Consider This
Background on Emotional Intelligence

Think of your emotional intelligence (EI) quotient as having these four components: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. The first component lays the foundation for the rest. Here are signs that you are well on your way to mastering self-awareness and self-management.

Capability for self-awareness shows up this way:

» You can recognize your feelings (such as anger or embarrassment) as they happen. This is not always so easy to do because you are likely in a “thinking” mode. When you recognize the feeling, you are no longer at its mercy. For example, a self-aware person would be able to say, “This conversation is not going well. I’m feeling frustrated. I can now see that this happens every time this client suggests we bring in additional team members to help us out, simply because we hit a temporary obstacle. I find that a bit insulting.”

» You use certainty about your feelings to make better decisions about next steps. For example, “Every time I feel backed into a corner, I realize I am upset about not having my point of view heard. I’d better find a reasonable way to get my ideas into the conversation.”

Capability for self-management shows up this way:

» You have emotional self-control and can delay gratification. For example, a self-managing person would say, “I am super-eager to move ahead on my plan, but I see folks have too many questions that need attention first.”

» You demonstrate transparency and adaptability. For example, “I will let my team know how the new direction from management caused my favorite project to get derailed. And even though that hurts, I can move forward with management’s plan because I see such promise in it.”

» You are able to shake off emotions of anxiety or gloom rather than wallow in them. For example, shaking off emotions might sound like this, “Oh, no, they are asking us to adapt a new platform right in the middle of our implementation with this client! OK, we will find a way to keep the implementation going while we respond to the new platform, even if I need to bring in a few extra hands this month.”

2. Cultivate Relationships Built on Trust

Many managers believe their employees trust them. But our research showed that while most managers think they are doing OK in the trust department, EDEs would like their managers to be better at building trust. This dichotomy is crucial because trust is an essential ingredient for making talent your business. Over the past few decades, we’ve become more aware of the fallout from trust gaps in organizations.

In workplaces in which employees don’t trust management, cooperation suffers and adaptability in the face of marketplace changes screeches to a halt. Posturing prevails, rumors run rampant, and what people really think goes underground. Faced with a forest of hidden agendas and people playing it safe to get by, managers end up being consumed by resolving misunderstandings and tensions between people, rather than making real progress toward goals. Sound familiar? If so, you know that it’s simply exhausting to work in a low-trust environment. As Dennis and Michelle Reina describe in their book Rebuilding Trust in the Workplace, low trust saps not only energy but also confidence and commitment. And you need all three in large quantities to develop talent and generate high performance.

But when employees trust you, your ability to help successfully expand their skills increases immeasurably. According to the Reinas’ research, trust gives people the confidence to take risks and change their behavior—both prerequisites for learning and development. Think of trust as a condition for creating collaborative capital that enhances both relationships and results. For example, your staff member may not be willing to try a new business tool because a sales rep sings its praises, but if a trusted colleague says it would add tremendous value for the work he’s doing, your staff member is likely to get right on board.

Trust is also a prerequisite for effective feedback, the “breakfast of champions” for fueling new development. Why would your staff take feedback from someone whose motives they don’t trust? When trust is present in your relationship, your employees will be willing to listen to and learn from your feedback, whether it stings or it sings. Their trust in you provides a safety net for the vulnerability that comes with new self-awareness. With their trust, you can expect more loyalty, commitment, and growth.

Even though it is an essential skill, building trust with employees isn’t in your job description and probably wasn’t covered in any management course you’ve taken. How, then, do you find the time and path to reinforce or repair trust? Through paying attention to your own behavior every day, so that over time you build the three types of trust outlined by the Reinas.

The first is contractual trust: fulfill obligations and commitments without exceptions. If you make an offer to a staff member, you need to follow through—no empty promises. Be consistent, delegate appropriately, and encourage mutually serving intentions.

Second, build communication trust by being honest, sharing information, and maintaining confidentiality. Telling a staff member half-truths about the virtues of a project assignment or withholding important details jeopardizes not only the development opportunity but also your relationship.

Third, practice competence trust. Acknowledge people’s needs, skills, and abilities, and support them in making their own decisions. For example, if a big new assignment makes it difficult for your employee to respond to family obligations, acknowledge this tension and support the person in finding effective remedies.

Your people will notice what you do to build trust. An EDE we’ll call Elaine shared this story with us:

Elaine was thrilled to have a new development opportunity in the form of playing junior partner to a more seasoned financial professional. But not everyone was happy about this arrangement. At a management meeting, two other managers ranted publicly about the potential risk factors. Rather than back down to pressure, her trust-building manager, Henry, took on the concerns one by one and made sure the potential exposures were addressed. Although the assignment was delayed while Henry put all the pieces into place, in the end, Elaine’s relationship with Henry was transformed by the experience. Having witnessed Henry going to bat for her, she knew she could truly trust Henry as her manager and as a person. As a result, Elaine’s tenacity to work through roadblocks increased, as did her willingness to go the extra mile in producing great results while learning new skills.

The benefits of building trust are not confined to the lines linking you and your staff members. By experiencing a trusting relationship with you, your employees learn about the power of trust in their other relationships. Their payback for doing this will be huge. Each trusting relationship they build multiplies the number of their relationships that can be developmental for them. Sometimes there is nothing more powerful and helpful than having your staff member hear feedback (solicited or unsolicited) from a trusted colleague. In fact, impressive EDEs have articulated the power this way: the more trusting the relationship, the more important that relationship becomes in building confidence and encouraging them to take on calculated risks. One professional told us, “Closeness really matters. When there is less of it, there is less learning because the trust is not there.” Likewise, EDMs value how others can provide emotional support to their employees, sometimes in ways they cannot. They therefore encourage their people to build a network of strong relationships that foster growth.

3. Help Employees “See” Themselves During Key Interactions

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” This powerful observation, stated centuries ago by Socrates, has been expanded upon by Warren Bennis, who has invested over five decades to promoting sage leadership practices: “The unexamined life is impossible to live successfully. Like oarsmen, we generally move forward while looking backward, but not until we truly see the past—truly understand it—can we truly move forward and upward.” By being the agent who helps people see their behavior and link it to their future actions, you inspire the personal growth that underpins successful professional development.

Encouraging self-reflection is not intended to be a therapy session. Instead, it’s about guiding your employee to explore what is “inside” (behind his or her behavior) and what is “outside” (how his or her behaviors truly affects others). “Doing what comes naturally” without examining what’s beneath the surface and ignoring how others experience the interaction can be risky. Operating in panic mode, bullying others who are not keeping pace, and flirting to get a work favor are employee actions that backfire. Your staff members, often caught up in the pressure to achieve results, can fall into such behaviors and be completely unaware of their impact. They are doing what they have been conditioned to do, what they watched their families of origin do, or what they ingeniously developed as a survival habit.

Most managers are certainly not equipped to try to uncover the complexities of each person’s psychological drivers, and there’s no need to. Instead, EDMs simply hold up a mirror for their employee in a way that provides perspective—both about the assumptions that are driving that behavior and the downsides of acting in that way.