Emotional Intelligence Leadership

“You can’t base your life on other people’s expectations.”  Stevie Wonder

For a number of years, I led my life using other people’s expectations as my guide, as an anchor. Yes, we all do this to a point, but you need to recognize – become self-aware – of your own expectations to be really happy, productive and effective as a leader.

As I reflect on this today,  I’m much happier and much more effective as a leader now that I have my own set of expectations and live life and lead from them.

What are your expectations? What’s important to you and how do you lead your life?

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Leaders, use your strengths. Maximize them. But don’t overuse them – they become weaknesses.

Think about this: what got you here isn’t enough. If you only rely on your strengths, top ten strengths or otherwise, you will either remain in the status quo or go backwards as the world churns forward.

Self awareness enables you to target where to grow.

As a leader who wants to continue to keep moving, you need to leverage your strengths AND develop those weaker areas. Makes sense…intellectually. Action is the key. This is not a prescription for overwhelm. Pick one area to develop or improve and concentrate on that for three months. Before starting, decide on how you will measure your success. During that time and after, get feedback on your progress. Based on the input, continue to hone and adjust as appropriate. Don’t worry abut being perfect, you won’t be. And don’t try to develop more than three areas at one time. It’s a process of learning, developing and applying, as with any skill or capability.

Do this and your leadership capability expands beyond your current strengths.

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There are a number of things these days that might keep you from having a good night’s sleep. I’m sure you have your own list or could easily come up with one.

Something happened to a friend recently that hit me squarely in the gut. I found out that this friend and her child had their lives turned upside down by domestic violence and were homeless for a time. I was shocked. I didn’t know what to think.  Being sensitive to the fairly common gap between intention and impact, I acted. I reached out as best I could given the sketchy details and was about to offer them a place to stay when she  explained they are now in a program for families in their situation. She and her child are OK for now.

In the space of about two hours, my emotions ran the range. I also realized that there are parts of my life that have been very sheltered. This got me thinking about personal leadership and everything that goes into that, how that influences how we show up, what actions we do or do not take, what lens we see the wordl through and what keeps leaders up at night.

It made me reflect on what is important vs. what is urgent vs. what gets in the way by our own doing or external circumstances. And it was a timely reminder that though there are many things that we say are important, we better do a personal check-in to make sure we are on track. On track with what is aligned with our own personal leadership. In fact, a daily self-check-in can do wonders for  our personal leadership and integrity,  which in turn affects business results and what keeps us up at night.

What keeps YOU up at night?

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Have you ever volunteered your time and then wished you got some recognition for what you did? That doesn’t seem to fit. You VOLUNTEERED, so why should you be recognized?

Well, the simple truth for most of us, myself included, is that we like to be acknowledged and recognized. We appreciate being appreciated. It feels good.

I gave a workshop recently and donated my time and expertise. The attendees were happy, they got good value. Of course that is recognition. But I still walked away feeling that it would have been nice if a certain person acknowledged my efforts. That extra thank-you would have sealed my contribution on a high note. Contrast that with a different story: a few years ago, I received a hand written thank-you note from an executive with a large company. It probably only took him a few minutes to jot that note to me, but it had a huge positive impact, in fact, one that I still remember and I still have that note.

Ok, so what’s the deal, am I a recognition-needy person? Always looking for the pat on the back? No, actually not.

Which brings me to this point: as a leader, as an emotionally intelligent leader, do you know what your employees’  acknowledgment and recognition needs are? Do you meet them? Do you thank them for a specific action they took? Do you go beyond the usual “thanks” in a way that makes each person feel really good?

That workshop experience made me re-think my own giving recognition behavior. It takes conscious energy to be on the lookout for what kind of acknowledgment each person values. So yes, that is what I am trying to do more of.

And dare I say, I think we could do more of thanking each other each day. For the simple things that we take for granted, for the extra helping hand, for the above and beyond effort. But please, be sincere. If you’re just going to go through the motions, then for heaven’s sake, don’t bother.

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Yesterday I participated in an orientation for Community Cafés which are a series of guided conversations based on the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework leadership development and parent partnership.

During one of the conversations, I brought up the idea of intention and impact and what can occur when the two are not aligned. A really interesting thing happened as we talked about this. Two of my co-participants , native Spanish speakers, said that the word intention does not exist in Spanish, so we started looking for alternatives in English to see if that would help further the discussion. We ran out of time and didn’t bring the conversation to real closure, but ended up having an “aha!” moment: even when we share a common language, we should not assume that we (the people engaged in the conversation) have or use the same definitions.

While not assuming may seem obvious, I’ve seen so many situations where people make the assumption that their use of a word is the same as the other person’s understanding of it and it when they don’t match there’s a misunderstanding. Certainly not what was intended. Then, when there are more languages involved, another, sometimes several layer(s) of complexity is/are introduced.

A little later, we witnessed someone’s actions having an un-intended impact. The scenario went something like this: there were four tables with four people per table. Each table was assigned a puzzle to complete. It wasn’t clear if each table had to find it’s own solution or if the solution was for all of the tables to collaborate and combine their efforts. One person thought he was helping us all achieve a common goal – he had the best of intentions as he went to three of the tables and took one of their pieces to add to the piece from our table. He did not make any announcement or explain what he was trying to do. Some of the other people on the other three tables thought he was being a bully and that he was stealing pieces to only benefit his team. They did not like his actions at all. When we debriefed the activity, his intentions became clear as he explained what he had been trying to do. Ah, and ruffled feathers were soothed.

If this can happen in an environment where partnerships were one of the key topics we were focusing on, you can see why this happens too frequently in everyday life.

As leaders, where do you have an opportunity to clarify your intentions? Before you act, and if need be, after too.

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Intention and Impact. Is there a gap there? Are your leadership intentions and the impact of your words and actions aligned? Most of us think our intentions are clear, transparent, until something goes wrong, not as well as we thought it would or business results suffer. Leaders, especially those who have self-clarity (clarity in our own mind exists), tend to assume that the impact of what we do will follow our clear-as-a-bell intention. Certainly, it’s clear because it’s clear-as-a-bell in my own mind.

• Have you ever been misunderstood?
• Was it because what you said or did was mis-interpreted, it missed the mark?
• Have you found yourself having to explain, maybe apologize to repair a relationship?
• Did you have to do double work to straighten things out?

Stop. Back-up. Establish clarity from the beginning. I recommend actually using the words, “my intention is…” These three simple words can prevent a lot of headaches, problems and hurt feelings. They can prevent a simple change effort from going bad.

This works in personal relationships too. Use the three words, “my intention is…” and they will save you from having to use a whole lot of extra words on the other end. Make alignment of your leadership intention and impact one of your strengths and your team will be that much further ahead in achieving your goals.

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