Daniel Goleman's Blog, page 3

Daniel Goleman: What’s Beneath the Surface in Your Organization?

When Shauna was hired to be the executive director of a non-profit focused on access to clean water, she quickly realized that the four program sites operated fairly independently, and not at all efficiently. Each site had different systems, and those differences caused problems – not just duplicate mailings, but key donors missing from invitation lists. Shauna quickly developed standardized policies and systems, and sent them to the four sites to be implemented immediately.  But soon after, Shauna’s email and voicemail inboxes were filled with irate messages from staff complaining about the new policies and insisting that the systems wouldn’t work. Shauna faced  a widespread staff mutiny. Shauna’s intervention made sense logically, but there’s more to an organization than logic. What Shauna lacked: skill in organizational awareness, one of twelve Emotional and Social Intelligence competencies in the model I developed with my colleague, Richard Boyatzis. What is organizational awareness and why does it matter? Organizational Awareness Because organizations are complex systems, changes in one part impacts other parts, even if there isn’t an obvious direct link between the sections. Leaders who are adept at organizational awareness understand the many forces at work that operate beyond the formal organizational chart. They can read key power relationships, identify networking opportunities, and recognize the informal rules and guiding values at play in the daily life of an organization. They know that any institution is made up of people and the interactions between those people. Why does such awareness matter? Leadership, one view holds, means using relationships to get things done. So leaders need to have a full sense of their organization and the many nuances that either help or hinder results. They also need to know how to leverage their relationships to further their goals. What Happened in Shauna’s Situation? Shauna didn’t recognize the history of the four program sites that led to what she saw as “inefficiency.” Had she talked to some of the long-term senior managers, she would have learned that the four sites evolved in a day when the central office was more loosely connected to them. If she could speak candidly with staff, she would see how each site has operated as its own fiefdom, organized around the personalities and capabilities of the long-term staff. The site with the most antiquated donor and event management procedures is led by someone still uncomfortable with technology. Another site’s manager and staff developed their own way of managing information to make sure they keep control of how “their” people are handled. They try to avoid having donors they cultivated “stolen” by another site. Underlying everything was a strong rivalry between the sites and concern by the staff that their site get the funding they feel they deserve. Now What? How can a leader like Shauna become more skilled in organizational awareness? Shauna’s mistake: trying to implement sweeping new policies and systems without having a more nuanced understanding of her new organization. To repair the damaged relationships with the staff, I recommend acknowledging the staff’s concerns, listening to their feedback, and telling them to go back to using their previous procedures while she gathers more information. Meanwhile she can talk with the site managers and meet with the staff of each site. Along with questions based on the usual SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) model, she could ask the leaders to explain the history of their site, describe their staff’s personalities, and explain what makes their site unique. She might also ask about their perceptions of the other sites and the central office. In those meetings and a meeting with all four managers, she’d pay attention to more than their words, listen to tone, and watch for facial expressions and other indicators of the emotions behind their words. That information can show you where alliances and tensions exist, and what the general emotional climate might be. The lessons for everyone in Shauna’s situation? Develop deep listening skills, and don’t jump to making decisions before knowing all the facts. Talk with people in all levels and sections of your organizations to gain their perspective. Pay attention to what’s going on beneath the surface in your organization. Had Shauna done this her new systems would have been more effective and her staff more energized about her leadership. For more in-depth information about this topic, see Organizational Awareness: A Primer. This Primer was co-written by myself and several respected colleagues in the fields of Emotional Intelligence, research, and leadership development. It offers a concise overview of the Emotional and Social Intelligence Leadership Competency Model, and goes on to define how to develop organizational awareness regardless of your formal role.

Daniel Goleman: Emotional Intelligence in Health Care Settings

While looking for a walk-in medical clinic nearby, I saw reviews for one such that had a zero star rating out of five. The frustrated and angry patients who posted those reviews complained about everyone, from the rude receptionists to the indifferent physician assistants to the indifferent doctors themselves. The one key person not named, though, remained behind the scenes: the leader of that whole operation. Leaders who fail to use a full range of emotional intelligence, particularly in how they attend to emotions, have a negative impact on their organization, reducing performance, morale, and patient satisfaction. While this is true in any industry, it is especially true in emotion-filled settings such as health care facilities. Leaders in health care settings face many of the same challenges their counterparts experience in other industries: high pressure, complex demands, limited resources. What’s different is that the “business” of health care is people in distress. Hospitals, clinics and medical offices are the settings of intense human dramas and a stew of emotions. Patients and their families are upset, they express their distress to staff and practitioners who also experience their own emotions about their patients. How everyone handles those emotions has a powerful impact on the quality of care delivered. For instance: · When medical staff are emotionally unskillful, the ways they respond to patients leads to confusion, and a lack of two-way communication – and a flood of patient anger, frustration, despondency and the like. · For their part, health care workers are stressed by the emotional demands of their job, resulting in poor focus and sub-par interactions with patients. · Pressures for bottom-line productivity takes priority over compassionate patient care. · Tension emerges between health care teams interacting with each other across medical specialties and disciplines, causing inept patient care. And of course, there are heated politics, constantly shifting priorities, and new technology to integrate, all of which further contribute to the emotional overload. Ultimately, it all comes down to leadership - from the top down, and from the bottom up. Emotionally intelligent leaders attend to each of these issues in their organizational systems. I’m often asked what an employee can do about a boss lacking in emotional intelligence (or EI). When leaders lack EI, staffers give that feedback at their own risk. An indirect tactic can sometimes help: calling attention to how EI training can be beneficial for ALL staff. Emotionally Intelligent Health Care Leadership Here are ways that savvy health care leaders can develop strategies to address emotional issues in their organization: Start with yourself: As is true in all settings, it starts with the leader’s ability to understand and manage their own emotional intelligence. Leaders can start by becoming more aware of their own emotional reactions and develop better self-management strategies; emotional self-awareness and emotional self-control are the core building blocks of emotional intelligence. Also essential: empathy, the capacity to sense how others think and feel. For health care leaders, other crucial competencies include positive outlook and inspirational leadership. Recruitment: When considering what skills are needed for specific positions, make sure emotional intelligence is on the list. Along with the necessary technical/professional skills, recruit and hire for EI. Evaluate candidates for their ability to recognize and manage their own emotions and the emotions of their patients. Training: Staff at all levels in a health care setting need to know how to manage their own emotions and how to handle people who are upset. Incorporate training about emotional intelligence into orientation/onboarding and ongoing professional development training. This is especially important for staff who have direct contact with patients. Medical practitioners expressing their emotions in inappropriate ways trigger patients’ distress, making patients resistant to following practitioner advice or treatment recommendations. The key emotional intelligence competencies to feature in developmental training include emotional self-awareness, emotional self-control, empathy, and adaptability. Staffing levels: Consider the emotional labor being done by health care workers when deciding how many nurses, doctors, nursing assistants, radiology technicians, etc. are needed in a health care facility. Each of those roles has emotional tasks they perform along with their other tasks. It’s not just the number of patients each nurse can handle when administering medication, it’s the amount and quality of emotions those patients express to that nurse and how the nurse responds. Supervision: In addition to managing their own emotions, supervisors at all levels in a health care setting need to attend to emotional challenges faced by the staff they oversee. Something like a regular check-in with staff – where the question of emotions is asked specifically – could be very beneficial to both to express and balance emotions. Resource allocation: Attending to emotions takes financial resources. Health care leaders committed to quality patient care and staff retention find ways to provide the financial resources needed. Health Care Workers Overwhelmed by Emotional Demands Health care workers, particularly those who work directly with many patients, often can feel overwhelmed by their jobs’ emotional demands. This can be exacerbated in organizations that don’t recognize the emotional labor done by health care workers, and don’t build in support for those workers. While all emotional intelligence competencies matter in health care settings as they do in any other organization, empathy has extra meaning and relevance in the context of health care. Staff may get so bogged down with administrative duties or desensitized from seeing so many ailments, that they can forget the overarching goal of helping people heal. In many situations, health care workers actively shield themselves from experiencing too much empathy so as not to get too emotional. It’s uniquely important in health care to find the balance in empathy: To connect with people, but also protect oneself from becoming ineffective due to too much emotional reactivity. For more in-depth information about the competencies of emotional intelligence, see my newest release: Empathy: A Primer Additional primers include, Emotional Self-Awareness, Self-Control, Adaptability, and Positive Outlook. They're written with several respected colleagues in the fields of emotional intelligence, research, and leadership 

Daniel Goleman: Empathy: A Key to Effective Leadership

How many people do you interact with at work during a typical week or month? Most leaders I know don’t count the relationships involved in their work. However, if they wrote a list of the people with whom they regularly interact, many would be able to go beyond a simple list and could tell you something about each person. Some information may be work-related (such as how each team member prefers to receive feedback), and other notes would be broader (such as which sports teams matter to the support staff and that a key vendor has a new grandchild).   Fundamentally, leadership involves relationships. Whether you’re the leader of a small team, the manager of a large retail store, or the CEO of a global corporation, you conduct work through your relationships with others. To be effective in those relationships, leaders must understand the perspectives of the people with whom they are working. What leaders need is Empathy, one of the twelve Emotional and Social Intelligence Leadership Competencies. What is Empathy? Empathy means having the ability to sense others’ feelings and how they see things. You take an active interest in their concerns. You pick up cues to what's being felt and thought. With empathy, you sense unspoken emotions. You listen attentively to understand the other person's point of view, the terms in which they think about what's going on. Neuroscientists have identified the different sections of the brain involved with two distinct types of empathy: cognitive empathy and emotional empathy. With cognitive empathy, we can understand the perspective of another person and the forces that informed that perspective. With emotional empathy, we pick up on the feelings of another person through verbal and nonverbal cues, and experience what they are feeling. Empathy: An Important Leadership Skill Does being skilled at empathy contribute to a leader’s performance? That’s a question researchers at the Center for Creative Leadership set out to answer when they looked at a sample of over 6,700 leaders from 38 countries. Here’s what they found: “Our results reveal that empathy is positively related to job performance. Managers who show more empathy toward direct reports are viewed as better performers in their job by their bosses. The findings were consistent across the sample: empathic emotion as rated from the leader’s subordinates positively predicts job performance ratings from the leader’s boss.” How to Develop Empathy As I mentioned, the experiences of cognitive and emotional empathy reside in specific parts of our brains. Given that neuroscientists have shown us that our brains can change, how can we enhance the parts of our brain related to empathy? The keys to making changes in our brain are repeated experiences and practice. Two of the “six habits of highly empathic people” from the Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley include curiosity and deep listening. When we’re curious, we engage with others, even strangers, to learn more about their perspective. Standing in line at the grocery store, instead of reading messages on your phone, why not smile and ask the person next to you how they’re going to prepare the vegetables in their cart? Or when you’re early for a meeting, ask the other person waiting about something new they’ve learned this week in their job. Then, once you’ve asked the question, stop and really pay attention to their answer. Listen both for the words being said and the feeling behind them. Does the person seem excited about a new recipe for broccoli they’re eager to try? Or harried and indifferent about what they’ll prepare for dinner? Does the person waiting for the meeting sound proud of their new learning? Or anxious about the implications of what they learned? Respond accordingly, with a sign that you understand, or offer a helpful comment. One conversation won’t boost your empathy, but over time, exercising your curiosity and listening closely to others will help you sense more accurately how others think and feel. For more in-depth information about the competencies of Emotional Intelligence, see my newest release: Empathy: A Primer Additional primers include, Emotional Self-Awareness, Self-Control, Adaptability, and Positive Outlook. They're co-written with several respected colleagues in the fields of Emotional Intelligence, research, and leadership 

Daniel Goleman: The Chemistry of Connection

I will be co-leading a workshop on this topic at the Garrison Institute in June. Ask yourself: Do you send someone an email at work, even though you could walk over and talk with them? How much of your time do you spend on work-related email, texts, or other digital media – versus actually meeting with people? Have you had misunderstandings because you emailed rather than had a face-to-face talk? Have More Human Moments The trends for most of us tip more and more toward virtual contacts and less and less to real ones. And that endangers the “human moment” – that in-person connection where we feel the closeness that allows bull’s eye contact, the kind of interaction that resonates, moves people, and makes a lasting impression. Such moments allow a powerful psychological encounter that simply cannot happen online. Of course all the digital links between us are convenient, efficient ways to communicate. But their ease can be seductive, leading us to reach out digitally when we should reach out in person. It doesn’t matter if you’re a high-level leader, in sales, working with clients, or part of a team, or just one of many in an office – the face-to-face encounter has real value. [READ - Why Optimism Matters] These are points that might seem obvious, but bear repeating as the social norms for connection are slipping away from people being together to digital connections. Ten years ago people were miffed when the person they were with answered a cell phone call while they were talking – and today that personal disconnect has become standard. The human moment combines physical presence with mutual attention. The result is rapport. Research at Harvard finds there are three ingredients of rapport: 1) Full attention by both people. 2) A nonverbal, automatic synchrony of movements. 3) A feeling of mild pleasure. In rapport, whatever we’re doing goes smoothly, feels good, and has a special power. Just being present won’t do it – you can ride next to someone on an airplane for hours and never connect. It’s the attention that makes all the difference. The social circuitry of the brain was designed for face-to-face interactions, in person. Those circuits track a multitude of signals about the other person’s emotions, intentions, and the like – which gives us an immediate, unconscious but powerful, sense of what’s happening with them, and what best to say and do next. There is a steady loss of these signals as we move to phone calls (good but not best) to email, where there is zero emotional signal – just words. A classic Harvard Business Review article instructed executives on how to have a human moment: Step 1: Set aside what you’re doing, e.g. put down what you were reading. Step 2: Disengage from your laptop, or any other digital distraction. Step 3: Abandon your daydream or other random streams of thought. Step 4: Focus on the person you’re with. Good advice. I will be one of the presenters at a workshop on The Chemistry of Connection June 16-18 at Garrison Institute, Garrison, NY.

Daniel Goleman: Why Optimism Matters

Is there such a thing as being TOO positive in how you approach life? Is optimism simply a perspective that some people are born with? How does a leader’s outlook, pessimistic or optimistic, impact their team? Do people across the globe hold the same view of optimism? These are among the questions I considered as I wrote my part of Positive Outlook: A Primer for my new series on the twelve Competencies in my model of Emotional Intelligence. Researchers have tried to tease apart how optimism helps or hinders leaders at all levels in an organization. Their findings helped me understand the nuances of this important skill. Yes, I said “skill.” People are not born optimists – a positive outlook is something you can develop, just as you can enhance physical skills such as swimming. What is Positive Outlook? A positive outlook means you’re able to see opportunity even when faced with what at first glance seems a failure. You expect that changes in the future will be for the better. This view combines different strands of research on optimism. One, the focus of work by Martin Seligman and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, looks at how people explain to themselves the good or bad situations they encounter. Some people blame themselves for bad things that happen and assume that such setbacks will continue to occur and will impact everything they do. Others think that setbacks are situational, caused by a variety of forces – not due to some personal failing – that things will improve, and that they have the capabilities to shift things for the better. Why Positive Outlook Matters for Leaders It’s no surprise that research by Barbara Fredrickson at the University of North Carolina shows that Positive Outlook leads to positive emotions. What matters for business is the knock-on effect: positive emotions increase performance, loyalty, motivation, and customer service. Then consider that the emotions of leaders shape the feelings of the people around them for better or worse. Such “emotional contagion” has been extensively studied by Sigal Barsade at the Wharton School of Management. In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Dr. Barsade and a colleague detail how leaders’ emotions can create a positive emotional culture and enhanced performance. Too Positive? But don’t be a Pollyana: several studies point to the dangers of too much positivity. Reality matters. For example, people who are chronically anxious find it helpful to use “defensive pessimism” to consider and prepare for a range of possibilities, not just for the best-case scenario. And, in some situations, a bit of pessimism is a tempering influence to help us not leap into something that is realistically beyond our ability. For example, I might feel truly optimistic that I can climb Mount Everest, but I recognize that optimism won’t get me up the mountain given that I have no background in high altitude climbing. In the business world, Harvard research finds, the most successful entrepreneurs have a realistic sense of optimism based on the strengths they know they and their outfit have. Entrepreneurs who fail too often are victims of their own excessive optimism. On the other hand, there are those who never risk because their pessimism leads them to under-estimate their own capacities. Another case of “too much positivity” comes into play because of cultural differences. What comes across as an optimistic, positive outlook in American culture can be seen as arrogance in Europe. Likewise, in many Asian countries, bubbly optimism comes across as too self-promoting or bold. How to Build a Positive Outlook One of the best ways to build a Positive Outlook is to use techniques from mindfulness meditation. With mindfulness, you monitor whatever goes on within the mind. The basic premise of mindfulness meditation is to notice when your mind has wandered from your focus and to bring it back to focus. Repeating that basic “notice and re-focus” move builds connections in your brain so that it is easier for your thoughts to make those connections in the future. You are essentially re-wiring the neural circuits, and building new habits. Similarly, to develop a more Positive Outlook, first you must notice that you are focused on the negative. This takes Emotional Self-Awareness, a fundamental Emotional Intelligence competency, then actively choosing to shift your focus to a positive feeling. For example, how do you react when you see that your team’s sales dropped in the past quarter? Do you feel hopeless in the face of those lower numbers and convinced they signal a downward trend? If so, create a list of the ways your team is working to boost sales, to remind yourself of the upside. Then, when you first feel that distressing “sales are going to keep sliding” feeling, catch yourself, and redirect your focus to something positive from the list. That might feel like a small step, but that’s the power of mindfulness, and the moment-by-moment development of an EI competency. Repeating those steps—notice, redirect—many times builds the pathways of positive feelings in your brain. For more in-depth information about the competencies of Emotional Intelligence, see my newest primer: Positive Outlook. Additional primers include, Emotional Self-Awareness, Self-Control, Adaptability, and Achievement Orientation. They're co-written with several respected colleagues in the fields of Emotional Intelligence, research, and leadership development.

Daniel Goleman: Driven to Achieve… Too Much?

Six months into her new role as head of the accounting division for a global transportation company, Sarah was frustrated. She had worked hard to earn her new position and didn’t understand why her boss had just given her a lukewarm review, faulting her leadership skills. She had never received anything but high praise from professors at the university she attended, and as she worked her way up from an entry-level position into increasingly more responsible roles in this company. If there is one thing Sarah knows how to do, it is to set a challenging goal and work hard and smart until she achieves it. Sarah is someone with a strong drive to achieve. That focus on achieving has served her well… so far. What’s gone wrong? Too Much Drive to Achieve? Using the perspective of Emotional Intelligence, what’s gone wrong is that Sarah hasn’t learned how to balance her drive to achieve with other emotional skills. Achievement Orientation is one of twelve competencies in the model of Emotional and Social Intelligence that my colleagues and I have developed. By ‘competency’ I mean a learned and learnable skill that improves workplace performance and that can be observed by others. Like Sarah, someone skilled at the Achievement Orientation Competency strives to meet standards of excellence and continually seeks ways to do things better. However, leaders who demonstrate this competency are also skilled at balancing their personal drive to achieve with a focus on the goals and needs of the organization. That’s where Sarah's performance dropped. She has not been able to translate her desire to excel into effective strategies for leading her division. She doesn’t understand why her new staff doesn’t work harder and why pushing them doesn’t have much impact. Sarah is a good example of the complexity of Achievement Orientation Competency. On the one hand, her drive to achieve has played a key role in her career success. Research shows that Achievement Orientation predicts success in jobs where there are clear numerical goals and continuous feedback so you can measure how you're doing and change accordingly. Achievement Orientation is most helpful in early career stages. My mentor David C. McClelland and colleague Richard E. Boyatzis conducted long-term research that shows that a drive to achieve helps up to a certain point and then gets in the way. They followed promotions in a large corporation for 20 years and found that achievement motivation predicts promotion to mid-level management up to about year 8. However, after that, high levels of this orientation predicted the opposite for promotion to executive levels. That strong drive to achieve got in the way of being promoted to higher level leadership positions. Finding the Right Balance If you were Sarah's boss or coach, how would you help her translate her Achievement Orientation into a skill that is useful in her role as a leader? If I were Sarah's boss, I’d focus on helping her capitalize on her Achievement Orientation strength by setting new personal goals for building her leadership skills – skills that go beyond being a “doer.” Now that she is in her current position, what are her goals for herself? What are steps she can take to achieve those goals? How can she best lead others towards a bigger vision of progress? And, I’d talk with her about other Emotional Intelligence Competencies that could help, such as Adaptability, Empathy, Influence, Coach and Mentor, and Teamwork. To be effective as a leader, we need to develop a range of skills to handle our own emotions and positively impact the people we lead. For more in-depth information about the competencies of Emotional Intelligence, see my new series of primers, the latest of which is Achievement Orientation. The series is co-written with several respected colleagues in the fields of Emotional Intelligence, research, and leadership development.

Daniel Goleman: Emotional Intelligence Myth vs. Fact

Is Emotional Intelligence the same as being “nice” or “polite”? Does Emotional Intelligence just mean you have a lot of empathy? Is Emotional Intelligence only for women or men who want to “get in touch with their sensitive side”? After 20+ years of writing and speaking about the science behind Emotional Intelligence and its importance in work settings, I still come across people who believe one or more of these myths about EI. The author of a recent article in Scientific American fell into the “EI is just about empathy” trap. And an article in Harvard Business Review equated being nice with Emotional Intelligence. The assumption that Emotional Intelligence is related to a man’s “inner female” was raised in a comment to one of my posts about the Emotional Self-Awareness competency. Each of these exemplify misleading stereotypes about Emotional Intelligence. And they equate one narrow slice of these abilities with the whole. But Emotional Intelligence is much more than just being empathic or nice. If someone asked you for a short definition of Emotional Intelligence, what would you include in your definition? Here’s what I mean when I say Emotional Intelligence: It is the capacity to recognize our own feelings and those of others, to manage our emotions, and to interact effectively with others. Clearly, these are human qualities beyond gender or any superficial differences among us, and refer to a healthy balance of a wide range of abilities. The model of Emotional Intelligence my colleagues and I use includes the four domains below. Within those domains are twelve competencies, learned and learnable capacities that contribute to performance at work and in life. Yes, you’ll find self-awareness and empathy on the list of competencies. You’ll also find positive outlook, conflict management, adaptability, and more. Each of the competencies focuses on a specific way that individuals can be aware of and manage their emotions and their interactions with others. When I say “contribute to performance,” I don’t say that lightly. My colleague Dr. Richard Boyatzis from Case Western Reserve University and I developed this list after reviewing the competencies that companies themselves indicated distinguished their top-performing leaders from more average performers. Decades of research by Dr. Boyatzis, Korn Ferry Hay Group, and others show that higher levels of skill with EI competencies translates into better performance. Here’s just some of the data related to the different competencies: Emotional Self-Awareness: Korn Ferry Hay Group research found that among leaders with multiple strengths in Emotional Self-Awareness, 92% had teams with high energy and high performance. Emotional Self-Control: Australian researchers found that leaders who manage emotions well had better business outcomes. Adaptability: In a study of financial services sales executives done by Dr. Boyatzis and others, the more adaptable, the greater their effectiveness is shown by revenue and sales growth. Other researchers found that a leader's adaptability predicts better overall team performance. Empathy: Research at the Center for Creative Leadership found that empathy predicts better job performance for managers and leaders. Positive Outlook: A researcher at the University of North Carolina sums it up this way: People who experience and express positive emotions more frequently are more resilient, more resourceful, more socially connected, and more likely to function at optimal levels. More Complex—and Powerful—Than “Nice” Emotional Intelligence is key for leaders at all levels of organizations, regardless of industry. Before you discount the value of Emotional Intelligence in the world of work, make sure you’re considering its range. And, read the research. Decades of empirical research demonstrates that Emotional Intelligence is more complex—and powerful—than simply being “nice.” For more in-depth information about the competencies of Emotional Intelligence, see my new series of primers: Emotional Self-Awareness, Emotional Self-Control, and Adaptability. They're co-written with several respected colleagues in the fields of Emotional Intelligence, research, and leadership development.

Daniel Goleman: What Uber's CEO Needs is Emotional Intelligence

“I need to grow up,” Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick said of the episode where he yelled at a bankrupt Uber driver.  He doesn’t need to “grow up” – he needs more Emotional Intelligence. More precisely, he could benefit from three Emotional Intelligence abilities: Emotional Self-Awareness, Emotional Self-Control, and Empathy. Self-awareness would mean he knows how his emotions are driving his actions. This self-awareness would be in-the-moment rather than much later, when, say, a video of his losing it goes viral on social media. Self-awareness sits at the point where mindfulness meets Emotional Intelligence. In our research, self-awareness – the least visible of twelve Competencies crucial for Emotional Intelligence – turns out to be the most powerful. People high in Emotional Self-Awareness tend to have strengths in 10 of the 12 competencies, while those low in self-awareness show strengths in just one or two. That matters: the competencies predict business performance. Emotional Self-Control means you can manage your distressing and unruly emotions rather than their managing you. You don’t respond with an angry outburst or putdown, but rather expand the gap between your feelings and your action. This gives you the time to come up with a more effective response. Some call lengthening the gap between impulse and reaction a barometer of maturity - growing up. I call it Emotional Intelligence. And empathy allows you to tune into how the other person thinks and feels, so that your response takes their perspective into account. That competence lubricates rapport and chemistry, the emotional resonance that makes your interactions more effective. Every leader needs empathy, which allows for “bulls-eye” communications, where you make your point in a way that hits home for that person. After that blowup at an Uber driver was published by Bloomberg, Kalanick posted a blog, “A profound apology,” where he admitted he needed some help in leadership skills, and would seek it.   I’d recommend that help include a dose of Emotional Intelligence. For more information on Emotional Intelligence, I recommend Crucial Competence, a new video series exploring the Emotional and Social Intelligence Leadership Competencies.  

Daniel Goleman: Do Your Emotions Torpedo You at Work?

The scene: Justin, the regional head of sales for a pet supply company, just presented a new product to Alice and her team, buyers for a large retail chain. Justin has just finished, and as soon as he leaves Alice turns to her team and says, “What’s up with him? Does he want our stores to sell his products or not? We planned this meeting a month ago, and he’s been pitching us for a year. But he seemed stressed and had no enthusiasm. And he lacks the most basic understanding of our goals and what our customers want. I don’t see us moving forward with this.” Justin didn’t realize he was in over his head, but Alice could see something was wrong. Here’s the back story to his lackluster presentation: Justin was facing a perfect storm of staff changes and a product recall crisis on a different product. It was two weeks before yet a third new product was about to launch, and planning for the launch event was seriously behind schedule. A lot had to get done and the people who normally handled various tasks were not available. He was overwhelmed. Trying to get a handle on the long list of tasks still to be done, Justin had started to panic, and one way it showed was in his disconnected performance at that meeting. When Emotional Self-Control is Missing Often people think that being emotionally out of control looks like someone who yells constantly or weeps at the slightest provocation. But lack of emotional self-management takes many forms; Justin’s inability to manage his anxiety about the event planning is just one manifestation of a leader who is poor at handling stress and upsets. Emotional Self-Control is a key Competency in my Emotional and Social Leadership Competency Model. Leaders skilled in this Competency can manage their disruptive emotions and stay clear-headed and able to focus even when they are under stress or facing a crisis. Anxiety like Justin’s can show up in different ways. In a recent article, Victor Morrison, a high-level leader with a wealth of experience, writes about being promoted to a challenging position, the emotions he experienced, and how he learned to manage his disruptive emotions effectively. Victor tells of the many ways distressing emotions can cause problems, including increased criticism of staff and overly controlling your direct reports—even when they have more relevant expertise than you do. The Consequences of Emotions Out of Control Apart from his failure to make a big sale, what if Justin’s anxiety also leaked out as excessive criticism of the people around him? Chances are that his staff would withhold their creative ideas for fear that he’d shoot them down. A leader’s ability to stay calm under pressure is critical to the success of the entire group. As research at the Yale School of Management shows, a leader’s emotions leak, infecting the whole team. If the leader is engaged and enthusiastic, the team will be, and performance improves. But if the leader has poor emotional management skills, his or her distress will be contagious, and performance will drop. How Can You Learn to Manage Your Emotions? The good news about the Emotional Intelligence Competencies is that they are skills you can learn. Just as you can take steps to improve your golf swing or other physical techniques, you can also strengthen your emotional skills. What could Justin do to build his ability with Emotional Self-Control? First, he needs to recognize when he has disturbing emotions and how they are causing problems. That calls for another EI Competency, Emotional Self-Awareness, the ability to recognize your feelings and how they impact your behavior. Often, a step toward such awareness is feedback from trusted colleagues or mentors. In Justin’s case, that might mean Eva, the company sales director with whom he’d worked for years, could give him some frank, confidential feedback. Such a colleague could acknowledge Justin’s stressful situation and ask about the meeting with Alice and about rumors she’d heard of Justin’s increased criticism of his team members. At first, Justin might be defensive. Hopefully, Eva could help Justin see that no matter how challenging a situation might be, he needed to find ways to cope and not have it impact his work. After recognizing his anxiety got in the way, how could Justin manage future tough situations? My colleague George Kohlrieser, Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at IMD in Switzerland, offers advice in my new release, Emotional Self-Control: A Primer. He said, “This idea of remaining calm, composed, and collected is to learn the signals of when you are about to go into an overreaction so that you can prevent it. Part of that is also rewiring your brain to stay calm. You can rewire your brain through mindfulness meditation, by taking deep breaths, or by finding alternative healthy ways to release your emotions, such as writing them down. Whatever method you use to calm down, you need to practice it regularly so your body can learn how to return to calm.” That is the key, learning ways to “hit the pause button” long enough to keep yourself from going into an overreaction. Mindfulness meditation teaches you to acknowledge thoughts and feelings but not overly identify with them. You notice them when they are present, but do not get carried away by them. Emotional Self-Control in Action What if Justin recognized his level of stress and had been skilled in the Emotional Self-Control Competency? How could he have handled himself going into the meeting with Alice? As soon as Justin felt his anxiety rising, he would have realized he needed to take steps to keep that anxiety in check. As an expert whitewater canoeist told me, when she is about to paddle a challenging rapid, it’s not that she doesn’t have butterflies in her stomach, it’s that she gets those butterflies flying in formation. Using deep breaths or mindfulness, Justin could notice his feelings and know that he had a choice in how to respond to them. Before walking in the door to the meeting, he could put aside thoughts of the product launch event, focus his attention on the work he’d done over the year to cultivate the relationship with Alice’s company, and maintain that focus. Had he done that, he might have walked out of that meeting well on his way to an important contract. Additionally, this Competency can help you take a step back and address the real problem, in order to prevent the conditions from which harmful emotions arise in the first place. In this case, it’s clear that Justin is overwhelmed with responsibilities. Rather than taking that anxiety to his supervisors and conveying a sense of incapability, Justin could assess the entire situation and propose ways to make his role more manageable. Perhaps it’s to hire an additional team member to handle certain responsibilities, or it’s to better prioritize his time. Once his emotions are balanced, it’s far easier to see the big picture and come up with sustainable solutions. For more in-depth information about this topic, I have recently released: Emotional Self-Control: A Primer This Primer was co-written by myself and several respected colleagues in the fields of Emotional Intelligence, research, and leadership development. It offers a concise overview of the Emotional and Social Intelligence Leadership Competency Model, and goes on to define how Emotional Self-Control matters at work.

Daniel Goleman: Can You “Fix” Colleagues Who Aren’t Self-Aware?

In my last post, I told the tale of a retail manager who lacked self-awareness and displayed bullying behavior but wasn’t aware of his negative impact on others. Now let’s look at that scenario from the point of view of that manager’s colleagues. What if you work for, or with, a colleague or leader whose lack of Emotional Self-Awareness gets in the way of them being effective? Is there anything you can do to help that person become more self-aware? Regardless of whether they change, how can you manage your own experience of working with them? Emotional Self-Awareness: A Key to Effective Leadership Emotional Self-Awareness is one of twelve crucial competencies in my Emotional and Social Leadership Competency Model. Leaders with this skill recognize their own feelings and how those feelings impact the people around them and their job performance. When your boss or colleagues demonstrate Emotional Self-Awareness, they are better able to act with Emotional Self-Control, another crucial EI Competency. That shows up in behavior as a sense of calm, clarity, and open communication. When colleagues aren’t skilled in Emotional Self-Awareness, they may act like the clueless retail manager. They may think they’re being “assertive” in expressing themselves while their colleagues experience them as bullies or tyrants. How do people behave toward someone who has low self-awareness? Depending on the situation, colleagues may avoid interactions with them, not share important information, or distrust them. This discord hinders progress in achieving the group’s goals. For leaders, having the trust of their subordinates and open lines of communication are crucial. These are points I discussed with my colleague George Kohlrieser in the Crucial Competence and Emotional Intelligence in Leadership video series. Professor Kohlrieser, of the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), shared research he conducted with 1,000 executives from around the world, including top leaders like CEOs and Board members. His research found high-performing leaders are a “secure base” for their teams—and highlighted the importance of leader self-awareness and the trust they inspire. Beyond Being “Just an Annoyance” Working with someone who has low Emotional Self-Awareness isn’t just an annoyance for co-workers, it impacts everyone’s ability to perform well in their work. Research by Korn Ferry Hay Group and others show that a leader’s high Emotional Self-Awareness contributes to overall performance.    How to Deal with That “Unaware” Colleague What can you do if you work with colleagues lacking in Emotional Self-Awareness? First, it is important to recognize that while you might try to help your colleague develop greater self-awareness, it is up to them to change. You might be able to impact awareness, but they must choose what to do with that awareness. You may not be able to impact their behavior. But what you can impact is your own experience of the situation. One way to help your colleague is to give them honest and caring feedback in private. This depends on the nature of your relationship with that person. The best approach is for someone that person likes and trusts to take them aside and tell them what’s the trouble, how they are impacting other people, and what would be better – for everyone’s benefit. It might help to first ask if it’s ok to share some feedback with them, so they can be prepared to listen. For someone reactive, this is better than surprising them when they don’t expect it. In the case of the overly “assertive” retail manager, a trusted colleague might point out that his yelling isn’t having the desired impact on his staff and suggest other ways to express himself to get the desired effect. Providing a specific alternative to the harmful behavior can be very effective. Perhaps that trusted colleague could share George Kohlrieser’s recent article about how to develop self-awareness, and suggest discussing other ways to get results. Focus on What's Within Your Control The one thing over which you have complete control is your own reaction to the world around you. The unaware colleague is probably only one of many stressors that you face. How do you manage your own reactions, not just to this person but those other stressors as well? Mindfulness can help you be less reactive in general – which means you can still do your best work, no matter what’s happening around you, or at least be able to brush it off at the end of the day. What is mindfulness? Recognizing that our minds wander about 50% of the time, “mindfulness” refers to that move where you notice your mind wandered and bring it back to your focus. With mindfulness, you monitor whatever goes on within the mind. It sounds simple, but it is more challenging to put into practice. The way I learned mindfulness is through meditating, sitting quietly, and stepping back from a busy brain to focus on the present moment. My associate, Mirabai Bush, created a series of audio exercises to learn to practice mindfulness at work. Developing a mindfulness practice can help you remain calm and be your most productive regardless of your colleagues’ levels of self-awareness – or whatever the challenges might be. For more in-depth information, I invite you to read my first release specifically focused on Self-Awareness in leadership, a Primer on Emotional Self-Awareness. This Primer offers a state of the art, research-based overview of the Emotional and Social Intelligence Leadership Competency Model, as well as the first Competency of Emotional Self-Awareness. It's a concise read that anyone in a leadership position will benefit from, and is the first in a new series.