Spotlight on the Foundation of Emotional Intelligence

Picture this: You are enjoying a summer walk in the woods at dusk – the mosquitos are everywhere. Before arriving home you are fully aware of all the bites and the annoying itching. Or think back of your childhood to one of the probably many times you fell and hurt yourself. I am sure it came naturally to notice those sensations. It’s not exactly like you have to make an effort to notice how bad your skin is itching.

I just wished it were the same later in life, with other sensations and feelings, and especially in the workplace. I wished the feelings of beginning nervousness in a conversation, of unease when reading a document, or of doubt about a decision would be as poignant as the result of that mosquito bite or as the stinging sensation when you fall on your bare knees. But it isn't. We haven't really learned to pay close attention to our sensations. We've been taught, at least in Western culture, to focus and not be distracted. Luckily it has become somewhat more common this past decade to focus on intuition, to address inner processes and how they might alert you to some aspect you might otherwise neglect or that might go completely unnoticed. But even then, if we do notice our sensations and feelings, many of us do not know how to effectively address these feelings nor the underlying or resulting processes.

So your question to yourself can be: Am I present and aware, in the moment – in this moment? Am I using all my senses?

Or

Am I distracted, am I chasing the many thoughts that enter my consciousness at any given time? Am I ignoring things rather than noticing them?

The following should be absolutely clear. It's not about condemning the distraction, your sensations, or your thoughts. It’s about noticing them, knowing how they impact you, and it’s about bringing yourself back to the here-and-now, wherever that is and whatever you’re doing. 

If you search my blog for 'awareness' you'll find more articles on the topic - what it is, how it works, and how to increase your awareness.

In brief: take time to stop, notice, sense, and feel. Adjust your attitude, approach, and behavior accordingly. Or don’t adjust them, and just know how external distractions such as events in your environment and how internal distractions (often related to external events) such as worries, fear, and tiredness influence you.

Weekends are generally a good time to practice and enjoy your awareness, but aim to use it on the job, in meetings, when feeling tight, during presentations, while working on a report... You get the picture.

Just do it!

Improving Team Performance as a Team Member

There are numerous team performance strategies and team improvement practices. Many of them are very useful but they generally focus on what the team leader should envision, say, model, inspire, and accomplish. I’d like to take a different perspective and look at what team members themselves can do to improve their team’s performance.

What works best obviously greatly depends on the purpose of the team, it’s maturity, the context, and much more. I’d like to highlight a few factors that I have seen work across the board during my 22 years in the business of increasing team performance. Factors that every team member can take to heart and that they can influence to their team’s advantage.

Manage and lead yourself first

Know yourself, be aware of yourself, be honest with yourself, and be creative with your improvement goals and actions. I am referring to the much discussed Emotional Intelligence. How do you score? Do you know at all? Do you actively solicit feedback and really listen to what is being said about you? Before you can influence, let alone lead others, you have to lead yourself. Who is your sparring partner who? Who will really tell you what she sees and what she thinks about your assumptions, choices, behaviors, and results? How successfully do you reflect and redirect?

Learn to lead others

It’s known by now, I’m sure: You don’t have to be in a leading position to lead. Luckily not, otherwise there wouldn’t be too much leading going on in the world. In order to lead others in your team (read: inspire, motivate, stimulate), you have to learn about and tap into each team member’s values, dreams, goals, and fears. Yes, this means you have to really get to know each other and learn how to inspire commitment to work hard and smart. This means you have to know each other in order to find ways to support and energize your team members when things aren’t going well. Leading others starts with knowing and respecting others.

Identify, Live, and Enforce Core Values

Core Values are most often set by leaders in collaboration with their team, or so it should be. In every day life it’s the team that must make these values a reality in practice. It is you! So how do you life the identified values? Where do you get off course and with what consequences and adjustments? How do you help inspire and enforce your team’s values? Do you really hold yourself and each other accountable? This is another responsibility that in most organizations falls squarely on the leader. In a high performance team, however, you see mutual accountability at work. If a member of the team fails to deliver you don’t want the leader to have to intervene. You want the team to do that and you are part of that team. This is what makes a team a mature team. However, when holding yourself and team members accountable, make sure to identify and solve real problems rather than dancing around the hot pot and using distractions to shy away from what really needs addressing and improving.

Strive for continuous performance improvement

Complacency, satisfaction-overdose, and entitlements are devastating forces that are negatively related to team (and individual) effectiveness. Teams do not exist to create feel good situations. Leaders decide to invest in building great teams because great teams can enhance the organization’s performance significantly. Teams exist to make the enterprise more effective, flexible, innovative, and successful. If a team’s performance is not improving, the team must figure out why and resolve the issue. All teams are ultimately evaluated on their performance. Don’t let success be the breeding ground for complacency.

Get comfortable with tension, conflict, and team rivalry

The other side of the coin called team rivalry is that it weeds out inefficiencies, it keeps people focused, and it fuels the natural competitive nature of high performers. As Mark de Rond tells us: “Don’t confuse what things feel like, with what they really are… Differences of opinion are not just inevitable - They are useful and they are crucial”. They inspire new ideas and ways of doing things and they unravel blind spots and groupthink, all leading to more and better results. What team member or leader wouldn’t want that?

What have you done lately to improve the performance of the team(s) that you are a member of? 

When Facing Difficulty

Most of us tend to see difficulties as problems that need to be solved and many times we’re right in doing so. We often perceive difficulties to be problems that have good and bad solutions, that have right and wrong answers, that are either-or situations. We have learned to perceive and think this way during much of our education and upbringing. In quite a few cases this serves us well and we solve real problems. And in other cases it serves us very poorly since what we perceive to be a problem is really a polarity. Barry Johnson explains the difference between problems and polarities: “Polarities are ongoing, chronic issues that are unavoidable and unsolvable. Attempting to address them with traditional problem solving skills only makes things worse. There is significant competitive advantage for those leaders, teams, or organizations that can distinguish between a problem to solve and a polarity to manage and are effective with both”.

So we tend to see difficulties that are really polarities as problems that can and must be solved. This is a limited and counter-productive perspective and approach, knowing that quite a few difficult and challenging situations in life and business aren’t problems to be solved with an either-or solution, but polarities to be managed with the help of integrative thinking, through creating third alternatives, with ‘and also’ or ‘at the same time’ thinking. Some examples that you might find appealing:

-       Effectively manage your many work commitments while at the same time dedicating yourself to prioritizing home commitments.

-       Continuously seek to reduce costs while at the same time focus on improving the quality your products and services.

-       Embrace and initiate change and new opportunities while at the same time respect the value of stability, predictability, and tradition.

I therefore urge you, when faced with difficulty at work and at home, with colleagues and with family and friends, to ask yourself some fundamental questions:

1.    Am I dealing with a problem to be solved or a polarity to be managed?

2.    Do all involved agree on this assessment?

3.    How have I possibly contributed to this situation?

4.    To what extent do beliefs, perception, and awareness influence my assessment of this situation?

5.    What could be two totally different perspectives in addition to mine?

6.    Is this difficulty a problem that I can solve or an ongoing polarity that I'll have to manage?

7.    What role do my values and my fears and those of others play?

8.    What am I avoiding while dealing with this difficulty?

9.    How can the complexity of the situation be simplified without being simplistic?

10  How can we convert resistance to change and improvements into a resource for ongoing willingness and ability to growth and change?

11  What can I initiate to move from 'either-or' thinking to integrative 'both-and' thinking?

Wishing you insightful reflections and creative and integrative approaches when facing difficulty. 

The Words You Choose, The Beliefs You Communicate

Language shapes organizations, families, societies – it shapes every group, every institution, and every person. I think most of us know that it matters which words we choose and use in our attempts to motivate, guide, and inform our children. We know that teachers can greatly influence their students with their attitude and style, which is most prominently shown in the language they use when addressing their students. Yet often we use words and phrases that are just short of the opposite from what we are aiming to achieve whether it be in the home, the office, or at school: they are perceived as demotivating, confusing, negative, discouraging, hesitant.  We talk about what we don’t want to see rather than what we do want to see. We focus on old incidents thereby steering away from our main point. We focus on problems and blame rather than causes and solutions. We go on and on, losing attention and influence every second we continue on this nagging path. And, as you would want it to be, people listen to the language you use, to the themes you focus on, and to the words you choose. People around you interpret your words and your themes and act upon those interpretations, whether they do it consciously or not. Taking it even a step further, you can shape people’s beliefs (and your own) with your words and your themes.

I’m sad to say that what happens in organizations is often not that much different from what happens in families and in private life. There is a fair amount of negative, nagging, and numbing communication going around in organizations. Ineffective communication abound in the business arena, from silence, vague or mixed messages, hearing things "after the fact," distorted information, to receiving information overload. In the business setting, knowing what and how much to communicate, how to communicate it, to whom to communicate, when to communicate, and through what language comes only through a well thought out plan – the communication plan that defines and controls (or at least that’s the intention) the messages a company conveys to its customers, employees, stockholders, and to the general public. A communication plan should include objectives, strategies to achieve those objectives, clarity on who will deliver the messages and by what means, as well as the anticipated outcome of the efforts and how the results will be measured and evaluated. But it shouldn’t stop there, because with the best communication plan in the world, if front-line employees, leaders, and anyone and everyone in your organization is not fully aware and mindful of their spoken language and it’s effects, much of your influence is out of control. The spoken and written language is a big part of your organizational culture, just as it is a big part for societies and countries. For most politicians and for some business people, the words they speak are carefully crafted, but for many of us, in leading and in following positions, we do not consciously consider the words we use and the effects they will likely have on others. And that is because we don’t choose the words that we use. And we often don’t seem to understand how much our words and phrases are a result of the very beliefs and thinking patterns that they also help shape.

In my 22 year career as a business and leadership coach, I have used the language of my clients as one of the entry points to their belief system and thinking patterns. I have used their language to help them understand how they define themselves, others, and their relationships by the language they utter. We have used language as one of the available tools to increase their effectiveness. I feed back to them from our very first meeting what I hear them say and what strikes me in their use of words. We discuss the beliefs underlying their choice of words as well as the possible effects of their words on themselves (and not just in the case of self-descriptions) and on others. One of my clients 20 years ago spoke in terms of “I think I am rather well-liked, in general,….” and “They say I’m kind of good at technology, I guess.” The hesitance in this person’s language could have different causes, such as truly doubting his own abilities and strengths or the belief that he shouldn’t be bragging about himself. There are other possible dynamics at play, but the main point is that this client had started to believe his own words. He was reinforcing his underlying beliefs by building a vocab of hesitance and underestimation. Another example is war-language. I remain to be stunned by the many clients who use phrases such as “We’ll make sure we’ll get those bastards” (talking about a different department), or “The best way to get somewhere is to fight your way to the top in this company” – you get the picture, you’ve heard it yourself I’m sure. Many clients will tell me that it’s “just the way we talk about things here – don’t worry too much about that”, but it’s much more than that, with beliefs, assumptions, expectations, and thinking patterns to be discovered and influenced. Equally important, of course, I point it out when clients use positive, confident language or language that is inclusive and geared towards win-win situations.

Communication experts, from Thomas Gordon with his active listening and I-messages, to Paul Watzlawick with his axioms that you cannot not communicate and that communication is always content plus relationship, to Bert Decker, with his belief that you have to be believed to be heard, there has been much attention given to communication: How to communicate when discussions turn heated, how to deliver a perfectly informative and interesting speech, how to adjust your style of communication to different audiences, how to persuade a potential customer, or how to keep a longwinded colleague in line so as not to drag on the meeting once again. These are important aspects of communication, no denying that. I urge you, however, to start with the obvious. I urge you to look and listen to your daily comments, before and after the official meeting. I urge you to look and listen to remarks you make in the hallway or at lunchtime. I urge you to look and listen to your tone of voice, to the strength with which you declare something, to the words that you choose, and to the effects they might have on others. Are you convincing, are you passionate, are you respectful, are you clear, are you positive in what you say and how you say it? Are you aware of the beliefs that underlie your language? Are you aware of the beliefs that you are expressing with the language that you choose?

Something to develop in yourself and in others

1.Questioning

Assuming that you know when the time is right, it is very useful and powerful to share and not hold back your questions. Questions about the way business is done, questions when you have doubts about what your are asked to do, questions regarding habits and routines. This may be challenging on both sides of the questioning, however, the possible new ideas and perspectives, can generate discussions and thought processes on a deeper level and from a different perspective.

2.Forward thinking

With the questioning comes the suggestions and the problem-solving, even when others don’t see a problem that needs solving. You can make it a habit to construct and suggest new methods of approaching challenges and ways of improving processes as well as opportunities that others can’t even imagine yet.

3.Offering help to others and being the one others go to

More than ‘just’ being a team player, people who gladly and abundantly help others become more successful. They add tremendous value to the organization and to their own development. Make sure you are known as the person to be asked for help even if you’re not an expert in what they are struggling with. Sometimes active listening, sharp questioning, and directing the person in the right direction will do the job. You can be the one others on the team go to for guidance and advice. This way you’ll be noticed in the most acceptable way possible. Of course you want to make it a conscious and consistent effort to notice and acknowledge other people’s contributions.  

Three simple things to develop in yourself and in others – which one is first on your list?