Leading by Feel - Let Your Guard Down
August 6, 2007
by: Sidney Harman
Eight years ago,we acquired Becker Radio (now Harman/Becker) to help us develop the dashboard navigation and media systems that are now the major part of our business. In a meeting at Becker, several of the engineers there
argued that the only way for us to take the lead in the emerging field of “infotainment” was to abandon tried-and- true analog systems and design and build totally new digital systems – a very risky proposition for our company.
Back home, I sat down with our key executives to talk about this disruptive idea. I went into the meeting with only a rough notion of how we should proceed. There was clearly anxiety and skepticism in the group, concern that we would be betting the company if we went digital.
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Your First Inquiry: “What Does This Business Do?”
August 6, 2007
Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? After all, we said Houston Sash & Door, Inc., buys lumber and manufactures doors and windows, which it sells to general contractors. Many businesses, however, are engaged in two or more different, but similar, lines of work; they have more than one profit center. For example, Houston Sash & Door may also sell a small number of windows at retail.
Leading by Feel - Sniff Out Signals
August 6, 2007
by: Robert Goffee
You need some degree of emotional intelligence to be an effective leader, but you do see some one-hit wonders out there – people who have limited emotional intelligence but can still excite a particular group. The problem is, they
can’t transfer their success to another organization.
They got lucky and landed in a situation in which their passions happened to connect with the organization’s passions, but they probably wouldn’t be able to replicate that at another company. By contrast, true leaders can connect with different groups of people in a variety of contexts.
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Leading by Feel - Gauge Your Awareness
August 5, 2007
by:Howard Book
Self-awareness is the key emotional intelligence skill behind good leadership. It’s often thought of as the ability to know how you’re feeling and why, and the impact your feelings have on your behavior. But it also involves a capacity to monitor and control those strong but subliminal biases that all of us harbor and that can skew our decision making.
Consider, for example, a vice president who complained to me recently about his new hire, the head of sales. He found her to be unassertive, indecisive, unsure – hardly leadership material. When I talked to her, however, it turned out she felt her boss was sabotaging her career. The vice president had been hired only five months before she had, and he was oblivious to how his anxiety to please the CEO was causing him to micromanage. In doing so, the VP was undercutting the sales director’s independence and confidence. His lack of self-awareness directly impaired her performance.
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Leading by Feel - Seek Frank Feedback
August 5, 2007
by: Andrea Jung
Emotional intelligence is in our DNA here at Avon because relationships are critical at every stage of our business. It starts with the relationships our 4.5 million independent sales reps have with their customers and goes right up through senior management to my office. So the emphasis on emotional intelligence is much greater here than it was at other companies in which I’ve worked. We incorporate emotional intelligence education into our development training for senior managers, and we factor in emotional intelligence competencies when we evaluate employees’ performance.
Of all a leader’s competencies, emotional and otherwise, self-awareness is the most important. Without it, you can’t identify the impact you have on others. Self-awareness is very important for me as CEO. At my level, few people are willing to tell me the things that are hardest to hear.We have a CEO advisory counsel–ten people chosen each year from Avon offices throughout the world – and they tell me the good, the bad, and the ugly about the company. Anything can be said. It helps keep me connected to what people really think and how my actions affect them. I also rely on my children for honest appraisals.
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Leading by Feel - Train the Gifted
August 5, 2007
by: Elkhonon Goldberg
In the past, neuropsychologists were mostly concerned with cognitive impairment. Today, they are increasingly interested in the biological underpinnings of cognitive differences in people without impairments–including differences in people’s emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence can be learned, to a degree. It’s like mathematical or musical ability. Can you become a musician if you lack natural aptitude? Yes, you can, if you take lessons and practice enough. But will you ever be a Mozart? Probably not. In the same way, emotional intelligence develops through a combination of biological endowment and training. And people who don’t have that endowment probably won’t become deeply emotionally intelligent just through training. Trying to drum emotional intelligence into someone with no aptitude for it is an exercise in futility.
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Leading by Feel - Get Motivated
August 4, 2007
by: Richard Boyatzis
People can develop their emotional intelligence if they really want to. But many managers jump to the conclusion that their complement of emotional intelligence is predetermined. They think, “I could never be good at this, so why
bother?” The central issue isn’t a lack of ability to change; it’s the lack of motivation to change.
Leadership development is not all that different from other areas in which people are trying to change their behaviors. Just look at the treatments for alcoholism, drug addiction, and weight loss: They all require the desire to change.
More subtly, they all require a positive, rather than a negative, motivation.You have to want to change. If you think you’ll lose your job because you’re not adequately tuned in to your employees, you might become determinedly empathetic or compassionate for a time. But change driven by fear or avoidance probably isn’t going to last. Change driven by hopes and aspirations, that’s pursued because it’s desired, will be more enduring.
There’s no such thing as having too much emotional intelligence. But there is a danger in being preoccupied with, or overusing, one aspect of it. For example, if you overemphasize the emotional intelligence competencies of initiative
or achievement, you’ll always be changing things at your company. Nobody would know what you were going to do next, which would be quite destabilizing for the organization. If you overuse empathy, you might never fire anybody. If you overuse teamwork, you might never build diversity or listen to a lone voice. Balance is essential.
Richard Boyatzis is a professor and the chair of the department of organizational behavior at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management in Cleveland.
Leading by Feel - Build Pathways
August 4, 2007
by: Steven Gutstein
I work with autistic children, a population typically defined by its lack of emotional intelligence. People with autism can’t connect – indeed, they aren’t really interested in connecting emotionally with others. Traditionally, the therapeutic approach with these kids has been to teach them to fake it. They are urged to make eye contact with others, to repress whatever distracting behaviors they may have, and to use social scripts. Many of these therapies have the appearance of being successful.People with autism do learn the scripts, and some even blend in.
The problem is, faking it never ceases to be work. So as autistic children become adults, they stop putting on the show. Among adults with Asperger’s syndrome (a form of autism marked by average or above-average IQ), fewer than 12% hold jobs. Only 3% leave home. These findings make the case profoundly that one gets only so far on IQ. People need to connect emotionally, and with flexibility, in order to succeed.
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Leading by Feel - Never Stop Learning
August 3, 2007
by: Daniel Goleman
You can be a successful leader without much emotional intelligence if you’re extremely lucky and you’ve got everything else going for you: booming markets, bumbling competitors, and clueless higher-ups. If you’re incredibly smart, you can cover for an absence of emotional intelligence until things get tough for the business.
But at that point, you won’t have built up the social capital needed to pull the best out of people under tremendous pressure. The art of sustained leadership is getting others to produce superior work, and high IQ alone is insufficient to that task.
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Leading by Feel - Be Realistic
August 2, 2007
by: John D. Mayer
This is a time of growing realism about emotional intelligence – especially concerning what it is and what it isn’t. The books and articles that have helped popularize the concept have defined it as a loose collection of personality traits, such as self-awareness, optimism, and tolerance.
These popular definitions have been accompanied by exaggerated claims about the importance of emotional intelligence. But diverse personality traits, however admirable, don’t necessarily add up to a single definition of emotional intelligence. In fact, such traits are difficult to collectively evaluate in a way that reveals their relationship to success in business and in life.
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