Speaker: Murray Priestman, Senior Partner, Stephenson Mansell Group
What strategies can leaders use to develop their emotional intelligence over time?
Murray Priestman: I'd like to talk about what strategies leaders can use to develop their emotional intelligence. And there are five simple things that I'm going to focus on. First of all, recognise that emotional intelligence is a capability that you can build. There's a lot of noise, a lot of research, a lot of opinions out there that will say emotional intelligence is something that we are born with. It's hardwired, it's innate and not something we can develop. From an SMG perspective, we've spent 20 plus years working with leaders to help build their emotional intelligence, and I can say with some confidence, this is absolutely something you can get better at. So focus on that. Secondly, understand exactly what we're talking about when we talk about emotional intelligence. Daniel Goldman describes this as the ability to manage ourselves and our relationships more effectively, and it's as simple as that. There are a lot of jargon a lot of models constructs out there, defining what it is, what it isn't. But if you focus very simply on better understanding and managing yourself and your relationships, then you'll go a long way in this way. Number three, where are you now? And, where do you want to be? So, baselining. Measuring what success looks like and where you're starting from is of course, going to be important. Now, a key part of emotional intelligence is self-awareness and understanding your values, motives, preferences, drivers. Who you are as distinct from what you do is a critical foundation for that. Values and motives are notoriously difficult to observe in others. So some sort of personality self assessment, it could be a psychometric test, is most likely going to be very helpful in helping you understand better your motives and preferences and what that means for how you show up at work. The changes you might want to make, ongoing objective feedback from key stakeholders is also going to be critical throughout this process. Not just from people that you trust, because people you trust can sometimes be a proxy for people you like people like you. But all the key stakeholders in your network or operating environment. Understanding what they see, how they feel, where they think you can change, dial up, dial down certain behaviours is going to be important to understanding not just where you are, but what success looks like. And then, lastly, a couple of very specific tips for how you can build emotional intelligence at work. So the first is around active, listening, so really focusing hard not just on hearing but understanding. Listening to key stakeholders as they're communicating. Play back what you think you've heard. Test your understanding. Show that you've been listening. You have understood their perspective, what it is that they share. In a virtual environment where we spend so much time these days, turn off notifications close down all other windows. Remove all of those temptations. So you're not checking emails working and presentations in the background. You are absolutely focused in the moment on the conversation. And then the last tip in that conversation. As far as possible, make sure that you're the last person to speak. So you're here listening because you're most likely a leader. If you're a leader, you probably have followers. If you are speaking first in meetings, forums, discussions, conversations, then there's a very good chance that by doing so as a leader, you're going to be shaping the conversation. The perspective, the direction for at least some of the people listening, there will be people who will tailor their response, their opinion, their input. Based on what you've said, the longer you can hold off offering an opinion perspective, the more likely you are to better understand your stakeholders, their needs, their motives, their perspectives and through that help strengthen your emotional intelligence.
