(upbeat music) - We're here with Dave Ciliberto, who is one of the many distinguished guests here, folks who are collaborating with the New Jersey Education Association, one of our longtime educational partners.

We're here in Atlantic City for the fascinating NJEA Convention.

Dave, President of Dave Ciliberto Enterprises, it's good to see you.

- Good to see you.

Thank you, Steve.

- For folks who don't know what Ciliberto Enterprises is, tell folks.

- Great, so I've been consulting in workplace culture and leadership for the last 20 years, and there are elements of emotional intelligence, communication, working styles, all things that help leaders lead and employees contribute.

- So, you mentioned emotional intelligence, I go to Dr.

Daniel Goleman, the author of- - Yes.

- Who coined that phrase.

Tell folks who hear the term emotional intelligence, what is it?

First of all, what is it?

What does it have to do with leadership and then in the classroom?

- Okay, awesome.

Well, it is the core of leadership that you can understand yourself, your own emotions, what triggers you, what motivates you, what inspires you, while also paying attention to others and what motivates, inspires them, but also their body language, how they behave, how they perform.

And you pull this together in what Goleman and Bradberry, Greaves from Emotional Intelligence 2.0 do, which is self-management, social management, relationship management.

And you pull that together so that you build relationships in positive ways, creating positive impact through how you communicate, how you observe, and how you partner and collaborate.

- Wow, there's a lot going on there.

As a student of leadership who's tried to understand it for many years and written and taught in the field, I realize that there's much more that I don't know, so I'm gonna follow up on this.

- Okay.

- Do you believe that this thing called emotional intelligence is either you have it or you don't, or you can learn it because you need to?

- You can learn it if you want to.

There are many leaders out in society that don't want to.

There are many organizational, academic, nonprofit leaders who do wanna learn it.

And it's not- - There are some folks in high level government positions- - Oh.

- In the nation's capital who may not want to learn it or even understand that it's a thing to be learned.

- Exactly.

- Just hypothetically.

- Hypothetically, I couldn't agree more because people think it means woke.

And to me, woke is part of emotional intelligence, that I am aware of you and respect you and respect your lived experience, and I'm gonna embrace that with my lived experience.

- How dare you do that?

- I know.

- How did that get... Hold on, how did woke, as you just described it, Dave, become a thing, become political, become divisive?

I'm trying to follow that.

- Yeah, but my small 2 cents is that some politicians like to get on a bandwagon and redefine what is actually happening that's good and turn it into a political platform for bad.

So, renaming formally DEI, like the governor of Florida did and the current incumbent in the Big House did.

But diversity means difference, and aren't we all different?

Isn't every human being different?

So, why is it bad to be diverse which equals different?

I don't think it's bad.

I'm different.

- But Dave, let me follow up.

- Sure.

- Different.

- Yes.

- We're distinct from others.

What do you think makes you... Now, first of all, I said this before you got on the air.

I don't know if you can't pick this up because you can't see.

We should get a shot of Dave's shoes later because it goes with the whole ensemble.

- (laughs) Thank you.

- Beyond the fact that I'm dressed very conservatively and you're dressed in a much more interesting way, what do you think makes you different?

- Okay, well, my lived experience being who I am, my lens makes me different, my lens includes everything I've gone through.

So, coming out in my early 20s, being gay, marrying a Latin man, so interracial relationship in my marriage, my education's different than others' education.

My work experience, world experience, travel experience is different than others.

Like every other human being, we all have different experiences, but I will say what connects us is shared experiences.

So, although I am not a person of color, my husband is, we both experience biases.

We both experience discrimination based on our own identities.

So my identity defines me, my intersectionality, some of these words might be deemed bad words currently.

- Define inter- - Yes.

- Operationalize the term- - Great.

- Intersectionality.

- So I'll give you an example of myself.

- Sure.

- My intersectionality is I'm a white guy and my age, so I'm in my early 60s.

I have lived in New Jersey until I couldn't stand it and moved to New York City, so geographically, I went to college in Virginia.

I'm diabetic, I'm gay, I'm in a interracial marriage.

These are parts of my intersectionality.

My client population as a consultant, that's part of my intersectionality.

I've worked with a lot of non-profit, for-profit and now academia, so this builds my experience uniquely with my intersectionality.

- Connect it to this convention, to the New Jersey Education Association Convention to the folks you'll be speaking to.

- Okay.

- How does it from a practical point of view, Dave, help educators be even better educators?

- Great question.

So, I think the connectedness is what makes educators so brilliant, and they can connect to students, they connect to colleagues by understanding lived experiences are different.

We're not judging them.

We are understanding them and respecting them, hence woke.

Woke means that I understand your lived experience, you understand mine even though they're dramatically different.

- Hold on one second.

To you, woke doesn't mean conservative, liberal, progressive, all those political terms.

That's not woke to you?

- That is not.

- Left's not woke to you?

- That's not.

What to me, it's that we feel comfortable with each other because we respect each other and we have an understanding that we have different lives, and that's not a judgment, it's an observation.

And then we can collaborate because we respect each other's background.

- P.S.

what message needs to be sent in your view, Dave, to students who are all different, who come from different backgrounds, their family situation is different, the neighborhood, their ZIP code, if you will, whole range of things, their sexual orientation, whatever you wanna say.

Why is this so important for younger people as they're developing a sense of self-confidence as they get to know themselves and see the world around them?

- Ah, because we don't want anybody to cover who they are authentically.

We want people to embrace who they are, their own identity, who have comfort and confidence in themselves and what they bring to the world.

We all have gifts that we bring to the world, and I do not want anyone stifled for the gift that they bring to the world because somebody else's opinion is negative on who they might be, could be or will be.

- Why are you so passionate about your work?

And is your work a big part of who you are?

Because people say your work isn't who you are.

I just, for me- - I agree.

- I disagree.

- Well, to answer your question, my passion is my work, so my work is who I am.

And growing up the way I grew up and what I'm able to contribute to the world is my superpower, which is creating comfort for people to be who they are, but also get skills to embrace what they're about to do.

And that's the leadership coaching I do and helping the workplace thrive.

- Well said.

Hey, Dave, thank you.

It was great meeting you.

- Great meeting you.

Thank you so much.

- Let's make sure we get a shot of those shoes.

Thanks, Dave.

- Appreciate it.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by NJ Best.

New Jersey’s five-two-nine college savings plan.

New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Bergen New Bridge Medical Center.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

New Jersey Manufacturing Extension Program.

Garden State Initiative The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

South Jersey Industries.

And by New Jersey Sharing Network.

Promotional support provided by ROI-NJ.

And by CIANJ, and Commerce Magazine.

- How long you been waiting?

- About a half hour.

- Brutal.

This keeps up, I'm gonna miss my pickleball game.

- I've been waiting eight years for a kidney.

What can you do?

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Over 100,000 people in the US are waiting for a life-saving transplant.

But you can do your part in an instant.

Register as an organ donor today at NJSN.org.