LEADERSHIP-EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE-Part 6 of 6

HIRING FOR PERFORMANCE

LEADERSHIP – Part 6 of 6 - Emotional Intelligence

Good morning this is Stephen J. Blakesley, CEO of GMS TALENT LP with our last and final part of the six part series on Leadership. Please remember that we are talking about attributes that enhance you and your leadership skills. The six parts are Presence,Visioning, Communication,Motivation,Crediting and today- Emotional Intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence applies to both talking and listening, two key skills for leaders in all positions. The more you have the these two, the better leader you will likely be.

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a relatively new term in the Business Skills category. It was first introduced by two gentlemen in 1989 and has since grown in importance as research and application has progressed. The early alert is that Emotional Intelligence is a learned skill and so if you have it you can get better and if you don’t have it you can get it. How cool is that?

So, let’s talk about the five parts of EI in the simplest of terms: Self-Awareness, Self-Management, Motivation, Social-Awareness, and Social-Management. Each of these 5 parts we have talked about in previous podcasts of Tell Me How. So today we are just going to talk about why Leaders need EI to be The Best. For a leader to be Emotionally healthy he/she has to be aware of what EI is and how to grow.

It all begins with knowing what emotions are: emotions are chemical reactions that occur in the brain that cause physiological reactions by the body. Let’s use that definition for our purposes today. So, it would seem that apart, from defining the words, one would need to know what emotions they are experiencing. The big ones and the little ones as well. Maybe, journaling for just a few weeks, you could log the emotions you are experiencing and what the cause of those emotions might be or from where they may have come. Like, coming from the emotion of anger, or happiness, or disgust or fear. What caused the emotions you are feeling now?- write in your journal just some cryptic notation so you will know or, at least, be on your toes when the next event comes along. Possibly you will be able to better manage the emotion when it presents itself, the next time. Journaling your emotions and their causes might be a good way to begin the process of growing your Emotional Intelligence. Just being aware of the events that have emotional influence on your body and the reaction you use to address them is a good beginning. Knowing how you are likely to react, in a given environment, is a good thing and called Self-Awareness.

Self-Awareness, incidentally, is thought to be the single most deficient of the five aspects of Emotional Intelligence.

Next, finding how to manage yourself (Self-Management) to always present the right image is a good thing but learning how to manage yourself to achieve the right objective is even better . That is usually the goal-to be a positive influence in moving your group toward a given objective. Being aware, then learning how to manage your own emotions is doing just that - being a leader whether you are the leader of not. Learning to manage your emotion is at the top of the list of things needed to be done to get the attention of others.

Learning to control your emotions and have them work for you instead of against you is always a positive thing. Control of emotion is always a plus. Knowing and controlling is the beginning to Emotional Intelligence.

Using emotions to Motivate yourself is not so unique. How do you do that? Well, using emotion to motivate is not new. In fact, it as been the key to Self-Motivation for sometime. For instance, how could you use FEAR to motivate yourself