2011-06-05 21:20:06

Great leaders grow profits

Emotional intelligence reaps rewards

Research conducted by Primal Leadership authors Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee supports this thinking. In their analysis of the profit contributions made by partners in a large accounting firm, they found that partners with significant Emotional Intelligence (EQ) strengths in empathy, social responsibility, and relationship building, and in the areas of self-regard and self-awareness, had a 390% incremental profit over partners without those strengths. This benefit added up to more than $1.4 million per year.

Experts say that leadership qualities often exist in organizations, but rarely at the top.

The reason is simple: While track record and management competencies are adopted as criteria for selection or promotion, leadership is rarely defined.

 

What is leadership?

While managers are appointed by their superiors, leaders are anointed by their followers. Leaders’ power does not lie in the authority of their role; rather, power is given to them by those who believe in them. In his book “The Feiner Points of Leadership”, Michael Feiner, formerly Chief People Officer at Pepsi Cola and currently Professor of Management at Columbia University Graduate School of Business, says that leadership has “everything to do with managing relationships, up, down, and across the organization. Leadership is the aggregation of hundreds upon thousands of small interactions. At the simplest level, the leader is a leader because he or she can enable their group to deliver.”

Social scientists have explored the underlying skills that create exemplary leaders. They often found in exceptional leaders significant EQ, comprising the social, emotional, personal, political, and survival skills that are essential in successfully dealing with day-to-day challenges and obstacles in our lives.

In their book, “The EQ Edge: Emotional Intelligence and Your Success”, authors Steven Stein (PhD) and Howard E. Book (MD) pinpoint six essential leadership skills.

 

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the capacity to know what one is feeling, why one is feeling that way, and the impact that feeling has on our behaviour and on our co-workers. For example, a CEO with strong self-awareness will be conscious of the fact that he feels irritable and impatient due to a prior disagreement and will recognize that his mood could affect interaction at an upcoming senior management meeting. He should also know whether he can put these feelings aside or identify his bad mood to his colleagues.

 

Self-Regard

Self-regard is awareness of one’s own strengths and weaknesses and feeling comfortable with them. Leaders with poor self-regard cannot allow themselves weaknesses and can never admit to mistakes. As a result, they are at risk of blaming others rather than acknowledging their own errors.

 

Assertiveness

Assertiveness is the capacity to voice one’s beliefs and wishes clearly and with conviction, defend them as appropriate, take an unpopular stance, and do this while being sensitive to the feelings of others.

 

Empathy

Empathy is the ability to see the world from another person’s perspective. It is the capacity to set aside one’s own feelings, beliefs, and perspective, and to grasp the total experience through the feelings and beliefs of another person. One’s understanding of another turns adversarial relationships into collaborative relationships.

 

Social Responsibility

Social responsibility is the capacity to put the needs of the team, division unit, or organization ahead of one’s own personal needs. Leaders who do not have this capacity make poor team players, cannot share the spotlight, and are reluctant to acknowledge the contributions of others.

 

Reality Testing

Reality testing is clearly seeing situations the way they are, rather than the way we wish them to be, or the way we fear they might be. It is the capacity to objectively evaluate a situation. Leaders without this ability are at risk of overlooking or denying problems until after they derail an organization.

 

The state of your leaders

The first step to growing profits by building better leaders is not only to hire the right person the first time, but also to measure the leadership skills of your current leaders.

This can be achieved by conducting a comprehensive assessment of leadership and behavioural tendencies. CEOs and management are then able to take the results of the assessment and directly apply this insight to better understand how their leaders lead and communicate with others, and how each leadership style relates to the overall composition of the working style of their team.

Exemplary leaders grow profits by building committed and enthusiastic relationships that bring others onside and inspire them to achieve or exceed their workplace goals. Such leaders do this through behaviours that meet the needs of bosses, peers, teams, and subordinates throughout the organization.

 

Building Leaders with Drake P3

Drake P3 is an online talent management system that uses an assessment instrument to help companies hire and manage people who will outperform. Any time person-to-person or person-to-job fit is an issue, Drake P3 can help. Drake P3 reveals a person’s natural tendencies, emotional intelligence, communication styles, motivational needs, decision-making abilities, energy levels, and more. Drake P3 provides fast results in a cost-effective manner and can easily be used and interpreted by non-specialists. In addition to supporting employee selection, DrakeP3 helps with employee on-boarding, team dynamics, employee performance, employee development, and succession planning. DrakeP3 has been a part of the Drake International Group of Companies for well over 25 years.