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’s, 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 your 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 Achievement in Stage 3 for instance, how will that impact the future success of the company as it grows?
As a Stage 3 company, there are five leadership competencies that will address critical Stage 3 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 3 Leaders
Accurate self-assessment
Achievement
Developing Others
Conflict Management
Teamwork and Collaboration
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.
Achievement
Leaders with strength in achievement have high personal standards that drive them to constantly seek performance improvements – both for themselves and those they lead. They are pragmatic, setting measurable but challenging goals, and are able to calculate risk so that their goals are worthy but attainable. A hallmark of achievement is in continually learning — and teaching — ways to do better.
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.
Conflict Management
Leaders who manage conflicts best are able to draw out all parties, understand the differing perspectives, and then find a common ideal that everyone can endorse. They surface the conflict, acknowledge the feelings and views of all sides, and then redirect the energy toward a shared ideal.
Teamwork and Collaboration
Leaders who are able team players generate an atmosphere of friendly collegiality and are themselves models of respect, helpfulness, and cooperation. They draw others into active, enthusiastic commitment to the collective effort, and build spirit and identity. They spend time forging and cementing close relationships beyond mere work obligations.
Your success. My passion.
Laurie Taylor, FlashPoint!
