'm currently in a deep exploration of Andrew Huberman’s podcast, the Huberman Lab. I’m learning about the neuroscience that interplays with the psychology of emotional and physical wellbeing. I am continuing to deepen into the same singular focus on the human condition and through this cycle of learning and teaching, integrating it into my work and life.

In terms of what I surround myself with, it’s nature. It could be something as simple as a walk in the sunlight or spending time in the mountains. Meditating or walking mindfully in nature is how I resource myself for this work and as a parent and a partner.

I love that. Thank you so much, James. This has been a meaningful conversation for me. How can people get in touch to learn more about the Ei Collaborative??

Feel free to connect with me on Linkedin ! Thanks, Jared.