How Emotionally Intelligent are you? Dare to take a test?

Leadership literature provides a dazzling array of helpful strategies for success and sure-fire paths to the top of the corporate ladder. It would be truly delightful to be able to pick up a book, absorb its contents and find yourself successful in its afterglow.

The idea

If there were really a set of behaviours that guaranteed success it would soon be arbitraged away. However, there does seem to be a secret sauce to effective leadership that we almost all agree on and that is that it is extremely challenging to get to the top, and stay there, without a healthy dose of emotional intelligence.

Danger zone               It’s easy to assume you are emotionally intelligent, especially if you are socially popular with a large circle of friends. Absolute honesty and the opinions of those around you do sometimes paint a more sobering picture of you emotional capacity.

In practice

Try answering the questions below yourself and then ask a friend, colleague or spouse who knows you well, and doesn’t mind being honest, to complete it for you. 

TRUE	FALSE	Statement
		I never try to avoid tough conversations.
		I know exactly what makes me angry.
		If I can’t get along with someone, I know exactly why.
		I know what makes me sad.
		I always consider how my words or actions will make someone else feel.
		I put time aside everyday to think about my behaviour and interactions.
		I never say things that I regret later.
		I’m OK with saying sorry.
		I know exactly what I do well.
		I know exactly what I can’t do well.
		I can say NO to my boss when I know I can’t meet his/her expectations.
		I am interested in hearing other people’s opinions.
		I am always respectful of other people, even those younger than I am.
		Colleagues value my feedback.
		People tell me I am patient.
		I am always calm under pressure.
		I think very long and hard about my mistakes.
		I think very long and hard about my successes.
		I love challenges that no one else can solve.
		I can listen to someone without interrupting.
		My mood never affects my interactions with other people.
		I don’t mind if plans change.
		I don’t mind if MY plans are changed.
		I don’t get irritated if someone can’t follow my instructions.
		I try not to lose my temper in public.
	Grand  total   (True = 1, False = 0)

How did you score?

20 – 24 true:         Super human

12 to 20 true:        Emotionally gifted

below 12 true:       Human like the rest of us with the potential to improve

Next week, you will learn a little more about how to improve your EI score - if you need to, of course - and improve your chances of being successful in people-orientated pursuits.


Copyright Tremaine du Preez @2012, all rights reserved.

In leadership using the 'F' word more is better than less

by Tremaine du Preez

For many of my clients there is one day a year (more than one for some) that they simply know is going to be a real downer and there seems to be nothing they can do about it. (One man confided in me that this day is only slightly more fun than delivering an unprepared speech to the executive board, naked.) No it’s not the company year end party or the family picnic day with the guys from head office, it’s worse – Feedback day - with a capital 'F'. Neatly packaged under the heading “performance review”. Don’t get me wrong, I do know some people who love getting feedback, either they have bosses who truly care about them as people and employees or they work for themselves.

The idea

I often get asked if there are any magic formulas for making performance reviews painless and effective. Of course there are but I don’t think any of them work quite as advertised and none of them are magical in any way. Besides, changing the performance review is not as effective as changing the entire feedback process in an organisation. Effective feedback consists of a person’s ability to deliver a message appropriately and an environment in which feedback is valued as a tangible tool to improve performance, and hence success.

Danger zone                If feedback is only ever delivered at the quarterly/bi-annual/annual reviews a lot of old stuff has to be rehashed and mistakes have to be brought up which, more often than not, cast a huge shadow over the accolades that are doled out alongside them.

In practice

So how about this instead?

·         If you understand the ambitions, goals and drivers of your direct reports and give them feedback often that is linked directly to what they want to achieve, you will change the nature of feedback entirely.

·         If you practice this skill regularly you’ll know what works well and what should be changed. You’ll also be more confident and relaxed when you speak to reports about areas of improvement.

·         On the other hand, your reports will actually see the value of feedback, real time in their efforts. Perhaps you make it a habit to give a debrief after every sales pitch, for example, any good ideas can be implemented in the very next pitch and staff will even look forward to getting valuable and valued advice.

The annual performance review could now be painless because issues were dealt with as they arose throughout the year. Staff might even enjoy their ‘performance review’. It could just be magical.

Copyright @ Tremaine du Preez 2011 All rights reserved

www.leadershipconsultancy.org

An idea for today: Are you fostering a curious culture?

Curiosity; a basic human instinct at the root of advancement. 

Do the most curious people in your organisation sit in the research and development department? Are the designers and big thinkers grouped together where they can concentrate their skills to design products and processes and let everyone else get on with important operational issues to sell those products and services?

The idea

What if everyone in your organisation was curious about just one thing? If the tea lady was curious about what drinks visitors preferred at different times of the day or what tea to serve the visiting analysts from Japan. If the IT support department was curious about the effects of information overload on productivity and what to do about it. If your sales team were curious about how your product truly impacts the lives of your customers. What if your CEO was curious about everything? 

Innovation and creativity are hardly universal skill requirements at most companies. These skills are reserved for those that will use them directly. But what if every person in your company came to work curious about how to do things better, how to use less paper clips or one less page in the customer contract? Imagine the productivity enhancements that would come from this?

In practice

·       An environment of curiosity has to be fostered as part of the corporate culture

·       It’s not something you can talk about and expect people to develop themselves

·       You need to expect curiosity from staff by giving them things to be curious about

·       Be curious yourself and wonder about things

·       Ask your staff to wonder too, and give them time to do so.

Copyright @ 2011 Tremaine du Preez, all rights reserved

An Idea for Today: Are you coaching or showing off, coach?

Business acumen, social skills, a keen eye for spotting trends and opportunities, savvy decision making and the ability to coach subordinates to great heights. Does this sound like the wish list for the perfect leader? The ability to mentor the brightest minds in your posse is a leadership virtue as old as leadership itself and central to the grooming of new talent. Coaching is a more recent trend popping up on job descriptions. Some leaders make awesome coaches, they get it - while others, simply don’t. How are you doing with coaching, coach?

The idea

It’s understandable that many feel and behave as if coaching was merely the hip, more happening term for mentoring. It isn’t though.  In a coaching relationship, knowledge is not passed down between coach and coachee. The coach need not have any experience of the issue at hand nor be able to offer sage advice. Of course, it’s tempting to want to jump in with; “back in 2000, I was faced with a similar dilemma and here’s what worked for me.” This seems innocent enough and could even be useful, but it also completely defeats the point of coaching. On a more ominous note, I have witnessed many a coaching session completely degenerate into a painful, hour-long narcissistic rant by a leader who believes that their experience is the most valuable, or only, thing they have to offer, what a pity.

Coaching sessions create a space where the coach guides the coachee into fully appreciating and understanding the situation they are in and what is required to move forward. They do this through listening to and interpreting all the signals displayed by the coachee. Big, open probing questions are asked to encourage the coachee to explore options and find blind spots, themselves.

Aha! Moment               Mentoring fulfils a very important function, however, when introduced into a coaching structure, it can potentially limit someone’s frame of a situation. Coaching delimits current mindsets by asking intelligent and probing questions to expand perspectives.

In practice

·         Try to be very clear on whether the development time spent with employees is going to be used for coaching or mentoring, and stick to this agenda.

·          Gen Y’s are generally big fans of coaching and flourish under the attention that a coaching session places on them and their big ideas. This is a good time to help them explore the risks and limitation of those big ideas, through careful questioning.

·          If you are new to the idea of coaching, grab a book that explains its principles, and power and perhaps prepare a few good, probing questions that you could use in a coaching session.  


Copyright @ Tremaine du Preez, all rights reserved.

An Idea for Today: Don't Kill Yourself

Heart disease kills more people today than any other disease, more than cancer or car accidents. What’s that got to do with leadership or you? Everything. Emotional stress is part and parcel of leadership. We are told that it also raises one’s risk of heart disease.  To be specific, how we respond to stress, not stress itself, is the contributing factor.

The idea

Our stress response – or the change in hormones that occurs in response to a stressful situation – is something that we share with our ancestors. It was valuable in a hunter-gatherer society with dangers ever present. Foraging for something fresh at the takeout or securing a table at Starbucks during lunchtime, may be competitive, but are certainly not life threatening activities. So when someone cuts in front of you in the queue and can’t hear your vigorous throat clearing behind them because their iPod is blasting away, the surge of hormones that you feel and indentify as frustration or anger, are the same hormones that our ancestors felt when they realised that a crocodile was spying on them from the riverbank a few feet away. This hormonal response gave them the immediate burst of energy and clarity of thought needed to, hopefully, escape danger unharmed. It was usually quick lived and the hormone response was able to subside as soon as the danger passed.

Our stresses aren’t so clear-cut, Many of us live with a constant buzz of low level stress, with no immediate outlet for it. The effects that this persistent stress has on our body is hardly a topic raised at management meetings, but it should be.

Danger zone                When the everyday stressors of life seem ever present, the body’s ability to turn off its natural stress response is diminished. Our fight-or-flight response stays turned on. A constant trickle of stress hormones – adrenaline, noradrenaline and cortisol, is released which slowly decays our body’s ability to fight disease and affects the hormones that help us get a good night’s sleep – likened to a constant drizzle of corrosive acid into the body.

In practice

·          Identify 3 sources of low-level stress in your life, right now. Maybe you always seem to running late or have a colleague or client that rubs you up the wrong way when you work together?

·          Now ask yourself how you respond to these stressors?

·          What one thing can you do to change the way you feel about this stress or remove it?

·         There are so many other things in this life that can kill you, don’t let it be the way you respond to your stress.

Copyright @ Tremaine du Preez, all rights reserved.