Take Your Team to the Oscars

The Help, Moneyball, and The Descendants – these Oscar nominated movies demonstrate ways of understanding team and individual emotional and social intelligence.  The Oscar nominated movies and some other great ones we highlight demonstrate interesting tips for team and individual awareness.  This is a great way to build team engagement and knowledge on how to improve skills.  It always helps to have a model so our discussion is organized around the Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey^® (TESI^®), which includes the seven key skills we’ve found teams need for building their ESI.

We list two movies for each of the 7 skill areas and discuss the first one.  We hope you’ll comment on our blog site and contribute to this fun learning opportunity for all of us!  We thank the many people involved in making these movies for the great entertainment and the remarkable ways in which your work teaches us.  We enjoyed the movies we are reviewing here and recommend them to you.

Team Identity:  The Help and Of Gods and Men

Team identity measures the level of pride each member feels for the team as a whole, and how much connection and belongingness members feel to the team.

The Help:  The team is composed of African-American maids in Jackson, Mississippi at the dawn of the civil rights movement. A plucky new college graduate who grew up there is horrified with the way her grown-up school chums relate to their maids. So she asks one to tell her story and eventually they all get involved, and what’s been going around for so long starts to come around at last.  The maids had always given each other emotional support; this project brought them together in an act of tremendous courage to have more of a sense of pride, possibility and certainly belongingness to their team.

Motivation:   Margin Call, Albert Nobbs

Motivation is a competency that measures the team’s internal resources for generating and sustaining the energy necessary to get the job done well and on time.

Margin Call: In this case the team is made up of professionals in a financial company who have just realized they are holding tens of millions of dollars worth of worthless stock.  They decide to sell it to their clients the next day in order to save the company. This is capitalism at its worst, and the few conscientious team members cannot change the self protection trend. At the end of the day the conscientious ones are unable to shift their corporate compliance habits, the result is disaster for the company’s investors.  This is a movie your team could see in order to strike up considerable discussion about appropriate motivation and to ask when do we stick with the pack and when do we break free?  It can be a great start to discussions about ethics and how to find win/win answers.

Emotional Awareness: I Am, Iron Lady

Emotional awareness measures how well team members pay attention to one another and demonstrate acceptance and value for one another.

I Am: Tom Shadyac, the highly successful movie director for Jim Carrey films such as Ace Ventura pet detective has everything and lives like it until he has a bike wreck and his life is in peril. He discovers that he’s gotten it all wrong as has everyone around him it seems, so he takes a film crew and begins asking knowledgeable people such as Desmond Tutu the Nobel laureate, Noam Chomsky the political theorist and Coleman Barks the poet and Rumi translator: “What’s wrong with our world?”and “What can we do about it?” Their answers are a consistent formula for living sustainably in relationship with each other and the environment.  Some of the key concepts in the film are: cooperation is in our DNA; the truth of who we are is we are because we belong, technology and the human narrative are beginning to come together; we are geared at a primordial level to feel what each other feels.

This is more a film about an individual leader than a team, but the ideas are ones the team can see and extrapolate concepts and values they want to notice and promote in one another.  Iron Lady is listed as the opposite of emotional awareness.  Margaret Thatcher is portrayed as paying primary attention to herself and unflinchingly adhering to the beliefs she developed as a child rather than learning and responding to new ideas and populations.

Communication:  We Bought a Zoo, Beginners

Communication provides information on how well team members listen, encourage participation, share information and discuss sensitive matters.

 We Bought A Zoo: This movie tells the story of a major attempt to start over after the death of a spouse and mother. The hurting family leaves their old house, old neighborhood, old school, old job and buys a house in the country that is home to over 40 species of animals and an unusual assortment of people who take care of the animals.  The team becomes the father, the zookeepers and the two children, all learning how to work together to get this challenging small business into start up mode and to turn a profit. The father is the team leader.  He is now the employer of the zookeepers, the food and shelter sponsor for the animals, and the source of love and guidance for 2 children. Most of the movie he’s afraid he’s just about to let everybody down but he keeps taking his own advice to his lovelorn son: “20 seconds of insane courage will deliver something totally magical.”  Fortunately it works and the results are as heartwarming as humorous.

Team members can pick up lots to talk about in terms of which zookeeper or other team member they most identify with and how the different personalities help promote or challenge team success.

Stress Tolerance:  HappyThankYouMorePlease, Moneyball

Stress tolerance measures how well the team understands the types of stress factors and manages the intensity impacting its members and the team as a whole.

HappyThankYouMorePlease:  This delightful film will reduce your stress just by watching it. When 9 or 10-year-old Rasheen gets left on a subway by mistake a group of 20 somethings come together like an ad hoc team on his behalf. He didn’t know his parents or how old he was and was not interested in any more help from social services, but he turned out to be a great teacher of love just as life was providing some great opportunities for practice for his young adult care takers. For example, a geeky guy wants to develop a relationship with a woman who can’t grow hair because of a medical condition. She doesn’t feel worthy of his adoration but tells her friend who found the boy “Let’s be people who deserve to be loved.”  Part of the lesson is for everyone to learn to feel loved.

This is a great film to show a team with generational differences.  It’s a heartwarming way to appreciate the generation entering the workforce.

Conflict Resolution: The Descendants and Of Gods and Men

Conflict resolution measures how willing the team is to engage in conflict openly and constructively without needing to get even.

Of Gods and Men: In March 1996, an Islamic terrorist group kidnapped seven French Trappist monks from their remote monastery in Tibhirine, Algeria. They were held for two months and then killed.  At the heart of this atrocity is a tale of heroic faith, steadfastness and love, captured in the sublime film “Of Gods and Men.” It is perhaps the best movie on Christian commitment ever made.  This is a powerful movie and one of the best released in 2011 about real team work. The monks made a very difficult choice in the face of certain danger to stay together, practice their faith and be with their Muslim community.

These men were not shy with each other, they got angry, they blamed, they acted like victims, they wept, they hid, and they each eventually realized that they were expressing these emotions in response, not to the people and the world around them, but rather in response to their perceptions and judgments of that world. This recognition is what enabled them to fully surrender their lives to the service they provided the local community, and receive the spiritual grace that sustained them through the ending of their time on earth.

Positive Mood:  Hugo, Midnight in Paris

Positive mood measures the positive attitude of the team in general as well as when it’s under pressure.

Hugo: This is an extraordinarily charming film about children and adults and how courage looks and feels and is practiced from both points of view. There are two small teams, one of children, one of adults.  Ultimately the two teams come together as one, but major challenges are faced first. It’s also a beautifully made movie.

Ask you team what elements of the movie help them have a sense of “can do” that they can bring back to their team.

Don’t forget – take your team to the movies.  Have fun and learn!

EQ 360 Builds Success, Prevents Derailment

Whether caused by blind spots, habits, or lack of awareness, failure to recognize how others experience the way we engage is a key contributor to leadership derailment.  When we don’t notice that we lose people’s attention because we talk too long or we scare folks away by being too demanding, we miss vital information.  Instead of recognizing the responses and making strategic changes the head this type of head in the sand leader keeps on keeping on right into a diminished career.  So how can this be prevented?  After all it is challenging to accurately discern how others are responding, and even harder to know what triggered particular responses from peers, direct reports or others.

A client we’ll call Melinda found an answer. She kept her job and is much happier now thanks to her working carefully with her EQ 360 results.  She heads a key program as senior vice president for a high profile non-profit.  She managed a department in charge of launching new programs and convincing key investors to fund her organization’s programs.  Her staff needed to be inspired and to receive detailed overviews on expectations and expected ways to engage in order to demonstrate the organizational mission.  She did this well.  However, when she reported up to the high profile board of community leaders, Melinda had lost so much credibility that the CEO thought he was going to have to let her go.  The board wanted big picture, quick and strategic feedback yet Melinda was giving them long winded analytical analysis that bored most and angered some.

The CEO wanted to keep Melinda but wasn’t sure he could. We used the EQ 360 to help her recognize her specific challenges and learn ways to change her habitual way of engaging. Board members, her boss, peers and direct reports all rated her and the results were included by each category so she could see who was perceiving success and where specifically people were struggling with her engagement. She needed to enhance her awareness of how she communicated to different groups and modify her approach accordingly. Key EI skills she needed to sharpen were her:

•  Reality Testing (by expanding her political savvy and paying attention to how to communicate instead of habitually engaging with the same style with everyone)

• Emotional Self-Awareness by recognizing that when she felt worried, she gave detailed explanations and further lost the Board.

• Assertiveness by fine tuning her listening skills so she could be more effective with her assertiveness.  Melinda didn’t have any problem speaking up, but she too often wasn’t strategic in how she spoke.
• Optimism by recognizing that when she started her 360 work she was feeling defensive and less than sure that she could make the changes and that was aggravating her didactic habits.  If she could trust in her many skills and tap into her flexibility, Melinda could make changes more effectively.

EQ 360 Assessment

The EQ 360 is an assessment in which an individual rates his or her own skills and others who know him or her in a variety of ways also answer the same questions.  The results graphically show how the individual perceives his or her skills in each of the 16 EI skills measured by the EQi and then presents a comparison to how others see those same skills. The results are shown by the different rater groups of boss, direct reports, peers, family/friends or others, such as clients.  The overall goal is to accurately understand one’s skills and how they are expressed and to have a similar perspective between the individual and the raters.  However, it is quite likely that there will be differences, and it’s possible the differences will vary between rater groups.  For example, the boss may be in agreement with the individual, the direct reports may rate him or her higher and the peers may have lower ratings in some areas.  The raters’ responses are reported with three or more to a group, except for those of the boss.  That confidentiality supports candor.

Value from a 360

The EQ 360 provides the opportunity for gaining considerable value.  How much is actually gained depends most on the attitude and willingness of the individual.  The capabilities of the coach and support from the boss and organization also make a difference.  The potential value of a 360 assessment used in the workplace can come from:

• The opportunity for everyone to be more reflective: The individual receives considerable data that invites introspection and reflective awareness. Raters are asked to take about twenty minutes to answer the questions and that causes them to shift from day to day tasks and think about how the individual engages and displays skills.  Hopefully, the rater takes some time to reflect on what part of the engagement they are responsible for as well.  It is a two way street!  And finally if you have a leadership group each having their own 360 and then meeting to discuss what they have learned and opportunities, the invitation for deepening the reflective awareness is large.

• Light is shined on blind spots: This is probably the best recognized value of the 360 by organizations.  We can easily move along in our lives thinking we’re doing fine while totally missing the mark with our direct reports, for example, and be incredibly wrong.  Melinda found that not only did she have a problem with the Board but that she had taken so little time to engage with her peers that they didn’t know her well. This resulted in mediocre ratings from them.  Coaching discussions helped her realize the value of working with her peers to herself and the organization.  This reframed “I don’t have time for lunch with Jose” to “I can’t afford to miss lunch with Jose.”  The blind spots can also be about behaviors.  Melinda may think she has great stress tolerance skills, but family/friends might report they miss her and are worried about her health because she works so much.  Direct reports might reflect she has low stress tolerance because they experience the anxiety that taking a new project on creates, and they are often given much of the work.  The resulting resentment from staff brings on a handful of other challenges.
• Balancing skills to build congruence.  This is one of the most important benefits of the EQ 360.  The 16 skills reflect important information on their own, but no skill is an island.  Every skill is more powerful when exercised in context of highly related EI skills.  For example, the effectiveness of assertiveness is tied to skills in empathy, impulse control and optimism.  For more information see Marcia’s article on The Four Corners of Empathic Assertiveness.
• Rater group congruence: If direct reports, peers, the boss and others have considerably different views of an individual’s performance, it’s a problem.  Success in an organization is a multi-dimensional endeavor.  The 360 points out problem areas and supports strategic focus in building relationships.
• Horizons are broadened when the leader takes time to look at feedback from people he or she works with regularly, consider the information carefully and prepare a focused response.

The EQ 360 should always be used for the right purpose, which is for individual growth and it requires a trained coach who will help sort through the information and guide the person in their growth process.  Most importantly, the individual needs to bring a willing attitude to the process.  Willingness to learn and make a few strategic changes can result in phenomenal career benefits.  It did for Melinda.  She expanded her mindfulness, carefully prepared for Board meetings and practiced how to respond at the level they expected.  She built relationships with her peers and found they had much to share and she enjoyed her work more because of the valuable relationships.  Melinda’s boss expects her to be a vital part of the workforce for a very long time.

Emotional & Social Well-Being Supports Employee Engagement

The good news about our 2.0 world is organizations are finally getting it – that is they are recognizing that if they place their top value on building emotional and social well being for their employees and teams, they will gain the business and financial values of increased and sustainable productivity, better decisions, loyalty and best of all trust among their workforce. Ok, they get it, but how do they DO it? It isn’t hard, yet it does require intentional commitment and follow through. Fortunately there is a road map, the powerful tools of the EQi 2.0® for individuals and the TESI® for teams are well researched assessments designed to measure and provide the path to building emotional and social well-being. These provide the data to implement a specific plan of action for individuals and teams.

Let’s take the case of Teresa (not her real name) who recently joined a mid-size successful law firm as a paralegal in the Environmental Division (ED). The ED has a managing partner, administrative partner, 10 attorneys and 5 paralegals. Teresa is excited, hopeful, apprehensive, and cautious. She is experiencing a normal set of mixed emotions as she starts this new position that could become a rewarding long-term career or a really difficult chapter in her life. It is very much in her best interest and that of the firm for this to work. Recognizing the investment they are making, the law firm has established a process to welcome and support Teresa’s success.

First, they used the EQi 2.0 as a part of the hiring process to hire a person who would have high potential for success in this position. Once Teresa joined the firm she was given her EQi results with a coaching session by Abigail, an external consultant to their OD team. Teresa was guided to explore all skills of the EQi and to focus on a few that would be most helpful for her. Teresa’s happiness (scored at 90) is lower than she would prefer and she recognizes that her happiness has a global effect on her life, it affects the energy she has to do her job, her ability to connect with others, and how she feels about herself. Teresa and Abigail dug in to explore the well-being indicator in her report and seek useful strategies that Teresa could put into action. Happiness was originally described by Dr. Reuven Bar-On, the creator of the original EQi, as a barometer of emotional health and well-being and as an indicator of one’s entire emotional and social intelligence. The EQi well-being indicator emphasizes that four of the sixteen EQi skills are particularly interconnected to the dimension of happiness. Teresa’s found:

1. Her self-regard (95) was ok, but she would benefit by strengthening her sense of self-confidence. Teresa feels scared in her first position as a paralegal, but upon discussion she recognizes she has strengths to build on including her previous work experience.
2. Her optimism (110) was likely to be a healthy point of leverage in building her goals. However, she and her coach checked her reality testing (102) to make sure she maintained good perspective and didn’t just look at the world with rose colored glasses.
3. 3. Her interpersonal relationships (95) indicated that she longed to take time to develop more friendships. She’d focused on career and family and was truly feeling lonely for personal friends. Teresa recognized that a few close friends would make a big difference for her whole life, but she was worried that she just couldn’t invest the time. She was surprised that her coach would even suggest this was important, after all didn’t the law firm just want billable hours? It seemed like investing in friends would diminish her contribution at the firm. Teresa’s curiosity was definitely engaged.
4. Her self-actualization (104) was fairly strong and Teresa talked about how important it is to her to contribute to making the world a better place. This is why she chose to be a paralegal and work in environmental law. She would be supporting cases focused on water quality and hazardous waste management. She talked about her passion and excitement and demonstrated why this skill and her optimism are key components of her happiness.

Teresa and Abigail discussed a strategy, with Teresa taking the lead on changes she was going to work on. First she knew it had to be small focused steps because she was already busy. She decided to build her self-regard by: 1) giving herself positive messages at least 5 times a day, 2) noticing what was going right, and 3) taking at least 15 minutes each evening to reflect and write down how she felt with the positive messages and what she did right during the day. She committed to doing this for 28 days straight, as Abigail emphasized that she’s building new habits supported by new neuronal pathways. She also decided to have a least one personal lunch or coffee break a week that was just meeting with friends, not about business. Teresa will also do this for four weeks and then decide on next steps. She was intrigued with Abigail’s confirmation that the firm recognizes that people need connections and that folks who feel that they have a full whole life are better long term contributors to the firm and support their clients and co-workers more effectively.

Teresa was beginning to get the message that her new employer believed in her emotional and social well being and was really pleased to learn that the investment wouldn’t stop with just her individual needs as she and her teammates in the Environmental Division were also supported in being a strong and viable team. The team would be taking the TESI (Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey) in a few months and she’d be a part of taking the Survey, evaluating the team’s performance in skills such as motivation, emotional awareness, conflict resolution and stress tolerance. Days were marked out on everyone’s calendars for once a month team building sessions where they would use the data from the TESI, connect it with their reflections on projects that were successful or challenged and intentionally keep building their skills to work together.

After the coaching session, Teresa felt hopeful and committed to being a productive member of the firm for a very long time.

Leadership Development: The Four Corners of Empathetic Assertiveness

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

–George Bernard Shaw

 Successful leaders exhibit skills that may look natural and easy yet are truly the result of paying close attention and being responsive to the whole environment.  To do so, they learn to be emotionally literate and employ a complex set of skills in ways that may seem innate though in fact are the result of a willingness to work, learn and improve.  Leaders often believe that their cognitive intelligence is the threshold for their success, and they do need solid IQ smarts and a good education to get in the door and to keep up with technical and professional developments.  To move beyond that threshold they need to be adept at relationships, influencing and leading staff and teams effectively.

The path for exhibiting this excellence is based in emotional intelligence:

“a set of emotional and social skills that influence the way we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships, cope with challenges, and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way.”

The most powerful and sustainable way to build those relationships requires using the four emotional intelligence skills demonstrated in this graph.

The artful use of these four skills creates a resilient environment and is well supported by using the EQ-i^2.0 with the leaders.  We also find considerable value by measuring team skills as well with the Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey^®.  Together these two assessments present a powerful picture that supports developing leadership capabilities.

In a real-life case, Carl (his name is changed to protect privacy) became the new CEO at a large hospital and faced big challenges such as leading the medical staff, the administrative staff and various boards to work together.  Carl is one smart IQ person and he needs all those smarts!  He is leading new change initiatives, changing reporting relationships and strategizing on how to meet financial challenges that have built up over several years.  He also needs to build loyalty, solid relationships and a desire among a staff of many different backgrounds from neurosurgeons to administrative staff to work together and build a new future together.  Every day he exhibits skills in all four dimensions of this success diagram.

Empathy
 – People know he understands how hard they are working and that change can be painful, they feel his compassion and genuine interest in them.

Assertiveness
 – He is assertive, there is no doubt that the changes are to be made.  His staff knows that they are expected to perform to the new standards and will be held accountable if they don’t.  When actions are unacceptable he makes it clear; however, this isn’t necessary often because he communicates what is needed up front and the requirement of accountability is clear.

Impulse Control – 
His expert use of impulse control is reflected by his measured responses when something goes wrong and his thoughtful engagement on complex matters as he helps all involved recognize that big problems take time to resolve successfully.

Optimism
  – He leaves no doubt about his belief that they will be resolved, thus exuding consistent optimism.  His staff gains hopefulness and inspiration, they know he cares about them and will hold them accountable.  It is a healthy proactive structure that is gradually turning a big ship around since he started six months ago.

When leaders seek to guide and influence others we know they need to communicate – but how?  The choice that gets the desired results taps into the four corners of empathic assertiveness.  These are four of the fifteen skills measured by the EQ-i and the good news is they can be developed and improved in all motivated leaders.  It is best for the leader and his/her coach to review the results from taking the EQ-i and create a game plan that calls for these skills to be used in synch.  If a leader one day pats an employee on the back and praises him or her. Then the next day the leader impulsively yells about a mistake, it can be difficult for the employee to trust the relationship. The leader needs to learn to bring those skills together in a cohesive message.  Let’s assume a leader, I’ll call Mary makes one of the following two communications:

“Nancy, I’m so disappointed with the errors in your report, we worked with you so hard last time and here you are making the same kind of mistakes again.  Now, do it right and have the memo on my desk by 10 a.m. tomorrow!” 

OR

“Nancy, I appreciate your desire to get this project completed on time, but quality has to matter just as much as timeliness.  Please take time to correct the errors, get help from others on the team as you need, and give me your proposed final memo by tomorrow at 10 a.m. I know you can get this done well just like you did with last month’s project.” 

If Mary was just assertive and didn’t manage her impulses her irritation at the poor quality could cause Nancy to be less resourceful, Nancy is likely to move away emotionally from the project and from Mary rather than moving toward the project and rolling up her sleeves to accomplish even more.  The second message incorporates all four skills and is more likely to lead to success.

How to be successful with the Four Corners model

Empathy is demonstrated by understanding the emotions people are communicating and responding to them.  This is key to building trust, engagement and passion.  Demonstrating empathy can take just a moment, if you see that someone is surprised, worried or perplexed, acknowledge the emotion, connect it with a reason you believe is related and give the person time to correct you if needed and to respond more.  “You feel perplexed because these two goals seem contradictory.” Also, be sure to give the person time to speak.

Assertiveness is demonstrated by the ability to speak up, to make your points, to say no when called for.  Leaders can develop their skills with assertiveness by intentionally saying what is important to them and by practicing saying no by being clear about their priorities.  A leader’s staff and teams want to hear from him/her, but the way that the assertiveness is communicated will make all the difference in how it is accepted.

Impulse control includes the ability to manage impulses, be patient and to control the desire to be angry. Howard Book writes in his chapter “When Enhanced EI is Associated with Leadership Derailment” (The Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence, Hughes, Thompson and Terrell, 2009) that impulse control is a primary skill upon which all other cognitive and emotional skills depend.  Leaders with poor impulse control make haphazard and poorly thought out decisions.  Rich Handley in his chapter “Advanced EQi Interpretation Techniques” in the edited volume presented his research on the relationship between the fifteen EQ-i skills in which he found the EQ-i skill that supports the most successful use of an identified EQ skill, e.g., for emotional self awareness that supportive skill is impulse control.  It turns out that impulse control is the most influential of all the skills.  If someone overuses impulse control they may be risk adverse and just play things too safely.  Someone low in impulse control at best will irritate others and at worst will burn many bridges.  Leaders can develop their impulse control by finding ways to stop and think before they speak.  We often suggest a leader use stair therapy – if they are feeling impulsive or even explosive we urge them to go climb a set or more of stairs before they say anything.  There is no doubt that getting oxygen to their brain and incorporating physical movement will be helpful.

Optimism is the demonstration of hopefulness.  When leaders help their teams believe they will find an answer even when the going gets tough, they are building optimism.  Plentiful research is demonstrating the power of positive mood.  Leaders can build optimism through the way they talk about challenges.  Speak of challenges in limited ways, frame the concern so it’s not so global or big that it can’t be handled and say, “we just haven’t found the answer yet.  The word “yet” creates a presupposition that the answer will be found!

The art of developing successful leadership is created by bringing the right skills together so leaders can experience a resilience that is sustainable even when tested.

Leadership Development: The Four Corners of Empathetic Assertiveness

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

–George Bernard Shaw

 Successful leaders exhibit skills that may look natural and easy yet are truly the result of paying close attention and being responsive to the whole environment.  To do so, they learn to be emotionally literate and employ a complex set of skills in ways that may seem innate though in fact are the result of a willingness to work, learn and improve.  Leaders often believe that their cognitive intelligence is the threshold for their success, and they do need solid IQ smarts and a good education to get in the door and to keep up with technical and professional developments.  To move beyond that threshold they need to be adept at relationships, influencing and leading staff and teams effectively.

The path for exhibiting this excellence is based in emotional intelligence:

“a set of emotional and social skills that influence the way we perceive and express ourselves, develop and maintain social relationships, cope with challenges, and use emotional information in an effective and meaningful way.”

The most powerful and sustainable way to build those relationships requires using the four emotional intelligence skills demonstrated in this graph.

The artful use of these four skills creates a resilient environment and is well supported by using the EQ-i^2.0 with the leaders.  We also find considerable value by measuring team skills as well with the Team Emotional and Social Intelligence Survey^®.  Together these two assessments present a powerful picture that supports developing leadership capabilities.

In a real-life case, Carl (his name is changed to protect privacy) became the new CEO at a large hospital and faced big challenges such as leading the medical staff, the administrative staff and various boards to work together.  Carl is one smart IQ person and he needs all those smarts!  He is leading new change initiatives, changing reporting relationships and strategizing on how to meet financial challenges that have built up over several years.  He also needs to build loyalty, solid relationships and a desire among a staff of many different backgrounds from neurosurgeons to administrative staff to work together and build a new future together.  Every day he exhibits skills in all four dimensions of this success diagram.

Empathy
 – People know he understands how hard they are working and that change can be painful, they feel his compassion and genuine interest in them.

Assertiveness
 – He is assertive, there is no doubt that the changes are to be made.  His staff knows that they are expected to perform to the new standards and will be held accountable if they don’t.  When actions are unacceptable he makes it clear; however, this isn’t necessary often because he communicates what is needed up front and the requirement of accountability is clear.

Impulse Control – 
His expert use of impulse control is reflected by his measured responses when something goes wrong and his thoughtful engagement on complex matters as he helps all involved recognize that big problems take time to resolve successfully.

Optimism
  – He leaves no doubt about his belief that they will be resolved, thus exuding consistent optimism.  His staff gains hopefulness and inspiration, they know he cares about them and will hold them accountable.  It is a healthy proactive structure that is gradually turning a big ship around since he started six months ago.

When leaders seek to guide and influence others we know they need to communicate – but how?  The choice that gets the desired results taps into the four corners of empathic assertiveness.  These are four of the fifteen skills measured by the EQ-i and the good news is they can be developed and improved in all motivated leaders.  It is best for the leader and his/her coach to review the results from taking the EQ-i and create a game plan that calls for these skills to be used in synch.  If a leader one day pats an employee on the back and praises him or her. Then the next day the leader impulsively yells about a mistake, it can be difficult for the employee to trust the relationship. The leader needs to learn to bring those skills together in a cohesive message.  Let’s assume a leader, I’ll call Mary makes one of the following two communications:

“Nancy, I’m so disappointed with the errors in your report, we worked with you so hard last time and here you are making the same kind of mistakes again.  Now, do it right and have the memo on my desk by 10 a.m. tomorrow!” 

OR

“Nancy, I appreciate your desire to get this project completed on time, but quality has to matter just as much as timeliness.  Please take time to correct the errors, get help from others on the team as you need, and give me your proposed final memo by tomorrow at 10 a.m. I know you can get this done well just like you did with last month’s project.” 

If Mary was just assertive and didn’t manage her impulses her irritation at the poor quality could cause Nancy to be less resourceful, Nancy is likely to move away emotionally from the project and from Mary rather than moving toward the project and rolling up her sleeves to accomplish even more.  The second message incorporates all four skills and is more likely to lead to success.

How to be successful with the Four Corners model

Empathy is demonstrated by understanding the emotions people are communicating and responding to them.  This is key to building trust, engagement and passion.  Demonstrating empathy can take just a moment, if you see that someone is surprised, worried or perplexed, acknowledge the emotion, connect it with a reason you believe is related and give the person time to correct you if needed and to respond more.  “You feel perplexed because these two goals seem contradictory.” Also, be sure to give the person time to speak.

Assertiveness is demonstrated by the ability to speak up, to make your points, to say no when called for.  Leaders can develop their skills with assertiveness by intentionally saying what is important to them and by practicing saying no by being clear about their priorities.  A leader’s staff and teams want to hear from him/her, but the way that the assertiveness is communicated will make all the difference in how it is accepted.

Impulse control includes the ability to manage impulses, be patient and to control the desire to be angry. Howard Book writes in his chapter “When Enhanced EI is Associated with Leadership Derailment” (The Handbook for Developing Emotional and Social Intelligence, Hughes, Thompson and Terrell, 2009) that impulse control is a primary skill upon which all other cognitive and emotional skills depend.  Leaders with poor impulse control make haphazard and poorly thought out decisions.  Rich Handley in his chapter “Advanced EQi Interpretation Techniques” in the edited volume presented his research on the relationship between the fifteen EQ-i skills in which he found the EQ-i skill that supports the most successful use of an identified EQ skill, e.g., for emotional self awareness that supportive skill is impulse control.  It turns out that impulse control is the most influential of all the skills.  If someone overuses impulse control they may be risk adverse and just play things too safely.  Someone low in impulse control at best will irritate others and at worst will burn many bridges.  Leaders can develop their impulse control by finding ways to stop and think before they speak.  We often suggest a leader use stair therapy – if they are feeling impulsive or even explosive we urge them to go climb a set or more of stairs before they say anything.  There is no doubt that getting oxygen to their brain and incorporating physical movement will be helpful.

Optimism is the demonstration of hopefulness.  When leaders help their teams believe they will find an answer even when the going gets tough, they are building optimism.  Plentiful research is demonstrating the power of positive mood.  Leaders can build optimism through the way they talk about challenges.  Speak of challenges in limited ways, frame the concern so it’s not so global or big that it can’t be handled and say, “we just haven’t found the answer yet.  The word “yet” creates a presupposition that the answer will be found!

The art of developing successful leadership is created by bringing the right skills together so leaders can experience a resilience that is sustainable even when tested.

Emotional Sustainability Practices

To develop the truly effective solutions that today’s complex world demands, our emotional strength and resourcefulness has to be sustainable! Because right now as we are just about to resolve the current crisis, new problems are germinating, others are sprouting up and some tricky challenge has matured to the point it is just about to tap us on the shoulder and insist, “What about me??”

Emotional sustainability is achieved through developing (or redeveloping) both our individual and our social skills. It requires personal practices to hone our own adaptability, centeredness, and growth, and it also requires maintaining physical and social support systems that keep us sensitive to our environment and integrated with our community. Ecologically speaking we know that sustainability describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time, that concept also fits well for leaders and teams.

We can understand and develop emotional sustainability to produce powerful demonstrations of leadership and team strength that result in continuous growth and development. Sustainability is similar to resilience, another term used frequently to describe leadership goals.  Both indicate the capacity for long lasting endurance and responsive engagement.

With the underpinning of emotional sustainability, leaders and teams experience many benefits including:

• They are more able to benefit from conflict
• Leaders and team members are more likely to stay consistently engaged and positive
• They know how to ride the waves of change
• Leaders and team members have courage to regularly listen internally to themselves and externally to others, reflect on what they hear and be responsive because they value relationships and communications skills
• They demonstrate the benefits of reduced stress because they confront unrealistic expectations and maximize their strengths.

Emotional sustainability is exhibited by leaders and teams when they demonstrate the following practices:

• Awareness:  They are aware of their feelings and actions and attuned to those of others.
• Responsiveness:  Having recognized emotional and other forms of communication, they respond in a timely and sensitive manner.
• Ability and Willingness to Change Perception:  While often holding well developed views, leaders and team members are able to open their minds, listen and fully consider the perceptions of others.  This skill includes the ability to change their minds and perceptions when appropriate.
• Stress Management:  Leaders and team members act with emotional sustainability when they adjust their stress dials to the right tempo.  They need enough stress to be creatively engaged while not overdoing it to the point they lose physical or emotional stamina.
• Positive Attitude:  They look at events with curiosity and a sense of possibility and begin with the presupposition that positive results will unfold even in challenging situations.

Practices for Building Emotional Sustainability with Individuals and Teams include the following five active forms of engagement.

• Active reflection – Take time regularly to stop and breathe and do what Marcia refers to in Life’s 2% Solution, do the triple T – Think Things Through.  It’s taking time to notice what you are doing, why and to change as you believe is best.  Reflective self awareness is a powerful strength.
• Give feedback individually and to teams – Leadership assessments reflect a large reluctance to give feedback.  This creates loss of power that could result from the creative flow of ideas and has a secondary impact of frequently resulting in a buildup of resentment because people don’t respond to the unexpressed thoughts or concerns (big surprise!).
• Yoga or other forms of movement – Keep a physical flow moving in your body whether it is with yoga, walking, running, or qigong.
• Be actively aware of something bigger than yourself – Why do you do what you do? Connecting with something bigger than you and following that path provides meaning and purpose to your life.  A life of intentional service in accord with your values provides perspective and zest.
• Intend to live a meaningful life – Self-actualization is one of the key skills measured by the EQi 2.0 and one of the key questions is based on the belief that you intend to live a meaningful life. When leaders and teams incorporate the first four skills we’ve just discussed with this intention, they have the opportunity to deliberately manage their commitments and activities in order to live purposeful lives that are robust without leading to burnout.  That’s not an easy achievement; it requires conscious and deliberate living.

A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

Now is the time to live our intention to be the finest people we can be. Two public shootings occurred this week in states near our home in Colorado.  West of us in Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot while she spoke to her constituents in a simple public setting outside a grocery store. The Democratic lawmaker was doing the best work our politicians do; she was meeting with her constituents.  Chief Judge John Roll of the U.S. District Court for Arizona was killed as were others and many were wounded.  To the east of us in Omaha, Nebraska Millard South High School Vice Principal, Vicki Kaspar, was killed and Principal Case was injured in a shooting at the school by a student, Robert Butler. Acts of violence and tragedy are being experienced worldwide.

How shall we respond?

• Listen with the ears of our heart.  Focus first on the quality of what is said rather than letting the relationship be objectified.  Our messages to and from one another matter.
• Be forgiving.  Forgiveness is the process of repair, healing, making whole again, it is the opposite of retribution.  Omaha students are designing T-shirts printed in school colors to raise money for the three parties most affected by the tragedy, including Butler’s family. This is an example of forgiveness in action, and it is the only way to heal.
• Recognize and acknowledge our essential connection with one another.  Research is showing our species thrived not because of ruthless competition but its remarkable ability to cooperate.  Try saying to yourself when you encounter anyone: “In love I am one with you.”  Just try it and see what happens.
• Explore the truth and implications of the ancient Mayan statement “en la k’etch, which translates as” – You are another myself.
• Calm yourself.  Whether you meditate, pray, walk or use another strategy, be intentional about taking dedicated time to calm and center yourself as you move beyond stress to connect with your truth.

Developing emotional and social intelligence (ESI) is the focus of our work.  We’ve written seven books providing specific strategies for making a sustainable difference in the quality of the lives of individuals, leaders, teams and organizations by expanding ESI.  This is how to mitigate and prevent the conflict that escalates to violence when we treat each other carelessly.  We’ve worked with people on six continents and are blessed in the many ways we have been touched and taught by people worldwide. The heart of our work is coaching people to expand their compassionate truth telling with themselves and with one another.  While we offer many formats for engaging in this vital path, in truth employing the five simple and profound steps listed above will accomplish all that is needed.

Paul Simon wrote Bridge Over Troubled Waters in 1969 and Simon and Garfunkel released it in 1970. At that time in the United States, where we live, people were deeply troubled over the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement was growing, on May 4, 1970 four Kent State University student demonstrators were killed and nine more were wounded deeply shocking our nation.  It was a time of deep challenge and this beautiful song touched our hearts, minds and souls. Simon and Garfunkel sang:

When you’re weary, feeling small
When tears are in your eyes,
I will dry them all
I’m on your side
When times get rough
And friends just can’t be found

Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down

©1970 Simon and Garfunkel

This song is perhaps one of the most profound expressions of empathy ever written in English.  It acknowledges that a great deal of our human adventure is still fraught with disappointment, loss and sorrow.  It volunteers to be consciously present in those times providing strength and companionship to help us get through them.  Empathy is the ESI skill most critical to understanding what others are requesting and why they are making the request.  When we take time to understand the heart of the message, it becomes much easier to respond to those needs and desires and to avoid the kinds of conflict that is certain to result from ignoring the true request.

Thank you Simon and Garfunkel.  Thank you to all who are willing to slow down, listen with the ears of your heart and know that communication matters.  Thanks to those who go beyond fear and the belief in separation to know and assert with your whole self to all beings on this planet “In love I am one with you.”  Thank you to those willing to be taught by the ancient Mayans and so many other cultures that “I am another yourself.”  Thanks to all who stop in the midst of the chaos, the demand for social media interactions, the busyness and expectations to be still, breathe and send peace to yourself and one another.

Thanks to all our friends and colleagues for the privilege of communicating and working with you.

Using Emotional Intelligence For Messaging Up and Across

Managing up or messaging up are goals frequently raised in executive coaching sessions.  We add messaging across – that is to peers – to this imperative goal.  Messaging up and across refers to intentionally and deliberately communicating well with your boss and those above your boss and with your peers.  It is a deliberate effort to bring understanding and collaboration to relationships between people who may have different perspectives.  The point is to convey respect by taking the time to communicate strategically.  Remember your communication can be empathetic, compassionate, strategic and engaging all at once.  In fact, this comprehensive packaging should be your goal.

If you are a CEO with a Board governing your organization, messaging up is vital.  It’s also vital if you are a team lead, reporting to your supervisor.  In fact how we communicate with others throughout the organizational chart is essential to notice.  We know communications with your direct reports is fundamental to your success; this article will focus on a different dimension of communications.  It’s a form that can be all too easy to miss when you get in the trance of accomplishing your every day list of tactical jobs.  And that’s why good interpersonal relationships with those in higher organizational positions and with your peers requires purposeful action.

The potent emotional intelligence skills triangle of Assertiveness, Empathy and Impulse Control is your key to success, especially if you pepper your engagement with Positive Mood (happiness and optimism). With assertiveness you first need to be assertive with yourself by doing whatever it takes to make sure you take the time for this engagement. Put it on your calendar, have lunch or coffee with a peer once a week, meet with your boss regularly give feedback and take a few minutes to ask about his/her life and talk about yours.  Create a personal connection; it’s the path to building trust.  It’s what it takes for people to want to “get your back” to help you out in times of challenge.  It demonstrates engagement, loyalty, and commitment, but more importantly it makes your job more fun. Assertiveness includes the ability to communicate your perspective, to stand up for yourself and to say no when necessary.

Empathy and impulse control govern the effectiveness of your assertiveness.  When you demonstrate empathy the recipient of your assertiveness feels that your communication is made with their best interests in mind.  That makes all the difference in whether your suggestions are considered self serving or made with their best interests in mind.  And you know that deeply influences the response to your communication.  Your skills in impulse control help you decide when to speak up, what tonality to use, and how to pace your engagement.  Communicate with your peers with impatience and they will reciprocate – directly or indirectly.

Balance is your goal too little of any of these three skills can obviously can get you in trouble.  Note that too much of any of these can get you in a lot of trouble.  Too much assertiveness feels like aggressiveness; too much empathy feels like the boundaries are failed; too much impulse control turns you into a risk adverse person missing opportunities.

Here are key steps you can follow to message up and across effectively:

• Be intentional and purposeful
• Don’t confuse false humility with your poor communication if you don’t speak up for yourself
• Be aware of and respond to your different personality, communications styles, and conflict resolution styles
• Acknowledge others
• Be a team player
• Let your peers know you value them
• Be honest and trustworthy
• Provide solutions, not problems
• Request feedback, feedback, feedback – ask for it directly
• Work with strengths and weaknesses – yours and theirs

Messaging up and across is a powerful tactic for getting more interesting work, more responsibility, and enjoying your engagement at work.  Use it well and it can help you improve your work/life balance as it increases the ability to set boundaries and have those boundaries understood and supported.

Multitasking Brings High Costs

Multitasking Brings High Costs
- Marcia Hughes

Remember the days when you could drive your car without talking on the cell phone? Those where simpler times. In today’s world many think multitasking is an unavoidable process, but how has attempting to perform all of these tasks simultaneously affected performance? The American Psychological Association has recently published an article examining this very topic, http://www.apa.org/releases/multitasking.html. They found that ultimately it takes longer to switch from topic to topic rather than focusing on one thing at a time.

If you are as busy as we are these days your to-do list can become overwhelming. To tackle the multitude of deeds that need to get done it becomes reasonable to combine tasks. Why not peruse that new article while on a conference call? There also is a point of pride in these moments as we’re too likely to think “My brain can handle multiple tasks at once. I’m smart!” or “I’m efficient”. In the end we need to ask ourselves an important question. “Is it more important that I just get this done or that I get this done to the best of my ability?” Given that what we produce becomes a reflection of ourselves this question is easy to answer – or at least it should be. Read More.

The Full Circle of Collaborative Intelligence

In this final week of October we will wrap up our discussion on Collaborative Intelligence (CQ, CI). In the previous two blogs we evaluated motivation, team identity, emotional awareness, and communication. These are skills and behaviors that successful teams seek out when improving CQ. The circle isn’t complete without these final three. In this blog stress tolerance, conflict resolution, a positive mood are examined.

Stress tolerance is the skill of holding the world’s parade of unpleasant surprises at bay. Using other skills such as emotional awareness, conflict resolution, and communication will allow a group to deal with stress earlier in the development and thus make it more manageable. Dealing with adversity and turning challenges into opportunities is the best outcome of stress tolerance.

Conflict resolution is the process employed by individuals and teams facing confrontation. What team do in the face of adversity can define the group. when you’re willing to entertain change and conflict, giving up much of the illusion that you’re in control, you and your team can actually find powerful new levels of success.

One attribute that can effect conflict resolution and stress tolerance is a Positive Mood. Optimism and simple happiness have a lot to do with this type of attitude. As a leader, when people look to you during adversity and you can reflect a positive mood the results are exponential.

These skills and behaviors are the first steps needed to raise the collaborative intelligence of a group. When analyzing a group be sure to recognize your own deeds first. Leading by example has always been the most effective way to create a positive a environment.