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!

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.