Importance of Casting Vision

The need for leaders to cast a clear vision is generally accepted as one of the success factors behind effective leadership.  However the development of this skill still remains a mystery to many leaders.  How does one develop the capacity to cast a clear effective vision?  It is obvious that some knowledge is required, some of which I am about to share with you, but there is more than knowledge required to pull this off with precision.  Leaders must learn both the science (processes) and the art (dealing with people) of casting vision.

A vision needs to be value-based, where people are willing to invest their energies because they believe in the outcome – it gives greater meaning to those involved.  This is true whether it be a personal or organizational vision.  So whatever the endeavor, the visionary must have (for self) and create (for others) buy-in to a worthy outcome.  Organizationally, this cannot be achieved without trusting relationships built through significant discussion and communication.  When those implementing the vision are invited to participate in the creation of options and action-planning, ownership to the vision is increased and commitment levels produce more effective results.  Gone are the days when a leader can just use top down command and control mechanisms to thrust a vision upon others because they are paid to be there.

It is crucial to understand that if you are casting a vision then you are also unmistakably a change-agent.  You therefore need to call on all the expertise required to manage change.  Thus the leader must cast the vision for the organization often and in varying ways.  This enables others to continually capture the vision. This is one of the reasons why organisations use mottos, wall plaques, stationery, one-to-one discussions, memos, meeting agendas, and various other mediums to constantly get the singular message out to all staff.  As a change agent, the leader also needs to consider how to best manage the early adopters, the never adopters and all else in between.  Hence you have to be careful to honour the past, reveal the current status quo’s lack of effectiveness and paint a successful picture of the future.

In order for a vision to be actualized it also must be viable.  For example, organisationally, if the vision is competing with other existing companies, then strategic planning is a key component.  Hence, to enter an existing market the strategic planning process would look strongly at whether it could gain market share and survive/thrive.  Or if the vision involves diversifying from existing products and services into a complementary area, then the capabilities of the company could be examined to see if it has capacity to expand and implement the vision.  Using a tool like Porter’s five forces can be good for this.  It can also aid in investigating an innovative start-up business vision, where you can examine things like how easy it is for others to duplicate the new product or service, etc…  An investigation like this may lead to the realization that the vision is too risky and likely to fail.

Finally, it is underestimated how important it is for the leader/s to have absorbed the vision into their own psyche.  Unless the leader is passionate about the vision it will not be believed and pursued to its potential.  Thus, with a passionate leader, a viable vision that is value-based, and has a strong buy-in, the final step is to create an action plan.  You can chunk the vision down into specific goals creating projects with distinct start and completion times.  Using project management processes, the right people are delegated to the roles and responsibilities to oversee and empower teams to achieve the vision.  This involves ongoing communication, rewards and review.  It involves managing people, processes, timelines and results.  In conclusion, it is so critical for optimum results that leaders constantly aid their team/staff to relate all the goals, projects and action steps back to the bigger vision so that no one gets lost or left behind.

www.ExecutiveSuccessCoaching.com

Emotional Intelligence – How to improve it!

Emotional Intelligence (EI) – that is, the capacity to work effectively with your and others’ emotions while engaging in human interactions.  EI is demonstrating itself to be a critical factor in leadership effectiveness.  Increased numbers of empirical research studies are being produced that reveal outcomes that can no longer be ignored by serious leaders. Some of the key measures associated with emotional intelligence that are being examined are job satisfaction levels, job effectiveness, the contagiousness of moods and physiological responses to others (heart rate, health).  Studies show that the emotional intelligence of the boss directly affects employee job satisfaction levels, and this in turn impacts upon employee turnover.  Furthermore when a boss brings a negative mood to the workplace through displays of irritability, and anxiety it takes away from a climate of enthusiasm, which diminishes work effectiveness.

In contrast, when a boss is able to exude an optimistic and enthusiastic mood it impacts positively upon innovation, productivity, team work and increased resilience to difficult circumstances. With a greater number of research studies demonstrating the positive impact that increased emotional intelligence has upon business results, it is becoming more difficult to ignore this element of leadership development.  The good news is that leaders can improve and grow in this area. I have worked one-to-one with leaders to achieve this very thing.  So where do you start to work at improving this area?  There are a number of options available to you.  You might want to look at taking an assessment to assist you in this.  I offer them on my site at www.ExecutiveSuccessCoaching.com.  You may want to read up more on the four elements of emotional intelligence and select one that you know needs more work and set some goals for yourself, or perhaps ask those you are leading for their perspective, either directly or through a 360 assessment.  The most logical place to start improving emotional intelligence is to increase your own self-awareness, for it is the building blocks to EI.

Key variables that align well with evolved EI are awareness of your own  personal values, taking opportunities to reflect and knowing your strengths.  When you are clear on your values – your inner guiding life principles – then your decision-making is automatically simplified.  You are able to confidently say ‘no’ to opportunities that don’t match who you are, or have become.  And you are able to quickly distinguish between opportunities worthy of your investment.  One exploratory question I have found helpful in working with leaders to increase their awareness of their values is, “What is so important to you, that if you didn’t do it, you would consider your life a waste?”

Leaders who know their strengths are able to construct their life and business in order to cater for their strengths and potential growth areas.  They openly acknowledge their weaknesses allowing those areas to be addressed in any organizational strategic planning.  They know how to build teams around them that will complement their strengths and growth areas, which will create greater effectiveness.  There are some great assessment tools available today to assist leaders in this process of discovering their behavioral strengths, which will also enable them to learn how to flex their style with people who are different.  I recommend increasing your self-awareness in this area.

The final area that is vital for increasing self-awareness is learning to take the time to reflect over your responses to others.  Optimally it is best to reflect before making decisions so you don’t simply react but you make a measured response.  Sometimes we emotionally react and after the fact we know that we haven’t demonstrated emotional intelligence.  Instead of beating ourselves up, these are the times to intentionally practice reflection.  Use a journal if you want to get serious and write down your thoughts.  Ask yourself, “What just happened?  “What was going on for me in that emotional encounter?”  “What hot buttons were pressed, and how could I have responded?”  “If a similar encounter were to occur in the future, how would I pick up on it – what would be the indicators, and how could I recognize them as red flags in order to respond appropriately next time?

As you can see this type of growth doesn’t happen over night, which is why one-to-one coaching is effective to improving this competency.  As you become more aware of your own inner responses and what triggers negative reactions, it is only then that you can make alternate decisions to a better you.  I have given you a number of possible paths to improving one area of your EI, so which one are you going to take?  When are you going to get started?  This area is critical to effective leadership, so don’t ignore it any longer – start today?

David Allan MBus Professionally Accredited Coach LinkedIn

Emotional Intelligence and Self-awareness

As a leader I always look for more ways to improve in my leadership capacity.  Specifically, I have found when I increase my emotional intelligence (EI) it always has a by-product of improving my leadership of others.  When it comes to developing EI in leaders the foundational building block for increasing this essential competency is self-awareness.  If you are not aware of your own emotional responses how will you be aware of others?  If you are not aware of your own emotional triggers how can you step back from a situation and objectively respond to the stimuli being thrown your way and not react to it?  There is a lot of talk today about emotional intelligence and its positive influence upon leadership effectiveness, but how much of this is hype?  Surprisingly, more empirical research is emerging with significant results showing how EI in leaders positively effects employees’ job satisfaction levels, decreases their intention to leave, improves innovation and increases bottom-line results.  Emotional Intelligence however cannot be built over night.  But it can be built if leaders would follow a personal development plan.  The key is to start with increasing self-awareness.

In the end I find one of the best and fastest methods for leadership development in EI is through listening to honest feedback given to me in real-time, and then to immediately start implementing a new approach – to experiment – to see what happens.  To speed this process up even more, I have also found it invaluable to have a coach to walk with me so I have even more objectivity and ongoing accountability.  These methods have enabled me to increase in my awareness of my emotional reactions and lead others more effectively, increasing emotional intelligence (EI).  I am by no means perfect, but as one of my mentors taught me, “Although I am not what I ought to be, I certainly am not what I used to be.”  For the reality is that any significant leadership development in this area doesn’t happen over night.  But if you keep focused on developing the correct areas you will see growth over time.

So you may be asking, “How do I know what the correct areas to focus on are?”  I mean, if there are gaps in your emotional intelligence where you are ‘unaware’ how do you become aware?  That is why honest feedback in real-time is essential.  You need to humbly be open to such feedback and then experiment by changing your approach in a very short time span after receiving the news.  If you wait before you experiment, the invaluable insights you just received may rapidly merge back into your blind spots once more.  Now this is where I find a coach is invaluable, because there are two main reasons why people don’t accept feedback.  The first is that you don’t trust the people giving it, either because of ulterior motives, or through incompetency.  The second main reason is because the feedback process is seen as unreliable, whether a formal untrusted 360 degree assessment is used or data collection and interpretation is seen as flawed.  But having a coach, an outside objective expert whose main objective is your growth, brings greater confidence and direction in how to constructively respond to the feedback.  A coach can help you to develop a plan and ascertain whether or not you are overreacting, being too suspicious, arrogant, or using a host of other unhelpful filters to assess your situation.

I have personally found that there is something deeply satisfying about this type of leadership development, because it also influences the way you interact with your family and other important people in your life.  Furthermore, it is a boost to your leadership confidence when you notice that you are catching yourself from reacting to emotionally charged environments and instead you are now responding constructively.  You find yourself directing your team not only through an articulated strategy but also through behavior that models the very values you are trying to espouse within your team and organization.  You are no longer overwhelmed with anxiety when you begin to think about dealing with a team conflict, but you look forward to assisting team members to constructively work through to resolution knowing you have the capacity to be objective and assist them to be the same.  Conflict is seen as an opportunity to anchor the values of how team members are meant to deal with each other in adverse circumstances.

Let me conclude by addressing the concept of using a personal development plan, mentioned earlier.  The four key areas of emotional intelligence as depicted by Goleman are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management.   The first step for you to take is to ascertain which one of these four you need to focus on.  If you would like assistance in finding helpful tools to increase these leadership capacities, then go to www.ExecutiveSuccessCoaching.com/resources where you can scroll down and view various online assessments which not only immediately reveal areas for your developmental focus, but also, once completed, give strategic approaches in what to do about improving them.  Now if you are new to all this, the foundational element is self-awareness, and there are a number of assessments that are very helpful to increasing this capacity.  I can remember some 18 years ago now taking my first Myers-Briggs Personality Type indicator.  I discovered as a leader that a number of the approaches that I took were not born out of my values but simply were a part of my personality makeup.  That was a shock to me, but one of the best outcomes from taking such an assessment was a greater appreciation to accept differences in others.  I learned to stop interpreting other people’s actions through my own narrow framework.  I learned to work with those differences in others appreciating what they had to offer to the team.  Over time, I found myself less resistant to different perspectives and more embracing of variety.  Over the past 18 years, I have found myself taking other assessments like DiSC and many others.  All of which have been a part of increasing my self-awareness, along with committing to implementation and being coached.  In my next post I am going to discuss how to address the other three EI elements of self-management, social awareness and relationship management.

David Allan MBus

http://www.ExecutiveSuccessCoaching.com

 

Does Emotional Intelligence Really Work?

I’ve been working full time with leaders to assist them in their leadership development for 10 years now, and I have found that the leaders that make the biggest positive impact with others are those who can engage empathetically utilizing the emotional dynamics that take place in any human encounter.  This of course is the very essence of  the four key elements of ’emotional intelligence’ – that is – self-awareness, self management, social awareness and relationship management.  This has lead me on a search to see whether there was any hard data to verify my experiences.

What I have discovered in my search is that greater numbers of empirical research studies are being produced that reveal outcomes that can no longer be ignored by serious leaders.  Some of the key measures associated with emotional intelligence that are being examined are job satisfaction levels, job effectiveness the contagiousness of moods and physiological responses to others (heart rate, health).  Studies show that the emotional intelligence of the boss directly affects employee job satisfaction levels, and this in turn impacts upon employee turnover.  Furthermore when a boss brings a negative mood to the workplace through displays of irritability, and anxiety it takes away from a climate of enthusiasm, which diminishes work effectiveness.

In contrast, when a boss is able to exude an optimistic and enthusiastic mood it impacts positively upon innovation, productivity, team work and increased resilience to difficult circumstances. With a greater number of research studies demonstrating the positive impact that increased emotional intelligence has upon business results, it is becoming more difficult to ignore this element of leadership development.  The good news is that leaders can improve and grow in this area.  I have worked one-to-one with leaders to achieve this very thing.  So where do you start to work at improving this area?  There are a number of options available to you.  You might want to look at taking an assessment to assist you in this.  I offer them on my site at www.ExecutiveSuccessCoaching.com.  You may want to read up more on the four elements of emotional intelligence and select one that you know needs more work and set some goals for yourself, or perhaps ask those you are leading for their perspective, either directly or through a 360 assessment.  The most logical place to start improving emotional intelligence is to increase your own emotional awareness.  So I am going to be speaking about this in my next post.

Start Growing in your Emotional Intelligence today

David Allan MBus

www.ExecutiveSuccessCoaching.com