Welcome to the Brilliance Brief. Every week, we break down leadership, mindset, and personal growth into something real and doable. Expect research-backed insights, a little storytelling, and practical ideas that actually fit into your life (even the messy parts).

My daughter had our full attention for the first 5 years of her life.

Then her brother arrived.

She’s 6 now. He’s 18 months. She’s a great sister.

But sometimes she’ll see me on the floor playing with him and walk straight over. “Do that with me now, Daddy.”

Or she’ll tug my sleeve while I’m answering emails. “Will you play with me?”

Every time, the question underneath has nothing to do with the game. She’s asking: am I still as important to you as I was before he got here?

How she answers that question now will shape how she sees herself at 16. And at 26.

I try to catch it. I try to respond to the real question, not just the words.

But between running two businesses, creating content, and keeping up with a toddler who wants to be held every second he sees me… there are days when I miss it completely.

She’s teaching me something I thought I already knew: the words people say are rarely the point. What matters is what’s underneath them.

The team member who keeps asking for 5 minutes of your time. The high performer who suddenly starts cc’ing you on things they used to handle alone. The direct report whose questions just got more frequent.

On the surface, each of those things is about a task. Underneath, it’s the same question my daughter is asking: “Do I still matter to you?”

Psychologist Daniel Goleman spent years studying what separates high-performing leaders from average ones. His research kept pointing at one thing: 

The best leaders read the emotional temperature of the room in real time and adjust. 

That skill is called situational intelligence. Think of it as the branch of emotional intelligence focused specifically on the moment you’re in. Reading what’s happening underneath the surface and responding to that.

Most of us respond to the words. The strongest communicators respond to the room.

When I want to get better at something, I journal about it.

Sometimes daily. Sometimes weekly. I sit down and ask myself: what happened recently that I wish had gone differently?

The answer almost always points to a moment where I responded to the words and missed the room.

4 questions I keep coming back to:

1. What was the emotional temperature?

Not the topic. Not the agenda. The mood. When I replay a conversation that went sideways, I can almost always trace it back to the moment I read the mood wrong.

2. Who was quiet, and why?

The quietest person in the room is often the one whose reaction matters most.

Silence usually shows up right after someone said something they didn’t feel safe continuing. If you can rewind the last 60 seconds, you can usually find the moment things changed.

3. Was that the right moment?

The right message at the wrong moment lands like the wrong message.

If someone was exhausted, stressed, or clearly not ready to hear it, the important thing I wanted to say could almost always have waited.

4. What did I miss?

This is the big one. When something felt off and I pushed forward anyway, what was I not seeing?

Now I try to ask instead of assume. “How are you feeling about all this?” “Do you want me to help solve this, or do you just want me to listen?”

That last one has saved me more times than I can count.

Before a meeting I know will be emotionally charged, I run through these same questions ahead of time. I think about what people in that room might be feeling before I walk in.

The reflection builds the instinct. And the instinct starts showing up in real time.

At the end of today, take 5 minutes.

Think about one conversation that didn’t land the way you wanted.

Run it through the 4 questions. What was the mood? Who was quiet? Was the timing right? What did you miss?

You’ll start seeing the patterns. And once you see them, you can’t unsee them.

Talk soon,
Justin

P.S. What’s a movie you could watch on repeat and never get tired of?

Hit “reply.” I’m always adding to my list.