Through your behavior, you clarify expectations and elicit behavior shifts in others. In addition, focusing on Strategic Leadership can enable you to create relationships with purpose across your organization.
Across my leadership development and coaching practice, I am seeing that some of the most important work involves working with honest self-awareness. Building self-awareness is a primary element in providing a strong and balanced presence/emotional maturity in leading complex and ever-changing organizations. The skill set that I believe has a great deal to offer in this kind of environment is Emotional Intelligence. Lately, my coaching with Executive Leaders has me revisiting the Emotional Intelligence impact on leader effectiveness and how it pertains to leadership accountability. Specifically, I was drawn to the Harvard Business review article What Makes a Leader by Daniel Goleman (You can click here to read it).
Please consider taking a few moments to ask yourself these three quick ‘self-test’ questions:
- Based on Daniel Goleman’s article, Emotional Intelligence and its vital relationship to leading, how would you assess your strengths in using the five components* of Emotional Intelligence?
- *Five components are in the attachment and also listed at the bottom of this mail.
- Advanced level: Ask someone you trust to provide objective feedback.
- How might you more broadly leverage your identified strengths from our coaching sessions?
- Advanced level: Consider stakeholders in other teams, peers, manager, family etc.
- With whom could you consider doing a better job of using specific Emotional Intelligence Components with, then provide first steps for each person.
- Advanced level: Consider stakeholders in other teams, peers, manager, family etc.
- Considering the Emotional Intelligence Components, what is your overall conclusion about areas of challenge or development opportunities to increase your effectiveness as a leader?
- What would you like to work on? What are your first steps?
- Advanced Level: Ask someone you trust to provide objective feedback.
Thank you for making the time to invest in your development as a leader. As you know, your commitment to building and leading a strong team will both challenge you and provide opportunities for your own professional growth and success moving forward. As many of you know, coaching is a great way to keep your leadership goals in focus as you move forward in your career. To build on the value of your leadership development, from time to time, I’ll be sending relevant articles which you can apply to your unique situation. These will help stimulate your thinking as a leader; provoke reflection and renewed focus to encourage you to make conscious and perhaps different choices under demanding circumstances.
The Five Components of Emotional Intelligence at Work
| Definition | Hallmarks | |
|---|---|---|
| Self-Awareness | the ability to recognize and understand your moods, emotions, and drives, as well as their effect on others | self-confidence realistic self-assessment self-deprecating sense of humor |
| Self-Regulation | the ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods the propensity to suspend judgment–to think before acting |
trustworthiness and integrity comfort with ambiguity openness to change |
| Motivation | a passion to work for reasons that go beyond money or status a propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence |
strong drive to achieve optimism, even in the face of failure organizational commitment |
| Empathy | the ability to understand the emotional makeup of other people skill in treating people according to their emotional reactions |
expertise in building and retaining talent cross-cultural sensitivity service to clients and customers |
| Social Skill | proficiency in managing relationships and building networks an ability to find common ground and build rapport |
effectiveness in leading change persuasiveness expertise in building and leading teams |
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