“How To Be An
Emotionally Intelligent Boss"
By Gary Lee
In a previous article, we discuss about why
Emotional intelligence (EI) is important in the
corporate workplace and how Daniel Goleman defines
EI through his Quadrant framework. Just to recap
very quickly, here is a brief outline of his theory.
1.
Self
awareness: How you can accurately identify your own emotions
when you are in a situation?
2.
Self-
management: How can you manage your emotions so that you can
reach a positive outcome?
3.
Social
awareness: How can you identify your emotions when you interact
with another individual or in a team?
4.
Relationship management: How can you manage an interaction with
another person or group so that a positive outcome is achieved?
As the
New Year begins and we review how 2007 went, I could not help
but recall the times when my friends were lamenting about how
bad their work environment was and how incompetent their
superiors were. Whenever I asked how their work life was, these
were some of their replies:
“I
cannot stand him. He is just so dumb. He says the dumbest of
things and makes the worst decisions, causing work delays and
more work for everyone else to do.”
“My
boss is a wimp. She talks big and makes empty promises during
the board meetings and arrows us to do her dirty work after
that.”
“My
boss is a slacker. He goes home by 6pm while the rest of us slog
till 8pm. Why does he get paid more to just paste post-it
stickers on our work while we have to alter it and ensure
everything works perfectly?
These
are just some of the remarks that I hear during our regular
gatherings and I sometimes wonder what it really takes to be a
good boss or superior. As we climb up the career ladder, we move
up to higher ground and our perspective becomes broader. We are
given more authority to make decisions and more responsibility
towards the organization’s bottom line and the staff under our
charge. It is easy for us to use the reason that our juniors
will never understand the kind of stress we go through and what
we do for them sometimes.
If we
look beyond the current work situation, it would be a nice idea
to have a scenario where you can have a wonderful working
relationship with your peers while making the right decisions
and you as the superior are respected by your peers for it. It
may not be popular decisions but they are the right ones that
ensure the productivity is increased while the staff’s interests
at heart are considered.
So how
can we be a model superior where we can make the right decisions
that benefit both the organization and staff while maintaining a
harmonious working relationship? We can achieve this by
increasing our EI. Many have agreed that the older we grow, so
should our EI. One way we can learn to increase our EI is by
becoming more socially aware about our surroundings. Everyday we
choose what we want to focus on and we can choose how we view
our employees. The world is full of skeptics and negativity as
seen on the newspapers, the family and even in the workplace. We
can choose to focus on the flaws of the system or the individual
faults of our staff and even ourselves OR we can focus on what
is good. We pay attention to things that we want to focus on.
There are some key areas of growth in social awareness and there
are as follows:
·
Influence:
Wield effective tactics of persuasion to help build consensus
and support
·
Communication:
Send clear and convincing messages. Deal with difficult issues
straightforwardly. Listen well and seek mutual understanding
·
Leadership:
Inspire and guide groups and people. Lead by example while
stepping forward to lead as needed, regardless of position.
·
Change
catalyst:
Initiate/ manage change. Recognize the need for change and
remove the barriers.
·
Conflict management:
Negotiate and resolve disagreements. Handle difficult people and
tense situations with diplomacy and tact. Orchestrate win-win
solutions
·
Collaboration and cooperation:
Work with others towards shared goals. Promote friendly and
cooperative culture while balance a focus on tasks with
attention to relationships.
·
Team
capabilities:
Create team synergy in pursuing collective goals. Build team
identity, esprit de corps and commitment
Awareness of all these can be achieved through reading related
materials or even attending training programs but to gain
competence, it has to be practised on a consistent basis. We can
choose to wake up everyday to focus on a facet of social
awareness to grow. We all have the power to choose, we can
choose to remain where we are or grow with each passing day.
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