9 How to build emotionally intelligent teams, Daisy Bird

0:00So we're into day two of 2026 and you may be wondering when you're going back to work and also what news resolutions you're very likely to not keep. It is with that in mind that in this episode, Daisy Bird explores the role of emotional intelligence in building resilient, high-performing teams. From understanding individual triggers to creating environments where people feel seen, supported and able to do their best work, Daisy explains why emotional awareness is a leadership skill, not a soft extra. Keep listening for our last few episodes of this series featuring Finfluencer Rachel Harris, Laniece Brothers on female founder health and Emily Austin on productivity.

0:41Hi Daisy. Welcome to How To Start Up. I'm very excited that we're having this conversation. How are you? I'm good Jules. Nice to see you. Thank you for having me. I've been a big fan of your podcast and admiring your work for a long time. Oh well I'm thrilled to have you on and I know we've talked about it for a while so it's fantastic that we're finally putting it in our diaries and making it happen because I know when you run service-based businesses, it's probably the last thing on the list is to take time out and talk about what you're actually doing in the day-to-day. Before we get into it, I'd love it if you could introduce yourself and a bit about the business that you founded.

1:14So I'm Daisy Bird and I set up a creative communications agency in 2010 that's always specialised exclusively in luxury travel, hotels and wellness brands. And you've just celebrated 15 years. So huge congratulations. Everyone said to me, just get to five, just get to five years. And I know in the last five years, the world's fallen apart about 100 times, but in 15 years, you'll have seen it all. What were the key motivators for you in setting up your business at such a young age as well? I think youth was actually a gift. I sometimes wonder if I'd have had the strength and the courage to set up my own business at my age with more responsibilities from an earnings perspective or children.

1:59So I think being young and very passionate about what I was doing at the time and knowing that I wanted to just narrow my focus a bit. I was very lucky to work with incredible brands in the hotel and travel industry. And for amazing people, I really always admired and respected my employers. And I learned a lot from them. I got to a stage where I just wanted to only work with brands that felt really aligned with my interests and my passion points and my values. And looking back at your startup self, what are you most proud of? I think I am most proud of being selective about the brands and the people that I worked with.

2:42That was the intention from the get-go, to align myself with brands, destinations, and people that aligned with my personal taste, my values, because that's where the magic happens. If you're really passionate about the brands that you represent, especially in my industry, where my role is to champion them, to endorse them, to promote them, to tell their stories, from my perspective it's got to be driven by passion and genuine interest and I knew from an earlier age that I'm extremely effective when I'm interested and passionate about things and when a brand doesn't align with my values or my purpose I'm not so effective so that really is what I'm most proud of and actually really there were times when I turned down liquidative briefs which could have compelled my business earlier but it didn't feel aligned with my integrity and there were definitely times where I questioned why I was doing that.

3:33And then when big crises happened, like COVID, it suddenly really made absolute sense to me why I'd made those decisions because our relationships, our client partnerships were very human. They were very meaningful. There was a lot of love and care and passion from both sides and honoring of the partnership, which meant that I think we came through it strong. We retained our clients and we retained our staff. That's incredible in a travel business. Oh my goodness. I've never heard anyone actually be able to do that through COVID because everything just fell apart. But you're right to be proud of that.

4:06And also I think to know that at such a young early age in your career is amazing because I just towed the line of working for luxury brand after luxury brand thinking, great, lovely job, great work hard for someone else. And I didn't ever really feel like I fitted in, but you listened to that gut feeling quite early on and took the plunge. but what would you maybe have done differently looking back? I wish I'd had more confidence from the get-go. If I'd have realised that it would have been quicker than I'd anticipated to win clients, I might have resourced the business more quickly. I had more senior talent early, however I was always into a kind of slow and steady approach rather than scaling too quickly.

4:46And people are the hardest part in any business because you read a CV, you don't know if they've got intuition, integrity, initiative, all of those amazing skills. And I don't know why they call them soft skills because they're bloody hard to find. But that kind of thing, people are expensive and they take a lot of time and energy from you. And it's hard because then you're not doing the do as much anymore. You've got other people doing the do. On that, how have you approached recruiting people in? What lessons have you learned? We spend a lot of time with our co-workers and we're in a people business with service providers.

5:21We've got to gel as a team, but also with our clients. I think I've always been quite careful to matchmake individuals with the right brands because not everyone is as effective on one brand or one sector as they are on another. I really look for skilled people with similar work ethics and values, but I look for individuality. I don't want clones of myself, for example. I think in this day and age, especially working with luxury brands, people with high disposable wealth aren't all going to be the same kind of personality types or with the same backgrounds or education. So I do look for diversity and for people to look through a different lens and approach communication strategies with individuality.

6:06How important is emotional intelligence when you're looking to bring people into your business? Hugely important. I think as well as learned skills and practical skills and network and strategy, having empathy and being able to read mood and sentiment, not just our clients, but our colleagues, but also customers. You know, at the end of the day, brand strategy. One of the things I love the most about my business is really diving very deep into a brand, understanding what that brand represents, their positioning and their customer profile, and then adapt to all our strategies around that. If you're going to take it off their plate and communicate on their behalf, you have to know every nut and bolt of that business.

6:45And in the travel sector, it's people. And I was laughing with a friend the other day saying, bloody hell, people are really annoying because you've got yourself that you have to manage. You have your team you have to manage. You have your clients who are also people you have to manage. And then in our roles with podcast production and PR, you've got journalists that you then need to manage. So it's all people who can all have a bad day. but for your team where you work really hard together you do many hours together how do you tackle that how do you know when you meet somebody that they're going to be a good fit it's tricky we don't always get it right but I think we look for kindred spirits as well as skills we've done a lot of coaching over the past few years which has been really really helpful it started with me I've always believed in coaching and I've worked with various coaches over 10-12 years and then I realized that I wanted to bring that into the business and I to start slowly.

7:32So with my senior leadership team to help us design a really cohesive and collaborative leadership structure and now bringing that down to sort of managerial levels. So I think that around 10 people have coaching now. And ultimately, I want to bring that into the entire business because it's been very helpful for the individuals to have an external resource to help them with their personal development to dial up their leadership skills, but also from a you know personal perspective really growing self-awareness we've used thanks to our coaching partner a really useful sort of personality testing psychosymmetric testing tool which has helped us individually grow self-awareness and also share with one another how we can get the best out of each other it's helped me design teams and actually i've used that in final stage of interview process with senior hires to understand where we need to dial up certain energies and certain teams and certain skill sets and where it might be too much to have too many of the same personalities in one team.

8:34So yeah, I found that fascinating. I found it very helpful for myself as a leader and to express to some of my colleagues, my own tendencies, how they can get the best out of me, how they can manage up to me, the do's and don'ts and really understand other people. I think it's been most helpful for more introverted personalities who don't express themselves as openly as some of the more extrovert personalities? Yes, because I find I am very analytical and OCD and I work with a lot of creatives and sometimes like, but how can you just not fill in the spreadsheet? How can you just not get that process?

9:11And they are over there, over there, over there, got a hundred ideas at once. And so if I was probably a little bit more aware of that from the get-go, I'd be more sympathetic and they'd be able to explain how I work the best. But that is a huge investment both in money and time in your team. Is it something you'd recommend for new founders to consider at the beginning of their businesses to get to know themselves a bit better? Absolutely. I think I've always been self-aware, but I think I was maybe a bit ashamed to admit where I wasn't so strong. So I think in the early days, I thought I was meant to know it all and be everything and wear every hat.

9:45You and I would have been like dream business partners because I need around me people who are incredibly analytical, practical, data-driven, excellent at process and organization because is I can get carried away by ideas. You know, I can have a million ideas at once and I can initiate lots of things, but I really need a lot of really practical people around me to get the task done. So if I'd known that in the early days, I might have hired senior people to balance out my strengths. But I'm now very lucky that I have excellent people around me, including a very fantastic managing director who balances out where I'm not so strong and can help really drive the business.

10:22I would contradict that though there is no luck in this you have just slogged and slogged and then decided to put money back into the business to do the coaching and invest in those people because we've chatted over the years about people and structure and teams and trust and delegation and loyalty and all of these things that you kind of hope people are going to bring back to the business and when you're leading you're paying every salary out every month it can feel quite of a drain sometimes when you're not being fueled back but do you feel more supported now that you're team are more aware of you and who you are.

10:56Yeah, absolutely. I think you have to be open with your senior people. I'm a real collaborator. So whilst I'm the sort of sole business owner and the founder, I like to canvas my people to make opinions and I really care about what they want and need in the business. Well, you need them to be good. You're paying them to be better at things than you are sometimes. Exactly. I've got people who are significantly more skilled than me in certain areas of the business and I default to them and I champion them to the clients and I will delegate certain projects to real specialists within the team. I've always embraced difference.

11:28I certainly don't want a team that is all working like robots. You know, it's got to be customized and personal, how we deliver service to our clients and pulling results from different teams. If someone is really excellent with having a network in, for example, the art world or the fashion set, or is an absolute demon at organizing events or partnerships, then we'll pull results from that team or that individual because collectively we can be brilliant but if you rely on one person to manage a single project or a single client we don't get the brilliance of a wider team well that's the joy of communications and it's this kind of magic fairy dust that people go oh PR and I've had CEOs in the past like wave their hand at me I'm like it isn't magic it's hard work but it is magic when you get the right people on a project and that it all happens and that collaborative approach.

12:18People ask me, why do I go to co-working office? Because I cannot be working on my own solo. I get really bored in my own company. And that human connection, I think, makes or breaks any job. Culture actually is such a buzzword these days. And people talk about brand development as the community growth. It's all about community and culture. I know from our conversations from years and years ago, you've always been so thoughtful about your people. And I was always in awe of how much you put your people first within your team because I was working at brands at the time that couldn't care less about their people.

12:50How have you been a champion of culture from the get-go? I think I've always been very clear on my values. Values when it comes to how I care about people, our employees, our clients, the brands, having a really strong moral compass about what is right and wrong, what's appropriate and not appropriate. Yes, we're service providers, but we're not here to say yes to every request that comes through from every client because sometimes it doesn't align with our values or it doesn't align with what is responsible strategic advice. I think taking care of people comes in many ways. You know, we can do the fun stuff, the sort of togetherness, the social element of work.

13:30We do quite a lot on the wellness side. I like, and actually this is something that came out in my insights discovery report, is that don't talk to me in a really formal way. I like informality. I like gatherings that feel not so businesslike. So I really enjoy bringing people together. For example, a wellness retreat in the countryside. That's not your clients or the press. That's your team you're doing that with, isn't it? Yes, absolutely. I think taking people out of the office into an environment where it's very relaxed, it's very informal. You're connecting with each other on an equal ground, regardless of age, seniority, job title.

14:03It's actually just meeting people on a human level. And I feel like that's where the magic happens and we get to know each other and people feel relaxed. And I enjoy that. I think maybe I get more out of it than anyone else because, you know, sometimes there is a weight of responsibility that comes with being a founder and the expectations of you. It's every day you have that responsibility. So how often would you do, say, an offsite with your team? We do quarterly wellness get togethers and that's usually in London, whether it's breastwork or movement. And I encourage people to come to me and make suggestions.

14:36And then we do an annual sort of offsite to know a retreat, which I think is important. We do invest a lot in people from a kind of staff development standpoint. And I think this is related to your question on emotional intelligence. An element which I think is extremely important to people that we hire is that they have an appetite to learn and an ambition to grow and develop, and that they are able to receive feedback in the spirit that it's meant because we do invest a lot in trading, very regular checkups, you know, the full kind of six month annual appraisals, detailed KPIs. but it's the regular check-ins from line management.

15:14And I think where people really, really thrive is when they realize that the feedback that they are being delivered is for their benefit, for their professional growth, not just for the business. And yes, there's always a risk that they could take that elsewhere. And I'm not naive enough to think we keep staff forever. And I've had amazing people who have worked for me and gone on to do brilliant things elsewhere. but I think being able to receive feedback well and listen and action is extremely important for their own profession also their personal development well also not every boss is going to be like you and actually a colleague of mine said this it's like it's quite good when you're not actually in the office because we overhear other businesses nearby and how awful they are to their teams it's like oh I'm taking that as a compliment and as a win because they don't know what they don't know you and I have worked for a number of years for other people and in business and we've met a lot of people, but experience is what you get after you've needed it.

16:10And I think as much as I want to nurture and protect my team, I know they will leave at some point. And I've said to them, when you're ready, let me know and I'll help you get a job somewhere else because I'd much rather help you find the right job. And they're like, are you joking? I was like, well, no, because A, you're going to give me more notice to replace you, but B, let's just be really honest about this. And I'd love the feedback. And actually going through B Corp was amazing because it's all about feedback. It's like asking all the tricky questions because then you know where you stand.

16:37And I don't know what you think about this, but there's various commentary on different generations of how they behave at work and their expectations of what work should give them. It's like, no, no, you are here to earn a salary. That seems to be slightly forgotten. And I remember working at Burberry to midnight most nights and, you know, those lights that are motion-censored and I'd have to roll my chair back from my desk to turn the light back on because it kept going off because I was the only one left in the office. And I kick myself now being that stupid to work that hard. But I learned so much from that experience.

17:09And I learned and developed and I knew what I had in me. But I do feel that kind of balance of that give and take has shifted over the recent years. Leading question. It's a question. I think there was a time probably for the first 10 years that most of my people and we were a smaller business, but most of my employees had very luckily been with me since they graduated, which was amazing. That level of loyalty and care and connectedness between us. A number of them have moved on and gone on to do brilliant things. And I had to recruit from other businesses and actually other sectors. And that was quite daunting.

17:47However, bringing in talent from lots of other brands, in-house ad agencies has helped communicate downwards that not every business perhaps takes care of people so well or invests in their development because in those 10 years where my wonderful team had been with me so long they didn't know any different and to be fair I don't know any different because I've worked for myself for 15 years so I don't know what's out there in the big bad world. I know well I can tell you I've witnessed your team and I've witnessed the birthdays and I've witnessed the celebrations I've witnessed the off sites. It is unusual how much you invest in your people and our confidential conversations one-on-one.

18:26I know how much you really care. Like it's always about your team first. I rarely hear about press and clients when we have chats, which I think is really special and really unusual. We're taking a quick 30 second break from this episode to ask, are you thinking of starting your own podcast? If so, this is great news because we run a course that will train you how to produce your own podcast yourself. This course is for people who do not want to outsource and pay someone else to do it. You want to learn how to do it yourself. We teach you everything that you need to get up and running with your own podcast show and so much more.

19:04Just DM us at hello at Fallowfield Mason to book your spot. Well, it weighs heavily on me. Thank you for acknowledging that. There's always more that one can do, but we are a business after all. And whilst it's very important to cultivate a workplace and a culture and a team that enjoy what they do and feel that they're growing and learning and being taken care of, I've definitely been quite soft at some times. Actually, I need practical people around me to create the efficiencies and the processes because the more efficient we are, the more time people can have for the benefits, the additional holiday, the remote working, etc.

19:41You can't have it all. So there's got to be the work ethic, the graph, the results, hitting KPIs, listening to your feedback and developing, and then you can have the benefits. You can't have one without the other, if that makes sense. That's a very diplomatic answer to my question about, say, the 20-year-olds coming into the workforce who are like, well, I need 60 days annual leave and I want a pay rise immediately. And it's like, well, what value have you added back to the business? my head of HR in Australia for Chanel was amazing she's like if you can come at me with your job description and show me everything in green is what we pay you to do and then everything in red is what you're doing in addition that we're not paying you for we might have an opportunity to grow your role it's like ah well it's simple as that and then every negotiation I've ever gone into an MD with it's like this is what I'm contracted to this is the value I'm already adding on top can you give me a pay rise I've proven my worth they're like sure it's a no-brainer And especially when you're dealing with money people who don't understand PR and don't want to understand PR, it's a very black and white system for them.

20:44But I think it was that kind of around it because lots of women typically and typically in comms would be like, but they must know I want to pay Rise. No, no business is going to give away money unless they can see a return. It's business sense. But yeah, it's a hard one to manage when you care about your team. That is such smart advice because you're right. I think I sometimes feel ancient when I'm sharing anecdotes with my Gen Z employees, and I really try not to. But back in the day, you know, we were trained to always consider what you could take off your line manager, because if you can make their life easier and help promote them, there's space for you to grow.

21:19And I think if someone comes to me with a succession plan, basically being solution focused, you know, this is the value I'm bringing and also looking at it from a commercial standpoint, but also just considering a succession plan. you can't let go of tasks and responsibilities unless you can come up with a proposal on how they're going to get done. So just being smart with how you manage up to your line managers, because that's just deeply impressive if someone comes and they're showing more of a sort of entrepreneurial mindset. And I'm really lucky that I have a senior team now who really, they're business minded.

21:52And I love that. It feels very collaborative. And then they reap the rewards. As you say, we're all in it together and we wouldn't have businesses without our people. So it's a virtuous circle, hopefully not a vicious one. You've said before that the hardest part of running a business are those invisible skills and output that you need to have. Can you share what those have been for you? Yes. So in the early days when I was wearing lots of hats and doing everything, being out and about, managing every relationship, hosting every press trip, being front and center with every event, every client meeting was part and part being a startup.

22:29That's also not sustainable. You know, a founder, a leader, being front and center across everything doesn't empower the next generation of leaders to step up, but it also doesn't give you any space for thinking, creativity and strategy. Someone said to me recently, you burn the candle at both ends and you burn really bright. I was like, no, you burn out. Yes, yes, yes. And I have definitely had periods of suffering from burnout. I can get very overexcited about brands, people, projects, ideas. I love being with people. I get energized by being in community, by bouncing ideas. However, I also need time to replenish and reflect.

23:05And I think I've learned that I need to carve out that time and be less apologetic about it. Just be offline. Do the things that help me show up as a leader more effectively. And that might be investing in my own well-being. that might be carving out a big chunk of time for my own coaching or just being reflective on the future. Because I think it's very easy to be stuck in the weeds and it's very challenging to show up as a leader in the right headspace with the right energy if you are overbooked and running from X to Y. And I feel like that busy fool, I think it was a guest episode four way back four years ago said this is like, don't be a busy fool because there's so many things you could do and it's actually taking the time out to work out what you should do and it sounds like your coach has really helped pull you out the weeds and see bigger picture is there any advice you'd give anyone about how to find a coach I think coach is a different stage of your life like I've worked with people at the beginning who I think I've always been good at the softer side of business the sort of culture values integrity I needed help on practical and then I got to a stage where I needed help on scaling.

24:18And then I became a mother and I needed help on how to be a working mother because I didn't have role models around me. As wonderful as my own mother is, I didn't grow up with a lot of working women around me. So I literally had no idea how to mother and run a business. So I needed coaching that really supported that stage of my life. So I think there are different resources and different coaches for different types of businesses and different human beings and different life stages. I think as women, we go through lots of different stages of life and hormones. And I think making sure that you pull in the right resources for those different stages is quite important.

24:57Yeah. So be really honest with the precise bit of the thing that you need help with and go after a coach that can support on that. You are a female-led business hiring so far only women, plus you have two daughters. How do you feel women's health should be managed and supported within business? It's a hot topic. And I know the law may be changing around, say, menopausal leave. But how have you tackled this? It's a very good question. And I'm not shy to admit that I've been through a pretty turbulent few years at a perimenopausal state. I had no idea what was going on. There really wasn't as much knowledge even in the medical world.

25:34There weren't resources to go to. and I was quite deep into that journey when I actually realized what was going on and it explained a few things and I think I made a decision even though it was deeply personal to share with some of my colleagues what was going on because I knew that my fuse was shorter I wasn't as sharp as maybe they had been used to I was losing my train of thought in the middle of you know a really important strategy meeting and it felt really quite frightening to me whilst when I didn't know what was going on. It felt deeply frightening and I felt less mentally strong and energetically able to show up how I was used to, but I didn't realize what was going on.

26:14As the employer of lots of women, and as you say, as the mother of girls, there's no shame in it. So I did want to share with some of my co-workers and I think I got a lot of compassion from their response. And I hope that if they go through, which they probably will a similar stage, then they won't feel ashamed to admit to whether it's me or another employer or people, they're line managing what's going on, because we're all going to go through these things as women. Having babies when you are the owner of a business is challenging. I think there isn't enough support for self-employed mothers.