Qualitosis

Goleman’s 5 competencies of Emotional Intelligence are often referred to as the five “pillars” since they are the foundation of the emotionally intelligent behaviour.

However, should they be considered to be pillars or steps that need to be climbed sequentially to reach a reasonable level of emotional intelligent leadership in the workplace?

To explain this more easily, it is helpful to refer to the previous blog “Removing the Gobbledygook from Goleman’s 5 Competencies“

Here we explain the use of the heuristic replacements for the 5 competencies:

Self-Awareness = Appreciation

Self-Management = Trust

Social Awareness = Empathy

Social Management = Teamwork

Motivation = well…Motivation, duh

So why would we consider these to be steps not pillars?

You cannot build Trust without Appreciation – The Plumber

“I can do that by the end of the week, no problem…in fact I’ll have it done for you by tomorrow, latest”.

In a workplace environment, how can you be trusted to deliver to an adequate standard and on time if you don’t have the self-awareness to appreciate your own skills, limitations and the necessary contributions of others.

We all know this type of personality. On a football team they are often the most skilful but when they have the ball they try to dribble past all the opposition, inevitably losing possession. After a while the team loses trust in him and does not pass to him again.

I have a recent example of an excellent programmer who was always missing deadlines, not just by days, but by weeks or even months. This was having a significant impact on the team and was regularly eating up the project slack or “cushion”.

When we discussed the issues with him, it was because he felt he had to complete everything himself, even if there were areas outside his competence that he could have asked for help with. Despite discussing this with him, he would continue to work exceptionally long hours and still miss his deadlines. As a result, despite his obvious abilities, we were forced to rely less an less on him.

You cannot show real Empathy without Trust – The Actor

“You smell of hidden motives, get away from me”

Empathy without Trust is Insincerity. Before a leader can show real empathy, he or she needs to have built a relationship of trust with the Team. This means putting words into action, for example: always being considerate when under stress, reacting positively when opened up to, welcoming feedback or criticism, celebrating others’ ideas.

It is hard to over-estimate how much a single failure in this respect can undermine trust and destroy any amount of empathy to register with the team.

I remember a regional Human Resources manager who was hosting his latest initiative, the Friday morning croissants. I was listening to him espouse the benefits of this weekly get together as a way of getting informal feedback from the hard-working and stressed staff. I took advantage of this moment of empathy to make a suggestion as to how we could restructure the employee benefits to add extra value to the staff – at no extra cost. This was actually something I had been thinking about for several months. He responded “Well, if you don’t like the way we do things, you can go work somewhere else”. As I was wondering if he was joking, he turned and walked off – he wasn’t joking. His motive for the croissants wasn’t to get feedback at all, it was to tick a box to achieve an annual objective. I didn’t volunteer any suggestions after that.

You can’t build a Team without Empathy – The Narcissist

“One of my greatest assets is my humility”

We were in an off-site team-building session for the senior management. The facilitator asked us all to note down three ways we could motivate the rest of the organisation. The company had been under pressure because the country had just undergone a sharp currency devaluation. Staff had been cut back drastically and the remaining employees had their pay frozen, despite rampant inflation. Many were working double-shifts just to be able to pay their mortgages. The company was still making profits however, just not as much as previously. Several key employees had left or were in the process of leaving to rival companies which had given inflation-adjusting pay rises of up to 50%.

The facilitator went round the room, listing down our suggestions on a flip chart. Most of them were similar and essentially concerned giving an exceptional mid-year pay-rise, something that the managers themselves also needed themselves to get by. This would have required approval from the US HQ. However, when the turn came the General Manager, he only had one suggestion. To win another major contract. That in his mind would lift the spirits and turn the situation around.

This particular session ran over time with the General Manager insisting to the facilitator that the winning of a major contract had to be the number one objective to improve staff morale, despite all the other opinions and some raised tempers. When the facilitator in frustration suggested that for the sake of the exercise, it should be a team decision. When he was overruled, he accidentally blurted out to the General Manager “You know what, you have a serious problem with your ego!”

Fortunately, it’s rare to come across such narcissists in everyday life, but unfortunately it’s all too frequent at the top of organisations which value and reward based on financial performance over behavioural performance.

You can’t motivate a Team without a Team – The Slave-Driver

“The beatings will continue until moral improves”

The slave-driver is the archetypal “Boss”. He believes that staff need to be pushed, not encouraged. He will therefore threaten, coerce and bully the team into higher, but temporary levels of performance. The higher the levels of pressure, the harder he will push. Good team members will drop like flies and only the thick-skinned or desperate will survive.

This is the worst form of management for the long term success of a business and it is the most common cause of chronic Qualitosis.

I actually first heard the phrase “The beatings will continue until moral improves” from a fellow team-member while on a large IT implementation in the US. Every Tuesday morning we would have a pre-work meeting of all the team leaders on the project – around 30 would attend each meeting.

The format was for the Project Manager to stand at the front and to go through each team leaders’ objectives for the previous week, demand an explanation for any missed deadline and humiliate anyone for any “unacceptable” failure. Any mention of another team’s contribution to the delay would result in a cross-questioning to find out who was ultimately to blame, playing one off against the other in front of the whole team.

The dread of these meetings would start almost before the weekend. In one respect, they did motivate the team to meet deadlines, but the undermining of trust between teams and towards the Project Manager, meant that co-operation disintegrated and ultimately the goal shared by all of the team was to close out the project and go work somewhere else – even if it meant escaping through a sewer pipe to reach freedom.

You cannot motivate a team unless you have first built a team

Motivation is the energiser – The Leader

“Anyone who shows Appreciation, engenders Trust, feels Empathy and can build a team, he or she just needs a desire to achieve the goal to become an infectious leader”

The final ingredient in becoming the effective, emotionally intelligent leader is the Motivation to infect the team. He or she has to believe in the goal and the importance of the goal. As Bill Shankly said “Some people think that football is a matter of life and death. I assure you, it’s much more serious than that.” Without the energy that is created by an overriding personal goal and belief, all of the other steps will stagnate.

Still on the theme of football, I grew up near Ipswich in the 1970s and 80s and was lucky enough to be able to watch the great Ipswich Town team of that era, managed by Sir Bobby Robson. In those days we could wander over to the practice pitch and ask the coach for autographs of our heroes. Little did I know at the time that it would be that same coach who would become the hero, such was his humility. As an indication of how he led his teams he was posthumously awarded the FIFA Fair Play Award, for the “gentlemanly qualities he showed throughout his career as a player and coach”. There are many stories and anecdotes about what an exceptional man he was, but one in particular sticks in my mind. Whenever he would start to coach a new team, he would drive the squad to Durham in the north of England and take them down the mines where his father worked. The intention was so that the players would always appreciate how lucky they were – the first step in they themselves becoming leaders with EQ.

Taking the first step

The example of Bobby Robson (above) illustrates that the fundamental step is appreciation and self-awareness. It’s not just that it is the foundation for all the other steps but also that it is probably the easiest to learn in the workplace… fundamentally through feedback from colleagues.

In future blogs we will look at how we can effectively and efficiently give and receive feedback, raising our collective self-awareness and appreciation of how we all contribute to improving the workplace environment.