Alliance for Leadership Acceleration

1.    STOP – When you sense you’re being ‘triggered’ or know what your triggers are and want to interrupt the pattern so you’re not sucked into an emotional or ineffective response.

2.    FOCUS on breathing.  Get oxygen to the brain in order to function most effectively. 

• Get oxygen to the brain in order to function most effectively. 
• Consciously slow down your breathing and breathe deeply

3.    REFRAME the assumptions and REGAIN perspective.  Work to suspend judgment and keep from jumping to conclusions.  Be curious and move away from “right/wrong” thinking. Questions such as these will help:

Know someone who needs to beef up their emotional intelligence muscle? With LEAP, the Leadership Acceleration Program, we work with managers/leaders to do just that.

Remember that you think and therefore you feel.  There are many choices when thinking about any given situation.  By changing how you describe the event to yourself, you can alter how you feel.  Use the scenarios below as a guide to identifying what's happening in a given situation and then practice changing your thinking about events.  It will take work and practice before some of these skills begin to become more automatic.  Challenging and examining thoughts can lead to increased emotional contentment and happiness.

Perceiving the world as black and white:  Not everything in the world is right or wrong, or black or white.  There are many grays and many choices.  Some are partly right or a better, if not perfect, choice.

Perfectionism:  Everyone makes mistakes.  Only through failure can we learn.  Edison tried many filaments to create the light bulb.  It may have taken you many tries to learn to ride a bicycle.

Pleasing others:  It is pleasant when others are pleased; however, it is not possible to please everyone.  Not everyone is going to like you no matter what you do.  The most important thing is to like YOU.

Catastrophising: It would be nice if everything were to go well, however, it often doesn’t.  If negative things happen, it is very unfortunate and even sad, but it is not usually a catastrophe.

Dependency:  Everyone can learn the skills necessary to be independent unless they have suffered a major stroke or other debilitating illness.  Learning new things takes time and practice; however, the effort pays off in feeling more positive about oneself.

Collecting Blame: It is not possible to control other people’s behavior and decisions nor is it possible to resolve emotional issues for them.  The only one you can change is yourself.  It is possible to support others emotionally, to care about others, and to offer some assistance.  It is not helpful to anyone if you become overly responsible or emotionally consumed by others.

Dwelling on the dangerous events in the world:  Constantly thinking about the negative produces anxiety.  Worry ahead is not helpful.

Labeling:  Calling others names (you jerk) may be momentarily satisfying; however, this process maintains anger and depression.  Describe the event rather than label.  (He dropped the ice cream on the floor.)

Life Must Be Fair:  It would be nice if things went our way.  However, life is filled with unfairness and unfortunate events.  The more important focus is how to cope with life when it isn’t what we want.

Know someone who needs to beef up their emotional intelligence muscle? With LEAP, the Leadership Acceleration Program, we work with managers/leaders on these very things.

Emotion is an ever-present energy in the workplace. Harnessing this untapped resource in a positive way can have a tremendous impact on the reasoning side of business.

The EQ Competence Framework includes 3 foundational areas: Attitude, Feeling, and Behavior. 

Within these lie three “Personal Intelligences” and three "Interpersonal Intelligences” which can also be thought of as competencies because all of these can be developed by anyone who chooses to develop them.

PERSONAL INTELLIGENCE

• Self-Regard (Attitude) – The degree to which one accepts and values oneself.  To be ‘okay’ with oneself or having limited self-criticism.  “However I am and others are is OK.”
• Self-Awareness (Feeling) – Knowing one’s internal states, preferences, resources, and intuitions.  Includes: emotional awareness, accurate self-assessment and self-confidence.
• Self-Management (Behavior) – Managing one’s internal states, impulses, and resources.  Includes: self-control, trustworthiness, conscientiousness, adaptability, and innovation.

INTERPERSONAL INTELLIGENCE

• Regard for Others (Attitude) – The degree to which a person accepts and values others (distinct from liking or approving of what they might do.)  “However you and others are, is OK.”
• Awareness of Others (Feeling) – Empathy: awareness of others’ feelings, needs, and concerns.  Includes: understanding others, developing others, service orientation, leveraging diversity, and political awareness.
• Relationship Management (Behavior) – Adeptness at inducing desirable responses in others.  Includes: influence, communication, conflict management, leadership, change catalyst, building bonds, collaboration and cooperation, and team capabilities.

IQ has long been an important factor in the business world. However, when we look at the most successful leaders, we see more than IQ—we see EQ.  

Know someone who needs to beef up their emotional intelligence muscle? With LEAP, the Leadership Acceleration Program, we work with managers/leaders on these very things.

Delegating effectively is as much about getting more done as it is about empowering others and creating a high-performance organization. Delegating is often misunderstood and before we talk about the six steps to delegating effectively it is first important to understand what delegating is and what it is not.

Delegating is about sharing work, sharing authority, and providing employee development. Delegating is not about dumping your workload on someone else, letting go of all responsibility, or assigning work and checking the box done - never checking back to ensure it was done and done well.

Once you have defined what you need to delegate, then you can follow these 6 steps to delegate effectively:

1. Provide CLARITY about what you want done:  be specific and provide needed instruction.
   
2. MATCH the right task to the right individual.
3. Establish LEVELS of authority and autonomy – don’t hesitate to provide challenging assignments.
4. Determine RESOURCES and support for the individual.
5. Give clear DEADLINES for completion and discuss how & when you will check-in for follow-up.
6. Provide FEEDBACK on performance when assignment is complete.

Delegating effectively is one of the top 5 most consistently self-reported challenges that leaders struggle with. If you would like to know more about how LEAP the Leadership Acceleration Program can help you (or someone you know) become more effective at delegating, join us for an upcoming webinar.

In traditional organizations managers set goals, make decisions, establish and manage the budget, set policies, control the flow of information, etc.  In these organizations, managers are the “thinkers and planners” and employees are merely the “doers”.  This sets up an attitude of compliance in the minds of the workers.  People’s hearts are not in their work. They learn to get by, do the minimum and watch the clock.

In high-performance organizations, leaders recognize the value and potential of their human resources and want to get the most possible from them, so they create a culture and organizational design in which people participate in goal-setting, making decisions, and solving problems. People go beyond compliance to commitment in their motivation. They want to be part of the organization and are excited to contribute to its success and improvement.

What do you think would happen if your employees truly felt and acted like partners in the business?  What if they saw it as their business and not just your business?  What would be the consequences?

Set Goals at the Right Level
Setting goals at the correct level is a skill that is acquired by practice.

You should set goals so that they are slightly out of your immediate grasp, but not so far that there is no hope of achieving them: no-one will put serious effort into achieving a goal that they believe is unrealistic. However, remember that the belief that a goal is unrealistic may be incorrect.
 
Set Realistic Goals
Goals may be set unrealistically high for the following reasons:

• Other people: Other people (parents, clients, bosses, media, society) can set unrealistic goals for you, based on what they want. Often this will be done in ignorance of your goals, desires and ambitions.
• Insufficient information: If you do not have a clear, realistic understanding of what you are trying to achieve and of the skills and knowledge to be mastered, it is difficult to set effective and realistic goals.
• Always expecting your best performance: Many people base their goals on their best performance, however long ago that was. This ignores the inevitable backsliding that can occur for good reasons, and ignores the factors that led to that best performance. It is better to set goals that raise your average performance and make it more consistent.
• Lack of respect for self: If you do not respect your right to rest, relaxation and pleasure in life then you risk burnout.

Beware of Setting Goals Too Low
It’s important to be realistic and not set goals too high. Alternatively, goals can be set too low because of:

• Fear of failure: If you are frightened of failure you will not take the risks needed for optimum performance. As you apply goal setting and see the achievement of goals, your self- confidence should increase, helping you to take bigger risks. Know that failure is a positive thing: it shows you areas where you can improve your skills and performance.
• Taking it too easy: It is easy to take the reasons for not setting goals unrealistically high as an excuse to set them too low. If you're not prepared to stretch yourself and work hard, then you are extremely unlikely to achieve anything of any real worth.
  

Personal factors such as tiredness, other commitments and the need for rest, etc. should also be taken into account when goals are set.

It's all about knowing your strengths and challenges and how you contribute to the outcomes of different situations.

We know that anyone can develop emotional intelligence. From start-to-finish during our year-long LEAP Leadership Acceleration Program, we track the change in emotional intelligence indicators; we absolutely see positive change in participants during their 12-month leadership development journey—upwards of 30% on average. In a nutshell, once a person gets feedback and becomes aware of the concepts around emotional intelligence, they learn to be aware of their behavior and their impact on their social environment. When they learn the tools for coping and regulating, they really can control their behavior and act with a higher level of emotional intelligence.  

As an example, a couple of years ago we had a General Manager at a prestigious restaurant, who was a great employee—sharp, organized, great at his job, but he could not control his outbursts, he could not regulate he impulse when he became upset or frustrated. In this case, the person was very self-aware--the situation was quickly eroding his confidence as a leader and he could feel it. He knew there was a problem, he just couldn’t regulate. Through LEAP, with feedback, skill building, reflection, help from peers, and guidance from his Coach, by the end of the year we saw a 60% positive change in indicators for emotional intelligence and leadership confidence and competence. Backing this up, his sponsor and boss reported a visible and significant improvement in his leadership, the team he managed, and the work environment in general.

So, absolutely we can develop emotional intelligence. It comes down to first understanding “who I am at my core, at my best most natural self?” Then, “how do others see me in the work environment?” And from there, reducing the blind spots through reflection and sharing openly with trusted relationships. 

Many leaders believe, “if I just ask for feedback, people will give it to me”. While I wish that were true, unfortunately all humans, being what we are, if you hold a position over me, bottom line is, I don’t know that if I were to be completely honest with you, “are you going to fire me or give me crappy work or a crappy schedule?” We tend to hold back being truly honest even when offered the opportunity to give real-time immediate, face-to-face, feedback.

We’ve tracked the development of emotional intelligence in leaders over many years working with executives, managers and aspiring leaders to increase their confidence and competence. We have metrics that show the change in emotional intelligence level from the start of the leadership development journey to the end, one year later. Based on this, we've identified 6 key indicators of lacking emotional intelligence:

#1 Very limited self-awareness, which really goes back to a lack of feedback. If employees are irritated, act annoyed, don’t respond to what you want them to do, have no idea as to why you’re asking them to do things, it could be something that you’re completely blind to, a particular behavior or a mannerism that you are completely unaware of, you have no self-awareness and also you have no feedback, therefore, you’re lacking that self-awareness.

#2 Having perfectionistic tendencies, being hyper-critical of others, and having unrealistic expectations that no one around you can live up to which deflates the morale of team-members.

#3 Defensive when accepting feedback. When people attempt to give the feedback, the recipient doesn’t see it as a gift, they see it as criticism and respond either defensively or angrily when others attempt to give them feedback.

#4    Inability to manage emotional impulses is another area or sign of lacking emotional intelligence. People who can’t quite control what their reactions are, become victims to their emotional impulses, whether its anger or depression or whatever it might be that they don’t have the ability to recognize that emotion and bounce back quickly or manage it effectively in the moment.

#5    Lack of accountability and not taking ownership for performance situations like lack of results in the organization or when something goes wrong on a project.


#6 Being inflexible, not just in behavior, but inflexible in one’s thinking and inability to adapt to changing environments and changing situations and other people.