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middle age jump ship to start another career. When leaders reach a point in their career where they feel mastery, having completed most of their career goals, they can lose enthusiasm for what they’ve been doing.
Often at that point such leaders find renewed energy in a new ideal—for example, by gi...
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A personal vision is the deepest expression of what we want in life, and that image becomes both a guide for our decisions and a barometer of our sense of satisfaction in life. 13
That kind of leadership, however, requires not only a vision, but also a clear picture of the realities you are facing.
One quick index of whether you’ve become a boiling frog might be the “Logan Test.” Consider a few questions about how you typically act these days, and contrast it with the person you were in the past. Do you awake each morning excited about the day, not wanting to sleep any more than absolutely necessary? Do you laugh as much as you once did? Are you having as much fun in your personal life as you have in the past? Are you having as much fun at work? If you’re finding that your work, relationships, and life in general don’t make you feel energized and hopeful about the future, that’s a good
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Contrary to the advice prominent at the time, evaluative feedback—in which people were candidly given specifics about what worked or didn’t work in their behavior—was seen as more helpful than nonevaluative feedback.
that truth? A study of almost 400 executives showed that, for one thing, they use their self-awareness and empathy, both to monitor their own actions and to watch how others react to them. They are open to critiques, whether of their ideas or their leadership. They actively seek out negative feedback, valuing the voice of a devil’s advocate.
This is the real starting point of self-directed learning: taking stock of the parts of yourself that you relish and want to preserve, versus those you’d like to change or adapt to your new circumstances. A person’s self-awareness—the realization of this balance between what one wants to keep and what one needs to develop—sparks the readiness to change.
You suddenly understand what you value about yourself and therefore want to keep. Likewise, you’re able to admit what you need to work on. Each needs to be seen in light of the other—what to keep, what to change. 24
The 360-degree view offers a consensual image of your profile of competencies. Whether this consensus is an image of the real you depends on two givens: (1) that the people who participate in the 360-degree evaluation actually interact with you on a regular basis; and (2) that you reveal yourself to them. 26 There’s a good reason
Strengths displayed over the years—sometimes called signature themes— typically represent aspects that leaders want to keep, even if those themes are dormant for a period of time. 31 Such signatures offer innate resources to draw on as leaders. For example, Herb Kelleher, the long-time former CEO of Southwest Airlines, always had a strong sense of humor. As a leader, he loved to laugh and make others laugh, and he used that strength to great effect: Playfulness became an organizational strength at Southwest that set it apart from its competitors.
The best kind of learning agenda helps you focus on what you want to become—your own ideal—rather than on someone else’s idea of what you should be. It should lead to setting meaningful standards of performance, rather than taking on an arbitrary, normative standard for success that may or may not fit with personal goals. 3 When crafting specific, manageable learning goals, it works best to tie them in to goals that motivate you and ignite your full range of talents.
Recent studies of people who have improved their emotional intelligence reveal several key points about what works and what doesn’t. 13 Although some may seem obvious—even common sense—they are not common practice. The findings include the following: • Goals should build on one’s strengths, not on one’s weaknesses. • Goals must be a person’s own—not goals that someone else has imposed. • Plans should flexibly allow people to prepare for the future in different ways—a single “planning” method imposed by an organization will often prove counterproductive.
• Plans must be feasible, with manageable steps: Plans that don’t fit smoothly into a person’s life and work will likely be dropped within a few weeks or months. • Plans that don’t suit a person’s learning style will prove demotivating and quickly lose his attention.
For instance, people who have tried to improve their ability as speakers—a key to a leader’s communications and vital to many competencies—have set some of the following concrete goals for themselves: • Give at least two formal presentations every month, and have them critiqued by a peer I respect. • Practice with a friend before giving a presentation. • Videotape myself giving a speech and critique it with my boss’s help. • Join Toastmasters so I can practice giving more effective talks. • Talk to people who give oral presentations in a manner that comes across as relaxed and interesting, and
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and relax into the presentation.
law. Kolb found that people learn most often through one of the following modes: • Concrete experience: Having an experience that allows them to see and feel what it is like • Reflection: Thinking about their own and others’ experiences • Model building: Coming up with a theory that makes sense of what they observe • Trial-and-error learning: Trying something out by actively experimenting with a new approach
To recap, by entering into the first three discoveries of self-directed learning, it is possible to develop an engaging, but realistic, agenda that can help you reach your leadership goals. You have compared your ideal vision with the reality of your style and behavior, and you’ve used that to identify your strengths and gaps. Then, with that profile in mind, you’ve targeted specific leadership abilities in a learning plan, setting a practical course to strengthen them.
You begin the process of the final two discoveries when your agenda, and the steps leading up to it, has prepared
and focused your attention on what to do. Now you try it and discover how to make this kind of learning a continuo...
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Whenever he started to feel upset, he had four specific steps to take: 1. Step back—listen, don’t jump in. 2. Let the other person speak. 3. Get some objectivity—ask yourself, Is there a sound reason for my
reaction, or am I jumping to conclusions? 4. Ask clarifying questions, rather than ones that sound judgmental or hostile. This intentional change in Jack’s typical overreaction response allowed him to empathize and listen, to gather information more fully and understand it more clearly, and to have a rational dialogue instead of launching into a harangue. He didn’t have to agree with the other person, but now he gave that person a chance to make his case. Still, to make those changes,
Stealth Learning While much, if not most, typical leadership development takes place in seminars, during a weekend or maybe even over a week of offsite training, that time frame hardly begins the process.
So rather than, say, just going off to some kind of weekend sensitivity-training program to hone his empathy, Jack used naturally occurring situations at work with his subordinates and peers as his training arena. He also talked about his learning plan with his wife and enlisted her as an informal coach to help him become a better listener at home and with friends.
Such mental rehearsal can greatly improve how well you learn new skills. It’s a well-known fact, for example, corroborated by scientific study, that mental rehearsal enhances the performance of athletes. Olympic athletes, such as the American diver Laura Wilkinson, use it routinely. While preparing for the 2000 Olympics, Wilkinson broke three toes and was unable to go in the water. Rather than stop her preparations, Wilkinson sat for hours each day on the diving platform, repeatedly recreating in her mind a detailed vision of each of her dives. She went on to win an upset victory in the 2000
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Often leaders feel unsafe, as if they’re under a microscope, their every action scrutinized by those around them—and so they never take the risk of exploring new habits. Knowing that others are watching with a critical eye provokes them to judge their progress too soon, curtail experimentation, and decrease risk taking.
Bringing the Whole Team Along Helping a single leader move toward greater resonance marks a beginning. But for an entire organization, the impact will be all the greater if leadership growth goes beyond the individual.
We’ve seen repeatedly that when teams (and entire organizations) face their collective emotional reality, they begin a healthy reexamination of the shared habits that create and hold that reality in place. In fact, for leaders to extend emotional intelligence throughout their teams and organizations, that’s precisely where they need to start: by taking a hard look at reality, rather than focusing first on an ideal vision. Thus the sequence of reflection and self-discovery is reversed from what it was at the individual level, described in chapter 7.
Why the reversal? It’s a matter of
motivation. As individuals, we feel most motivated to change when we tap into our dreams and ideal visions of our lives. That vision of our personal future gives us the energy and commitment to change our behavior. The ideal vision for a group, however, is often a much more distant concept, so it simply doesn’t provide enough motivation to instigate change. A good example is the lofty language found in com...
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The root of the problem often lies with long-established and deeply embedded ground rules, or habits that govern the group. We call those rules norms when we talk about teams, and culture when we refer to the larger organization.
In short, groups are smarter than individuals only when they exhibit the qualities of emotional intelligence.
Group emotional intelligence, they argue, determines a team’s ability to manage its emotions in a way that cultivates “trust, group identity, and group efficacy” and so maximizes cooperation, collaboration, and effectiveness. 7 In short, emotional intelligence results in a positive—and powerful—emotional reality.
A team expresses its self-awareness by being mindful of shared moods as well as of the emotions of individuals within the group.
Since emotions are contagious, team members take their emotional cues from each other, for better or for worse.
Team self-awareness might also mean creating norms such as listening to everyone’s perspective—including that of a lone dissenter—before a decision is made. Or it can mean recognizing when a teammate feels uncomfortable in learning a task, and stepping in to offer support.
The Self-Managed Team Cary Cherniss, chair of a well-known research group, puts team self-awareness front and center and holds group members accountable for managing how they work together. At the beginning of a day-long meeting, he passes out the day’s agenda—along with a list of “process norms” that outlines how the group will carry out that agenda. For example: Everyone, not just Cary, should take responsibility for: • Keeping us on track if we get off • Facilitating group input
• Raising questions about our procedures (e.g., asking the group to clarify where it is going and offering summaries of the issues being discussed to make sure we have a shared understanding of them) • Using good listening skills: either build on the ongoing discussion or clearly signal that we want to change the subject, and ask if that is ok … Members of this group, who come from around the world, say these meetings are among the most focused, productive, and enjoyable of any they’ve attended.
This example offers an excellent lesson in how a team led by an emotionally intelligent leader can learn to manage itself.
This raises an important point about team self-management: Positive norms will stick only if the group puts them into practice over and over again.
When core values and norms are clear to people, a leader does not even need to be physically present for the team to run effectively—this is of special importance to the thousands of managers who work with virtual teams and whose team members are located all over the globe. In self-aware, self-managing teams, members themselves will step up to the plate to instill and reinforce resonant norms and to hold one another accountable for sticking to them.
The effect was clear: By helping to trigger a feeling of team pride in the maintenance group, the manufacturing team created goodwill between those two parts of the organization—and a desire to help the other succeed.
Uncovering a Team’s Emotional Reality The leader who wants to create an emotionally intelligent team can start by helping the team raise its collective self-awareness. As some of the examples discussed earlier illustrated, this is the true work of the leader: to monitor the emotional tone of the team and to help its members recognize any underlying dissonance. Only when a team can confront that emotional reality will it feel moved to change. By acknowledging a shared sentiment as simple as “I don’t like how it feels around here,” a team makes a critical first step in the change process.
A leader helps initiate that process by listening for what’s really going on in the group. That means not only observing what team members are doing
and saying but also understanding what they are feeling. Then, once a leader has helped the team uncover its less-productive norms, the group can come...
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SETTING GROUND RULES: THE LEADER’S JOB MORE THAN ANYONE ELSE, it is the team leader who has the power to establish norms, maximizing harmony and collaboration to ensure that the team benefits from the best talents of each member. A leader accomplishes that by moving the group toward a higher emotional tone, using positive images, optimistic interpretations, and resonance-building norms and leadership styles, particularly visionary, democratic, affiliative, and coaching styles (see chapter 4 for more on styles). For example, leaders can model behavior through their own actions or by positively
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And third, when truth seeking comes from the top, others are more willing to take the risk, too.
The next step for fostering new leadership, then, is to consider the real and the ideal state of the larger organization.
To create resonance—and results—the leader has to pay attention to the hidden dimensions: people’s emotions, the undercurrents of the emotional reality in the organization, and the culture that holds it all together.
Many large companies have processes in place for systematically evaluating employee attitudes, values, and beliefs—a kind of proxy for the emotional reality. These processes can be very helpful, but the problem is that surveys measure only what they set out to measure—and
