Do You Have The Emotional Intelligence Of Frankenstein?

Do you:

  • Growl at people?
  • Have a tantrum and stamp your boots when frustrated?
  • Lash out?
  • Take things personally?
  • Ruin parties just by appearing?

Or, are you more like Dr. Frankenstein?

  • Are you uncommunicative about your plans?
  • Are you sensitive to the issues involved in introducing a new way to do things like creature building?
  • Do you refuse to listen to good advice from your assistant Inga?
  • Do angry villagers storm your office door?

Perhaps, you need to learn a little about Emotional Intelligence.

In his book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman discusses a number of helpful topics. One of them is “emotional memory” and how it relates to the amygdala. Frankenstein may have had trouble using parts of his brain, but the amygdala wasn’t one of them.

 

Often called the “lizard brain”, it’s responsible for our fight or flight impulse. It’s where the emotions associated with memories are stored. This often unconsciously leads us to react in ways that are counterproductive. Something happens that triggers a memory, and our lizard brain kicks. Sometimes this causes us to react without the use of much, if any, reasoning.  Frankie did NOT like fire. He might not have been able to process why he had such a strong reaction to it, but he knew he didn’t like it.

However, even if we don’t know why we react as we do, knowledge is power. Having power over our impulses is how we keep from destroying walls as we flee or terrorize cubicle dwellers. Goleman has suggested five main elements that make up emotional intelligence:

  1. “Knowing one’s emotions” – Self-awareness
  2. “Managing emotions” – Self-regulation
  3. “Motivating oneself”
  4. “Recognizing emotions in others.” – Empathy
  5. “Handling Relationships” – Social skills

By learning more about these skills and how to use them, we can become less like Frankenstein and his creator. There are a number of books and workshops available on the subject. ALA will be having a workshop in Marietta, Ohio on April 17th. For more information, please visit the workshop page on our site.

Also, if you’re interested in reading more about Goleman’s explanation of how the amygdala works in setting our emotional memories, it’s contained in Emotional Intelligence on pages 20-22. I’m sure Dr. Frankenstein would have enjoyed it.

You can also go to Goleman’s site for more information on EI.

 

 

 

Geeks, Wonks and Gurus – How NOT To Lead Them

Whether your IT people are gurus, wonks or geeks, they’re very good at what they do. That’s why you hired them.

However, there are times when you may find leading them as difficult as herding cats. This could be due to different educational disciplines and backgrounds, different ways of looking at things or different ways of formulating solutions.

Whatever the reason, there are a variety of ways NOT to lead them.

Stepping up to address this issue is Alexander Kjerulf, speaker, consultant, author, and self-proclaimed Chief Happiness Officer. His clients have included, Hilton, Ikea, Shell, IBM and HP. As Kjerulf describes it, “I started out as a geek and later became a leader and an IT company founder so I’ve been lucky enough to have tried both camps.”  His tips for how NOT to lead geeks -

  • 1: “Downplay training – Training matters, especially in IT, and managers must realize that and budget for it. Sometimes you get the argument that ‘if I give them training a competitor will hire them away.’ That may be true, but the alternative is to only have employees who are too unskilled to work anywhere else.”
  • 2: “Plan too much overtime – Let’s wring the most work out of our geeks, they don’t have lives anyway,” seems to the approach of some managers. That’s a huge mistake and overworked geeks burn out or simply quit.”
  • 3: “Make decisions without consulting them – Geeks usually know the technical side of the business better than the manager, so making a technical decision without consulting them is the biggest mistake a leader can make.”
  • 4: “Don’t give them tools – A fast computer may cost more money than an older one and it may not be corporate standard, but geeks use computers differently. A slow computer lowers productivity and is a daily annoyance.”
  • 5: “Forget that geeks are creative workers – Programming is a creative process, not an industrial one. Geeks must constantly come up with solutions to new problems and rarely ever solve the same problem twice. Therefore they need leeway and flexibility. Strict dress codes and too much red tape kill all innovation. They also need creative surroundings to avoid ‘death by cubicle’.”

Kjerulf states that poor leadership in dealing with “geeks” can cause:

  • “Low motivation
  • High employee turnover
  • Increased absenteeism
  • Lower productivity
  • Lower quality
  • Bad service

Happy geeks are productive geeks, and the most important factor is good management, tailored to their situation.”

We’ve listed just five of the tips (in abbreviated form) used by Alexander Kjerulf . For all ten fully explained, see Kjerulf’s post on his website positivesharing.com.

Courageous Leadership

The Hobbit, Braveheart, even Shrek – you could go on and on with books and movies that celebrate courageous leadership. A lot has been said about this topic. There’s a courageousleadership.com, courageousleadership.org, Courageous Leaders Academy, Courageous Leadership Consortium, and, when I put the words “courageous leadership” into the Amazon.com search bar and selected books, I got 1,152 results – Courageous Leadership Workbook, Courageous Leadership for Transforming Schools, 12 Steps for Creative Leadership and on it went. When I Googled just the two words together, I got “about 213,000” results. Clearly, it’s a topic many people are interested in.

It can also mean many things to a lot of different people. If you ask someone what leading courageously means, you might get a wide array of answers such as:

  • Be willing to move into unchartered areas
  • Take risks
  • Change direction when it’s warranted
  • Make needed changes even when they’re uncomfortable
  • Leadership isn’t a popularity contest
  • Hold yourself and others accountable
  • Learn how to deal with conflict

For Rita Rizzo, owner of Rizzo & Associates, the topic of Courageous Leadership is one she’s very familiar with. Rita is a Certified Management Consultant who has a Masters in Training and Human Resource Management from the University of Leicester in Leicester, England and did her undergraduate work at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. One of the many topics she’s well versed in is Courageous Leadership. One part of her workshop on the topic deals with dealing with difficult others. She describes the four behavior types: Dominance, Influencing, Steadiness and Compliance and goes on to discuss how these types most commonly exhibit difficult behavior. For example, a Dominance behavior type might exhibit impatience, use verbal attacks or might use coercive tactics. To intervene with someone exhibiting this type of behavior, you could move swiftly to counter the impatience, look the person eye to eye to lessen the verbal attacks and be concise and direct in dealing with coercive tactics. In dealing with someone who exhibits the type of behavior called Steadiness, you can give them time to assimilate changes when they exhibit depression and draw them out when they seem worried.

Rita will be presenting a workshop called “Courageous Leadership” for us in Coschocton, Ohio on May 2nd. If you’re interested in more information on this workshop, please see our ALA website.

The Leadership of Independent Businesses – A Thank You

ALA does most of its training out of town. We’re based in Athens, Ohio, but we sponsor workshops throughout the Appalachian Ohio area. These workshops are the monthly training sessions for people enrolled in the Appalachian Leadership Academy as well as workshops featuring special topics for alumni and the community at large. When we make arrangements for lodging, lunch catering, dinner at restaurants, etc., we make our best attempt to use “mom and pop” businesses. It’s not just about keeping money in a community, but it’s also about quality and customer care. These independent businesses always seem happy to go the extra mile, and we appreciate the leadership it takes to run a business, manage staff and deliver excellent service.

We’d like to take time to publicly thank some of the small businesses who’ve been so helpful to over the past few months.

Naples Spaghetti House – Steubenville

Golden Rule Catering – Amelia

Levee House – Marietta

Millstone BBQ – Logan

Polished Comfort Catering – Chillicothe

In the future, we plan to use Bed & Breakfasts and locally owned inns as well as the hotels we’ve been accustomed to using. We’re looking forward to meeting more of these independent leaders.

No More Stepford Leaders

What do the following comments about women leaders have in common?

“The right look is the corporate appearance, assimilating this accords familiarity and respect. Be attractive. As you grow older, your hair should be cut shorter, as it conveys professionalism. Dress for the job you want, not what you have.

Avoid emotions, remain calm while being yelled at, and be respectfully feminine in your response.

Sacrifice your personal time; you have to dedicate your time 24/7. It is only those who work excessive hours that achieve leadership.

Claim your ideas, make statements rather than ask questions to open dialogue, and avoid being seen as pushy or aggressive.

Ensure good relationships with men, so that they are comfortable in our presence, and ‘avoid the hen house. Women shouldn’t should be seen in each others’ company, and definitely do not congregate. It makes men nervous.

Look for opportunities to network with senior men, and work out your strategy to get leverage. Show that you want the job, go for drinks or a round of golf, get comfortable being on your own with 20 men in a meeting.”

If you guessed that they’re antiquated, stale, sexist rules for being a Stepford Leader, you get both a gold star and a Golden Perfect Robot Award. Those Non-Stepford researchers Athena Vongalis-Macrow and Andrea Gallant have again given us food for thought. In their latest post for the Harvard Business Review, “Stepford Women in the Workplace”, they posit, “Step-forward leadership is about moving away from the familiar, old-fashioned advice. It is about stepping forward and actively finding new ways to talk with each other, and moving that talk into action that builds successful professional identities more suitable for the twenty-first-century woman.”

What is step-forward leadership? Thought you’d never ask, “We argue for the new criteria that promotes not Stepford but step-forward leadership for women. We need to identify and promote the true leadership qualities that women can bring to the workplace.  This is currently being overshadowed by the Stepford ‘rules”, giving people false expectations of what women in the workplace should be. We need to write less about what we expect women to do or wear, and more about individual, interpersonal leadership approaches that work. Step-forward leaders have multiple attributes that defy gender stereotyping. When examining, reporting, or discussing successful women, the emphasis needs to shift away from identifying them only from a gendered perspective and look more at the positive qualities they bring to the workplace.”

They then invite us to join the dialogue by asking, “What else can women do to promote the positive leadership attributes — and move from Stepford leadership to step-forward leadership?”

Harvard Business Review has five posts by Vongalis-Macrow and Gallant including the above mentioned article and “What Women Want In Their Leaders”.