“HOW am I as a leader?” vs. “WHO am I as a leader?”

Have you read the December Newsletter by Daniel Goleman?
Here is what I learned from Jan Griffiths’s interview with Daniel Goleman (the final part of this newsletter).

1. Why is Emotional Intelligence so important in leadership and culture?

(1) There is a huge MISUNDERSTANDING about how we THINK and how we FEEL.
We assume these two different things. Actually, the brain is not designed that way.
The human brain is designed so that we have FEELINGS about EVERYTHING we THINK. There is always a FEELING. The brain doesn’t distinguish between how you feel at home and how you feel at work.

(2) In the auto industry, leaders are proud of their command and control model. They are told to ignore feelings.
In a study with about 4,000 executives and evaluated their leadership styles and then asked the people who worked for them confidentially “How do you feel? What kind of emotional climate does this leader create?”
It turns out that the very worst style in terms of the climate it created was command and control.
The best was a leader who could articulate a shared meaning or purpose in what we do who inspired people, because when you inspire someone you get the best out of them. they are working for the cause, for the mission. And people will go way beyond the job description.

2. What is emotional intelligence?
It is being intelligent about emotion. There are 4 components of emotional intelligence:

(1) Self-awareness: you are AWARE of your own FEELINGS, you know what you are feeling, how it’s SHAPING your PERCEPTION, your THINKING, your IMPULSE TO ACT. You know how to use that information to manage your own emotions.

(2) Self-management: So you keep your negative emotions under control a bit. But you arouse the positive ones. The reason you love what you are doing.
That is very important for a leader because you have to begin by leading yourself.

(3) Empathy: knowing what the other people feel, without them telling you in words because they won’t tell you in words, they tell you in non-verbals, facial expression, tone of voice, and there are three kinds of empathy:
– Cognitive empathy: how I get how you think about this, that helps you communicate effectively.
– Emotional empathy: where you feel with the person, you sense what they feel, you feel it too. You can address that level whether explicitly or implicitly.
– Empathic concern: it means you care, you not only know how the person thinks and how they feel, you care about them and you communicate that to them in many different ways. And that means that they trust you. They are loyal to you. You are the kind of boss that people love to work for, rather than the kind of boss that people hate to work for.
Command and control style is more likely to put you in the hate-the-boss category than the love-boss category.

(4) Relationship management: Using all of that to handle your relationships well, to handle conflict, to create a team that feels very cohesive, that feels they’re on the same page.

3. Leadership is the ART of GETTING WORK DONE WELL THROUGH OTHER PEOPLE.

You have to motivate them, have to inspire them, have to create trust,

A study done by the Harvard Business School:
OPTIMAL STATE – a state where people are high-performing, there they are very satisfied with their jobs. So it correlates to low turnover, and being very engaged. Engagement is one of the usual metrics for any organization.
They are engaged, they feel really good, doing what they are doing and they feel connected to the people around them. That’s a high-performing person.
It’s emotional intelligence in leaders that’s more likely to create that optimal state in people who work for them.
4. BLAMING/ NEGATIVE FEEDBACK KILLS MOTIVATION

A study done at Google: it’s the FEELING of PSYCHOLOGY SAFETY – I feel safe enough, and I trust you enough that I can take the risk of suggesting something new. You need to feel safe enough to take the risk.

Fear certainly hampers innovation because innovation by definition is when you try, and you fail, and you try, and you fail and you iterate. If there is fear in the air, you are not going to put your best idea forward for fear of being judged or even worse being whacked.

Threatening people and instilling fear is the worst way to get them to perform well. The reason is they get defensive, and in the brain, they actually contract. They DO WHAT THEY KNOW IS SAFE. They DO NOT DO WHAT MIGHT BE THE BEST. The best way to get the performance out of people is to say what’s positive about them, what’s positive about what we are all doing together about our mission, and that is a very different way.

How do you give positive/ constructive feedback?
“I know you are good at this, and you are good at that, and you could GET BETTER at this, and HERE’S HOW”

What helps a company be innovative?
The answer is PEOPLE.

What helps people be innovative?
One thing that helps is having a leader who values it, encourages it, and supports it.

What kind of leader is that?
It’s probably not a command and control leader.

If you want innovation everywhere, I would encourage you to have emotional intelligence everywhere to help leaders develop it.

5. Good news: emotional intelligence can be developed or improved at any point in life. it is not like “I had that kind of childhood or my genes are such and such; I’ll never have it”.

It is really a question of what I need to work on or to improve. What habit is basically shooting me in the foot and what could replace it?

How are you as a leader?

“Who are you as a leader?” is what’s your position.
“How are you as a leader” is how do you actually operate with people

Advise for Leaders: Be more open, listen, and ask questions before saying what you think. Gather information. Don’t assume you know.

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What topics in this newsletter made you smile – a smile of understanding something you care about, of learning something new that lightens the darkness “I don’t know what I don’t know”?

Enjoy reading and contemplating!

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P.S. Daniel Goleman is an American psychologist, author of Emotional Intelligence #1 Best Seller, and science journalist. For twelve years, he wrote for The New York Times, reporting on the brain and behavioral sciences.