4. People crave leaders with high EQ: The Athena Doctrine (Gerzema & D’Antonio, 2013) documents a worldwide study of the skills people seek in leaders. These include connectedness, humility, candor, patience, empathy, trustworthiness, openness, flexibility, vulnerability, and balance. That is basically a list of EQ competencies.
5. EQ requires willpower: Willpower is a finite (but replenishable) resource, and your job whittles away at your limited supply. Have you noticed that you have less patience at home after a tough day at school? Or, how tempting your favorite dessert is after you finish writing a difficult report or facilitating a conflict situation?
All of these things rely on willpower, and you only have so much. Roy Baumeister and John Tierney (2011) point out that our brain’s large frontal lobes developed to facilitate being part of large social groups—in other words, for emotional intelligence. Successful participation requires self-control. Self-control involves willpower. Research into willpower reveals the following two key lessons that we cannot ignore in our quests for higher EQ:
1. You have a finite amount of willpower that becomes depleted as you use it.
2. You use the same stock of willpower for all manner of tasks. You might think you have one reservoir of self-control for work, another for dieting, another for exercise, and another for being nice to your family. But … there are hidden connections among the wildly different things you do all day. You use the same supply of willpower to deal with frustrating traffic, tempting food, annoying colleagues, demanding bosses, pouting children (Baumeister & Tierney, 2011, p. 35).
They specifically cite control of emotional intelligence as a willpower depleter. Developing EQ competencies can increase the willpower reservoir in many ways, as you’ll see in the second half of this chapter. Think back to the opening vignettes in this chapter, though, and ponder how these otherwise competent leaders undervalued the importance of ensuring they had willpower available for EQ.
Fortunately, you can develop and increase EQ throughout your lifetime through deliberate practice while monitoring the impact on your effectiveness. Let’s turn to using a working model for accomplishing this.
Your EQ Focus
Although we’ll be exploring eight EQ skills (organized into four realms), a core principle of coaching—executive, group, or self-coaching—is to focus on no more than three goals or priorities at a time. In fact, one may be enough, considering how quickly that limited reservoir of willpower and self-control can drain away. You’ll have a chance to reflect on all eight, ponder which are most closely tied to the goal you identified in chapter 1 (page 9), and see which of the Twelve Lenses of Leadership most likely require that specific skill. You’ll find specific suggestions for EQ development in each of the lens-focused chapters (chapters 4–15).
In figure 3.1 (page 38), note the flow among the four realms and the eight specific skills. The model is neither static nor hierarchical. Further, most people find that their acumen with a skill ebbs and flows, depending on their environment, stress level, and even the EQ of those around them. They may get very different feedback at home and at the office.
Let’s explore each of these four realms and the skills inherent in them. Each of these sections asks you to self-assess your current level of EQ with a specific skill. At the end of this chapter, you’ll find a tool for making the best use of this information.
Figure 3.1: An EQ model for whole-child school leadership.
Emotional Self-Awareness
“Check your emotions at the door.” “Don’t smile until midterm.” “Stay objective.” These and other persistent workplace norms downplay the role of emotions as valuable information for taking action, making decisions, understanding how others see you, and many other things. Consider these two separate skills.
1. Recognizing your own emotional state: You can’t regulate your emotions if you aren’t aware of them. Do you sense when you are enthusiastic, frustrated, fearful, joyful, angry, and so on before others do? Do you note whether your emotions are healthy or unhealthy or productive or nonproductive for your current situation? Can you identify a remedy before it is too late?
2. Experiencing self-fulfillment: Imagine someone leading you who isn’t sure that he or she has accomplished anything meaningful. This EQ skill involves having meaningful goals tied to your values, and the confidence to plan and take steps to reach those goals. You also need a healthy balance between confidence in your own talents and abilities and the humility inherent in knowing you’ll need the talent and efforts of others to reach those goals.
Figure 3.2 highlights some markers you can use to assess your ability with these EQ skills.
Figure 3.2: Assess your emotional self-awareness.
Visit go.SolutionTree.com/leadership for a free reproducible version of this figure.
Self-Management of Emotions
Recognizing emotions is only the first step; managing them is essential to real effectiveness. Also note that exhibiting too much or too little control of emotions can be equally dangerous. For example, coaching clients often ask, “What could be bad about my ability to handle lots of stress?” The answer? You might have a tendency to assume, “If I can handle it, so can everyone else.”
Again, let’s look at two separate skills.
1. Managing and expressing emotions: The more accurately and specifically you can appraise your emotional state, the easier it is to identify and apply a remedy. For example, knowing you are overwhelmed rather than simply frustrated might spark an idea for delegating, seeking support, or saying no to the next request. Or, you might note rising impatience as a teacher describes a classroom incident and prompt yourself to employ active listening skills to ensure you exhibit the empathy the teacher deserves.
As a leader, your goal is expressing emotions appropriately and effectively in ways that build relationships and the vital atmosphere of trust. Emotional neutrality may actually decrease trust people have in leaders; people report that trust falters when they don’t think they can accurately read a leader’s mood (Pearman, Lombardo, & Eichinger, 2005).
Controlling your impulses falls into this skill as well. If you are a planner who seldom gives into impulses, remember that interrupting others, pushing for quick decisions, slips in emotional expression, and poor follow-through can all come from lack of impulse control.
2. Acting independently: One way to assess your ability with this skill is to ask yourself, “Can I make a tough call, even if it means facing disapproval or lack of harmony or worse?” A leader who can act independently works toward consensus. John Glaser (2005) cites the Quaker definition of consensus as “a process used to find the highest level of agreement without dividing the participants into factions” (p. 148). Effective leaders can make the tough call and employ other EQ skills as necessary to maintain trust and safety.
Figure 3.3 highlights some markers you can use to assess your ability with these EQ skills.