How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?

Yesterday, I marched into the dermatologist's office at 1:55 p.m., five minutes early for my appointment. At 2:20 p.m., I was led into a private, procedure room. At 2:48 p.m., the dermatologist finally waltzed in and asked, "How are you?" I replied, "I'm behind schedule."

He acted as though he didn't hear me and began asking his medical questions. I sat fuming that I had waited 48 minutes, was going to be late for my 3 p.m. telephone call, AND this new doctor never even acknowledged his tardiness. But as they say on streets, “My bad.” That’s right, I messed up. I now realize that I did not handle the incident in an emotionally intelligent manner. I also know that little episodes like this one offer the opportunity to practice what I teach - the importance of growing emotional intelligence.

So, how emotionally intelligent are you? More importantly, why should you care about growing your emotional intelligence? Let's tackle the second question. There is a large body of evidence clearly demonstrating that emotionally intelligent leaders perform better, are promoted faster, and have lower turnover compared to those who are less emotionally intelligent. (1) The research by Professor David Caruso and Peter Salovey has also shown that there are four skills that can help you grow your emotionally intelligence. I have adapted them here to fit my leadership model. The four skills are:

1. Perceive your emotions. Emotions contain data. They are signals that tell us something is going on that we need to pay attention to. The first step in being an emotionally intelligent leader is to be able to identify what emotions are occurring in ourselves and those around us. This was my first failure in the doctor's office. I should have recognized that the emotion I was feeling was frustration.

2. Use your emotions. Researchers have shown that there are neurological links between how we feel and how we think. Emotions direct our attention to important events. We can try to ignore an emotion, but we are wired to have them influence our thinking and decision-making. Emotionally intelligent leaders use their emotions to help inform their thinking. In the doctor's office, I could have used my emotion to handle the situation better. For example, if I had told the doctor that I was feeling frustrated, and he asked why, it would have led to a discussion about how to handle the situation in the future.

3. Understand your emotional future. One of the major reasons to grow our emotional intelligence is to be able to perform better - to produce outcomes that are more desirable. After taking the first two steps in this process, we are able to ask questions such as; What might happen if I choose option A? What’s the probable outcome if I try option B? Will option C really get me the result I desire?

4. Manage your emotions. This final step teaches us how to share our feelings with others. This includes communicating with empathy, which means to have a sensitivity regarding how others may be feeling and how they might receive our communication. Once again, you can see that I failed in this step during my dermatology visit. Physicians are busy professionals who seldom have full control over their schedule. Some patients or procedures require more time than anticipated. I showed little empathy in communicating in my caustic manner.

Next time someone pulls your emotional trigger, how surprised will you be when these steps lead you to a more desirable outcome? Let me know how they work for you.

Keep on streching,

Dave

1. David Caruso and Peter Salovey: ‘The Emotionally Intelligent Manager: How To Develop and Use The Four Key Emotional Skills of Leadership,’ Josse-Bass, San Francisco, California, 2004.

Leading By Managing Stress

The college professor said, "I think the job of a leader is to remove stress from his or her employees." I replied, "I think one of the jobs of a leader is to help his or her employees manage stress for optimal performance."

How well do you help your team manage stress and anxiety throughout the day?

Dr. Robert Rosen recently wrote that PepsiCo's. former CEO, Steve Reinemund made it his mission to "light a fire in every individual to grow as a person." (1) During Steve's tenure, company sales increased by more than $9 billion, net profits climbed more than 70%, and earnings per share increased by 80%. Steve Reinemund understood that personal growth leads to professional growth, which creates organizational growth, which in turn yields financial growth.

However, growth creates stress. Too much stress creates panic. Too little stress generates apathy. The key is to find the optimal amount of stress without going over the edge. One way to do this is to look at stress on the stress performance curve seen below:

A - The Entitled - when leaders allow their team perform at this level, there is very little stress and minimal performance. People who perform at this level over a long period begin to feel this is their comfort zone and seldom achieve peak performance.

B - The Performer - when leaders provided the right kind of stress and the proper amount, they achieve optimal performance.

C - The ‘soon-to-be burned out’ Performer - when leaders allow their team members to experience the wrong kind of stress or too much of it, the people will perform, but soon they'll be over the edge.

D - The Anxious - if a leader allows the team to experience too much stress for too long, people become entrenched and performance inevitably declines.

The stress performance curve illustrates what you, as a leader, need to do on a daily basis -- keep people in performance zone B or get them to zone B. Here are several tips to do just that, especially when you're team is going through the stress of change:

1. Involve your team in decisions so they feel they have some control

2. Communicate what is changing, why it’s changing, and what's NOT changing.

3. Encourage team members to perform stress-relieving activities every day such as: walking, meditating, stretching, laughing...

4. Take baby steps during the change.

5. Keep the big picture in mind.

6. Explain where each person fits into the new change.

7. Ask your team to create norms to help them manage the stress.

8. If there is a sudden or unexpected change at work that pulls your emotional trigger, try the following, evidence-based, instant stress busters (2):

• Take a mental time out so that you can temporarily disengage from your thoughts and feelings.


• Shift your focus to the area around your heart, and imagine your breathing through this area.


• Create a positive feeling by imagining a positive event.


• Ask yourself what a more effective attitude or action could be.
  

These are just a few of the leadership tools we use in our classes to help leaders manage the day-to-day stress and anxiety of growth and change. Check out what a couple of professors from Harvard say about avoiding burnout. ( http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/gergen-vanourek/2008/12/three-ways-to-beat-burnout.html ) What tools have you found useful?

Keep on stretching,

Dave

1. Robert Rosen, Just Enough Anxiety, ‘American Management Association’s MWorld,’ Summer 2008, page 44 -- 47.

2. Bruce Cryer, Rollin MCraty, and Doc Childre, Pull the Plug on Stress, ‘Harvard Business Review,’ July 2003, page 102 -- 107.

How Leaders Choose - Part II

The two FBI agents stared at me from across the table. The woman’s blue eyes narrowed and her forehead wrinkled as she aimed her next question, “If you teach leadership, maybe you can tell me how important all these leadership tests the FBI makes me take really are?”

Me, “Depends how they use them.”

Her, “They use them for promotions, reviews, screening… lots of ways.”

Me, “Well then, it depends how predictive the tests are. Many leadership assessments have not been well-researched; therefore they don’t have a high predictive value.”

Her, “What about the leadership courses you teach?”

Me, “My approach is to use an evidence-based approach that is flexible enough to allow me to adapt it to the clients I work with. I’ve spent the last few years developing my new eXpansive Leadership Model (XLM) to accomplish both.

Her, “Interesting.” Then she and her FBI-agent-husband took a bite out of their hotdog, and turned to watch their son perform a perfect cannonball into the swimming pool.

Our leadership discussion was over. The conversation drifted back to how we all knew the host of this picnic celebration.

As my wife and I drove home after the party, my mind wandered to my new leadership model. After all, there are many leadership models and assessments, several of which are quite good. Here are three reasons that came to mind that might also help you better lead your team.

1. Adapt to Many Situations. The XLM can be adapted to manage many situations more effectively. It consists of four interdependent leadership thinking styles positioned on the four ends on an ‘X’ (Visionary - upper left, Rational - lower right, Commanding - lower left, and Empowering - upper right). With this as a platform, it becomes easy for me to help clients expand their leadership capacity by stretching their leadership capacity.

For example, I’m working with a client that has a wonderful service-oriented culture. The problem is that employees are sometimes afraid to speak up for fear of being perceived as non-team players. Their servant-leader culture has also discouraged managers from holding individuals accountable for results. I’m are using the XLM to help them understand that they can stay connected to their wonderful “Empowering” approach to serving people AND, at the same time, stretch to access their “Commanding” to speak up on an issue. I’m also adapting the XLM to help their supervisors coach better, counsel under-performers, conduct excellent performance reviews, and create individual development plans. How adaptable is your leadership approach?

2. Lead by Managing Tension. Everyone seems to be searching for balance these days. The editors of one of my professional journals even dedicated an entire issue to this issue of balance. When was the last time you felt balanced? Balance is not always or easily attainable is it? Things are moving so fast these days and issues are so interdependent, that the question is no longer, how can I find the right balance? The NEW question is, how can I lead by managing the ongoing tension?

For example, how do you manage the tension between: Meeting the needs of the team AND Meeting the needs of the individual, the Vision of where you want to go AND the Reality of your budget, Improving service (Empowering) AND increasing productivity (Commanding)… The XLM helps leaders manage the tension among these interdependent and opposing imperatives. Think back to the ‘X’ in XLM, and imagine that the ‘X’ is real two rubber bands. Assume also that your job is to grow the ends of the ‘X’ away from each other. The tension you would feel as the ends stretched AWAY from each other is the tension of great leadership. Leaders in the past had great answers. The leaders of the future ask great questions. So, how are you leading by managing the tension in work?

3. Apply the Research. Many leadership approaches are based on a smart person or worse, winning coach, writing about how to get employees to do their work better, faster, cheaper, happier... Most of these approaches lack the research that demonstrates that if you follow their prescription, you will experience their results.

We need to apply the tools of science to leadership in the same way we apply them to medicine. The essence of science is prediction. If you apply a model based on solid science, there’s reason to believe you will achieve what the model predicts. The XLM accommodates new research.

For example, I worked with a client that wanted to connect the research on Emotional Intelligence (EI) and Lominger’s work at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL - which included six thousand managers from 140 companies) to the XLM. When I did an analysis, I found ten key competencies that predicted management success. This research predicts that leaders who possess or develop these “Top Ten” in this client’s organization should be very successful. The same may be true for you. Which few might you choose to help you apply this research and grow as a leader?

1. Increase self-knowledge

2. Gain perspective

3. Manage vision and purpose

4. Listen

5. Manage conflict

6. Have strategic agility

7. Deal with ambiguity

8. Effectively build teams

9. Motivate others

10. Manage Innovation

The XLM is one of many models that can expand your leadership capacity. I developed the XLM because it is adaptable, helps managers manage the tension among competing imperatives, and allows me to apply new research and learning. How is your leadership style and model doing the same for you?

See you on the mountain,

Dave

How Leaders Choose - Part I

Monica stared at the wide selection of frozen foods, searching for the new, low-carbohydrate waffles she had just heard about. She had no idea there were 16 flavors of Eggos or that 31,000 new food products were introduced in the U.S. last year. Nor was she aware that too many choices could be a source of pain, regret, and low productivity (1). How to choose? Or more importantly, what criteria should we use to choose?

As she drove home, Monica started to see the connection between the overwhelming number of consumer choices and the avalanche of well-intentioned initiatives that crush her managers. She told me that she now understood why I encouraged her to focus on the criteria her team was going to use to decide what to teach at her offsite leadership meeting.

The Conversation

Let’s back up for a minute. Monica had just asked me to help her improve leadership skills by speaking at her meeting. She also told me of her plan to ask her managers to teach each other their favorite leadership skills during breakout sessions. Our conversation went like this...

Me, "What specific strategies will your leaders teach each other?"

Monica, "I'm not sure yet. But I think there are many different approaches to improve leadership. I want them to share their techniques."

Me, "Will your leaders have time to try many different approaches when they get back to work?"

Monica, "Probably not − everybody is complaining about having too much to do."

Me, "Well, instead of their sharing lots of different approaches, why don't we help them learn the few techniques that actually have a good chance of working?"

Monica, "What does that mean?"

Me, "It means if your people don't have time to test several techniques when they get back to work, I suggest that we focus on the ones that best predict leadership success."

Monica, "And you know these?"

Me, "Not just me! Anyone who does his or her research can discover what predicts success. Think of it this way. If you walk into a bookstore and zip over to the leadership section, you will see dozens of books. The fundamental question is, "how should you decide which book to buy?"

Monica, "I give up Dave, help me out."

Me, "The same way a doctor chooses which treatment to give patients."

Monica, "You mean research?"

Me, "That's right! I'm saying that we should employ the same evidence-based approach to improving your leaders’ skills as doctors use to improve their patients’ health. Let's combine my analysis of the leadership success with the insights from your best leaders."

Monica, "Sold!"

Hippocrates once said, “There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.” The conversation is really about how leaders should use science to help choose which initiative to roll out, change to implement, training to conduct... If you don't have time to waste trying all the different ways of reaching a goal, let research conduct those costly experiments. The essence of science is prediction. Science has the tools and rules to say, "There's data to predict (not guarantee) that if you try this approach, you’ll achieve this result."

The Two Fundamental Questions eXtraordinary Leaders Ask

Next time you embark on a journey to improve leadership skills, productivity, sales or select any book, I urge you to think about the criteria beneath your choice by answering two fundamental questions:

1. Where is the evidence that predicts your approach will produce the desired result?

2. How can you adapt the approach to fit your culture?

See you on the mountain,

Dave

PS. Harvard Professor P. Ghemawat also made the case for using the tools of science to predict business success when he analyzed four popular books on business growth. He concluded, "Given the dearth of their own data, these books might have paid more attention to academic research..." (2) (might? Try SHOULD!)

1. ‘American Psychological Association Online,’ 35, No. 6, June 2004

2. ‘Harvard Business Review,’ July-August, 2004