Imagine knowing that by simply increasing the level of staff satisfaction in a company, it could increase revenues. Connecting an increase in a company’s success to an upbeat, positive, energized workplace has been made by many business pundits over the years.
For those of you familiar with the term Emotional Intelligence, this is probably not new news. But embracing the concept of Emotional Intelligence as a leader, requires a leader who has a pretty high dose of self-awareness.
In the book, Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, he highlights self-awareness as the most important of the four domains of Emotional Intelligence and goes on to say “…. self awareness facilitates both empathy and self-management, and these two, in combination, allow effective relationship management. EI leadership, then, builds up from a foundation of self-awareness.” The other three domains include self-management, social awareness and relationship management. All four of these domains play a key role in leadership development.
We have a leadership competencies exercise that is a part of the CEO Insight Summary Worksheet. Prior to the X-Ray, the process has us meeting with the CEO and taking him/her through that worksheet and sharing insights into the results from the X-Ray surveys.
I’m creating a series of articles that highlight the five competencies for each stage of growth. You can repurpose these reports as a handout during an X-Ray for the CEO, you can create a blog post about the competencies or create an entire website series around these competencies for each stage of growth.
The goal is simply to ‘elevate the awareness’ of these 18 leadership competencies and how they can help uncover a hidden agent that could be holding the company back.
The Critical Question: If a leader ignores the competency of Accurate Self-Assessment in Stage 2 for instance, how will that impact the future success of the company as it grows?
As a Stage 2 company, there are five leadership competencies that will address critical Stage 2 issues more so than others. Descriptions of Leadership Competencies are from the book by Daniel Goleman, Primal Leadership. It’s important that we give attribution to Goleman’s book if you use this information.
Five Top Leadership Competencies for Stage 2 Leaders
Emotional Self-Awareness
Accurate Self-Assessment
Initiative
Empathy
Developing Others
Emotional Self Awareness
Leaders high in emotional self-awareness are attuned to their inner signals, recognizing how their feelings affect them and their own job performance. They are attuned to their guiding values and can often intuit the best course of action, seeing the bigger picture in a complex situation. Emotionally self-aware leaders are candid and authentic, not hesitant to speak openly about their emotions.
Accurate self-assessment
Leaders with high self-awareness typically know their limitations and strengths and exhibit a sense of humor about themselves. They exhibit gracefulness in learning where they need to improve and welcome constructive criticism and feedback. Accurate self-assessment lets a leader know when to ask for help and where to focus in cultivating new leadership strengths.
Initiative
Leaders who have a sense of efficacy—that they have what it takes to control their own destiny—excel in initiative. They seize opportunities—or create them—rather than simply waiting. Such a leader does not hesitate to cut through red tape, or even bend the rules, when necessary to create better possibilities for the future.
Empathy
Leaders with empathy are able to tune into a wide range of emotional signals, letting them sense the felt, but unspoken, emotions in a person or group. Such leaders can listen attentively and can grasp the other person’s perspective. Empathy makes a leader able to get along well with people of diverse backgrounds or from other cultures.
Developing Others
Leaders who are adept at cultivating people’s abilities show a genuine interest in those they are helping along, understanding their goals, strengths, and weaknesses. Such leaders can give timely and constructive feedback and are natural mentors or coaches.
Your success. My passion.
Laurie Taylor, FlashPoint!
