Photograph by Hans Peter Gauster, Unsplash
The way you treat people determines whether you’ll get their best effort. Resonant leaders understand how to balance their responsibilities with trusting relationships.
what distinguishes great leadership from average?
My approach to leadership development is to support the competencies and qualities related to emotional and social intelligence. Emotional intelligence enables leaders to deal with their own emotional responses, moods, and states of mind. Social intelligence informs how we understand and interact with others. These competencies allow leaders to act in ways that leave the people around them feeling stronger and more capable. They create an environment that is exciting, challenging, and supportive - one that can sustain collective success over the long term.
Developing ourselves this way requires deliberate, focused identification of our personal vision and our current reality, and conscious creating of and engaging in a learning agenda.
intentional change
Making any kind of change in our lives involves breaking old habits that hold us back and forging new habits that serve us better. And sustaining our new habits over time. This is what successful learning is all about.
- Richard Boyatzis, The Emotional Intelligence Workbook
How People change - the Intentional change process
This process of intentional change, developed by Richard Boyatzis, can be understood as five discoveries that we can choose to undertake:
Discovery 1 - What is my ideal self? This is about who you really want to be. The desire to change comes from identifying who you want to become.
Discovery 2 - What is my real self? When you have thought about who you want to be, you can then reflect on who you already are. This means taking a realistic view, getting some feedback and doing some reality testing.
Discovery 3 - What is my learning agenda? When you feel you know your ideal and real self you can begin to focus on how to close the gaps between the two. Now you can decide what changes you want to make.
Discovery 4 - How can I experiment and practice? Now you can start to plan the actions you will take. You need to use your imagination, find different ways to try out new behaviors, and find environments which will be safe to practice in.
Discovery 5 - Who can I trust to help me? We know people are more likely to change if they have support. Asking people you trust for their help can really speed up the process.
Photo by Case Western Reserve University, Weatherhead School of Management