6 Easy Steps to Increase Your EQ!

Filed under Blog by admin on February 2, 2011 at 11:00 am {no comments}

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Managers are in a tough position, sandwiched between employee complaints and pressure from higher ups. Even years of studying and work experience can’t prevent a few blunders that can send a team or department on a serious downward spiral. It’s not as hard as you’d think for a well-meaning and book-smart manager to let a team dissolve into an ineffective group of resentful individuals if he or she isn’t aware of how to effectively communicate with people. Luckily, this can be overcome with some effort. Start by working from this model:

1. Take responsibility for your feelings. Frustrated or upset? No big deal. Just admit it and be honest about it, and don’t blame others for “making” you feel a certain way. Blame games and facades destroy trust and positive working relationships.

2. Tune in to the feelings of your employees. Everyone has a bad day now and then, but if someone seems particularly down, ask (privately and empathetically) if he or she is all right. This builds mutual respect and can be a window in to the morale of your team. Don’t be afraid to inquire about the morale of the entire team if everyone seems to be dispirited.

3. Respect their feelings. Ask things like “how would it make you feel if I did this?” Even if you know a certain course of action is unavoidable, it might help you approach the matter differently, and will definitely help your employees to feel valued.

4. Challenge your assumptions. You’ve probably heard the silly adage about what happens when you assume (if you haven’t, Google it for a laugh) but it’s true! Don’t guess why your employees are doing something a certain way—just ask. You’ll save a lot of time and build trust as well.

5. Be empathetic. To use a cliché, put yourself in the shoes of each individual employee. If you can start to see things the way they do, responding to them appropriately will come much more naturally.

6. Avoid the tendency to be hypercritical. Do you want a judgmental lecture from your boss? Neither do your employees. You can offer constructive criticism without disrespecting or pre-judging your employees and their actions.

Don’t you just feel smarter already?

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Winners of Our Facebook Contest Announced!

Filed under Blog by admin on January 31, 2011 at 9:42 pm {no comments}

Did you know we hosted a drawing for five free signed copies of Quit Telling Me What to Do? Well, we did, and the winners were announced today on our Facebook page. Bummed you missed it? Get in on the February giveaway! Exclusive details about the contest for February will be shared with our friends on the mailing list first, so be sure to sign up to get monthly updates and weekly leadership and sales tips. Go on, it’s right there on the right. A little further… that’s the one! Looking forward to seeing you in your inbox soon!

Get Smarter! The Essence of Emotional Intelligence

Filed under Blog by admin on January 26, 2011 at 10:04 am {no comments}

Cover via Amazon

Book smarts alone don’t make a great boss. It takes a high EQ—Emotional Intelligence Quotient—to be a truly brilliant manager. You might already be familiar with the concept of Emotional Intelligence, made popular by Daniel Goleman’s Working with Emotional Intelligence. The principle is this: the way we relate to other people has to do with more than just personality; it has to do with core competencies each person must develop. A boss with a high EQ might be charming, but it takes more than charisma to maintain popularity. Instead, a great manager is there to motivate and encourage his or her team to bring out the best in each of them.

What are those competencies that make up a high EQ?

Self-awareness: Know who you are and how you feel about things, as well as how you are coming across to others.

Self-regulation: Handle your feelings well, deal appropriately with negative emotions, and understand that there are more important things than strictly emotional rewards.

Motivation: This one is pretty self-explanatory. Have the drive to achieve your goals and ignore obstacles in your path.

Empathy: Sense what others are feeling and work to understand their perspective on things.

Social Skills: Interact smoothly with others. This could mean persuading and negotiating from time to time, but also cooperating, being reasonable and making necessary compromises.

Cover of "The Power of Nice: How to Conqu...

Cover via Amazon

Think about it more simply. Just be nice. (Read The Power of Nice: How to Conquer the Business World with Kindness for more great, eye-opening information on that topic.) I’m not saying you’re all being mean, crazy dictators in the office. I’m saying that sometimes, business gets tough and numbers don’t add up, and it’s easy to forget the importance of being polite. Signing paychecks alone won’t encourage the productivity of your team. They need to see you out and about, and smiling and showing genuine care and interest in them while you’re at it. If you truly respect the members of your team and the work they do, it will show, and they will respect your leadership in return. That mutual relationship of respect will manifest itself in more quality work and higher rates of productivity because—you guessed it—you will have achieved employee engagement!

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A High EQ: Becoming an Emotionally Intelligent Boss

Filed under Blog by admin on January 24, 2011 at 5:41 pm {no comments}

My best boss was one who hired me on the spot and said, “You are going to be my top producer.” A vote of confidence—how novel! I’d come from a tyrant of a boss, and working with Dwain looked to be a 180 right off the bat.

On my first day in the office, he flew from his office in Washington, DC to Philadelphia to introduce me to my new coworkers. On our way out the door to go to the office, the phone rang. My 18-month-old daughter, of whom I was sole support, was sick at day care and needed to be picked up. Having just moved to the area, I had no friends or family that could pick her up, and I knew my job was as good as gone before I even stepped foot into my new office.

What I didn’t expect, however, was to see my new boss smiling sympathetically after overhearing the conversation. He told me to pick up my daughter, and asked why I kept apologizing. “You can’t control your baby getting sick!” he said. “You know, I can tell right now this office situation isn’t going to work for you.” The fatal blow. Tail between my legs, I expected to be fired just as on-the-spot as I was hired. Instead, he said, “I think I need to stay an extra day and set up a home office for you.” In a time when telecommuting was practically unheard of (1989), I was shocked. “I really think this kind of arrangement will make it easier for you to work and take care of your daughter,” he continued. “Remember, you are going to be my top producer in the country. It’s the least I can do!”

© Jcyoung | Dreamstime.com

What did I do? I set up a small table in my bedroom, practically touching my bed since I didn’t have enough space in my townhouse for my own office, and set up a phone and fax machine with Dwain’s help. More importantly, I proved him right. I really did become the top producer in the country (by far), selling fifty-two million dollars’ worth of franchises in just one year. I owe this jump start in my career not to the table in my bedroom, but to the trust of a great manager. Because Dwain believed in me, I believed in myself too, and continue to.

The moral of this story is not to tell you how I once doubled my salary to support myself and my young daughter. Instead, it’s to put a truly human face on the workplace. Don’t forget, every member of your team is a real-life human being. Obviously it doesn’t take a great manager to figure that out, but it does take one to treat them that way. No two people work the same way. An emotionally intelligent boss knows that and understands how to accommodate them in order to foster higher levels of performance. Maybe that means telecommuting, slightly different hours, a more public way of recognizing a job well done, or a few pizzas on the nights when the team has to stay late. But you can’t know what will motivate and accommodate your team without first having meaningful conversations. Have you gotten to know your employees lately? You’re already on your way to developing a higher EQ!

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Sharing is Caring: The Creation of a Shared Vision

Filed under Blog by admin on January 21, 2011 at 11:00 am {no comments}

The best way to engage your employees through communication and team alignment, as we discussed on Wednesday, is to create a shared vision. The process may require a significant amount of time and energy invested in the project, but it will pay for itself over and over again as your organization begins to function better from the outset.

© Fred Goldstein | Dreamstime.com

A shared vision can be created by talking to employees about what they find most meaningful about their jobs, particularly within the context of your organization. These conversations can occur during the workday, over lunch or during “breakfast with the boss” meetings. Everyone probably won’t jump on board right away, but I’ll bet you’ll be surprised at how many members of your team are excited to share—after all, who doesn’t love talking about him or herself every now and then? If working a few extra hours outside the normal work day means feeling like a cohesive member of the team, most of your employees will probably be happy to join the effort, because everyone needs to feel as though the work they do is meaningful and not just a means to an end.

Just because no one has approached you with their opinions of the company’s philosophy doesn’t mean they don’t have any. Create a forum for them to share their viewpoints in a healthy and productive way, instead of letting them become gossip around the water cooler. But remember: this won’t happen overnight. You’ll need to have two or three meetings—at least!—to create and finalize your shared vision, and if you don’t follow through with the process, your employees are going to wonder why you’ve wasted their time.

Fretting because you’re not the CEO and you don’t think you can make such broad organizational changes? You don’t have to. Start with your department or direct reports. If nothing else, your team will be cohesive, and when other departments start noticing the difference, they’ll want to create their own shared vision!

Finally, consider the option of allowing an outside party to facilitate your discussions. These skillful consultants are experienced with these sorts of meetings and can help you run them with the highest possible degree of effectiveness and efficiency. They also might well be able to uncover hidden issues that you wouldn’t be able to get at yourself, because employees will naturally speak more freely with someone outside their organization than they might with their supervisor, or even coworkers.

You may find it beneficial to allow an outside party to facilitate your shared vision meetings. Experienced consultants run these meetings all the time and know how to do so effectively and efficiently. Skillful consultants can also build enough trust with the group to uncover the real issues that might be lurking under the radar. It is completely natural for employees to speak more freely to an outside consultant than to their supervisor or someone else inside the organization.

Now you have the tools you need to start creating your shared vision. Next week, we’ll broach the topic of emotional intelligence, and how to use it to your advantage. Can’t wait that long? Read Quit Telling Me What to Do today!

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About the Author

Patricia Tedesco is an internationally-recognized business consultant, executive coach and keynote speaker who cuts through the clutter of business rhetoric to create custom solutions that deliver astonishing sales results. As a result of her programs, clients have experienced an astonishing increase in sales results, improved customer satisfaction, increased attraction and retention of key talent, and increases in productivity and profitability. A winner of nearly a decade's worth of awards, Patricia is a member of the National Speakers Association, and is a certified associate of Integro Leadership Institute and The Coffman Organization. Her clients include many Fortune 500 companies from the pharmaceutical, travel and hospitality, aerospace, insurance, technology, health care industries and government organizations. Buy Patricia's book at Amazon.com or give her a call today at (215) 822-9577.

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