Embarrassing I reflect back on when I starting managing staff I was terrible, I was a shit boss. I had no idea what I was doing.
I know I just wanted people to do what I told them just because I said so. There was no buying into the vision or understanding their motivations. Even making sure you leave your stuff at the door.
We have all had bosses like it. I made sure there was enough fear so that staff wouldn’t question my authority.
I thought I had to be more “authoritative” than the person next to me. If I was in control so people just needed to do as I said. There was no “win-win” it was my way or the highway. I look back now and shudder. I honestly didn’t know there was any other way. All the managers I had worked for up to that point were very results-driven. If you didn’t reach your numbers, you were marched into the office to justify your job. Fear was how you got people to do their job. I had no role models to learn how to lead or how to mentor someone. However, here I am now more than 20 years later, I have learned how to manage in a way that is more authentic to me and it works!
You don’t have to be a shit boss developing emotional intelligence matters.
What is emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is simply put the ability to control your emotions and others in the present moment. It sounds simple but has a number of key factors. According to Daniel Goleman,
Self-awareness.
Self-regulation.
Motivation.
Empathy.
Social skills.
Why is it important?
Developing emotional intelligence is the one factor that will make you successful in almost every area of your life. At a professional level is the one factor that sets high-performing leaders above others. On a personal level, it means your relationships around you will feel more connected. Allows for improved communication skills and increases your resilience. It turns out it is one of the most important life skills and increases your chances of success in every area of your life.
I have learned how to coach teams into high performance staff that want to come to work. Wow, they even laugh. They are self-motivated and managed with compassion and outcomes. It is possible to enjoy your job.
Emotions start wars and create peace; spark love and force a divorce. While unavoidable, emotions are also indispensable sources of orientation and propel us to take action. But unbridled emotion can make us and those around us to act irrationally.
Emotional intelligence is a relatively new, but started to become mainstream with Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.
Emotional intelligence is simply put the ability to control your emotions and others in the present moment. It sounds simple but has a number of key factors. According to Daniel Goleman,
Self-awareness.
Self-regulation.
Motivation.
Empathy.
Social skills.
The business case for emotional intelligence
According to Google’s famous Project Aristotle initiative, a high-performing team needs three things: 1) a strong awareness of the importance of social connections or “social sensitivity,” 2) an environment where each person speaks equally, and 3) psychological safety where everyone feels safe to show and employ themselves without fear of negative consequences. To harness these three elements of a successful team, it takes an emotionally intelligent leader.
People feel cared for when these three items are present in a team or organization. People that feel cared for are more loyal, engaged, and productive.
10 times more likely to recommend their company as a great place to work.
9 times more likely to stay at their company for three or more years.
7 times more likely to feel included at work.
4 times less likely to suffer from stress and burnout.
2 times as likely to be engaged at work.
1. Deep human needs
The three core human needs of work (and life) are to survive, belong and become. Much like Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs, once humans fulfill the need of food, water and shelter they will then seek to be accepted for who they are, and then finally to learn and grow to become their best selves.
The workplace is filling parts of our deep human needs.
2. Technology will enhance humanity
The Industrial Revolution required strong workers. The Information Age required knowledgeable workers. The future age of work will require emotionally intelligent workers.
As the world fills with more sophisticated technology such as artificial intelligence and 5G, human skills like compassion and empathy will define the competitive edge of workers and entire organizations.
In addition, as the world becomes more high-tech, there will be a desire and opportunity for more high-touch. As technology advances, it will take on a lot of the work that humans aren’t good at, don’t like, or too dangerous. This will leave us with more time and capacity to show up emotionally for each other.
3. Work and life blending
Not only are emotions finding their way into work, but workers want it more. A pervasive myth exists that emotions don’t belong at work. As the boundaries blur we want to be able to bring our whole selves into the workplace and this is inevitably messy.
4. Evolving employer-employee relationship
In the past, the employer-employee relationship was very transactional. But in today’s always-on work culture, the boundaries of the employee-employer relationship are expanding.
As employees seek more from their employers, moving from employing to empowering will serve employers well.
It’s not surprising then that more than any other generation, Gen Z wants their managers to be empathetic, according to The Center for Generational Kinetics’ 2020 study, Solving the Remote Work Challenge Across Generations.
If the youth is the future, and Gen Z are lonely and psychologically stressed then the future of work must be emotional intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence in the workplace separates high performers from the average employees. This is something gaining popularity as leaders become aware of the role emotional intelligence plays in the workplace.
Self-awareness; is an understanding of how you are feeling at any moment in time. It is also understanding how your behaviour impacts others.
Motivation – An effective self-motivation requires you to have a positive attitude towards goals across the organisation.
Self-regulation – Processing our own emotions effectively means we have the ability to read the situation effectively. Our response is only possible when we can self-regulate. We need to work to commit ourselves to the goals of the organization with integrity.
Social skills – are critical in a workplace the ability to build teams, forge change, and manage the conflict are important.
Empathy – Empathy is the ability to place oneself in the shoes of another. Managers need insight into how their decisions and behavior will impact their subordinates, peers, and superiors.
Emotional intelligence is a set of skills and behaviors that can be learned and developed.
According to Harvard there are some telltale signs of people with low Emotional Intelligence and those with high Emotional Intelligence.
People with low Emotional Intelligence:
Often feels misunderstood
Get upset easily
Become overwhelmed by emotions
Have problems being assertive
People with high Emotional Intelligence:
Understand the links between their emotions and how they behave
Remain calm and composed during stressful situations
Are able to influence others toward a common goal
Handle difficult people with tact and diplomacy
When staff lacks emotional intelligence they can be extraordinarily damaging to the culture.
The good news is that we can improve our emotional intelligence it is a skill that we can learn. We can improve on skills that improve knowledge of how others and we feel. We can also learn to harness our emotions in a way that meets the needs of our organisation.
At the individual level, exercises such as meditation, psychotherapy, coaching, and eliciting feedback from peers can provide meaningful insight into our own emotional landscape.
Within organisations, team-building exercises, corporate retreats, staff support groups, and training can pay handsome dividends for both collective and individual employee emotional health. In addition, you need to recognise and call out the behaviour.
Leading Together runs emotional intelligence workshops. Engage your leadership potential to improve your self-awareness, self-management, empathy, social awareness, and motivation. Horses are very aware of how you are feeling in the moment and can help you find a powerful way to experience emotional intelligence. The workshops are conducted in a relaxed environment with a horse trainer and leadership coach. They run for a couple of hours depending on the people attending and you will come away with a deeper understanding of yourself.
When creating connections with horses and people beautiful things happen.
Building emotional intelligence in yourself is one thing, but building a culture of emotional intelligence in the workplace can be a challenge. Our leaders must learn it first and model that behaviour. Changing behaviours doesn’t have to be complex. Leading Together uses horses to shortcut the learnings in team workshops. By scheduling team workshop sessions over 5 weeks you can radically change your workplace culture.
Over 100 years ago, a guy called Hermann Ebbinghaus formulated the learning curve. The learning curve is the is how long your retain information or the relationship between memory and time. Simply put if you retain all the information on day one. Your memory is at 100 percent on day one, then you have a 50-80 percent loss on day two which continues until you have only 2-3 percent of that memory left at the end of thirty days.
Now, this is sped up with our shorter attention spans and increased overload of information. So 100 years later our learning sometimes is reduced to 140 characters!
So what can we do to improving learning outcomes and retaining critical information. This why experiential learning is the key to the overload of information.
What is Experiential Learning
Experiential learning is the process of learning by doing.
Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory (Kolb, 1984) defines experiential learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience.”
Kolb’s Experiential Learning Theory presents a cycle of four elements
Repetitive Learning or learning by rote has long been replaced by ‘Learning by Doing.’ Experiential Learning uses critical thinking, or problem solving and decision making. By learning this way it has been established it accelerates learning.
Accelerated learning our lessons in shorter sessions more suited to how we now learn.
2. Provides a Safe Learning Environment
Simulations are important. Simulations provide challenges, allow mistakes to happen during the course of learning. Creating a safe environment.
Make mistakes in a simulated environment and learn in an arena rather than in the workplace.
3. Bridges the Gap Between Theory and Practice
By moving beyond theory into “learning by doing,’. Our learning allows a first hand experience of how you react under pressure to put into practicing what has been taught. This piece in crucial in being able to retain concepts and ideas.
4. Produces Demonstrable Mindset Changes
There are very few learning methods that can have a dramatic impact on the participant’s mindset. Ours does, emotional intelligence workshops, is one of them. Management guru Henry Mintzberg pointed out long ago that, “Leadership, like swimming, cannot be learned by reading about it”.
5. Increases Engagement Levels
In the scenario of a Team Leadership Workshop there is a focus on collaboration and learning from each other and this learning environment it increases engagement. Given that in the arena, each person is immediately involved in the problem solving , the level of ownership of the outcome is high.
6. Delivers Exceptional Return on Investment (RoI)
Experiential learning is personal and effective in nature, influencing both feelings and emotions as well as enhancing knowledge and skills. It goes beyond classroom learning and ensures that there is high level of retention, thereby delivering exceptional RoI over a traditional learning program.
7. Provides Assessments
Assessing the effectiveness of the experience is a crucial element of any learning program. Most assessments are data driven and traditional tools use tests to measure effectiveness. When it comes to experiential learning programs, it is extremely difficult to gather data, which can be used for assessments. But others have said this it is still the best leadership training ever.
8. Enables Personalised Learning
Experiential learning is highly effective in meeting these requirements to enable personalised learning. Everyone gets to learn at their own pace.
Our leadership workshops are backed by research and experiential learning in practice, where personal reflections are put into practice. Get out of the classroom and into the arena for leadership learning.
As a leader you are in a position of power over others and…“with great power comes great responsibility”. You can choose to use it to build people up or use it to destroy them. As a leader bullying, toxicity in the workplace becomes your responsibilty. Leaders need to know what it is and how to manage it.
Anyone who has been a victim of workplace bullying or worked in a toxic workplace will know the damage that can be done. It can ruin your confidence, cause anxiety, or even worse lead to severe mental health problems. When you are at work for most of your waking moments this constant stress can lead to physical manifestations and a breakdown in other significant relationships in your life.
repeated hurtful remarks or attacks, or making fun of your work or you as a person (including your family, sex, sexuality, gender identity, race or culture, education or economic background)
sexual harassment, particularly stuff like unwelcome touching and sexually explicit comments and requests that make you uncomfortable
excluding you or stopping you from working with people or taking part in activities that relates to your work
playing mind games, ganging up on you, or other types of psychological harassment
intimidation (making you feel less important and undervalued)
giving you pointless tasks that have nothing to do with your job
giving you impossible jobs that can’t be done in the given time or with the resources provided
deliberately changing your work hours or schedule to make it difficult for you
deliberately holding back information you need for getting your work done properly
pushing, shoving, tripping, grabbing you in the workplace
attacking or threatening with equipment, knives, guns, clubs or any other type of object that can be turned into a weapon
initiation or hazing – where you are made to do humiliating or inappropriate things in order to be accepted as part of the team.
Given more than 2/3rds of us experience workplace bullying there is a high probability that you are a victim, witness, or perpetrator of workplace bullying. The effects of this can last a lifetime. It is an important and urgent issue. I was staggered by the numbers and the research.
There is a growing body of evidence showing that there is a significant correlation between bullying and low emotional intelligence. I believe that most leaders who lead through fear do this because they don’t know another way. Bullying and low emotional intelligence also correlate also with workplace performance.
Having been the victim of bullying, I personally understand the emotional and physical impact. It is this experience that continues to drive me to find another way to lead. I am a passionate believer that those in a position of leadership have a responsibility to manage and care for their team in a way that supports them. As a leader you have an obligation to show up, be present and do what you can so that they can grow into great leaders themselves.
Physical Symptoms
What ongoing stress can do to the body
If you are seeing any of these systems in your organisation or in yourself you may want to evalutate if you are in a toxic workplace. It is important that we understand it. What does it look and feel like and then make choices to either leave or change the culture.
I have witnessed a workplace so toxic that woman were vomiting in the bathroom everyday through fear. There were suicide ideation discussed and strategies from leaders on how to support suicidal staff but none of the conversation revolved around improving culture. The anxiety in amoungst the team was incredibly unhealthy and had been normalised.
The physical and emotional cost is not just “burn out”. It can be permanent. It is trauma.
Solutions to bullying and toxicity are clear
By increasing emotional intelligence you can transform a workplace. It works in all areas of the organisation. , improving wellbeing, performance, and motivation. Research is clear that emotional intelligence creates the difference between good leadership and great leadership. Everyone wins in a workplace that has a higher level of emotional intelligence. If you want to learn more about emotional intelligence and how to use it you can download my free emotional intelligence book.
A Time Marker is how we remember and mark the passing of time. This has shifted for so many of us in 2020. Was 2020 fast or slow? I really can’t say. I was reflecting with a group of leaders on 2020 and talking about Time Markers. When I got a lot of puzzled looks I thought I should explain myself.
What is a Time Marker?
A Time Marker is an event or something that happens to us, that makes it easy for us to remember that moment in time. Our rites and rituals are important Time Markers. If you remember moments in your childhood they are often around significant events. Do you remember the graduation ceremony from school? Do you remember a birthday party? Your first kiss? Your first concert? A wedding? These rites and rituals of how we celebrate and mark time create moments for us to reflect on the passing of time.
Why are Time Markers Important?
They are opportunities for us to come together, create connections and engage with each other. They offer opportunities for things to look forward to, provide hope and celebrations.
One of the important functions of our Time Markers is to be our reference point and understanding of time. It also creates opportunities for change, rites, and social phases like “schoolies”, “weddings”, “significant birthdays”, “funerals”, “honeymoons”, “retirement parties”, “first days at school/jobs”, “sporting events”, and “graduations” these rituals mark a point in time where we expect change and our structures determine that this is a different phase in our life. Those more significant Time Markersare our rights of passage. Those first moments, and final moments like schoolies which marks the passage from a schoolchild to adulthood. Those significant Time Markers don’t just mark time but create our sense of time.
How many times have you said, “I am looking forward to… (holiday, birthday, celebration)”? The things we count down days until. We build anticipation and excitement around time markers. We use them for our delayed gratification. Delayed gratification is essential for motivation both personally and professionally.
Delay of gratification, the act of resisting an impulse to take an immediately available reward in the hope of obtaining a more-valued reward in the future. The ability to delay gratification is essential to self-regulation, or self-control.
For me, 2020 has been plans, plans, and disappointments. I have attempted to plan so many things only for them to be continuously changed or canceled. I have paid for tickets to events, to be postponed and changed. Parties have been canceled. Family events canceled. Events of all sorts canceled. Even holidays canceled.
Without Time Markers
So what is the impact if we don’t have transitions or Time Markers to signify important moments in our life which allow for transitions? We feel a sense of flux and grief. There is a collective sensation of emotional disorientation.
Sense of Flux
They feel disconnected, unmoored, isolated, lost. Some can’t sleep; others sleep too much. Some obsess while others tune out. For some, anxiety spikes or depression deepens; others report feeling numb.
It is important to remember that all of these are reasonable and responses to a highly unusual situation.
When we can’t plan or plans are canceled we need to acknowledge even as leaders we are also experiencing these emotional responses.
Leadership and Time Markers
In the workplace, it means we have people who are experiencing anxiety and depression or feeling disconnected and searching because they don’t understand the loss they are feeling. There is a shared experience when we lose our Time Markers and a sense of feeling disorientated. We haven’t experienced this before and we don’t have the language to even talk about it.
What are our Leadership Lessons?
Talk about what it is and what you are feeling. As leaders, we need to acknowledge that 2020 has created new challenges and we need new tools and language to deal with the constant change and loss. A shared language to describe things allows a space to describe and talk about these issues. Compassion and empathy are key whilst everyone is going to handle their grief very differently.
However, if you can find space to share what and how you are feeling it creates a sense of team and ‘we are in this together’. It allows an understanding of what we are feeling and acknowledgment of those emotions.
I have managed my plans, plans, and disappointments by trying to use mindfulness and gratitude. When I have another Time Marker lost I simply ask myself a number of questions to think about the situation differently. It has been a game-changer.
“What is it that I can learn?”
“What space does it create, or what is the opportunity here?”
“What can I be grateful for at this moment?”
The simple act of reframing the situation has made me less frustrated and reactive to what is going on around me. It has also given me a sense of control.
If you can continue this practice, it also starts to harness innovation. Imagine if you can, what happens when you have a culture of looking for an opportunity in change, you begin to build a team culture of innovation and growth.
