Mick Unplugged
Emotional Intelligence: Jim Burns Reveals the Hidden Advantage in Leadership
11 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What is the background of Jim Burns and his role in the community?
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to an in-person Mic Unplugged. I'm in my hometown in the upstate and I am here with a gentleman who when you think of the upstate of South Carolina, you think about development, you think about community outreach. It is this guy, Jim Burns.
You're listening to Mick Unplugged, hosted by the one and only Mick Hunt. This is where purpose meets power and stories spark transformation. Mick takes you beyond the motivation and into meaning, helping you discover your because and becoming unstoppable. I'm Rudy Rush, and trust me, you're in the right place. Let's get unplugged.
You can't laugh. That's the truth. I bet you're too kind. No, no, no, no, man. It takes a village, my friend. It does take a village for sure. Jim, I know if I remember correctly, you moved here from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
You were five, 10. Yep. Yep. Exactly. And it was actually a little town right outside of Pittsburgh called Latrobe. I've heard of Latrobe. There's some real ballplayers. Or St. Vincent College, where the Steelers training camp is. And Arnie Palmer was there. And Mr. Rogers. Lots of the little beer called Rolling Rock. Old 33. There's that.
So, small fact.
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Chapter 2: How does Jim define personal and professional growth?
I didn't know it was Latrobe. But my youngest son, who we just talked about. Yeah. The University of Miami. All both went to St. Vincent to play football. Really? He chose Beloit College and only won two games of four years. And St. Vincent won, like, the D3 championship three years in a row. And I said, Cameron, are you sure that this was really the right decision for you? Life choices, right?
And choices. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, Steelers fan.
Big time. Yep. I know that I raised my kids right because they're all big Steelers fans, too.
All right. And the episode is over. That was the beginning and the end. Oh, because us Patriot fans.
Well, they did good, too. They got six Super Bowls as well.
Yeah. Yeah. Ours are more recent, but that's fine. We're living in the past. I hear you. I hear you. No, man. So, Jim, I want to get into a lot, but, you know, I ask all my guests the very first question is about their because. That thing that's deeper than your why. I call it like your true purpose.
Yeah.
And it changes over time. So if I would say, Jim, today, what is your, because why do you keep doing what you do?
And, and like, like we, we talked a little bit about four, it's kind of interesting just to go back and think about it. And so it's, since we met and we started talking and doing this, I was like, wow, it really is a, is a great question. We did this game with kids, right?
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Chapter 3: What role does self-awareness play in effective leadership?
Like why, why, why dad, why do I do the calls? And then, and then, you know, if you're, You don't think about it as a parent. You say, because I said so. And so, so great, great. I love the question and everything. I narrowed it down to, you know, it's kind of a bunch of, bunch of answers, but to try to get together, you know, my, my, my becauses are family, friends, faith.
I call them a three F's. Yeah. Okay. I have some of those in school. That's right. Yeah. That's right. Uh, my three, my three S and then, um, uh, you know, I'm, I'm all about leadership and, and in every, I think, uh, you know, John Maxwell said everything rises and falls on leadership. And then I'm also, uh, all about growth, you know, growth, you know, you want your companies to grow.
You want to have personal growth. Uh, you want to see your, the organizations that you're a part of grow, whether philanthropic or the community or whatever. And so, uh, Um, I, I created a company, uh, that I, it's called C LLC. It was strategy and execution excellence.
And, um, I still have the company and I'm, I'm working with Harkness development and I'm the chief operating officer for Harkness, but, um, C is still an entity. And the reason that I started that was because it's strategy, C LLC, S E E strategy and execution excellence. Hmm.
And what I saw out there through my career was that some people were really good at strategy and really good at visioning, but they didn't execute. They didn't get into the details. They weren't the type of person that wants to be collaborative, which on any big project you have to do. So they set the vision, they set strategy, and they might be fantastic at that. Mm-hmm.
But when you bring that together, because you can't just be good at strategy or it's just a plan on the shelf.
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Chapter 4: How can leaders effectively implement emotional intelligence?
You can't just be good at execution because then you execute things that you that don't matter. And so and I think that's part of that's that's one of my why is it's like be able to see the bigger picture, to envision what's not there and what it can become and then bring that to fruition.
I love that. And you're exactly right. I actually had this conversation with my COO. She's going to yell at me when she hears this. Don't get a choke. It's my Mario choke. It's okay. It's okay. I don't believe that people that are highly organized and plan amazing are great executors. Right. Right. It's almost like, and that's not a bad thing because I feed people that are great at execution.
Miss the small details. But for whatever reason, a lot of times we put people in place and we expect them to do it all. And we expect them to do the organizing, the planning and the execution. And usually when somebody is great, again, at the organizing, the planning.
They failed to execute to standard because they put so much time and energy making sure that if all the things could happen, we can solve or we will be protected. Right. I'd love to get your take on that, too. Like I see leaders fail a lot when they think you've got to be multidimensional.
I think as I'm one of the things in personal growth, right, you've got to be self-aware. You've got to know as a leader what you're good at, what your gifts are, right? Listen, I think if you don't know your strengths and your weaknesses, then you're going to create problems. Yeah. So you can be great.
You can be a great manager of people and have great people skills, but you're not going to have you don't have the financial acumen. So what I look for in leaders of the companies that I have, you got to have you have to supplement with really smart people in those areas that, you know, aren't your strength. Okay, so how do you recognize that?
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Chapter 5: What strategies can leaders use to build strong teams?
And that's just, that goes straight back to personal self-awareness. I can do certain things, but I might not be as good as somebody else. And when it's a big enough piece of the organization, you better make sure you hire strong people in all those other positions.
Again, something else we agree on. It's another thing. I literally just got finished speaking to an organization about that where I said, You're spending way too much time trying to grow weaknesses in people. Right. Why not let your people accentuate where they're very strong and continue to be strong and then supplement where they're weak with another person that's strong where they're weak?
And, and keep building your organization that way. Yeah. Because if you, as a growing thing, right, you go back, you grow, there's a growing thing. You need strong people throughout. And, and if you're the right leader, you're going to grow more people.
You're going to put them in positions where they're leading in certain areas so that, you know, if you get hit by a bus, I get my organization, my entity growing.
is going to continue on. Exactly. And you use the word grower growth several times. I know you've said this, and it was one of the things that when I moved here, when I moved back home, when I was researching Jim Burns, you had a statement that said, if you're not growing, you're dying.
Talk about the power of that growth, especially in this modern world, not just for leaders or entrepreneurs, but people in general, that growth, not just the mindset, but the actual application of growth.
I think, again, most people are like, oh, well, I don't know how to do this, or I don't know how to do that, and they try to grow in those areas. Don't do that. Grow in the areas where you have interests, where you have strengths. But you got to keep growing because you never, you never stop growing. You never stop reading.
I'm a big, I've got like a whole reading list of things, including Mick plugged there. And, and, and so you, we just got, we've got to continue growing. to have the mindset that there's, I think the more that I find out about, right. It, it points out how little I know. Right. And so if you in, in everything that I've been a part of is, has been, how do we grow?
How are we going to grow in economic development? And then there's a board chair for the local economic development corp, right? We have to dispel the, we're growing too fast and we're growing to what we, we've got to grow in a proper course, right?
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Chapter 6: How does Jim balance his professional responsibilities with family life?
And I agree with that 100%, right? So you got to have measurable. They got to be measurable goals to grow or you don't, right? When you hit those goals, you feel empowered and you feel like I did this and it energizes me, at least me, it energizes me more. So how do we do that and keep energizing yourself to go to that next level?
I love that, dude. I love that. So, again, one of the best and greatest leaders that I know is Jim Bryant. When you're looking at building your teams, what are some of the values that you look in for people? Because I have to assume that you're a lot like me and I've never asked you this question before. But for me, I hire people. And then the role will become the role.
But if you're not the person fit, you will never leave the role fit. So I don't care what your accolades are. I don't care what your resume says. If you're not the right person as a human being, it's never going to work. So tell us a little bit about that.
I think there's two categories. When I'm looking at hiring different people, I think there's two categories. There's very specific categories. Like an HR person, I don't need a scientist to do that. You know, I need somebody that's got that emotional intelligence and then it's motivational and everything like that. So you look for specific things. Accounting is another role.
Mikey, you got to know the books. You got to know the rules. You got to do that so that you keep everybody else out of trouble in in my in the development business that we've grown here. Yeah, I like I like people that have a.
breadth of knowledge i like you know more of the swiss army knife kind of uh folks that that i can put and in any situation um and they'll figure it out they always have me to come back to as a resource we were talking about this you know we're doing annual reviews and i i i think my job as a ceo here is is to make sure that everybody has the tools they need to be successful
They have the skill sets to be successful in the projects that they get assigned.
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Chapter 7: Why is community involvement important for leaders and entrepreneurs?
And then they know that they can always get to me. It might not be at a normal time. You keep a busy schedule, but they can always get to me. And if there's roadblocks, I'm going to help them overcome those things. So I think there are specific instances where you're looking for really targeted areas of expertise. Yeah. But for the most part, those are the those are the, you know, kind of the
more administrative roles that you've got to have within a growing or an organization of some size. And then for most of what we're doing here, man, you know, I need great project managers. And that's like the whole spectrum. That's not, that's not, hey, they're really good at this or this is, I can take the, I can give them a project no matter what it is and they go and knock it out.
And that's, I'm extremely blessed to have some great people that work with me that have worked with me in different organizations and everything. And that's your success as a leader depends on how well you build up everybody else.
Totally agree. And you just brought up one of my favorite terms, which is something, it's actually a pillar of all of the companies that I have, which is emotional intelligence. We lead, we respect, and we interact with emotional intelligence. But in 2025, and we're heading into 2026, I still see a lot of leaders. I see a lot of individuals talk the emotional intelligence game.
But then when it's time to apply it in a real world scenario, they forget all those principles. Like my favorite one is self-regulation. You get that tense moment and you just answer right away or you send that email off. And then when you meet with me, it's like, no, you're supposed to pause like five, 10 seconds, right? Or get up and walk around and then come back to it when you're calm.
Why are leaders, one, not leading with emotional intelligence? And what are some things, what are some tips from you that leaders can do now to make sure that they're implementing emotional intelligence into what they do?
Why are people doing it? I think it goes back to, do you know who you are? Number one. And what do you control?
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Chapter 8: What legacy does Jim Burns hope to leave behind?
I'm a strong believer, whether it's a stoic virtue, it's a lot of different things. But as a leader, what can I control? And I can control what I think. what I say and what I do. I can't control anybody else, what they think, say or do. And so all I can do is be the example of what I expect from that.
And so I think there is, it's way too easy to sit behind the computer and you get a bad email or something that upsets you and you're ready to fire something off. And I think that's what you got to know. I control what I say, what I do. Okay, what you said is upsetting to me, but I'm not going to react immediately. And I'm like, I have big, big decisions or something that really is upsetting.
I say, we're not going to respond. We're asleep on it. We're going to come back tomorrow and we're going to have regulated and gotten through all the emotions, right? You can't act on emotion.
You act with the... Whenever you act in anger... You're not going to come out. That's not going to be the best decision that you can make.
A lot of it. Right. Yeah. With, you know, the world champion, six-time world champion Patriots, we call controlling the controllables. I think Bill Belichick was the first to ever say that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could be. Could be. Could be. No, but you're spot on.
So for that person that's listening, that's watching right now, that's like, yeah, I hear what Jimmy Maker's saying, but man, it's tough. What's some advice you'd give?
I think just that whenever something upsets you that much and before you act on something, take that breath.
No.
Take that time and just know that, like, let that be a part that's ingrained in you to be a leader. People want in the face of, you know, you look at Churchill, right? In the face of what was almost imminent, he couldn't assure them that they were going to get through the winters and the things like that of World War II. But his just said, you deserve victory.
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