Tag: leadership | Page 3 | Key Step Media

Posted on November 30, 2017November 12, 2020 by Matthew Lippincott

Research: How Teamwork Powers Mindful {and Effective} Leadership

More effective teams result from a leader’s investment in their personal development of self-awareness, emotional self-management, social awareness, and relationship management.

This is one of the findings from my in-depth interviews with 42 leaders exploring the role of mindfulness in strengthening their leadership capabilities. The study also included use of the Emotional and Social Competency Indicator (ESCI) model developed by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis, and found all twelve of the leadership competencies present in the participants. Teamwork was the competency most highly referenced by the participants, who provided detailed descriptions about the value they had received from focusing on cultivating their own, and other’s capabilities to be better team members.

Teamwork is defined by cooperative rather than separate, or competitive work. It also includes working towards common objectives, and taking ownership of both positive and negative outcomes. Individuals with strength in this competency will be able to build and maintain working relationships, in addition to promoting an environment conducive to input from teammates. They will also be:

Supportive of other teammates or group members
Involved in facilitating cooperation
Appreciative and respectful of others’ opinions and suggestions

“Teamwork is a competency of Emotional Intelligence that empowers effective leadership.”

The leaders I interviewed linked teamwork to a variety of benefits, including greater innovation, employee autonomy, and business growth. They also reported that their improved ability to develop effective teams resulted in stronger relationships between teammates, and greater loyalty to the organization. Finally, participants credited mindfulness with helping them understand their own role in being a good team member in the context of relationships with subordinates, peers and superiors. Leaders tied these improvements to their effectiveness, directly attributing career success to the combination of greater team capabilities, and the willingness of others to help them.

How Leaders Create Cultures Conducive to Teamwork

Study participants demonstrated a working understanding of multiple leadership theories, such as Situational, Transactional, and Transformational. Their leadership behaviors, however, tended to be more reflective of the relational leadership theory and dispersed leadership approaches. Specifically, they understood the importance of being able to meet the needs of the people and groups they worked with, and realized that the definition of a good teammate may not be the same for everyone. They also knew that they, and members of their teams, may need to adapt their behaviors in order to successfully align with the frequently changing goals of the organization.

Participants reported that investing in attentiveness to others had a powerful impact on the strength of their relationships. The HR head for a leading global manufacturing firm summarized this as “…the deepness of listening and relating to a person and helping them connect on an individual level so they feel valued and connected to you as a leader,” which he directly attributed to improved team performance. A leader with a Fortune 10 Firm also touched on the importance of being open to receiving feedback from his direct reports: “I asked for feedback and insights from the people that I work with, and therefore they felt comfortable giving it to me.”

The importance of following through on commitments to coworkers was also stressed by participants. For example, the senior legal counsel for a leading healthcare product manufacturer shared the positive impact that her previous managers’ interest in her work life balance had on their relationship. As a result, she made sure to care for her direct reports in the same way, and take on additional personal workload if necessary: “…I want to make sure that people when they’re off, they’re truly off…certainly something can wait or we’ll try to get something else done.”

“Effective leaders model teamwork by listening to their staff, asking for feedback, and ensuring work/life balance.”

Making certain to not be perceived by others as paying lip service to concepts such as participation, respect, and fairness was highlighted by participants. A Department Head for a major US Hospital Network illustrated this point when describing the way he interacted with a newly promoted manager on his team: “I’ve decided to allow space for her and her team to design the new model, and giving everyone space to have their own thoughts and ideas.” His comments echoed what other leaders had to say about the relationship between team performance and the leader ensuring that each member feels valued and motivated to make continued contributions.

How to Create a Stronger Team

Leaders were consistent in expressing their belief that you need to pay careful attention to being a good teammate if you want to be a member and/or leader of a high performing team.

This includes study and refinement of team development activities, and active observation of whether or not your interactions with others make them willing to support you as a teammate. These aspects of cultivating teamwork were summarized by a participant who has held Controller and CFO roles for three leading corporations: “I’m being respectful and…really listening, really understanding where they’re coming from… and then reflecting.”

Some steps you can take to promote teamwork that were described by participants include:

Work with your team to agree on a formal description of a good teammate
Jointly design a plan to help each member become a good teammate
Create and maintain open feedback channels
Focus on a culture of improvement, aimed at learning from mistakes

It is also important to keep in mind that building trust with your teammates requires authentic and compassionate behavior on your part. This means being available to openly discuss their fears and concerns, and working with them to find ways to manage these issues. Making a sincere effort to help teammates manage stressful situations more effectively will also contribute to greater engagement, as will modelling the behaviors you expect of others in the workplace.

Recommended Reading:

Our new series of primers focus on the 12 Emotional and Social Intelligence Leadership Competencies, including Emotional Self-Awareness, Adaptability, Influence, Teamwork, and others.

The primers are written by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis, co-creators of the Emotional and Social Intelligence Leadership Competency Model, along with a range of colleagues, thought-leaders, researchers, and leaders with expertise in the various competencies.

See the full list of primers by topic, or get the full collection!

Posted on November 20, 2017November 12, 2020 by Matthew Taylor

Coaching for Conflict with Self-Awareness and Self-Management

The more I have learned about the emotionally intelligent leadership competencies, the more I am struck by how little most other conflict management trainings and literature focus on self-awareness and self-management. Some models focus on social awareness, incorporating listening for other perspectives, but most focus almost exclusively on relationship management “moves” – i.e. how we interact productively with others in conflict.

In my experience, any approach not grounded in the self is not likely to succeed. The best conflict “moves” in the world won’t help me engage effectively in our conflict if I arrive feeling that I’m right, you intentionally hurt me, and that what I really want is “justice.”

Before we focus on strategies to manage conflict, we must raise critical self-awareness and build self-management so that we are able to bring our best selves to any relationships in our lives – personal or professional. In my coaching of people in conflict, this rigorous self work begins with exploring the baggage and stories that might be getting in our own way. Then it moves to self-management, exploring how we can manage our baggage and stories so that we can effectively communicate with others in conflict.

“Before we can resolve conflict, we must develop self-awareness and self-management, and bring our best selves.”

What baggage might be getting in your way?

As a leadership coach, my first goal is to help people see how their emotional reactions to conflict have triggered their “baggage’’, or the thoughts, beliefs, emotions and behaviors that limit their ability to effectively engage others. This happens through asking a series of questions that include some combination of the following:

Tell me exactly when in this conflict you were first aware of having a strong negative emotion?
Tell me what emotions you were feeling? (follow up with probing questions and only accept answers that are actually emotions)
Exactly what happened that triggered these emotions?
When you were feeling these emotions, what thoughts were going through your head?
And so what did you do?
How do you think your actions served you, and how do you think they might have gotten in the way of resolving your conflict?
If you had to name what you really wanted to happen—your real goal—what would you say?

What stories might be getting in your way?

Once people are able to see their baggage more clearly, they are ready to consider how their stories—about other people involved and about what actually happened—may also need to be reconsidered. My next goal, then, is to help them become aware of their negative stories, focusing mostly on the person or people on the other side of the conflict. This work happens through the following questions:

When you were/are feeling the strong emotions you have named, what story are you telling yourself about the person/people on the other side of the conflict?
What evidence do you have that supports your story?
How does your story about this person or people serve you, and how does it get in your way of engaging effectively in this conflict?
What other stories might be true about this person/people and their emotions, values and behaviors?

“Manage your own baggage and stories first, then you’re emotionally ready to address conflict.”

How can you manage your baggage and stories?

Getting to awareness about our baggage and stories tends to be pretty enlightening for most people in conflict because we are least likely to be aware when we are feeling wronged by others. Awareness alone, however, does not mean we are prepared to effectively engage with others in a conflict. We also need to deliberately manage our baggage and stories in the moment.

To manage the baggage, I focus people on self-management strategies they can use at the moment they feel emotionally triggered. Coaching for emotional self-management follows this line of questioning:

How can you manage the emotional triggers that are getting in your way right now?
What do you need to do for your true goal to be working through this conflict, and what can you do in the moment to hold onto this goal?

Helping people manage their stories is usually the highest impact self-management coaching for people in conflict. We explore what they need to believe about the other person/group in the conflict to effectively engage them. I help them build the emotional “muscle” of replacing negative stories with “noble” ones by engaging them in the following exercise:

Make a list of the real challenges this person is facing, and the emotions that feel related to this conflict. What can you genuinely empathize with?
Write a list of at least five aspects of the other’s noble story that you respect or value. These may include: values they hold; positive shared experiences; behaviors and actions that positively reflect on their character; their real strengths and past successes; the noble intentions that drive their actions

Without fail, after making this list people notice an immediate positive shift in their emotions connected to the other person/people with whom they are in conflict. I charge them with reading their list before their next engagement and noticing how it impacts how they show up differently to the interaction. People usually report that they are suddenly able to engage without the negative emotions they have been bringing up to this point, and they are able to listen with real curiosity to other people’s experiences and interpretations of the conflict. This, in turn, prevents escalation, and may even prevent future conflicts from coming up.

Conclusion

When we add rigorous self work to our conflict management coaching, we make it exponentially more likely that our people will effectively access the relationship management strategies they learn in most programs and literature in the field. When we help people become aware of their emotions and the baggage and stories they trigger, they realize the extent to which they are working from assumptions without evidence. They become motivated to manage their baggage and revise their stories about others involved in their conflict.

When you self manage effectively, two things happen. First, you show up able to listen with curiosity to other perspectives. Second, you show up reflecting other people’s noble stories back to them. When we reflect people’s noble stories—their best selves—to them, that’s typically how they will show up. If our goal is truly to resolve conflict, then shouldn’t we be inviting our best selves to the conversation?

“When we reflect people’s noble stories – their best selves – to them, that’s typically how they’ll show up.”

Recommended Reading:

In Conflict Management: A Primer, Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and colleagues introduce Emotional Intelligence and explore the many facets of approaching conflict management with skill and positivity.

In a relatively short read, the authors illustrate how to frame conflict as an opportunity rather than a burden, how to maintain bonds despite differing perspectives, and how to blend mindfulness and thoughtful analysis into professional relationships that work.

For more in-depth understanding of emotional and social intelligence in leadership, see the full primer collection or the Crucial Competence video series.

Posted on October 26, 2017November 12, 2020 by Ann Flanagan Petry

Focus: Your Greatest Ally in Managing Conflict

Focus is an important skill for leaders. Yet, it is extremely difficult to remain focused at times when emotions are high. For example, who hasn’t experienced feeling disregarded, discounted, dismissed, or just plain dissed by a boss or co-worker? Even if no words are exchanged, emotions like anger and hurt flare up. Whether the threat comes from a real or imagined interaction hardly matters. The primitive part of the brain developed specifically for survival reacts. Known as the amygdala, this almond-shape set of neurons plays a key role in the processing of emotions, especially fear responses.

Threats of any kind including feeling disregarded or discounted cause us to quickly lose focus. Yet, focus is our biggest ally when it comes to responding wisely to conflict. You may think of focus as directing your attention to one thing while filtering out other things. However, research shows that focus is more complex than that. In fact, we focus in different ways for different purposes. Each of these types of focus is critical when it comes to conflict management.

Different Types of Focus

The various types of focus fall into three broad categories. The first two—focusing on self and focusing on others—help you develop emotional intelligence. The third, focusing on the wider world, can improve your ability to devise strategy, innovate, and manage organizations. These ways of paying attention are vital to navigating individual and team interactions. Happily, you can become a more focused leader with the right kinds of practices[1].

Being able to train your attention inward on yourself is the first type of focus, and it’s at the heart of self-awareness. In fact, it is considered a foundational practice for development of emotional intelligence. Inner focus helps you understand the weather patterns of your own mind, and choose how to respond in any given moment – especially amidst turbulence.

Focusing on others, the second type, correlates with empathy. The ability to consider another person’s point of view is a critical skill in all relationships. It is central to our ability to connect with others.

Global or systems thinking is the third type of focus. It is especially important in the development of social awareness. This requires deliberate cognitive effort to disengage from default mental habits in order to focus more broadly and with fresh eyes.

Focus entails turning your attention inward, empathizing, and being systems-aware.

Focus in Action

Consider the story of a colleague. Jack presented his project to a group of senior executives and, when one of them dismissed his data as “all wrong,” he was flooded with anxiety. His heart was racing, and his mind was playing out worse case scenarios… even imagining being kicked off the project. Yet, he had enough practice in mindfully tuning into his thoughts, feelings and physical reactions, that he noticed the anxiety quickly. Crazy as it sounds, simply noticing his own anxiety lessened it. He intentionally chose not to let fear of failure take over. Painful as it was, he leaned into his anxiety and stayed focused on the person challenging him. He asked for more information and agreed to revisit his data.

This wouldn’t have been the case just a year prior. Indeed, Jack was prone to outbursts, especially when he felt someone was questioning his work. His default was an expletive laden response. His objective: overwhelm and overpower naysayers with verbal aggression.

An executive coach was brought in to work with his team because there was a lot of conflict. She was an aikido master, and a psychologist. The team completed Emotional and Social Competency 360’s and as you might imagine, Jack was described by peers as angry, unpleasant, and difficult to work with. He didn’t deny it. The coach’s question was simple: “How is that working for you?” He concluded, not all that well.

With that realization, he set out a plan to deal with his anger. No easy task given he had a lifetime of practice in flying off the handle. He would now be learning three new habits grounded in focus.

Inner Focus: mindful awareness. He used a smart phone app for daily guided breath and body practices to strengthen concentration and awareness.
Other Focus: He learned about interpersonal focus practices. This required intentionally listening with curiosity. He worked on taking in the perspective of others.
Focus on the wider world or more open awareness. He learned there often wasn’t one right answer, especially given the complexity of his organization. He realized he didn’t need to always have the right answer, either. This freed him up to focus more broadly and as a result he became more creative and could think outside the box.

Leaders, you don’t have to be at the mercy of your emotions. Focus and attention training helps.

It took weeks of daily exercises along with personal reflection to build his ability to focus. However, he described seeing results within the first few weeks of initiating the plan.

Basically, he began to feel in control – like he had better options. He recognized he didn’t have to be at the mercy of his emotions. Being able to direct his attention where he wanted it and keep it there despite difficult conversations or stressful projects was empowering. Even discovering that humans are wired for survival and that we need to override basic reactions to false threats was hugely eye opening for Jack – it became less personal and more about using all the tools he had at his disposal.

By making focus an ally, leaders can more gracefully navigate turmoil. No matter what the source of the turmoil, whether it is internal, like two competing priorities, or external such as a disagreement with a client or co-worker, it pays to be able to choose where to put your focus. With practice, you can direct your attention for your own and others benefit.

Recommended Reading:

In Conflict Management: A Primer, Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and colleagues introduce Emotional Intelligence and explore the many facets of approaching conflict management with skill and positivity.

In a relatively short read, the authors illustrate how to frame conflict as an opportunity rather than a burden, how to maintain bonds despite differing perspectives, and how to blend mindfulness and thoughtful analysis into professional relationships that work.

[1] Daniel Goleman, Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, 2013; Daniel Goleman and Peter Senge, Triple Focus: A New Approach to Education, 2013.

Posted on September 28, 2017January 14, 2022 by Matthew Taylor

Coaching, Teaching, Consulting: What’s the Difference?

coaching, consulting, teaching

As the Senior Director of Adaptive Leadership for the Achievement First Charter School Network, I coach for the full range of leadership roles with a focus on emotional intelligence. I’ve been developing leaders for over ten years, but I’d like to tell you a story about how I learned to develop the emotional intelligence competency of Coach and Mentor early on, and how that lead to a refined understanding of the differences between coaching, teaching, and consulting.

The Muddled Approach

David seemed to be struggling to manage his time and take decisive action. This surprised me, as I promoted him from team lead to department manager because of his incredible organization and effective problem solving. So, I dove into developing David’s personal organization system. But that seemed fine, and our work there didn’t improve his performance. David then told me that he just needed a thought partner to solve new kinds of challenges. I shifted to that, assuming that David would learn over time if I lead him to, or just told him, the right answers the first time. Several weeks passed and I realized that David’s task management only got better on the challenges we discussed in our meetings, but not on other issues where I anticipated he’d make progress on his own.

At this point, I wasn’t sure what more I could do for David. There was something going on here that I doubted I could teach him. I began to wonder whether David had the skills and abilities that his role required.

So what went wrong? Ultimately, this is an unfortunate unfolding of events, because I attributed a weakness to David that was actually about my own failure to give him what he needed to grow.

When Teaching and Consulting are Not Enough

Back then I would have told you that I was coaching David, and many managers would agree with me. Since then I have learned from the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and my mentors at the Teleos Institute that I was actually teaching and consulting, not coaching. I have learned in my own work that knowing the difference and being able to match the right approach to the right growth area is critical to developing leaders.

So far in my David story I had been teaching (modeling, practicing, and giving feedback on a skill) and consulting (giving advice and co-creating). I had pushed on his observable skills and knowledge because I assumed that I could SEE David’s obstacle to growth. This would be true if David’s growth area were just a skill gap, but David kept hitting a brick wall. Strong managers who coach know that when someone like David hits a wall with technical skill development, there’s something deeper going on, an obstacle to growth that we can’t see.

In their training related to Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence model, Korn Ferry Hay Group uses the metaphor of the iceberg to explain that there is a whole set of characteristics we have that are hard to see, and that play a role in our ability to develop new competencies.¹

It is easy to see the skills and knowledge that are the “above the surface” part of the iceberg. It’s harder to see values, self-image, and motives. Sometimes these deeply personal characteristics “below the surface” get in the way of our growth. Teaching and consulting alone won’t work when the challenge is below the surface. That’s when we need to coach.

Knowing When to Coach: Technical vs. Adaptive (Or Skill vs. Will)

The concept of technical vs. adaptive challenges has helped me make the right decision about when to coach as a manager. Technical challenges require us to learn new skills and knowledge about something we’ve already got in our wheel-house, and that is consistent with the way we see the world.

Adaptive challenges go beyond skill and knowledge acquisition. They demand a shift in the way we see the world and ourselves. If it’s adaptive, it hits us below the surface at our values, character traits, core motives, and beliefs.²Quite often, as in David’s case, managers who attack technical skill building quickly discover that the obstacle is actually adaptive. When skill growth stagnates, strong coaches ask themselves a simple question: “Is this a skill issue or a will issue?” When they sense an adaptive or will-related challenge they pivot to coaching. Strong coaches will move back and forth between teaching, consulting, and coaching over time, but they always make a deliberate choice about which hat they are wearing.

“Strong coaches can intentionally move back and forth between teaching, consulting, and coaching as needed.”

A good coach helped me realize that David’s obstacle was an adaptive one. I stopped teaching him how to organize his time and consulting him on technical problems, and I started asking him questions. We dissected specific times when he was getting stuck and I asked him how he was feeling and what was going on in his head in the moment. We discovered that David’s greatest strength, his analytical mind, was turning against him in the face of multiple new challenges and his ensuing feelings of incompetence. When a new challenge came up, David got so in his head about the many potential solutions and his inability to choose that he defaulted to answering email or executing tasks that made him feel successful.

Our coaching shifted to how he could self-manage his limiting emotions and behaviors, and manage his brain so he could settle on one sound decision. I deeply believe that managers can coach. The key is to know when to coach, and to shift our focus to what’s below-the-surface. If we can accept that we don’t have the answers there, then we can facilitate a conversation that helps our people surface their unseen obstacles and tap into their full potential.

To summarize the difference between these three approaches

Teaching is when a manager models, guides practice, observes practice and gives performance feedback, and is appropriate when someone has a skill or knowledge gap.

Consulting is asking guiding questioning, giving advice, and co-creating, and is appropriate when someone needs a thought partner to help solve problems.

Coaching is supporting someone to uncover their internal obstacles and to learn how to manage them, and is appropriate when a manager realizes that skill and knowledge gaps are not the primary obstacle to performance.

Recommended Reading:

In Coach and Mentor: A Primer, Daniel Goleman, Matthew Taylor, and colleagues introduce Emotional Intelligence and dive deep into the Coach and Mentor Competency, exploring what’s needed to develop this capacity in leadership.

In a relatively short read, the authors illustrate the valuable skills needed to foster the long-term learning or development of others by giving feedback and support.

See the full list of primers by topic, or get the complete Emotional Intelligence leadership competency collection!

References:

Hay Group. “What is a Competency” from Hay Group Accreditation Training Presentation (Boston, MA, 2013).
Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, (2002) Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the Dangers of Leading. (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2002).

“Coaching is supporting someone to uncover their internal obstacles and to learn how to manage them.”

Posted on September 28, 2017November 12, 2020 by Matthew Lippincott

Want High Performing Teams? Invest in Coaching and Mentoring

coach and mentor emotional intelligence

Investment in coaching and mentoring activity can have a positive, or even transformative, impact on leader effectiveness. By focusing on coaching and mentoring, leaders can help their team develop Emotional and Social Intelligence (ESI) competencies and minimize the impact of the negative aspects of organizational culture on performance. These are some of the results of my analysis of in-depth interviews with 42 leaders, which included use of the ESI model developed by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis.

Successful coaching and mentoring is seen in leaders with a commitment to career-oriented development of others.

This includes guiding others to identify and follow through on their own strategies for improvement. Since many of the leaders I interviewed had lengthy and successful leadership careers, it was not surprising that this topic was the second most frequently referenced competency identified in the study. This competency is exemplified in leaders who:

Recognize others’ strengths
Provide ongoing performance improvement-oriented feedback
Encourage others

Participants also clearly expressed that their own career successes were linked to the higher performing teams they created through consistent coaching and mentoring. Many stressed the importance of this approach, often reporting that it accounted for 15-20% of their time.

The participants in my study said that mindfulness helped them develop the level of self-awareness and social awareness they needed to identify how to coach and mentor in an effective way. This included identifying interpersonal cues needed to determine whether or not their behaviors were having the desired effect. A part of this process also required leaders to regularly reflect upon what others need, and how to use that understanding in a way that their subordinates and peers would respond to.

Many leaders also reported coming to the realization that a leader/follower relationship is one of co-dependence. Therefore, the leader must systematically let go of thoughts and behaviors motivated solely by their personal interests. Instead, they began to base their decisions on two core values that appeal to everyone:

Delivering clear value to the organization, and
Ensuring that subordinates are able to do so as effectively as possible

“Being a “coach and mentor” to others has very real, measurable value for emotionally intelligent leaders.”

The Value of Coaching and Mentoring

The leaders I interviewed indicated that much of this activity was voluntary on their part. However, they also reported that their commitment to coaching and mentoring was well worth the investment of their time, and linked it to numerous benefits, including:

More innovation and voluntary contributions from direct reports
Greater team and individual autonomy
Improved team synergy and performance
Reduced workload and less stress for the leader

Participants described the creation of strong, intra-team relationships that helped to address negative aspects of organizational culture, such as concerns about job security and disruption within the workplace. For example, subordinates responded positively to development efforts that increased their market value and ability to advance and/or move laterally, if needed. Leaders also provided examples of their efforts contributing to an enduring, trust-based professional/personal network that transcended individual organizations.

Authentic, supportive relationships that extend beyond traditional workplace boundaries were specifically linked to improved team output as well. For instance, leaders commented on the value they experienced by openly sharing stories of personal struggles interfering with their workplace performance. They also reported making a point of identifying when their direct reports and peers seemed to be having similar difficulties, and proactively creating a channel for safe, open dialogue focused on helping.

Coaching and Mentoring in Action

The leaders in my study identified a variety of forms of effective coaching and mentoring activity. A common strategy was obtaining organizational resources to support training requirements. However, the way in which leaders interacted with their direct reports on a daily basis was also a key part of their approach. For example, a senior manager with a global engineering and manufacturing firm described an emphasis on “stretch assignments” and cultivating autonomy: “… I step back and allow people to lead me so that I am supporting them and giving them the courage to do something that they are not used to doing.”

Examples like this showed that leaders were capable of utilizing the scaffolding concept for supporting learning and development set forth by Dixon, Carnine, and Kameenui. This strategy reflects an understanding of the importance of a knowledgeable person being available to provide input and direction during the process of development, with the aim of gradually transitioning to independent action.

Another senior leader, with a major international manufacturing company, focused discussion on the value of action-oriented feedback: “…I just said that it’s really important that you ask these questions during your interaction with the client… it would’ve been a much more natural part of their conversation, rather than me entering into that conversation later.” This illustrates the importance of utilizing highly contextualized, task-centered interventions to develop understanding of the processes and interrelated variables involved in solving problems. The importance of this level of understanding has been explored in the work of Weick and Roberts and leaders described developing it with a method that aligns with the Direct Instruction model for improving skill acquisition and retention.

Getting Started

In addition to making a sincere effort to make training and development resources available to subordinates, a strategy for effective coaching and mentoring activity also includes the following:

Equal participation of subordinates in performance plan design
Creation of a vision for an “ideal working relationship” between leader and follower
Agreement on, and full understanding of, measurement criteria and progress tracking
Modelling mutual respect (turn off your devices during meetings), and
Inclusion of stretch assignments coupled with supportive, yet constructive, feedback

Based on what leaders told me, I recommend working towards an intermingling of mindfulness practice and coaching and mentoring activities. For example, maintain focus on the importance of diligent, daily coaching and mentoring activity, as well as the reasons for making it a priority. In this context, give additional attention to the competencies of empathy, emotional self-control, and influence as enablers of your commitment to develop others. This, in turn, will help you identify activities and opportunities for achieving those goals.

Recommended Reading:

In Coach and Mentor: A Primer, Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and colleagues introduce Emotional Intelligence and dive deep into the Coach and Mentor Competency, exploring what’s needed to develop this capacity in leadership.

In a relatively short read, the authors illustrate the valuable skills needed to foster the long-term learning or development of others by giving feedback and support.

“Here’s what it means to be a “coach and mentor” with Emotional Intelligence.”

Posted on September 26, 2017November 12, 2020 by Victor Morrison

The Role of Trust and Intuition in Mentorship

Acting as a coach/mentor is one of the best expressions of leadership and, in particular, mindful leadership. An engaged and connected leader doesn’t see coaching or mentoring as an act to be performed or a checklist to be completed, but rather a way of being in the workplace, leading by example and having the time to offer constructive feedback.

I want to share some examples to clarify the coach/mentor relationship and how it might work with an employee. The examples are not meant to be comprehensive, but rather to illustrate the many facets of mentoring. They come from managers and employees I have worked with who shared their experience with me.

Tap Into Intuition

Jane and I worked together for 4 years. She was a Director and I served as CEO. When asked for an example of mentoring, she said that I consistently encouraged and supported her to check in with her heart and her gut. She remembered me saying that there are a million rational reasons to make a case for or against something, but each one of us has an intuition to connect to. This idea resonated with her and she continues to practice self-awareness, identifying and paying attention to that instinct/intuition when she is making decisions.

Similarly, Julie described a situation with a customer that she brought up with our leadership team because of some specific violent and threatening behavior. She wanted the leadership team to be aware of the situation. Everyone jumped in with their opinion about what she should have done and what she should do next. She remembered me interrupting the discussion and asking her if she knew what she wanted to do. She said she did. I said, “Then it’s done, and our job is to support you in executing your decision.”

Julie, like Jane, worried whether or not she’d made the right decision and if there might have been a better decision. In reflecting on this almost a decade later, she understands that there wasn’t a right answer, but rather the best one for her, her department, and the customer at the time. She said that, in that moment, having a supportive boss helped her see the significance of staying true to herself and her gut instinct and in turn the importance of supporting others who worked for her to be true to themselves.

The takeaway from these two examples for the coach/mentor is understanding that your role is not to try to make everyone be like you. Each of us has an authentic style and when we make decisions or act in congruence with who we are it will invariably be better for ourselves and the business.

“Leaders: Understand your mentoring role is not to try to make everyone be like you.”

Cultivate A Climate of Trust

Rebecca, VP of Operations for a natural food company, was trying to manage a situation in which one of her senior managers, Betsy, was having personality differences with the founder/owner of the company. Rebecca fell into the trap of micro-managing Betsy because she was afraid that if Betsy did something the owner didn’t like it would reflect back on her. The result was that Betsy didn’t feel supported by Rebecca or the owner and Rebecca felt continual fear and stress that something was going to go wrong. This dynamic escalated to a palpable tension that permeated the organization. Betsy’s performance declined. She felt frustrated and discouraged. Rebecca and I discussed the situation one day. During that conversation, Rebecca realized that her fears had caused her to lose sight of Betsy’s strengths and abilities. Once Rebecca could see beyond her fears, she was able to see Betsy’s strengths, reset her attitude, and offer Betsy the respect, feedback, support, and trust she needed. Betsy began to work better with the founder/owner immediately. She also began to regularly exceed Rebecca’s expectations. What surprised Rebecca the most was that Betsy started to seek out Rebecca for advice and was open to Rebecca’s feedback and help. Rebecca shared with me that my encouragement to cultivate a culture of trust helped her realize that instead of her worst fears coming true, she was able to get the most out of the people she worked with.

Bob, a manager who was a peer of mine, remembered that working with one of our senior managers created tremendous anxiety for him. He shared that my simply being available to validate how he and others on the team were feeling was a tremendous help. He said it was good to have someone less reactive than he was to kick around ideas on how to best deal with her. He believes that having someone with a calm disposition to work with enabled him to think with a clearer mind and made him more productive.

Take Time To Coach

As a leader, your responsibility is to the individuals with whom you work. It is your job to create an environment that will allow them to grow and flourish. The gift of the leader is the experience, insight, and understanding of how people and businesses work.

Coaching and mentoring is the vehicle for sharing your experience with others, and adapting it to their personalities, sensitivities, needs, and motivations to help them succeed.

You do this not because you have to but because you want to. Be available, listen for subtle and not so subtle clues or uncertainty, pay attention to your team, and get to know their idiosyncrasies. The effective coach/mentor takes the time to provide clear, direct, and supportive feedback in the moment. It may not always be convenient for you, but it is essential for your team members.

“The gift of the leader is the experience, insight, and understanding of how people and businesses work.”

Recommended Reading:

In Coach and Mentor: A Primer, Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and colleagues introduce Emotional Intelligence and dive deep into the Coach and Mentor Competency, and what’s needed to develop this capacity in leadership.

In a relatively short read, the authors illustrate the valuable skills needed to foster the long-term learning or development of others by giving feedback and support.

Posted on September 19, 2017November 12, 2020 by Daniel Goleman

How Meditation Fuels Emotionally Intelligent Leaders

meditation and emotional intelligence

Not many of my readers know this, but long before I started writing about emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness, I studied meditation. I started back in my college days, and found daily meditation calmed my undergraduate jitters and helped me focus better. To get a scientific look at what I had experienced, I did my doctoral research in psychology at Harvard University on how meditation might help us be less reactive to stress.

Back then, there were but two scientific studies of meditation I could point to. Today, there are more than 6,000. This past year or so, working with my friend since grad school, Professor Richard J. Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we used rigorous standards to review all that research. We share the strongest findings in our book, Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. While 99 percent of the studies failed to meet these standards, about 60 – one percent – were first-rate. They make a convincing case for the positive, lasting effects of meditation.

Meditation and Emotional Intelligence

While continuing my interest in meditation, over the past 20+ years, of course, I’ve studied and written about emotional intelligence and its powerful role in high performance and leadership. My colleague, Richard Boyatzis of Case Western Reserve University, and I developed a model of emotional and social intelligence that centers around twelve learned and learnable competencies. Now when people ask me how to develop those competencies, my response often includes the power of meditation to strengthen emotional intelligence.

It’s not that meditation makes you expert in all twelve emotional intelligence competencies. Not at all. Exhibiting these at a high level takes specific learning, particular to each competence. But meditation has some general impacts that can help upgrade several of these leadership skills.

“Meditation helps elevate emotional intelligence competencies, which in turn elevates leadership ability.”

For example:

Emotional Self-Awareness supports development of all of the emotional intelligence competencies, simply because it allows us a way to monitor and evaluate what we do and how we think and feel. Mindfulness meditation cultivates emotional self-awareness, helping us develop the mental ability to pause and notice feelings and thoughts rather than immediately reacting. Seeing our thoughts as just thoughts, and feelings as just feelings gives us a platform for choosing more skillfully how we react, or to change for the better what we habitually do.

Emotional Self-Control means that you are in charge of your disruptive reactions, rather than your feelings controlling what you do. I’ve written extensively about the executive centers of our brain (the prefrontal cortex) and the fight-or-flight emotional centers (and their trigger, the amygdala). Research now shows that regular practice of mindfulness meditation builds the pathways between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex so that the calming, thoughtful influence of the prefrontal cortex can curb the knee-jerk reactions of the amygdala.

Empathy – tuning into and reading accurately how others feel – helps us manage our relationships. While emotional self-awareness helps you know yourself, empathy means being able to understand the thoughts and feelings of the people around you. My new book Altered Traits reviews several studies that show certain kinds of meditation enhance empathy – for example, just eight hours of a form of meditation known as loving-kindness or compassion meditation has been shown to strengthen our mental brain’s circuitry for empathy.

Conflict Management
Conflicts big and small are inevitable in work and in life. Being able to understand different perspectives and effectively work toward finding common ground is an essential skill for leaders at all levels of organizations. The building blocks of skillful conflict management include the other three competencies I mention above. Before we can manage conflict effectively, we need to recognize our own disruptive feelings and manage them. We also need to understand the feelings and perspectives of others. Just as mindfulness meditation supports development of the skills for knowing our own feelings and controlling them, those skills enhance our ability to manage conflict.

“Emotionally intelligent leaders have self-awareness, self-control, empathy, and can manage conflict.”

Emotional intelligence means being skilled at a variety of competencies. Meditation alone will not make you excel in these skill sets, but it can help. To become adept at the competencies, get a strong foundation by first learning to become aware, to focus, to interact with others in a constructive and meaningful way. These abilities are exactly what meditation helps to cultivate.

Recommended Reading:

Altered Traits is the newest book by bestselling author Daniel Goleman and neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson. Through thoughtful analysis of countless studies, the authors offer the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it. At the heart of what Goleman and Davidson aim to impress upon readers and listeners is that beyond the pleasant states mental exercises can produce, the real payoffs are the lasting personality traits that can result.