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Category: Personal Development

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Growth Management Personal Development Technology

Communication – The 5th Pillar of Your EPICC Cybersecurity Team

Here we are, the last and final article in the series on creating an EPICC High Performance Cybersecurity team. If you have been with me from the start of this series you know the first four pillars are Engagement, Productivity, Integrity, and Collaboration. The fifth and final pilar we are going to talk about is Communication.

You’ve heard it before “you were born with two ears and one mouth for a reason: to listen twice as much as you speak,” but how often do we follow that rule? Too often, and I’m guilty of this too, we are thinking about what we are going to say next in response to what we are being told, rather than listening to understand. Which means, if we are not listening we are not communicating completely or effectively.

Communication is an open and safe exchange of information, ideas, and opinions; the good, the bad, and the ugly. When something is not going right, communication is critical. You may think this sounds a lot like collaboration that we talked about in the last article, and they do go hand in hand, but you cannot get to collaboration without communication.

Communication has to do with how we say what needs to be said, when we say it, and whether we are truly listening. This is incredibly important for your cybersecurity team. If they are not truly communicating and listening, think of what could get missed in your mission to protect your organization.

Respectful communication is key and you must lead by example. Clearly discuss what respectful communication looks and sounds like and what will and won’t be tolerated and then do what you are telling others to do. Some examples of respectful communication includes being fully present and not typing emails or texts while someone is talking. You are not listening if you are thinking about what you are typing. Other examples include making eye contact, repeating back what you heard to show you were listening, and asking clarifying questions. These are the questions that helps ensure you truly heard and understood what the other person just said.

If you are not sure what makes up a complete list of respectful communication thinks about the things that drive you nuts when you are talking with someone. A good exercise would be to get your team together and without asking them to name names ask each person to provide examples of what they think respectful communication looks like and what they think is rude. Use this time to discuss what you want for the team, create a list together of what is acceptable and not acceptable and now as a group you have collaborated on the rules of respectful communication. Everyone now knows what will and won’t be tolerated.

Giving and receiving feedback in real time, which I discussed in motivation and feedback is another  crucial part of communication, especially as a leader. If you have ever been given critical feedback long after the incident occurred, you know how frustrating that can be: how can I fix something that happened three months ago?

Feedback means communicating with your team, individually or as a group when needed to share what you are observing that is working well and not working. The conversation on what is not working well is a crucial conversation that is often difficult to have. It’s tough to deliver bad news or share with people areas that need improvement. But the ability to do this not only makes you a stronger leader, it will garner respect when done well, and help your team be a more high performing team.

If you need help starting a conversation or figuring out how to broach a topic with someone on your team there are specialists who can help. For example, A subject matter expert on this whose articles are extremely useful is Dr. Laura Sicola, who is someone from whom you can learn a lot about communication. Similarly, if you are looking for more on how to create a high performance team, you can reach out to me at sharon@c-suiteresults.com to learn more about conducting a High Performance Team Workshop.

It’s perfectly normal to need help and perfectly acceptable to ask. What is unacceptable is thinking that things can change on their own or deciding that the status quo is good enough and change isn’t necessary for you or your team. But in the end, whether or not you are going to get assistance in building your EPICC team or do it yourself, it’s time to get started and get to work.

Categories
Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development Women In Business

A Lesson in Self Awareness

I had a brief interview with the Registrar, School of Graduate Studies, University of Toronto.

He asked me 3 questions:

1.) Do I generally get along with others?

2.) What do I do if I don’t get along with someone?

3.) When can I start?

I started the following Monday.

The Registrar was my first mentor. He gave me his complete trust. He was supportive when I initiated changes, he recommended me to collaborate on exciting projects and encouraged me to be engaged at all levels at the university.

During my second year at U of T, the Registrar announced his upcoming retirement. I was disappointed that he would be leaving soon, but also happy for him to begin a new chapter. I decided to invite him for lunch, as a small token of gratitude for all that he had done for me.

On the day of our lunch date, I met him at his office. He was an unpretentious man, with an unpretentious wardrobe, but that day he wore a trendy new shirt and tie. I commented on his new look and he smiled and said, “My wife picked this out.” I told him that she has great taste.

I asked him if he likes Indian cuisine and he told me he was up for anything. So, we headed out to a quaint restaurant nearby, that had a great lunch menu. On our way there I noticed that he walked a little taller and had a little spring in his step. He was in a great mood!

After we placed our order we started to discuss work but I wanted to learn more about him – about who he is as a person. He quickly opened up and shared some really surprising stories with me. The Registrar told me that he was once a volunteer teacher in Africa, which is where he met his wife, who was also a volunteer. And I discovered that he has a great sense of humour. He told me a hilarious elephant story, which had me in tears at one point!

We enjoyed delicious meals and great conversation. When the server presented the bill, the Registrar reached across the table to pay. I insisted that it is my treat. I paid the bill and then we left the restaurant.

As we were walking back to work, I expressed to the Registrar how much I really appreciate all of the time and support that he gave me. I told him that I will never forget his kindness. Then I said, “Thank you”. He smiled at me as we walked across the campus.

Then he stopped for a moment and asked me, “Can I share something with you?” I answered, “Of course.” He said, “I have been working here for 25 years and this is the first time a colleague has invited me to lunch.” Then he said, “Thank you, Michelle.” I smiled at him.

We walked the rest of the way in silence. When we arrived at our building he held the door open for me, and then he followed behind me. We walked up the stairs together to the second floor, where his office was located and then I continued up to the Ph.D. Oral Exams Office on the third floor.

When I reached my office, I sat down and turned my chair around to face the window. I gazed outside and thought about our conversation. I was so grateful that we had the opportunity to gain self-awareness. We learned how our actions impact others and how others perceive us.

That was the best lunch I ever had.

Michelle Nasser, Executive Coach     michellenasser.leaders@gmail.com  www.michellenasser.com

Categories
Best Practices Growth Human Resources Management Skills Women In Business

Stop! Don’t Choose Employee Engagement as Your New Year’s Resolution

Seems like an odd request, but not when you realize that only 8 % of the population keeps their New Year’s Resolutions.  Enhancing your business culture by improving employee engagement is too important to set up for failure.

For the same reasons that people don’t stay on their diets and quit exercising, businesses lose the momentum to build a culture that makes a significant difference in success.  This is true on so many levels, from recruiting the best talent to customer satisfaction.

Here are some reasons companies fail at building a culture of engagement:

  1. Too much pressure

The thought of making January 1st your day to “turn it all around, “gives the illusion that at some point you will be done. In fact, every day can be used as a perfect day to begin and continue a new idea, concept or way of conducting business

Solution:

Make the change manageable.  Take the time to discover where you are right now.  You can only do this if you ask for people outside of your circle of influence what their perspective is.  Then engage those same people to help find the solution to a common goal

  1. It’s hard

Nothing soft spoken here.  Yes, it can be.  Any change takes work.  Depending upon where you start and what your goals are, the challenge and its difficulty correspond to the difference.   However, you have the choice to experience the changes as hard or a series of opportunities.

Solution:

In one word, acceptance.  When you can accept that this new movement towards building a community of people with a common goal will take time, repetition and detours, it is less stressful.  Knowing it is a challenge does not mean it has to be hard.

  1. It’s complicated

Interestingly enough, the process is as complicated as you make it.  The research I did for my book, Blueprint for Employee Engagement, showed me how important it is to break your goals and ideas into small baby steps.  You actually get to achievement faster that way.

You don’t decide to create a new business culture and voila, it appears.  In fact, when attempting a broad change, many people will be skeptical.

Solution:

By far the best way to simplify an action is to have a plan.  When I coach executives the only way to see to the end result is a plan.  Map out the plan like an outline and then break each point into more action steps.  Then take each of those steps and give them at least 3 stages.  It may look like you are complicating the process, but in actuality you are creating those baby steps so you can succeed with a greater feeling of accomplishment

  1. The realization that you have to keep doing it!

My favorite adage is, “Life is a journey and not a destination.”  If you want to make permanent change in your business environment, it is a forever process.  Get ready for setbacks.

Solution:

Once you realize this is a continuous journey a lot of pressure is removed.  It also means that along with the inevitable setbacks comes opportunities to re-evaluate and fine-tune.  This allows you to be on a continuous improvement plan for your entire business.

Don’t make employee engagement and company culture a fad.  Deliberately choose to create a better workplace environment.  Get the best talent, to be the most productive and creative, so they provide your customers and clients with the ultimate in service.  That is a decision you will forever be proud of.

Julie Ann Sullivan has the cure for retaining good talent and reducing absenteeism. Want a free copy of her book, Blueprint for Employee Engagement 37 Essential Elements to Influence, Innovate & Inspire? Talk to Julie Ann @724-942-0486.  Julie Ann hosts the Mere Mortals Unite and Businesses that Care podcasts on C-Suite Radio.  For more information go to http://julieannsullivan.com/

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Skills Women In Business

The New Year’s Resolution You Can Keep

Like most people, I usually hate making new year’s resolutions. They are something we create out of a sense of obligation, knowing all the while that we will probably not stick with it for more than 24 hours. Then as icing on the cake, there’s a predictable little twinge of guilt for giving up on it, since it was something that should make our lives better somehow. Well, I want to suggest a way to make this year different.

Decide for yourself that this year, the resolution will not be about you, but about others. More specifically, take stock of your relationships, and take an honest look at the nature of your communication patterns with them. Is there something about the dynamic between the two of you that  brings out a tendency to be unnecessarily blunt, passive-aggressive, or indifferent? Do you shut down or avoid people when there is real or potential conflict? This year, let your resolution be a gift to them – and to yourself: the start of a new, healthier and more positive relationship through a shift in the way that you communicate.

Here are three ways you can wrap your gift:

First, be mindful of what your eyes say even when your lips aren’t moving. We often don’t realize that our face is reflecting our true opinions about something we hear before the other person is done speaking, and often before we even start.

For example, do you have a habit of rolling your eyes, breaking eye contact, or cocking one dubious eyebrow when you disagree with someone? These are signs of disdain that shows you are not open to hearing what they are saying, and will put people on the defensive.

For me, I know that my “thinking face” has my eyebrows scrunched down, furrowed. It doesn’t mean I’m angry or disagree, but that’s often what people mistakenly think it means. In reality, they should be happy when they see that face, because it means I’m listening carefully and seriously considering what they’re saying, but unfortunately that’s not the effect it has. That’s why I need to remember to “reset” my eyebrows to a more neutral, nonjudgmental position.

If nothing else, be sure to make eye contact when someone else is talking. You don’t have to stare them down, but don’t multitask, look at the computer or smartphone screen, or keep checking your watch. Give them the gift of your full attention.

Second, watch your words. Small details in word choice can have a big impact on how people hear and interpret what you say, and how they feel about it. Beware of absolutes, such as everything, nothing, everyone, nobody, and always… Statements like “Nobody wants…” or “You’ll never convince me that…” show that your mind is made up, you are sure that you are right and everyone else is wrong. Plus, they are a form of exaggeration, making you sound melodramatic. In the end, they shut down productive conversation and any chance at collaborative negotiation.

Instead, if you want to promote mutual listening, try hedging those statements. Try phrases like from my perspective…, on multiple occasions…, or I’m concerned that… They allow you to state your case, but allow for the fact that it is your perspective, not “gospel truth.” It shows you are open to working together to reach a mutually acceptable solution.

Finally, engage people. I know you are busy, so you don’t need to hear their life story, but seek to connect with them as people, not just as coworkers or employees. For example, when you pass someone in the corridor, give them more than a perfunctory nod acknowledging their existence. Stop for a moment and ask them how they’re going to use the time off if your company is closed for a holiday, how they’re feeling if they’ve been under the weather, or how their kids or pets are doing. Just remember: a little effort goes a long way.

The beauty of these little tips is that they take so little effort in comparison to what you get back, so it becomes the resolution that you actually want to keep!

**********

Do you have a comment or question about how to easily and effectively make this shift? Click here to set up a 20-minute focus call to discuss it with me personally.

 

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Management Skills Women In Business

5 Recommendations to Effectively Interact with Visual Aids

Click here to watch 5 Recommendations to Effectively Interact with Visual Aids. 

How many times have you found yourself struggling to pay attention while the speaker spends most of the time talking to their visuals aids?  They give you permission to do anything but listen to them.

Your visual aids are not your notes. Instead, they should add impact and emphasis to your message, increasing what your listeners remember and how long they retain it.

Grab these 5 surefire ways to make sure your listeners stay connected with you while increasing their understanding through your visual aids.

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Personal Development

Your Brand Promise Depends on Quality Assurance

Quality assurance is just that. Your customer is assured that the products he expects are exactly what he gets. We’ve noticed that despite having the trademark and being the producer, you don’t own your brand or your brand promise. Your customer does—period!

He expects certain dependability, consistency, availability, and quality in your product. His expectations are developed by personal history with your brand, not by your advertising, labeling, and catchphrases. If you, your distributor, your supplier, or even your retailer let him down, he will blame your brand, and start shopping for an alternative. But, the trial-and-error process of finding a new brand creates anxiety and potential disappointment, so he doesn’t really want to shop. Yet, he feels obligated since the quality assurance has faded, and therefore the brand’s promise has been broken.

When your faithful customer wants to depend on your brand, why take the risk? Guarantee him availability, dependability, and quality, and he will never leave. Your brand will be his brand, the one he buys time and time again—and the one he recommends to family and friends!

Quality assurance is a promise to your customer. If it is challenged for any reason, we recommend giving an apology, an explanation of how you will fix it in the future, and, rather than refunding his money, giving your customer more of your products at no charge. This says, “Please give us another chance, and allow us to show we can exceed your expectations.”

Then, put new procedures and policies in place, add clauses to your production agreements, and create a signoff sheet or a new form to improve quality control and reestablish your value in the customer’s mind.

We once incorrectly labeled a 1.5L bottle with a 750ml-bottle UPC code, which is double the volume and almost double the price. This led the retail store to charge customers almost half of what they should have. This particular store had already scanned hundreds of bottles, costing them thousands of dollars in lost profits by the time we found out! We took complete responsibility, despite it being our contracted bottler’s mistake. Our sales manager brought a check to the buyer’s office to cover his losses, fortunately before he was aware of the issue. Not only did we have a check in our hand—we also had a schedule to replace the mislabeled products with properly labeled products. Then, we gave the buyer something even more important—a report of how we would prevent this from happening again. We earned his respect for that, and he gave us an ad then and there. Now that’s quality assurance!

Quality assurance is essential, especially when handling outsourced services, processes, and goods. We were always wondering why some contracts were so long. Our bottling contracts were only 3 pages long when we started Barefoot Wine, but when we sold our brand nineteen years later, our contracts were 37 pages long!

Quality assurance is not an endpoint; it’s a journey. Once you realize your reputation and brand promise are on the line, make sure your company constantly looks for ways to prevent issues from reoccurring. This is the key to persistently improve quality assurance.

Don’t make your brand’s customers cry, “But, you promised!”

For more, read on: http://csnetworkadvis.staging.wpengine.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Management Women In Business

Achieve Peak Performance – Pay Attention to Your Well-Being

Some of the smartest and most successful people I know understand in order to have the ability to work at peak performance levels requires incredible energy and stamina. To have that consistently, one has to schedule recovery time. It’s as important to your bottom line as landing that big client or making the next sale. Let this sink in:  According to SHRM (Society for Human Resource Management, 85% of talent managers agree employees who use most (or all) of their vacation time are more productive and focused.

See, part of taking care of yourself is being a champion for your own physical and mental well-being. That’s why you’ll see extraordinary leaders plan and take vacation down time. That means disconnection from responsibility, technology, and even emails! (That last one scared you a little, didn’t it? Studies show that over 50% of employees check work-related emails after hours, on vacation and during holidays. STOP.) While it’s not always possible to completely “unplug”, it should be a goal to use your down time as true time away. To replenish the mind and spirit. To shake out the cobwebs. Find new perspective. Renew energy levels. And make quality time to pay ATTENTION to loved ones the top priority.

I read an article not long ago in Fortune Magazine that shared how Europeans think Americans are crazy because while they take up to six weeks of vacation per year, statistics show that US employees leave 429 million vacation days on the table annually. Interestingly 40% of executives think employees would be more productive if they took vacations. Yet among those same senior managers, 72% said if offered unlimited vacation time they wouldn’t take it! What’ THAT about?

If what you REALLY want is to be better at what you do, and have a better life while you’re doing it – try these three strategies for scheduling recovery and downtime: 

Plan early: One thing we do as a team, is review calendars at the first part of the year and plan a variety of trips during that year and might include cars, bikes, pool time or trips back to Australia to see family and friends. It’s a practice we have followed for many years to ensure the majority of vacations are scheduled to give us experiences to look forward to. Can you review your calendar and book time to enjoy something that you love to do with people you love being with?

Create variety: Look for ways you can mix it up – with a variety of destinations, adventures and times of year based on your needs and budgets. I’m not a stay-cation kind of gal. My office is in my home (maybe you have one there too.) That means I would just work the whole time, so that doesn’t work for me. For some people, it works. Consider visiting a new spot, driving instead of flying, build in adventure, art galleries visits, or a walking tour of a city. With so many online tools to help plan your visit, you can leverage community events, support local initiatives and experience cities and towns in a completely new way. We often use the site HomeAway.com, as I prefer an apartment or a house than a hotel when traveling for extended stays. We have used this service around the world and have loved it every time. My career allows me the luxury of travel to incredible places staying in lovely hotels and yet some vacations the idea of getting on another plane or staying in another hotel. Can you and your family choose a new adventure in the next twelve months that everyone can help plan to enjoy a trip together?

Go offline: This is the toughest ask for many of our clients (and me) but it’s not impossible! Can you create an out of office message that bounces back to manage email providing an alternative person to help while you are away? Can you stay off social media and instead focus all that time and attention on creating memories with those you love? I am a huge fan of a digital detox; your vacation is a great time to do that.

Get outside. There’s something incredibly life-affirming about getting outdoors in beautiful new space. Think mountain hikes, a walk on a nature path, collecting shells on a beach, or catching fish on a lake. Have you ever noticed how much better you feel, how much deeper you sleep and how much healthier you feel on vacation when you invest time to be active while you are relaxing?

Create memories: Truly, isn’t one of the biggest reasons we work so hard is to create a lifestyle for our loved ones? Keep this in mind – recovery time is not always just about your taking a break, it’s about taking the time to create special experiences with family and friends. It’s about connection. It’s also NOT negotiable for any leader who wants to excel. If you want to accelerate your leadership and be a productive contributor on your team? Take time off. You will be more fun to work with, more focused and energized and you will create memories with people you care about, and isn’t that the reason many of us work?

Here’s my challenge to you: Pay attention to what matters. You, your health, and your loved ones all benefit from scheduled recovery, book yours today.  Need more convincing or ideas how you can achieve peak performance through regularly scheduled recovery time? Check out this video and learn how professionals can achieve maximum productivity results, focus and dedicated attention to goals and priorities through recovery time.

 

Categories
Growth Skills

Tips for Natural Sounding Writing

You are in a restaurant with a friend. You’ve just seen your company’s third quarter results. As you explain the results, she asks questions which takes you deep into the conversation and to further explanations.

Do you ever wonder if you are setting the right tone with your writing? When it comes to writing memos, sales pages, or white papers, many people freeze in their tracks. They’re afraid if they don’t use just the right (perfect) formula they won’t be effective in communication. But writing is just another form of conversation, like the one you had with your friend.

You have a natural-born talent to communicate – you have that skill already. Leaders have well-developed communication abilities. You would not be in your role if you could not communicate well. Written communication should not be a stumbling block that it is for some leaders.
How to Get Started: Outline or Free Flow?

You are sitting down to write a report. Pretend you’re in that restaurant about to tell a colleague about this great product, or service, or result you have achieved in your company. Think about what you’d say to her. What would she ask you? Keeping your reader in mind as you write helps you focus on the message.

It is usually more effective to write in a rough form than to edit your work as you write. I’ll bet you remember having to turn in outlines of papers when you were in school. Our teachers made us do them because outlines really are helpful for organizing material. Start with an outline and then fill in the concepts under each main point you want to make.

Creating an outline is difficult for some. You might be more comfortable with a style that involves letting your ideas flow and then organizing them. Then polish your writing. The process of refining your writing involves looking at word flow, the length of paragraphs, and the way you’ve connected your thoughts. This is also the point at which you can add headers, sub headers, bullets and numbered lists. Some of your readers love to read all the details. Some want to skim and get the key points.

Readers can sense your energy. It flows through in everything you write. If your writing is stiff you may easily lose your reader. (We’ve been trained to have short attention spans.) Read what you wrote out loud. Does it sound conversational?

While it is true that you need to get it right, don’t let a craving for perfection stop you from writing. Done is often better than perfect.

Pat Iyer is a professional writer who works with others to assist them as an editor, ghostwriter and online course creator. Reach her at patriciaiyer@gmail.com.

Categories
Growth Human Resources Management Personal Development

Do You Trust Your Employees?

One of the questions I frequently ask clients is whether they trust their employees. I ask with purpose. If an employer does not trust the employees that are supposed to be interacting with customers, that employer also can’t trust that customers are being taken care of well.

A company’s front-line employees are the ones who create the all-important first impression. Employers have to be able to trust them to make that first impression a good one. Unfortunately, far too many employers retain workers they don’t trust and, as a result, jeopardize relationships with customers.

Trust Is the Foundation

Trust is the foundation of any relationship between employer and employee. This trust manifests itself in two ways. First, employers want to be able to trust their employees to perform the job to the standards set. This includes taking good care of customers. Second, employees need to be able to trust that their employers will take care of them just as they are expected to take care of customers.

A lack of trust in either direction is usually an indication that a particular employee should not be put in a position of interacting with customers. If that employee cannot be trusted to do the job up to standards, he or she certainly cannot be trusted to interact with customers. Likewise, if the employee does not trust that the employer will take care of him or her, customer satisfaction isn’t going to be a priority.

In addition, think about this for just a minute: an employee who is not trusted by his or her employer will probably not be trusted by customers either. Do you see how important trust is

Communication, Retention, and Motivation

With trust as the foundation of employer-employee relationships, we can build on that foundation in other key areas. First among them is communication.

A relationship of trust between employers and employees rises or falls on the ability of all parties to communicate. Owners and managers must be willing to effectively communicate what’s going on within the organization so as to empower employees to be part of it. Likewise, employees have to be willing to communicate their thoughts and ideas so that management has an understanding of what is on their minds. Both sides need to be more than willing to listen and respond accordingly.

Next comes employee retention. When trust exists in the employer-employee relationship, retention is a lot easier. A solid relationship built on trust puts everyone at ease. It makes the employer happy to keep the employee; it reduces the likelihood that the employee will look for a new job.

Last is employee motivation. Employees who know they are trusted are more likely to have confidence that they will be retained. That trust and confidence subsequently motivates employees to be better at what they do. The more trust and confidence there is, the more motivated employees are.

Show Employees Your Trust

If it helps you to better understand the concept of trust in the employer-employee relationship, think about it in terms of parents and children. Older children who are treated like adults will begin to act like adults. Employees respond much the same way. Treat them like trusted team members and they will begin acting that way. Empower your employees by demonstrating your trust and they might just surprise you with the way they take care of your customers.

Remember that trust in the employer-employee relationship is a two-way street.  Do your employees trust you?  Mutual trust creates an environment that customers flock to. If you don’t have it, you may not have your customers for very long.

Randi Busse is the founder and president of Workforce Development Group, Inc., www.workdevgroup.com, a training and coaching organization that specializes in improving the customer experience, increasing customer retention, and maximizing revenue. She is also the co-author of Turning Rants Into Raves: Turn Your Customers On Before They Turn On YOU! Randi can be reached at randi@workdevgroup.com.

Categories
Growth Human Resources Leadership Personal Development

4 Insights to Manage Emotions for Life Success

As an employee engagement consultant, I am often called into help an organization resolve very complex conflicts.  The relationships have been damaged and emotions are high.  In my experience, the level of emotional intelligence of the involved parties plays a significant role in 100% of these situations.  I can safely claim that higher levels of emotional intelligence can prevent these complex conflicts from escalating and damaging the relationships.

Daniel Goleman, the author of Emotional Intelligence once said, “If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand…no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.”  My experience confirms this and, it begs the question, what can we do to improve our emotional intelligence and how can we therefore be more successful?

Emotional intelligence involves four very important skills. The first two involve our skills i.e. the awareness of our own emotions and the ability to express them appropriately. The second two involve the emotions of others i.e. the ability to recognize emotions with others and the ability to influence them to express them appropriately.

These are challenging skills that require effort to develop and we all can benefit from making an effort to continuously learn to enhance each.  That is why I want to share 4 key insights to help each of us continuously improve.

Moods are temporary so, avoid communication when emotions are negative

George S. Pransky, PhD., in his book The Relationship Handbook, helps us appreciate that moods are temporary perceptions of the world. Because they are temporary, Pransky advises us to wait when we are having negative feelings toward someone before we communicate. (George S. Prannsky, 1992)

Pransky is a marriage counselor. After advising couples over many years he advises we treat negative emotions as a signal to slow down, restore our positive energy, and think about changing our perspective. Temporary negative moods are an outcome of a certain perspective.  If we shift perspective, we can shift our mood.  Those couples who avoided communication and waited out the negative emotions had the most success in achieving long-lasting and happy relationships.

Blame is a victim’s response, not a leader’s

Imagine holding a bell. You shake the bell and it rings pleasantly.  What caused the ring?  Was it the bell or the clapper?  It’s a silly question misguided.  The sound came from the interaction between the two.  Both contributed.  Attempting to blame another person for a negative mood makes as much sense as asking “what caused the ring”.

The negative mood is asking us to stop and shift perspective.  Avoiding blame is a useful rule to follow during this evaluation period.  Better questions are, “what did I do to contribute to this negative perspective?  What can I do differently to change it?”

Notice the other and express empathy

Empathy is such a powerful tool and is often overlooked.  This is a tragedy.  Empathy helps us to influence the mood of others.  Empathy costs us nothing.  It is merely an expression that helps both parties remember they are human and are capable of negative feelings.  When we express empathy, we are not agreeing with another’s perspective of the world. We are simply relating as another human being who can experience a mood.

Empathy is the expression of understanding.  It acknowledges the existence of a mood and helps release any negative emotion thereby enabling logical discussion.  Calm logic can then lead to creating innovative solutions to complex problems.

In his book Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman explains how negative emotions overwhelm the brain.  This is useful because it helped humans to survive.  Fear helps us to focus and decide to either fight or flee.  The ability and willingness to effectively express empathy releases the brain to focus on solutions and away from fear. (Daniel Goleman, 2002)

A leader’s mood influences others’ moods

A leader’s mood will influence the moods of others and therefore the leader’s mood can either improve performance of a team or damage it.  A leader’s ability to be upbeat in the face of challenges will help teams to overcome those challenges.

The emotional part of our brain (the limbic) is open loop meaning it can connect with others.  This enables humans to support each other in the face of challenging emotional situations.  Recent disasters such as the floods in Houston demonstrate the power of this open loop insight. People can console each other. People can sense the emotions of others and even influence them to change just by being there and managing a mood in the face of disasters.

Why do we congregate during funerals?  To console each other.  We facilitate healing just be being there and sharing emotional support for each other.  We savor the open loop.  We savor the connection with others. Why not use it to influence positive moods.

Summary

How do we enhance our emotional intelligence skills?  We must practice if we want to be more successful in life.  These four insights can help. For example, if we realize our moods are temporary and give ourselves a time to reflect; if we avoid communication during low moods; if we avoid blame and realize we are a contributor to our own perspectives; if we learn to provide empathy and realize it is a powerful tool for influencing others’ moods; and, if we realize how our moods can influence the performance of others we can continuously improve.  It requires effort and it is worth every bit of it if we want success.

Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal.  Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania.   Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP.  Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.

Daniel Goleman, R. B. (2002). Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. Boston: Harvard Business School.

George S. Prannsky, P. (1992). The Relaitonship Handbook. New York, NY: McGraw Hill.