In 1999, American Express Financial Advisor’s Senior Vice President Mike Woodward gave Group Vice President Art DeLorenzo a copy of Daniel Goleman’s book Working With Emotional Intelligence. It was a sequel to Goleman’s seminal book, Emotional Intelligence. This was an awakening for Art as he had experienced Emotional Competence Training earlier thanks to Dr. Rick Aberman. Rick had built his reputation as a mentor to high profile sports stars at the collegiate and professional level. Simultaneously, Art had built a relationship with Dr. Fred Luskin, the creator and director of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects in Palo Alto, CA.  They met through a mutual friend, Dr. Alan Sherr in Northport, New York where Dr. Luskin was working as a school psychologist at his daughter’s elementary school. For Art Goleman’s book fleshed out and added words to what he had seen in his work as an executive. Self Awareness, Self Regulation, Motivation, Empathy, & Social Skills were the concepts he had highlighted but now he had categories and a name. Art’s exhaustive reading on this topic validated his observed hypothesis that EQ was the differentiator for success not just IQ.

In late 2000, Art invited Dr. Aberman & Dr. Luskin to meet with him in Albany, New York where he was a Group Vice President for AEFA. The purpose was to introduce Dr. Luskin to Dr. Aberman and to discuss combining the qualities that they all represented professionally. Art had 30 years of sales experience and had seen that when people were less stressed they performed better.  He saw this first hand in his observation of those field leaders he admired and in the coaching he experienced from legendary soccer coach T. Richard Terry at Castleton State College in Vermont. Rick brought his knowledge of emotional intelligence and his application of that knowledge to the meeting. And Fred brought his amazing work around forgiveness and stress management via his work at Stanford School of Medicine.

This co-mingled pool of talent and understanding evolved into a research project that became MYT – Maximize Your Talent. The three wanted to prove that by teaching financial advisors how to manage themselves more adeptly they could experienced more calm and thus be more productive. They also did not want to become a “seminar” or “workshop” entity that simply told their story and moved on. MYT was designed to measure peoples EQ before they presented their training. Then they engaged outside “observers” selected by the participants and taught them how to give honest and direct feedback. Then they presented a well thought through IDP – Individual Development Plan – for each participant and followed up with a high level of coaching conference calls. After their initial launch on September 01st, 2001, the results were just what they thought they would be; increased productivity, lower stress & anger, and improved quality of life, positive states, and vitality scores. In October of 2008, after 7 more research pilots confirmed their hypothesis, they became a business entity know as MYT Group, LLC. MYT has expanded their work beyond the financial services industry and is now a growing consulting firm.