Unit 2: Page 1
As you can see from your journey through the exercises in Unit 1: Interconnection, emotions are the most important part of creating experiences that customers (and co-workers) want to come back for.
Emotion is an important part of your success. “Emotion” really means “E-Motion”. When you think about it, your feelings actually put energy into motion.
For example: Anger causes us to attack. Love causes us to expand. Fear causes us to escape. Joy causes us to play. Sadness causes us to withdraw. Interest cause us to explore. Pride causes us to dream big. Guilt causes us to make amends. Hope causes us to yearn for positive change. Shame causes us to disappear.
Love takes all the aspects of all the positive emotions into itself. It causes us to play, expand, dream big, and yearn for positive change. It causes us to feel connected – because we are.
As a Positive Leader you become a “Positive Energizer” when you put the “E” for energy in motion and then focus that energy on the creation of value for your customers, your colleagues, your communities, and, for YOU.
Positive emotions build durable personal resources as well as “psychological capital” of hope, resilience, efficacy, and optimism.
In this unit, you will discover how you can consistently increase your emotional intelligence, also know as EQ. EQ is the foundation for the critical relationship skills you need at work and in life.
Daniel Goleman, author of “Emotional Intelligence” tells us that 67 percent of the competencies needed to be a really effective manager are emotional in content. If you have been leading people for more than a year – you’ve figured that out.
Two-thirds of your success as a leader relies on your ability to perceive and manage emotions accurately, your own and others’. It’s a critical leadership skill to master. And it’s one that is in short supply in business today.
That’s why it starts with you. As you gain more skills needed to flourish in your own life, you’ll naturally begin to influence people in new ways. All leaders have impact – you are about to design the kind of impact you want to have on others.
You get the opportunity every day to make new choices! As a leader, you impact the lives of many. This includes your colleagues, customers, and people within many communities. You also impact their families, their friends, and their circles of influence. Your impact travels this far because people who are happy at work are more productive, engaged, committed, creative, generous, and healthier. They serve their families and communities better. And when they are happy at work they create more value for the organization and the customers. It’s a positive, reinforcing, appreciating cycle that reliably returns value to the bottom line.
Emotions are contagious and you’re always broadcasting them. This unit will shed a little light on the places where you have some positive influence over your emotions and those of others. As I said in unit 1, we are all connected. When you make a change in your choices, it helps others make a change in theirs. Your positive example helps more than you can know. People hear what you say but they see what you do and how you show up for them. You are the leader.
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Emotions impact every dimension of the workplace: performance, engagement, commitment, creativity, generosity, happiness, and longevity (and anything else you can think of). Perhaps you remember the old days where we were cautioned to “leave our emotions at the door.” Bad advice.
Better advice would be to ask others to leave their problems at the door, but please, bring their emotions to work. Positive Energizers are emotionally intelligent and use the power of positive emotions to craft a culture with a specific intention – for individuals to flourish and organizations to thrive.
There are four main competencies that make up emotional intelligence: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Social Awareness, and Relationship Management. They fall into two broad categories: Personal Competence and Social Competence. Emotionally intelligent leaders understand and manage their own emotions as well as being able to empathize with and understand others. They are able to use their skills to communicate clearly and connect with others in relationships.
Emotional Intelligence
Personal Competence
Social Competence
Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Social Awareness
Relationship Management
To give you a better understanding of how to discover these competencies in yourself, I have used a framework developed at the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations and created a set of reflection questions to help you assess your current state.
Directions:
Find a quiet place and 15 – 20 minutes to enjoy a “Time In.” Turn off your phone or leave it behind. Ponder over the questions I’ve created for you and then dare to give yourself a little assessment. Make note of your results since you may want to come back to this and re-calibrate your EQ over time.
I am believer in good questions. It’s important to ask a lot of questions to stimulate your thinking. After you assess where you are, feel free to go back and drill deeper down into each question and write more about your answers. Approach this exercise with the INTENTION of joyful self-discovery.
Resist the urge to beat yourself up if you find you are not where you would like to be. Many leaders are very hard on themselves.
If you are one of them, this course will introduce you to self-compassion as a critical skill. The only way one can feel true compassion for another is if one knows how compassion feels in their own body-mind-spirit system.
Every quest begins with a question. Enjoy these and expand.
(ASSESSMENT)
Wow! You must be wondering if I am suggesting that you perfect all these areas of competency. Actually the data shows that effective leaders are able to demonstrate at least one strength in each of the four categories. Everyone has different strengths. This exercise is designed to raise your awareness and to help you choose which areas you’d most like to expand.
After reviewing your answers, write down three things that you have identified for expansion.
(ANSWER FIELD)
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Emotions play a powerful role in the workplace and yet they are hardly discussed. Most organizations focus on tangible business results such as output, sales, profits, and leave some of the intangible results like morale, commitment, and happiness, to chance. You are about to change that. When you drive collective emotion in a positive direction your team becomes a powerhouse of energy. Let’s delve a little deeper first so you understand why emotional intelligence is so important.
Because emotions are contagious, and yours, as the leader, are even more so, it’s critical that you understand the very basics of how your brain works in conjunction with the rest of your body to produce those emotions.
The modern human brain has three layers with three distinct functions. Let’s study the Triune Brain from a layperson’s neurological perspective.
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So what does all this brain science have to do with leadership? Leaders who are loved and respected manage their own systems well. They are cool under pressure and thoughtful and responsive rather than reactive. Hot amygdalas make for poor decision-making and many regrets. Understanding how to quiet down one’s own reactive tendencies and keep the crocodiles at bay, so to speak, is the sign of a mature and rational leader. Because the brain is malleable, it’s entirely possible to retrain your brain to respond in a different way, thereby allowing the executive functions to become stronger and your life and your leadership to be more deliberate.
Okay, so how is it we train our brains to spend more time in the executive functions and calm that jumpy amygdala? There are several ways. Three of the most researched are meditation, mindfulness, and focusing on the heart. They all rely on the same thing – your present moment awareness.
I’m happy to provide several resources for each of the methods, and of course there are even apps that can help you today. Click the buttons below to download the resources.
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I want to let you in a little secret. There’s a part of your primal brain that you use every day, but may not use intentionally. It’s called the Reticular Activating System. and I want to tell you how you can use it to your advantage.
Have you ever heard the sayings, “What you focus on grows?” or “What you think about you bring about?” There’s truth behind them. Think about the last time you had your sights set on buying a new car. If you had a specific color and model in mind, you may have noticed that this particular car seemed to be everywhere all of a sudden, whether in your neighborhood or on the highway.
I fondly call this “The Yellow Volkswagen Syndrome,” and consider it to be a powerful aspect of brain science. You see, when we turn our attention to any one thing, we stimulate the Reticular Activating System. This system works like an Internet search engine; your thoughts, along with the questions you ask yourself, or that people ask of you, are the search words that kick it into gear and tell it what to look for and focus on.
In the case of someone who wants to buy a yellow Volkswagen, it causes him to see them everywhere. You can use the power of the “RAS” when you set your intention and it will help you stay on track. For instance if your intention is to look for more things to appreciate in your day, and you write that down and say it out loud, you’ve given your brain a very clear direction and it will oblige you by helping you find what you seek.
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Check your “state” before walking into your workplace. What are you thinking about? Is it positive or negative, optimistic or pessimistic? Is it energy gaining or energy draining? Are you smiling or pensive? Are you open or closed?
You broadcast your emotions even if you don’t realize it. The electricity in your body reaches far outside your body. What we feel, we call “vibes.”
Become aware of what vibrations you are bringing into the workplace. Notice. Turn your dial to a more optimistic, uplifting channel.
50 to 70 percent of how employees perceive the climate is due to the actions of the leader. Leaders set the mood. What mood are YOU broadcasting?
Think about the last 48 hours. What kind of moods have you been broadcasting at your place of business? Be specific about the kinds of emotions you allowed, intentionally or unintentionally, to affect your climate.
(ANSWER FIELD)
(INTENTION HEADER)
Think about WHAT emotions you want to broadcast tomorrow and HOW you will get there.
Write down that intention and say it out loud before you get into your workplace. For example, today I intend to broadcast joy. To do that you might remember a time when you felt joyful. Please vividly recall how it felt, what it looked like, what it sounded like, what it smelled like, and even tasted like.
I intend:
(ANSWER FIELD)
(HEADER)
Begin to notice what you notice.
Follow your attention.
Notice without judging.
Notice without resistance.
Just
notice.
Learn this one well, we’ll be using it a lot as we move on. You may want to write down some of your observations in your Leadership Journal.
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