Developing Your Emotional Intelligence

DEVELOPING YOUR EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE

ELEMENTS FOR SUCCESSFUL DEVELOPMENT

1)KASH Model

• Knowledge
• Abilities
• Skills
• Habits

2)Holistic Approach

• Mind
• Body
• Emotions

3)Individual Development Plan

• 70/20/10
• Leverage Strengths
• SMART Goals
• Uncomfortable/Stretch Self
• Practice, practice, practice

SIMPLE STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE FOR LEADERSHIP

SP – Self Regard / Be Mindful of Your Weaknesses.
Nobody’s perfect; our flaws make us human. The keyis to be cognizant of your limitations and ensure thatthey do not impinge on organizational performance.
Take time to review your accomplishments, the skills and abilities you bring to the job, and the strengths others recognize in you.
Awareness leads to action and meaningful change. Be mindful that change does not occur overnight, but with persistence, transformation is possible.
Develop strategies to improve your limitations.
You are only limited by the power of your imagination.
For exaggerated Self-Regard: Awareness of your shortcomings helps to circumvent an inflated self-concept and temper over confidence.
SP- Self Actualization / The Small Things we Enjoy. Sometimes you just need to look at your job under a microscope to develop an even deeper passion for what you do.
Write down some of the things you do in your job that are motivating for you. No matter how small, everythingmakes the list. Review this list once a week; Monday is usually a good day.
Celebrate your achievements – professional and personal. Take time to reward yourself for significant milestones.
Remind yourself that even the smallthings (like having a client compliment you on your presentation) can push you to do your very best.
ProtectYour Time.Since you already know what you’re passionate about, you need to protect the time you havescheduled for these activities so they do not fall lower on your list of priorities.
Create a list of what you are thankful for in your life. Keep a balanced perspective on what is truly important to you, your values and aspirations.
Block off time in your calendar, well in advance, for those activities you enjoy, especially if they are the vulnerable,non–work related type. Seeing an appointment in your calendar, even if it is for lunchtime yoga, will help you keep your time commitment.
SP - Emotional Self-Awareness (THE foundation of all EI) / Be a Role Model. Through the steadfast control of your emotions, you can be innovative, successfully take risks, and gain the trust of your employees. The most prominent leaders and individuals have an aptitude for remaining composed in competitive situations and under mounting pressure and duress.
Your ability to be aware of your emotions helps you to serve as a model of composure and ensures that employees feel secure and content to overcome any potentialchallenge.
Take time to learn about the different emotions you experience and begin to identify how you emotionally respond to different situations.
Identify the distinctions between emotions and learn how to shift your emotional response to a more effective emotion for the situation (e.g. shift frustration to patience).
Give seminars/workshops or hire an expert to teach employees about understanding emotions and theimpact of their emotions on others.
Practice centering so you can shift to center when needed and choose the emotion to bring forward (e.g. shift from anger, to center, to compassion).
SE – Emotional Expression / Listen and then Express. Leverage Empathy and Interpersonal Relationships to ensure your expressions are at an appropriate intensity, especially when you want to contribute a differing point of view.
Be vigilant of others’ reactions, both verbal andnonverbal (body language, emotions, tone of voice, and eye contact).
Seek to understand the other person’s perspective;ask thoughtful questions.
Maintain appropriate silence; listen for content and emotions.Then express your differing point of view.
If your emotions are getting the best of you, end the interaction and ask to follow-up later after you have time to reflect and gain composure.
Learn how to identify your emotions correctly and then share your emotions more often with others. For example, share your positive emotions with your team/members and be specific with what you are feeling.
Actively listening and giving signs that we truly seek to understand provides an invaluable amount of validation to the other party. When the other party feels heard and understood,they are less likely to be defensive or dig in their heels. This way they are more likely to be open-minded and cooperative.
SE- Assertiveness / Knowing Where You Stand. In order to move towards a decision, and ensure your team works collaboratively, highly assertive leaders need to have a clear understanding of where they stand and the points on which you are willing toconcede.
Note the ideal outcomes you would like to seefrom your next meeting.
Review the outcomes you identified and separate the core outcomes that are essential to progress.Then, identify the information you need to hear from others to concede on these points. Knowing the core outcomes that are essential, and theidealistic outcomes on which you are willing to be flexible, will help you stay focused on the goal, and not become paralyzed in rigid debate.
Learn methods related to effective conflict resolution, brainstorming, and decision making.
Look for opportunities to share one idea, perspective, fact or opinion at meetings or at home. Challenge yourself to speak-up at most to every meeting you attend.
At meetings, write down a few key words of your thought/idea before speaking. Getting your key points written down will increase your ability to speak clearly and concisely.
Breath to stay centered (Count 4 for breath in, Count 6 for breath out).
Choose your body position – leaning in slightly (assertive) vs. leaning back (more openness/flexibility).
SE - Independence / Stay Connected. While being emotionally independent isimportant for leading a team, being completely autonomouscan hurt the amount of buy-in you receive from them. Here arefour qualities that you do not want to display; if you do, it may be timeto scale back your independence.
Ignorance: Are people feeling like I am ignoring factsin an effort to pursue my own agenda?
Know it all: Do I think I know everything, and thus myteam’s advice is not needed?
Detached: Am I hurting collaborative relationships andengagement by not including others?
Closed door: While I have an open-door policy, I am not available or accessible, nor welcome people to be part of the consulting and decision making process.
If you need to increase your independence, look for opportunities to make decisions on your own, or offer a slate of options for people to choose from.
To increase independence, accept a project lead role, where you will need to make the final decisions/recommendations presented to the sr. leadership.
IN –Interpersonal Relationships / Balance Recognition with Constructive Feedback. Remember to express recognition on a regular basis and tocoach your team by delivering constructive feedback. As aleader, you are in an ideal position to inspire, coach, andmotivate your team to reach their individual and grouppotential.
Do you know what kind of recognition your teamprefers? Not everyone likes a reward given in front oftheir peers or “Happy Birthday” sung at their desk. Take time to discuss how individual team members like to be recognized and rewarded.
Leverage empathy skills to understand the types ofrecognition that motivate and inspire each of yourteam members.
Find opportunities where you can help your teammembers unlock their individual potential; the mostsuccessful leaders develop their employees.
Spend social timewith your team members, peers, and other key stake holders. Taking time to learn about people and their lives outside of work is critical to building trust and strong relationships.
Learn about coaching models and techniques through books or classes. Develop your coaching skills by applying what you have learned to situations with your colleagues, your team members or those you interact with outside of work.
IN – Empathy
(THE enhancer for all EI Dimensions) / Pick it up a Notch. Successful leaders have the ability toadopt others’ perspectives and can understand how different people experience emotions.
Take the time to understandeach member of your team. Prior to your next meeting,prepare by:
Listing all attendees and what needs andexpectations each bring to the meeting;Predicting how they will act during the meeting; Whatissues do you need to be sensitive towards?Generating a number of questions that you can useduring the meeting to further understand your team’sneeds;Keeping a journal that records your correct predictions(hits) and incorrect predictions (misses) of the issuesand actions that would be brought forth. Reduce thenumber of misses by understandingwhat caused your incorrect predictions.
Watching a Pro.Find someone who you believe is an effective communicator and team leader. Observe their communication style in practice, taking note of how they balance their ability to remain empathic and sociallyresponsible with meeting organizational demands
Focus your attention completely on the person you’re interacting with and try to identify the emotion they are experiencing in the situation. What emotion are you experience. Share with them the emotion you perceive they are experience and share how you are feeling.
Breath. Try not to make a judgment of the other person but accept their emotional response as “okay” and right for them.
Mixing Sugar with Spice. It is important to ensure that your empathy doesn’t get in the way of handling tough conversations/decisions. Being empathic does not mean being extra nice all the time; you still have deadlines to meet and so does your organization. When a tough conversation or decision is needed, acknowledge that you may need more preparation time in order to be empathic. Then to prepare: Write down what you want to say and rehearse it; Be respectful of people’s reactions, but don’t let them derail you; Keep in mind that if you mirror the emotion, you will likely intensify the other person’s reaction. For example, if the news you are bringing someone makes them angry, by becoming angry yourself, you are likely to make the situation more heated. Acknowledge their emotion and choose an appropriate emotional response to move the interaction forward.
IN – Social Responsibility / Reflect and Focus. Being a successful leader is not a soloactivity. Real success comes from helping your teammembers reach professional goals and individualimprovement. Always supporting others, however, can takeaway the time you need to spend on yourself as a leader. Tryto ensure that you are not avoiding your current emotionalstate, goals, and functioning by focusing too heavily onothers.
Reflect on how you spent your time last week. Whatactivities and tasks did you spend your time on? Which of those tasks were for the betterment of yourself, your family, your work, those you lead, andothers?If you are over involved in any area, adjust yourschedule for the next month and refocus your efforts.If you are under involved in any area, adjust your schedule for the next month and refocus your efforts.
Participate in your organization’s support of non-profit organizations.
Include a volunteering team building activity for you next team meeting, planning session or team building event. Inspiring others to be socially responsible can create an overall feeling of meaning and charity inthe lives of others while fueling your passion for contributing towards the greater good.
Leverage your passion for causes you care about by reaching out to your friends and family for help.Brainstorm several activities that you, family and friends can engage in to help at least one of these causes.Identify a plan, specific roles for each person and a timeframe for these activities.
DM – Problem Solving / Seek Understanding First. If you find yourself quick to jumpinto problem-solving mode, you may start implementingsolutions without fully surveying the situation.
Begin by explaining your interpretation of a problem toat least two people, one who is connected closely tothe problem and the other who is a neutral third party.Don’t ask for solutions; have them hear your summaryof the situation and ask clarifying questions if needed.A question to which you do not know the answer is asign that you need a greater understanding of theproblem before you begin to solve it.
Learn about different problem solving techniques (Quality tools, process tools, group problem solving techniques,) and when to use them for different types of problems encountered.
When analyzing solutions – take into account the perspectives of all stakeholders. Keep in mind your end objective and how it relates to your organization’s vision, mission and values.
Watch Your Limit!Our brains typically handle seven chunks of information, whether we are memorizing or deciding between many options; seven seems to be the maximum amount of information we can effectively manage.
The next time you are stuck in solving a problem, ensure you are dealing with no more than seven pieces of information (or deciding among fewer than seven choices). Too much information paralyzes you, while too little leaves you uninformed.
Also, if your decision is stressful, your mental and emotional resources will be even fewer, so you may want tolimit yourself to three options.
Decision Deadlines.For complex issues, including interpersonal conflicts, set a deadline by which the problem must be resolved. This deadline will help you stick to an efficient process for problem-solving where you are less likely to put off dealing with a tough decision.
Generate multiple alternatives for a problem and evaluate them on the basis of impact, costs, resources and timing. Set a deadline for when you will select the best single solution. Treat this like any other important deliverable and have a colleague follow up with you to ensure you've met your deadline.
Engage your body – Take a walk around your work building, climb a few flights of stairs, swing your arms, or stand up and stretch. Let your unconscious work for you – put the problem aside and come back to it later or the next day.
DM – Reality Testing / Gut Checks. Emotions occur for a reason—to provide us withinformation about an event. If you ignore them completely, you‘re missing out on crucial data that objective analysis cannotprovide.
Try a few “gut checks” throughout your day. Reflect onhow you felt about a conversation, resolving aperformance issue, making a tough decision, etc.
Gut checks are particularly important for largedecisions or meetings where you usually allow
objective data (e.g., the vote was 10 to 4 in favor ofpulling the project) to take precedence over what youremotions tell you (e.g., Karen sure looked hurt whenher project was cut).
Leaders need to be particularly attuned to theemotional information present in their relationships;ignoring it will likely alienate individuals and form riftsthat make it difficult to get work done.
Put your Realism to Work.You are likely to notice when personal bias is affecting your performance or your team’s performance.Leverage this strength by using objective processes to facilitate the group’s productivity (e.g., SWOT analysis,strategic-planning techniques) when you notice progress becoming sidetracked by personal agendas orunrealistic views of the situation.
Research some facilitation or meeting management techniques to create a more productive mindset for your team, where the focus is not on exploring personal speculations, but rather on accomplishing realisticobjectives in each meeting.
DM – Impulse Control / Unfreezing. If you find yourself significantly less impulsivethan the environment you work in, you may appear to berooted in thought when others are driving action. If progressis being held up by too much contemplation, your team maythink you are incapable of driving change in the organization.
Before making a decision, determine up front whatevidence you will need in order to feel comfortableacting. Whose approval do you need? What is thethreshold of risk you are willing to accept?Knowing this information up front will help youbalance deliberate decision making with the progressdemanded of today’s leaders.
For Impulse control that is low: Explore whether your reactions have more to do with losing patience or losing your temper (i.e. anger management) If you lose your temper too easily? If yes, seek assistance from HR, EAP or a professional to learn anger management techniques.
Ask yourself whether you are frequently inpatient with others? Do you interrupts other and/or start talking over others? Work to control your impulse to immediately respond, to be the first in a group setting to respond, or to interrupt others. Hold back on sharing your opinions and ideas until everyone else has shared.