Emotional Intelligence Leadership

A tickle that develops into a sore throat is my early warning system for a cold. My response is lots of hot tea with honey. Usually I can catch it in time so that the cold doesn’t materialize.

Most of us have early warning systems for various aspects of our lives. They may be so automatic, we don’t think about them. But developing them isn’t always automatic.

As leaders, we also need to have reliable early waring systems. And they need to be developed and nurtured. And, we need to pay keen attention to them. Two that work for me (and that I’m still developing) are:

1) my intuition

2) asking big picture and then progressively more detailed questions

Intuition experts say we all have this ability, some of us use it more than others. And it turns out the more you use it the better it is, like a muscle. My intuition has become more reliable over time as I pay attention- become more self-aware, trust it and consciously call it to action.

A quick story. I serve as President on a local board of directors for a not-for-profit organization for women business owners, NAWBO (National Association of Women Business Owners). Our term started in July and most of the board was staying on for another term. We have a couple new members also. Recently, I had a feeling that one of our new board members was going to resign. It was a “gut” feeling. Over the course of the next three weeks, I touched base with this person a few times to see how things were going and how I could lend support. There wasn’t anything specific she asked of me. But last week she resigned for some personal reasons. I wasn’t surprised. I was disappointed to see her go, but I know this is what is best for her.

Here’s the learning in this example. I had an intuitive feeling something was going to change, but I didn’t pay enough attention at the time. Had I done so, I would have been three steps ahead in having the back-up plan ready to execute. I had somewhat of a back-up plan. Not solid enough. I should have really listened and trusted to my intuition when it started to give me the sense that something was about to happen and then prepared to set plan B into motion.

Plan B has now been put into place, but it took three days longer than it should have.

If you are a leader (and everyone is on some level) what is your early warning system?

Stayed tuned for more…

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Trust is on my mind. I’ve talked about it here before, but lately it seems to be everywhere. In a recent blog post, I wrote “I Trust Too Much!?!” Then I happen to pick-up the June 2009 Harvard Business Review (HBR), and the cover is “Rebuilding Trust.” Then Walter Cronkite passes away. He was known as the most trusted man in America. I then catch part of an NPR story about trust. My fascination with trust continues.

One of the articles in HBR is “Rethinking Trust” by Roderick M. Kramer, a social psychologist and the William R. Kimball Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in CA.

Kramer starts by sharing evidence that to trust is really part of being human. But he claims we can’t always rely on our judgment. This makes me nervous. Even though I’ve been told I sometimes trust too much, most of the time (98%) it works out OK, actually it works out well. This means what has worked for me so far is pretty comfortable and I’m likely to continue doing that. Kramer says that can be dangerous. He points out that we need to revisit the trust issue and check-in every so-often or we may put ourselves in a grief-causing situation.

He outlines seven rules for trusting wisely:

1) Know yourself

2) Start small

3) Write an escape clause

4) Send strong signals

5) Recognize the other person’s dilemma

6) Look at roles as well as people

7) Remain vigilant and always question

The first rule is a great tie-back to emotional intelligence. Knowing yourself is the starting point in both arenas. Without this knowledge and I would say self-honesty, you could be setting yourself up for abuse by trusting too much, or on the other end, hold yourself back from developing deeper relationships by trusting too little.

I, therefore, must be ever conscious of correctly interpreting the clues I get from other people or, I may put myself in a position of unwanted vulnerability. Finding the balance where I can trust (and of course be trusted), so we can build the relationship is of great interest to me. And also of great interest is not being taken advantage of.

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“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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Watching my two-year old son today at the beach in Hawaii made me think about how trust actually develops.

Is it there until it isn’t? Can and do we relearn how to trust? How do we develop trust in ourselves, in one another and the larger world? Why is it that some of us are more trusting and why do we trust sooner than others?

In the 1950’s, psychiatrist Erik Erickson developed a model of social and emotional development. The process of socialization, the Eight Stages of Development start with learning basic trust vs. basic mistrust. This occurs in infancy through the first one or two years: the nurtured and loved child develops, trust, security and a certain optimism.

Back to today. We’ve been to this beach before, so familiarity made us both more comfortable. Comfortable enough to settle close to the shoreline and immediately play in the wet sand, about a foot above the line where the surf rolled in. Previously we would start in the dry sand quite a ways from the ocean and slowly make our way to the seashore over the course of an hour or so. Today, it was just a few minutes after our arrival that my son wanted to go in the water.

But the waves were a bit bigger and the tide was higher than our previous visits. We waded in a bit, holding hands. My son is not a huge risk taker, at least not yet. I’d say he is somewhat cautious. We were fine until the the third wave. It wasn’t much bigger than the others, it came up to his chest, but it was relatively bigger than what he was used to. He cried and we retreated. And that was the end of going in the ocean for today.

This made me wonder if he trusted me, himself, or even the waves until the situation proved to be different that he expected. And I’m wondering how much of today’s experience will impact our next visit.

This made me think about leaders who trust from the get-go until there is evidence not to vs. those that withhold trust until other people have earned it.

What do you think? What kind of leader are you? What kind of leader would you want to be lead by?

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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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 Leadership Principle 1: Know Yourself continued: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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I work with very smart leaders. Many are at the top of their organization. They are great at getting business results. Most are still refining how to get even better results through those that work with them.

And yet only a handful really know themselves and have a high level of self awareness.

Leadership Principle One is Know Yourself. You must connect with yourself on the fundamentals before you can do that with others effectively. You  must be a student of yourself to be an effective leader. And if you hope to get better results through those that you work with, you need to nurture your emotional intelligence and become an emotionally intelligent leader.

Know yourself, re-connect with yourself by reflecting on and answering these simple self assessment questions:

-What ten characteristics/qualities distinguish you, make you stand out?

-What are your top five values and how do those show up in your life? How do your top values influence what you do and how you do it?

-How emotionally intelligent are you? Daniel Goleman defines Emotional Intelligence as: …the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our relationships.  See www.haygroup.com/tl/EI/Quiz.aspx for a mini EI self assessment.

When you have a clearer understanding of yourself, use that information to help you make better future choices and decisions. That may include reviewing past decisions and doing a post mortem, asking a mentor for his/her input and engaging in leadership coaching.

Stay tuned for more on knowing yourself.

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A friend and business colleague phoned me and started the conversation after hello with, “we’re pretty good friends, right?” I immediately felt warmer and the warning light went on in my head. After I agreed, she went on to give me some feedback: she said that my sending an email offering help to a third party was “kinda taking over” (taking over her role as head of the non-profit volunteer organization we both belong to).

That came as a pretty big surprise, since that was not and is not my intention (there’s an example of the gap between intention and impact). After taking a breath, I apologized and explained that wasn’t what I wanted to do and I calmly asked her how she wanted me to change that going forward. She asked me to run things by her first and admitted that it might be cumbersome, but that was her preference (and she is the head of this organization). Ok, sure I can do that.

In the moment I composed the email and sent it, I was not thinking that my actions could be mis-interpreted. Since receiving the feedback, I am now much more conscious of how I will do things as they relate to this group and specifically to her, our leader.

Self management keeps me from making this any larger than it is. But I feel a bit annoyed (at least my self awareness is working some) at myself for not having thought about it more and the potential impact of my seemingly innocent actions. And I feel a bit irritated that what started out as a good gesture didn’t exactly turn out the way I thought.

Emotional intelligence as it happens.

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Everyone agrees that as a leader, part of your job is to improve business results. Uh huh. Well, this is why you have to be emotionally intelligent: Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence and co author of Primal Leadership with Richard Boyatzis and Annie Mckee found that an affiliative leadership style which builds emotional capital is more effective in today’s organizations than the leadership styles of yesterday. The data reviwed by Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee suggest that HOW a leader leads is key…to the bottom line. The numbers point to a leader’s style being about 70% of the emotional climate and climate is in large part the reason why people stay at a company. A good emotional climate makes employees feel good to be a part of that entity. Emotional climate then drives about 20%, sometimes more, of business performance.

How does emotional climate come to be? As noted, a leader’s style and how s/he makes you feel creates the emotional tone of the workplace. There are four fundamentals of what is known as emotional intelligence that enable a leader to create a great emotional climate. They are: self- awareness, self-management (self-management of emotion), social awareness (empathy), and relationship management. Each of these components is inter-related and we’ll be talking more about these in future posts. But for now, it all starts with self-awareness.

By a certain point in life, we tend to think that we know ourselves pretty well. Perhaps. Then again maybe not. Or maybe in certain ways, but not in the realm of our emotions. There are three key competencies to being self-aware according to Hay Group’s Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI): emotional self-awareness, accurate self-assessment, and self-confidence.

• Do you know the signs that tell you what you are feeling?

• Do you use that information to help you shift your focus if needed?

• Do you have strong sense of your capabilities? Of your shortcomings?

• Are you open to feedback and do you solicit it regularly?

While it’s tempting to answer “yes” to these questions and conclude that you are in fact emotionally intelligent, it turns out that there’s a range of emotional intelligence. And, perhaps more importantly, emotional intelligence, like leadership, can be developed.

Take action on becoming more emotionally self-aware: the next time you are working, notice how you are feeling. Happy, frustrated, calm, energized? Then, see how that impacts what you’re working on. Are you productive, creative, efficient? Is everything flowing easily? Or are you slogging through it just to get it checked-off the list? Are you doing C+ work? Check-in with yourself . Note what emotions and patterns of emotions cause you to be at your best.

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