John Corcoran: 12:01
And so in the forum context, in the business forum context and in EO, you would start with one word. Open is an exercise that people do, which is a word to describe where you feel emotionally. Is it ready? Is it anxious? Is it exciting?
Is it nervous? Is it distracted? And so what you’re saying is that you do that with the kids so that it helps to develop emotional intelligence with the kids?
Eduardo Montano: 12:27
Yes, because they learn to identify the feeling. That’s very important because if you ask a kid how do you feel. Good. bad, and that those are the two emotions that exist in there right now. So here we developed a list of all the feelings that it’s possible.
So we asked them to look at the list and identify exactly how they feel, because it is very important for the parents to know how they feel. Sometimes we live with them, but we have no idea if they’re going. What are they going through? If they’re having a serious problem because their problems are as serious as ours and, and parents and most of the time minimize their problems because those are not problems. Mine are big problems. Yours. That’s a small thing. But for them, it’s as big as your problems are for you.
John Corcoran: 13:24
So all right. So step one is developing emotional intelligence by identifying how they feel in that moment, at the beginning of the meeting and the end of the meeting. What’s next?
Eduardo Montano: 13:34
Okay. Next also similar to to EO it’s the 5%. So we have to be in contact with the best things that happened in the last month and the worst thing that happened in the last month and personally and in the family now, the challenge in the family is that most, most of the worst things involve another member of the family. But that’s okay, because for a parent, it’s very important to know if their kid is mad at us because of something we said or something we did, and we didn’t realize it had such a high impact on them. So that is very important for it to know our kids, to know what is, what do they appreciate?
What do they hate? What do they don’t like about the way that you communicate and you interact with them and you cannot honestly answer anything? You have to stay quiet because those are the rules. You cannot make faces. You cannot tell anything.
You cannot roll your eyes. You. Just you. The only thing you can do is listen. And the only thing you can do is learn from your kid and learn to empathize. Empathize with, with them and to make sure that you get all the information and you’re not blocking what he’s trying to say.
John Corcoran: 15:01
So in my forum, we might give each member of the forum four minutes to do this. And they’re going through and they’re talking about how they feel, what their emotions are towards their business right now, towards their family right now, and towards themselves personally. And they spend a few minutes talking about these things with the idea that they’re, you know, getting in touch with what they want, what they don’t want, what’s really bothering them, what’s really occupying their mental space. How does it go with kids, then? Is it all personal or is it like school, sports, family or you know, and and and do you just kind of give them a couple of minutes to talk it through?
Eduardo Montano: 15:40
Yeah, it’s similar. It’s six minutes and it’s what makes them feel stronger emotions. Sometimes it’s going to be their sport. If they’re sports oriented sometimes it’s going to be a bully. Sometimes it’s going to be the grades that they’re getting.
That’s where the parents begin to know their kids, because they don’t really know them until they speak of these things. And parents listen with their eyes, with their ears paying full attention. With no cell phones. These are prohibited, no distractions. And that’s a message that we send the kids right now. You are the priority. You are my main focus. Whatever you say, I am paying attention.
John Corcoran: 16:32
By the way, how old can kids participate in this? How old do they need to be?
Eduardo Montano: 16:38
I’ve tried it with kids beginning at seven years and it works. And it works fine and is fun. Fun facts. A grandfather once told me he was doing it with his son, which since they he got married, they don’t have too much communication. And they were doing it and it was working great for them to connect again.
John Corcoran: 17:04
That’s nice, that’s nice. All right. So that’s step number two. What’s step number three goals?
Eduardo Montano: 17:12
Most of the kids only react to day to day situations. But they don’t have a clear path of where they want to go. So this is to make them think and establish goals. Maybe they cannot think long term, but they can think medium. They can think one year ahead.
They can say, well, at the end of this year I want to accomplish this. So this is a very fun way for the parents to be involved in the goals of their kids and maybe help them accomplish them, not establish them, because the kids should establish his goals, but with ideas to accomplish. Yeah, they can participate as long as the kids want them to participate. So they make goals like Smart goals then. So they learn how to make a goal, and they learn how to follow up a goal. And they are made accountable because they’re making it public with their family.
John Corcoran: 18:19
All right. I have a nine year old whose goal would probably be to eat a million pieces of candy by the end of this year. What do you do when they set a goal like that?
Eduardo Montano: 18:27
Yeah, that is not a goal. Yeah, I mean it is a goal, but it’s not.
John Corcoran: 18:31
I thought you said the parents can’t determine the goal. What’s going on here?
Eduardo Montano: 18:36
Part of what we can do is explain what. What do we mean about goals? I mean, the goal. Let’s talk about a school goal. Let’s talk about what if you play sports, what is your goal with sports.
What do you want to accomplish? You play tennis okay. How do you want to finish the year and what place or what do you want to accomplish? You have to name something in grades. Well what average do you want to accomplish ?
Well, maybe you want to make more friends. Well, how many friends do you want to make by the end of the year? Or you’re not talking to your sister? Oh, well, that could be a goal. But make a better relationship with your sister.
So first establish what you want to do? And then the how is after. That’s the action okay. And that’s the fun part in the forum where they talk about the actions. Well, I want to be in first place in tennis by the end of the year.
Okay. My actions are going to be I’m going to train five days a week, 2 or 3 hours, and then I’m going to go to the gym. I’m going to do whatever. That’s the action. What are you going to do? Because they don’t, the goals don’t come from the sky. You have to work for them. But if you are clear of where you want to go, it’s going to be a lot easier to establish. How are you going to get there?
John Corcoran: 19:56
And so is that step number four the actions. Or is that step number three discussing the goals.
Eduardo Montano: 20:01
Step number three. Number three.
John Corcoran: 20:02
That’s step number three okay. So let’s go on to step number four.
Eduardo Montano: 20:05
Then the fourth is solving problems. Our kids have problems that sometimes they don’t know how to solve. And that’s a big issue for them because they get frustrated and they get very anxious. And that’s not good for them. So this is I present my problem and the family, one by one, each throw ideas of how they can solve them.
So the idea is that the kid gets 1020 ideas of how they can solve their problem. And, and they have to choose one. And that’s their, their compromise. They compromise that they’re going to solve this problem this way. So by the end of the problem solving, they say, okay, I like these two ways of solving my problems. I’m going to try this on Tuesday. I’m going to go, I’m going to speak with blah, blah, blah. And then this is what I’m going to do.
John Corcoran: 21:03
Okay. So let’s do a hypothetical here. Not at all based on my own personal family experience, but let’s say one kid says, my problem is my dad doesn’t let me play Minecraft enough and get enough iPad time. So then the siblings will give them ideas about how to solve that problem.
Eduardo Montano: 21:22
Yeah, maybe. Maybe the well, the father. He can also give ideas and he says, well, you want to play more. Okay. And I have a limit. Is it fair to say that one hour is enough for you to play. That’s that’s an idea. Because I want you to play outside. I want you to do this. I want you to do that.
So it’s an opportunity also for the father to explain why he is taking some, he’s making some decisions and what’s what’s behind it. Because I’m not a big fan of you have to do this because I say so. But you have to. This is why I’m asking you to do this. Yeah, maybe you don’t understand it, but you have to say yes because I’m your father.
But I want to explain why I am I? What is the intention behind this? What I want to accomplish. If you do this for a long time, if you play games on the computer for a long time, these are the consequences. I don’t want those consequences for you.
John Corcoran: 22:32
In the EO forum context, it’s really experiential. People share their experience. They don’t give advice, they don’t provide solutions. So it sounds like this is a little bit more flexible I guess.
Eduardo Montano: 22:44
Yes, yes, these are ideas. Most of them are based on experience. Others are based on on what they have been studying, reading books about parenting, and they learn about these new things. Games that didn’t exist in when the father was a kid. Now they exist and now the problem is obvious.
So these are the new rules that I didn’t have when I was a kid. But these are the new rules in this house, because this and this and this. So if you want to make goals around those rules, that’s okay. But you cannot say one goal of mine is for you to abolish this, this, this rule of the House, because that has a reason to be okay.
John Corcoran: 23:29
What? Another hypothetical here. Again, not at all based on my own personal family experience, but let’s say that one of the spouses says the wife may be like, how do you avoid, you know, kind of ongoing challenges and friction kind of boiling up in this context and creating a lot of animosity. I’ll give you an example, like if we were doing this in my family, you know, my wife would probably be bringing up that, you know, I, I want all of you kids to clean up your room more and help clean up around the house. That would be like a constant, like, kind of source of friction.
How do you turn that into something that is productive and not have it kind of degrade the experience and have the meeting kind of, you know, devolve into, you know, complaining and, and kind of bitterness and anger.
Eduardo Montano: 24:27
I would do it two ways. One is with the 5%, I am really sad because I really want you to have better habits and you’re not cleaning your room. And that makes me sad. As a parent, it makes me feel like a failure. That’s your 5%.
Then the problem solving that’s another way you can say, well, my problem is that I would like you to clean your room. So I want ideas from you. How can we accomplish this? What can we negotiate for you to do this? Because I don’t want to scream.
I don’t want to say this is what you have. No. Let’s negotiate together. Maybe the negotiation if you give. And maybe I have to give something also. Maybe. Maybe we do. I mean, we agree on something, but yeah, in that way nobody is mad, nobody is emotionally altered. So let’s discuss it. Let’s talk about it.
What do you think? And the siblings can help. Yeah, I think you should. I do clean my room. Why don’t you do it? Yeah, but let’s do it in a constructive way. Let’s give ideas. Yeah. We’re not throwing trash. We’re giving constructive ideas.
John Corcoran: 25:50
So for families that have maybe a kid that’s too young to participate in this and 1 or 2 that are older that can participate in this, would you recommend that they get started doing this with the older ones before the younger ones are ready?
Eduardo Montano: 26:04
He can listen for the first step. Well, he can participate in how you are feeling? He can start with that. And he also can say his 5%. What if you help them?
If you help them, you can say, well, you remember when you were very mad the other day. What made you mad? Well, because this and that or whatever. Or. I saw you very happy the other day. Yeah. I like to ride a bike or whatever so you can help them. But the five. The fifth step is the one that he definitely can participate in. And it’s playing a game.
You have to play with your kids. The parents are playing less and less with their kids, and that’s a great source of communication. When you’re playing, kids say stuff. They tell you things that you cannot find out any other way. So they play whatever the kids want, whatever.
John Corcoran: 27:06
It could be. Sports could be a board game.
Eduardo Montano: 27:09
It could be a board game. Actually, we play board games or it could be outside or whatever that everybody enjoys. There’s also conditions. All of these have rules. And one of the rules is don’t let the kids win.
John Corcoran: 27:27
Don’t let the kids win.
Eduardo Montano: 27:28
No.
John Corcoran: 27:29
No, really? Why?
Eduardo Montano: 27:30
They have to earn it. They have to be very happy that they finally won. But it’s not you that you’re not giving it out.
John Corcoran: 27:41
That’s great. All right. That’s five. What’s number six?
Eduardo Montano: 27:44
It’s the closing word.
John Corcoran: 27:45
Closing word. Okay. Okay, so same thing. One word close. And the idea behind that is that they again, are getting in touch with their emotional intelligence. And they might say, you know, maybe they’re anxious at the beginning. And after this they’re feeling relieved or relaxed or something. Yeah.
Eduardo Montano: 28:02
If you accomplish that the forum was a success okay.
John Corcoran: 28:06
All right. Cool, I love this. This is such a cool format. All right, I want to make sure that we get to your more recent book. Tell us about the more recent book. EXTRAordinary. And you know, why did you decide to write this book?
Eduardo Montano: 28:21
Well, everybody talks about soft skills. I now call power skills. But these soft skills are like theory. No soft skills here, soft skills there. The schools, they talk about them, but they don’t teach them because it’s hard to teach because you see subjects like math and social studies and whatever.
So this is a way for me to explain to the parents, first of all, which are the skills that their kids need to develop to be successful and happy. That’s very important and happy in the future. And second, how can they help develop them at home. Don’t trust the schools to do it. You have to do it yourself. These are soft skills that you can do in your house directly with your kid.
John Corcoran: 29:18
And you said you prefer to call them power.
Eduardo Montano: 29:20
Power, power skills, power skills. They’re so powerful they make the difference.
John Corcoran: 29:26
That’s true. Soft skills are just they don’t have the best ring to it. Power skills. I like that we want power skills.
Eduardo Montano: 29:31
Doesn’t have a punch.
John Corcoran: 29:32
Yes. My boys would love that. Yeah. And so what are they?
Eduardo Montano: 29:37
Which are the things that you learn at school now you can search with AI. You can search with your computer.
John Corcoran: 29:46
At your fingertips. Yeah.
Eduardo Montano: 29:47
Everything is there. So. But what isn’t there is your power skills.
John Corcoran: 29:52
Okay. And what are the power skills okay.
Eduardo Montano: 29:54
We have 14. The first one is analytical thinking. You have to be in the you have to have the capacity to analyze and reflect and evaluate information right now. Kids look at social media and they believe everything. When are they going to do analytical thinking and say, this is true and this is not because this, that, that, that that’s the first one.
The other one is I’m a very huge fan because I do it myself. It’s autonomous learning. It’s how to learn independently depending on what you need to learn. It’s said that these kids are going to change professions 5 to 10 times in their lives. So they have to keep learning different things every time.
Right now they have to learn AI or they have to learn different skills. So how they’re going to learn, how they want to get a course, they can read a book, they can YouTube, whatever. But yeah, autonomous learning, digital abilities, that’s AI, that’s metaverse, that’s virtual reality. That’s they have to learn to use these tools, not the tools they use them, but they have to use them to make things better, to make them quicker. Make them. Make them more productive than they could have been without these tools.
John Corcoran: 31:29
Yeah, I had a great time recently working on a school project with my 11 year old. He had to do an artist report, so he picked an artist, and then he had to do these different sub assignments. He had to write a summary of him. He had to write a letter to him. He had to create a drawing that was inspired, but slightly different from his art.
And we used a number of steps along the way. I didn’t let him just use the AI, like generate it and create it, but I used it more for idea generation for learning about the artist’s background, you know, even like generating an image that he then had to draw. So he looked at it and then he drew it himself based on the image that the eye had come up with. Is that a good way to utilize AI with the kid?
Eduardo Montano: 32:14
Yes. I mean, there’s two ways of using it. One is for AI to do the work for me, and the other one is to help me understand what I have to do. So prompting is a very nice way of understanding your problem. Yeah.
If you know exactly what to ask, it’s like. Like programming something on a computer. I’m a systems engineer, so it’s very similar. You have to tell them exactly what you want for it to give you the right information. So I like AI prompting.
And yeah, you can use AI for example. Help me understand this subject and give me ten questions. are multiple choice questions or open questions and help me understand it. So quiz me, quiz me I’ll.
John Corcoran: 33:06
Oh I did, I did that one the other day too. We were learning the state capitals, so I brought out the chapter ChatGPT and we used the voice mode and just said quiz us on the state capitals. And then sometimes if we kept forgetting it, I would say, give me something about this city so that I will remember it, which it wasn’t great at, but it was. It was a little helpful. It was pretty. It was a pretty cool way to learn it.
Eduardo Montano: 33:28
Great. And you can say I memorize better images, give me an image I can, I can relate to.
John Corcoran: 33:35
Yeah.
Eduardo Montano: 33:36
So, yeah, yeah I, we, we do promote everybody using AI teachers kids administration. Everybody uses it myself. I use it a lot myself.
John Corcoran: 33:51
It seems to me that academia isn’t quite sure. And we’re recording this in May of 2025, but they’re not quite sure what to do with AI right now. There isn’t really a standard way of approaching it, and it’s kind of a lot of different schools and teachers are just trying to figure this stuff out.
Eduardo Montano: 34:07
Yes, yes, but we don’t have to be afraid. We need to use it. We need to use it. And for example, for a teacher to design a class, it’s a lot easier with AI. But what we have to do is the correct prompting.
We have a very peculiar methodology. So we already uploaded the methodology to AI. We uploaded everything that the AI should know about the school. So when I say make the activity for this class in this other subject, he’s going to make it based on what I already told him.
John Corcoran: 34:45
Oh that’s great because it already has that background knowledge. Yeah. I know we’re a little short on time, so we don’t have time to go through all the different power skills, but any other power skills you want to briefly mention?
Eduardo Montano: 34:57
Well emotional intelligence. I think that’s one of the main ones. It’s one of the most important things right now, because some of the few things that distinguish us from computers is emotional intelligence. But the sad thing is that we’re living in an era where it’s where we are less practicing because before we played with other kids and that developed our emotional intelligence. Right now it’s all computers. It’s all cell phones. We don’t even see the faces. We cannot distinguish the emotion that the other person is feeling in a determined moment, because we are not used to seeing faces.
John Corcoran: 35:38
I just witnessed this recently. So I have four kids and we live in a small house and it is chaotic and kids are fighting over stuff all the time. And we were playing recently with another kid who was an only child, around the same age as some of my kids and two of my kids. My nine year old and my six year old were arguing vehemently about whose turn it was at bat because I was pitching the ball to them, and the other kid was kind of sitting aside. He was kind of like, what do I do here?
Like, he didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know what to do with, like, two siblings fighting, you know, vociferously, you know. And it made me realize, you know, like, that is, you know, navigating that type of dynamic. You know, he’s not being exposed to it. And because of video games, because of screens, you know, kids are less likely to be exposed to that stuff.
You know, this was actually a rare instance where a bunch of fans, you know, people in the neighborhood were outside and we were playing ball in the yard, you know, but that doesn’t happen as much as it used to.
Eduardo Montano: 36:42
Yeah. We have to limit their time using devices. And that’s important that we have to push them outside before the parents push them inside the house. Right now we have to push them outside the house, go and play with each other.
John Corcoran: 36:55
Yeah. So any other in the book? Extraordinary. Are there any other strategies for developing these power skills like emotional intelligence? I know you already talked about the strategies from the family forum.
Eduardo Montano: 37:09
Yes. So what I did is a different approach from my first book. Now I did a story about two twins, Nina and Fabi. They wanted a better life for their village, so they had to develop these 14 skills. So they go out in the world and they live 14 adventures.
Each adventure is developing one skill. So that is my way to show the parents how they can show their kids to develop a skill. And at the end of each story, there’s a self-reflection question because they already know. So I have some ideas. Now they have to answer for themselves.
If you are in this situation, how would you solve it using what you just learned? You can do this with your kid. You can do this by yourself. If the kid is old enough, he can do it by himself. Over ten years old, he already can read the book. If not, the parent with the kid can read the book. That’s that’s the idea. So they think this is a book to think creatively and to solve problems with one of the 14 skills in each chapter.
John Corcoran: 38:19
Yeah. As we’re close to wrapping up here, I’m curious, you know, you’ve got three different schools. You’ve thought a lot about education. Are you as you look towards AI and this rapidly changing environment that we’re experiencing right now with technologies kind of flying at us. Are you excited about the future? Are you a bit nervous about the future or maybe a combination of both? How do you feel about it?
Eduardo Montano: 38:45
A combination of both. I love technology, but I’m afraid that it’s not well used most of the time. So? So what I’m trying to do is tell them, use it. But this is how we are.
You should use it. If you don’t use it like this in the evaluation, we have to adapt it. We have to change the form, the way we evaluate the kids right now. And now it’s different. Now it’s not a memory.
Now it’s. Now you have to know that he has. How to prove that he understands the concept. Even though he did the homework he did it with me. But in the test you are really going to evaluate if he understands. So the whole education system has to change.
John Corcoran: 39:31
Yeah for sure.
Eduardo Montano: 39:33
But yeah I’m excited but yeah it’s something that.
John Corcoran: 39:36
Yeah I mean I think I think back on it because you know I went I, I was an English major in, in undergrad and I went to law school Cool. And so many of the ways that I was tested on material was writing out long form essays, you know. And you certainly couldn’t do that these days, because you have no way of really knowing whether it was generated by AI. So I imagine it’s going to have to move to more in-person testing, where you know that the person is actually putting out and understanding the material.
Eduardo Montano: 40:05
And the homework shouldn’t have any grade because you don’t know how he did it, and the tests should have more grades because he really proves himself.
John Corcoran: 40:16
Yeah. You’re right.
Eduardo Montano: 40:17
All the system has to change.
John Corcoran: 40:19
Right. That’s a good point. I hadn’t thought about that. Eduardo, this is fascinating. And thank you so much for sharing your ideas here.
I want to wrap up with my last question, which is my gratitude question. So I’m a big fan of gratitude and giving our guests a little bit of space to acknowledge any peers, contemporaries, mentors that you would want to shout out and just thank them for helping you in your journey. Ernie.
Eduardo Montano: 40:42
Well, that’s a great question. I am, I do every day. I express my gratitude to myself. My gratitude goes to God. I have very strong beliefs.
So every problem, I put it in his hands. But yeah, my roommates, for example, they help me think bigger. I had only one school. And. Come on, why don’t you open another one?
And why don’t you do this? And why don’t you do that? You have great stuff. Why don’t you write something? So they, like, pushed me beyond my safe, safe, safe zone and actually.
And books. Books. Stephen Covey, for example. He made a huge impact on me. And how do I manage myself and my companies? Scaling Up is another huge book for me. That’s the way I manage my own businesses.
John Corcoran: 41:43
Got it right there. Yeah. It’s always close by. Yeah. Great book, great book. Eduardo, where can people go to learn more about you? Check out your books. Connect with you if they have any questions.
Eduardo Montano: 41:54
Thank you very much. In Amazon, if you only look for my name, Eduardo Montano. And the book is EXTRAordinary. That’s one. And the other one is the Family Forum.
And my page it’s www.eduardomontano.com there. You can see my videos also on YouTube. Family tips is my channel English and Spanish and the books are also English and Spanish.
John Corcoran: 42:20
Excellent. Eduardo thanks so much.
Eduardo Montano: 42:23
I enjoyed it very much. Thank you.
Outro: 42:27
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.