The Sunday Times Business Section had an interesting article that was adapted from Adam Bryant’s new book, The Corner Office. The sub-title of the book is “Indispensible and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed.” We were curious to see what role Emotional Intelligence (EQ) would have in his book as a way to pick up on our last blog post that spoke to that topic.
Clearly if you read our last post you know that we have a bias for the subject of EQ and its importance to effective leadership. Admittedly that bias clouds my interpretation of the article’s brief overview of Bryant’s five key qualities he established from more than 70 interviews with leaders. Despite all of that, we still think it’s not much of a stretch to say that EQ is in the midst of all of them.
Bryant says that these traits are not genetic. Rather they are factors that are in your control and can be developed through attitude, habit and discipline, which is just like what it takes to develop ones EQ. What is so exciting to us about EQ is that unlike your Intellectual Quotient (IQ), which you are wired with, you can do things to develop your EQ in the same way Bryant speaks to developing these critical leadership qualities.
The 5 leadership qualities Bryant defines and how we perceive each one relates to EQ are as follows:
1) Passionate Curiosity is described as being a student of human nature that is always seeking more knowledge and has a fascination with understanding everyone they are around. The better the questions the more effective the leader. It is through this constant questioning that strong leaders inspire others, identify new directions for their companies and come to understand how to engage with others.
GS) A major component of EQ is empathy, both being aware and accurate in order to relate and connect with the other person effectively when times are tough. The ability to do this well is strongly tied to how curious someone is and how willing they are to find out if their hunch is right by being curious and inquiring into the other person.
2) Battle-Hardened Confidence comes from embracing adversity and overcoming it. The people with this take ownership of the challenges and do not look for excuses. If they fall down, they are able to dust themselves off and keep fighting the next day. They have a positive attitude that is mixed with a sense of purpose and determination.
GS) EQ is built upon knowing and managing oneself when under stress. It comes with hard work and commitment to own one’s “locus of control” rather than blaming failures on factors they can’t control, like other people. One of the components of our EQ work with people looks at their level of positive versus negative orientation. This measure ties directly to a person’s willingness to see challenges as opportunities they can influence rather than as insurmountable obstacles that they deflect to others to fix.
3) Team Smarts is more than just being a team player that toils in obscurity. It is the ability to understand how teams works and how to get the most out of a group. It requires a sense for how people react to one another not just how they act in order to recognize the players the team needs and how to bring them together around a common goal. This skill is even more important in today’s matrix organizations where leaders often have to mobilize people who are not their direct reports.
GS) A person with strong EQ skills is going to thrive in team environments because of their ability to be in relationship with all types of people in all kinds of environments, even the most challenging. This comes from their ability to name and access a wide range of emotions, balance their thoughts, wants, actions and identify how they relate to their self and others. We focus on all of these measures in our EQ work with individuals so that they can know themselves in order to more effective in or leading groups.
4) Simple Mind-Set is the confidence and knowledge to be concise. Less is more and simplicity is critical in a landscape of ever growing complexity. The premium is now on the ability to synthesize and connect the dots that make sense quickly.
GS) This dimension is probably the biggest stretch to relate to EQ, but I would argue that having the ability to read ones audience is always critical. Whether you are in sales or not, knowing what the customer wants and being able to give it to them is important. The concept of differentiation comes from knowing where you end and the other begins and is a byproduct of strong EQ. If this is lacking then people will miss the signals from the other person, go with the default pattern of more is better and end up over complicating things and ultimately frustrating the recipient.
5) Fearlessness is the ability to navigate constant change and actually seek it out rather than run from it. It is about calculated and informed risk-taking in order to do things. It is also about never being comfortable with the status quo and getting complacent.
GS) Another critical component to our EQ work is to explore how people self-regulate themselves when they are stressed. We do this by looking at what we call relationship strategies that explore an individual’s trust of themselves and others. Those that have high trust of both, tend to be great at working with others and bring a strong sense of security and stability in times of stress. These are the fearless leaders that trust things will be okay and have an appetite for change.
We’re curious to hear other people’s critical leadership qualities. Our belief is they are probably connected to EQ as well.