It’s been 20 years since Daniel Goldman’s book “Emotional Intelligence” was published, and interest in the subject doesn’t seem to be losing steam. There are volumes of research that link social and emotional abilities to personal success and seemingly countless self-help books on improving your EQ. A recent unscientific consultation with The Google quickly returned about 14 million hits on the subject.
Not to sound blasphemous, but emotional intelligence is just not that complicated.
Most people have way more EQ than they give themselves credit for. In fact, I’ve only met two people with really low emotional intelligence: my teenage daughter’s boyfriend and a senior government executive whose entire Johari Window is a blind spot.
Using sophisticated words to describe your EQ may make you sound sagacious at the office cocktail party, but measuring your EQ matters much less than using what you have for good instead of evil…kind of like a super power.
If the answers to any of these questions ring a bell, you probably have a higher EQ than you think:
Is it important to be aware of your emotions and how they influence interpersonal and group dynamics? Absolutely. Can I always control my emotional response because I know what pushes my buttons? Nope.
Does being able to recognize another person’s emotional state help you respond in a way that de-escalates the situation and yields a more positive outcome? Certainly. Do I occasionally pass on the opportunity to de-escalate just for the entertainment of watching a jerk lose his mind? Yep.
Can showing empathy to a frustrated co-worker turn things around and bring them back off the ledge? Almost always. Do I occasionally poke the badger because I’m tired of the whining? Guilty.
See – you don’t need to know your EQ score or fancy vernacular to know whether a response to a given situation is going to make it better or worse. But if you’re looking for the success that comes with more developed social and emotional abilities, you have to be intentional about using your EQ for good.
Look at it this way: If you’re forever finding yourself in emotionally charged or awkward exchanges, you’re either doing it on purpose, or you’re too self-absorbed to realize what’s happening until it’s too late. Either way, it’s YOU. Like my oldest daughter told me the other day, “if everything around you smells like $#!+, you should probably check your shoe.” If you’re doing it on purpose, that’s using your EQ for evil – stop it! Assuming it’s the latter, a little EQ boost is easier than you think.
Begin with some healthy introspection about your interactions with others and how you view your co-workers.
Start appreciating what your teammates are contributing, and treat them like human beings that have good days and bad days.
Look for the good in others (instead of expecting the worst), and don’t just help them because of what they can contribute to your cause, but because helping others is what we’re on the Earth for.
Good leadership creates an environment where using EQ for good comes naturally. It creates a “we” organization with people who have a shared sense of purpose. It develops people who know how to have healthy disagreements without the emotional escalation that stems from a lack of trust. It builds a culture where feedback isn’t a dirty word, and it creates teams that know success isn’t hiding behind a thin veneer of playing nice.
So, you can be content with the EQ you have, or you can read the books, attend training seminars, and take as many self-assessments (notoriously unreliable for those with low EQ) as you can stand to measure your EQ improvement. Just know that regardless of how emotionally intelligent you are, if you’re not using your “super power” for good, your organization is better off without you.
Intentional leadership takes time, and there are already plenty of demands on the 24 hours we have. Our jobs certainly aren’t getting easier, and I’m betting that most of your day isn’t consumed by core leadership tasks like motivating, developing, mentoring and guiding others toward the implementation of a vision.
So, how much of your job as a leader should you delegate? Almost none of it, since leading more effectively will bring the most benefit to both your people and your organization.
On the other hand, when it comes to management tasks, you should delegate virtually everything that someone else can do. Here’s when I learned it:
Not long after 9-11, I was feeling a little overwhelmed juggling tasks as the commander of a little special operations flying outfit. Not only were we in near constant motion supporting the very young war effort, but we’d also just been told that our unit was closing in six months. The challenge: maintaining combat capability to the last day while working the not-very-responsive personnel management system to find everyone jobs. All while coordinating shut-down activities like asset disposition, facilities turnover, audits, ceremonies…you get the idea.
One day, I caught my second-in-command re-typing (yes, typing) a flight authorization to correct some minor errors made by one of our young Airmen. I’m afraid I reacted poorly to his justification that he was just showing the troops he wasn’t afraid to get “in the trenches.”
“Trenches, hell, get up here and help me lead!!”
I’ve got the stick for a minute.
It was a watershed moment for both of us. When I started delegating tasks to others in the organization, people jumped at the chance to get more engaged. And when we reviewed progress toward the various goals, it was their moment to shine as their extra effort was recognized. It was easy to make it about them, and it made me a better leader because I could focus on my core leadership tasks.
Why aren’t we good at delegating? For most it’s somewhere between “If I want it done right, I’ll have to do it myself” and “I don’t want to admit I need help getting all this stuff done.”
It’s time to put your ego aside and remember that there is almost always more than one way to successfully accomplish a task. It isn’t necessarily wrong just because it’s not the way you’d do it, and if you’ve created a culture where it’s a sign of weakness to ask for help, you have bigger problems than being a poor delegator.
In most office settings, everyone has some spare capacity. Use your employees’ spare capacity to create more time and space for you to focus on what’s important as a leader. Not just for your benefit, of course; delegation helps people learn and grow as they take on a greater variety of tasks, and they feel more engaged with each task accomplished.
So how do we become more effective delegators?
Start with a list. Make a list of tasks that can only be done by you – core leadership tasks and those that can’t be done by others because of policy or serious risk of organizational failure (real failure, not the Henny Penny kind). Then make a list of everything else you do; that’s your list of tasks to be delegated.
Choose the right person. But don’t over-think it – just start matching your task list with the most logical people. Think about giving them input about what they’d like to take on as additional duties. You might be surprised how much more willing they are to give extra effort when you get their buy-in up front.
Give clear guidance. When delegating, make your expectations clear, and then step back and give them room to succeed. As long as you’ve established clear boundaries, empowered them to make decisions at a lower level and let them feel like they’re contributing to the organization in a more meaningful way, you’ve set them on the right path. It’s okay to check up on them – that’s good management – but don’t micromanage them or you’ll both be worse off than you started.
Oh yeah, make sure you tell others that someone else with be taking over some tasks they’re used to you doing.
Re-evaluate your task list in a couple of months to see what needs to be refined. Don’t be afraid to make some tasks rotational or to give additional guidance where needed. Learning to delegate effectively is a process; don’t expect overnight success.
Are routine tasks keeping you from spending your time taking care of your people? What’s keeping you from being a more effective delegator?
As leaders, we need data and information to make sound decisions. Without them, we are but knee-jerk reactionaries, our direction and focus more resembling a weather vane in the wind than the rock-solid vision necessary for leading others.
So, as we start this new year, let’s decide now that we’ll do everything within our power to have access to that information. For instance: Do you blow up (real or perceived) when your staff brings you really bad news? Shooting the messenger is the pinnacle of foolish; the bad news continues, you simply don’t get it anymore.
The truth is, we should embrace those delivering us bad news. Even if they caused it. we can deal with the performance and behavior later, but right now, the best thing we can hope for is knowledge.
So, what do we say to our folks to prompt such open and forthright discussions? Well, realize first that your words don’t mean squat if your actions portray something else, but here are some suggestions:
1. Tell your staff to always be honest and frank with you, particularly when one-on-one. Having to “ask the right question” to get to an answer is no way to run a railroad. Or a manufacturer. Or a construction company.
2. Make sure they don’t color bad news positively. Present it “naked,” so to speak. As I frequently tell clients, “I’m just going to say this, and probably poorly. Please allow me to clean it up afterward.” You do the same. Unvarnished, bare truth first, pretty, glossy, covers later.
3. They need to know that you want ALL relevant information — good and bad. It’s not “horn-tootin’” to let you know of things that happened as planned; it’s simply informing your boss of relevant status. Both are important.
4. Tell them you want both sides of any story with known conflict. We can’t be interested in a one-sided flow of information; the hallmark of a good senior manager is the ability to see and discuss both sides, even if they personally favor one.
5. Make sure they realize that, if they know the answer, they should say so. Equally, if they don’t know the answer, they shouldn’t wrap it in so much BS that it appears they do.
These are merely suggestions. It’s a new year; time to correct some old “wrongs,” establish some new “rights.” One of those rights should be positive, accurate communications between you and your staffs.
As a friend of mine is so fond pf saying… “This ain’t rocket surgery.”
>
We just completed the survey in late November 2017. Not too many surprises from other years, or from our general expectations. Some of the results can act as a decent reminder for us all.
Specifically:
The top five business challenges began with Operating Cost Management. This remains consistent as #1 or #2, year after year. After speaking with many of you participating, it’s become clear to us that frequently this is mentioned as the result of challenges elsewhere. You may be concerned about operating costs, for example, because your management team is missing productivity or effectiveness targets…
…which is a great segue into the #2-ranked business challenge: Management and Leadership Performance.
Something near and dear to our hearts, obviously, and it seems to be a priority in your world as well. A couple of things stand out, particularly after a few follow-up conversations:
Succession planning is still like the pea in Princess and the Pea; a continued challenge obscured by twenty layers of present-day priorities. We have to get better. Naming a potential replacement at the last moment is not “announcing a succession plan,” it’s replacement planning, and frankly, shows a lack of planning in general.
Leadership pipeline development, the next-level from succession planning, is on many minds. Consider constant aging and retirement of boomers coupled with developmental shortfalls with our younger generations, and we’re headed toward a perfect storm. Someone must lead the rabble.
Individually (personally), your top challenge was managing change while maintaining focus. Gone are the days where each change gets summarily vetted through the organization prior to implementing, ensuring wide swaths of buy-in. No, we’re discovering what it’s like to change the oil in a car while driving down the road. At 80mph. In the rain. With our mother-in-law sitting in the back seat telling us to slow down.
It won’t get easier, though I do hope we can get better at it. Leading change is a learned skill, and though generalizing a bit, appears to be a key characteristic of some of the younger generations. Maybe join forces?
Staffing challenges will not lessen any in 2018, it seems. 36% see a slight increase in staffing for 2018, almost 10% see a significant increase with 44% staying the same. That leaves only 10% looking at reducing staff size in 2018. The war for talent rages on.
We’ll provide more detail from the survey throughout the year. Please download and utilize as you see fit and let us know if we can answer any questions. We’re here to help.
When we reviewed the 2017 Leaders and Laggards “Naughty & Nice” list last month, we thought we’d see how our winners and losers are poised to make a splash in 2018.
These three represent the best… and the worst:
Leadership Leader
Our leadership Leader for 2017 is Charles Butt, CEO of HEB groceries, headquartered in San Antonio Texas. He easily took the Leadership Leader mantle in October, after donating both personal funds and corporate support to Hurricane Harvey recovery efforts. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
HEB is #12 on Forbes Largest Private Companies list, and #1 in Texas, with $23B in revenue and over 100K employees at 330 locations in the U.S. and Mexico. Founded in 1905 by Charles’ grandmother Florence, the company was named after his father Howard E. Butt, one of the Butt brothers. I freely admit to having an occasional chuckle at the sound of that last sentence. As my wife is fond of saying, you’re only young once but you can be immature forever. Moving on…
The sheer size, success and longevity could be enough to make a leadership leader, but it’s the process taken that has our attention. This massive growth is entirely organic—they don’t go around buying up other grocers in that insatiable quest to be bigger. They simply plant seeds and water them. Locally.
And here are some of those leadership “seeds:”
HEB gives 5% of the organization’s pretax profits to charity.
Charles is a Glass Door Top 20, with a 97% CEO approval rating.
85% would recommend HEB as a place to work—validated by their Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 55+, impressive for anyone who follows those things.
The company culture and career advancement are most frequently named as reasons for that loyalty.
Jeff Thomas is a great example. Hired as a bagger 41 years ago, he’s held 22+ positions and moved nine times. He’s currently SVP/GM of the Central Texas region, leading 20K+ employees. From teenage bagger to leading 20,000 people. The pic on the right is Jeff, congratulating three sisters; two retiring with 50+ years of HEB service, and one sticking around since she just has 43 years. Seems they do something right to avoid typical retail retention challenges.
Charles recently provided a $100M investment to create a new institute dedicated to training school principals and superintendents, focusing on leadership styles to boost student performance and talent development.
Charles’ right hand, COO Craig Boyan: “[HEB’s] success stems from its investment in its employees…” “It’s our goal to pay as much as we can, not as little as we can. It’s hard for some to understand… that those who invest more in their largest cost item — people — can be those that win.”
Whole Foods founder John Mackey clearly admires Charles, saying that “HEB is one of the best-run companies I’ve ever seen.” Not grocer; not retailer. Best run company.
Besides, any CEO that has a company that has a mascot—a real mascot—has to be freakin’ amazing. It wasn’t a difficult decision, making Charles Butt and his HEB Triangle’s Leadership Leader of the Year.
Leadership Milquetoast
Oscar Munoz, United Airlines’ CEO, had a tough 2017. Much of it he brought on himself.
We had almost given up on United as a perennial Laggard, when Oscar Munoz started pulling them out of the gutter. His actions were so un-United-like that in February 2017 we declared him “Almost a Leader.”
After his horrendous April response to United’s man-handling of a passenger, he fell to Laggard status.
By September, with United still not being able to stay out of its own way, Munoz climbed back to the Milquetoast category with a common sense approach to adhering to self-imposed rules.
As 2017 came to an end, the only thing we were sure of is that he’s absolutely tone deaf when it comes to his customers and United’s investors.
For instance, during the third quarter earnings report, Munoz scared the crap out of analysts when he acknowledged the hole the airline had dug for itself. He said his management team was working on a plan for success. Really? Just now formulating a plan? That might be just after the nick of time. We weren’t alone in that assessment; United’s stock plunged more than ten percent that day.
When the flight attendants’ union joined the #metoo campaign, Munoz declared his support and said United needed to have a policy about sexual misbehavior. You think? That’s certainly not leading-edge thinking. He publicly joined the better-late-than-never club on preventing idiotic behavior.
And then there was December’s bump of a first-class passenger, innocently of course, so that a Texas congresswoman could sit up front. He said – she said aside, the airline’s response (blaming the passenger) certainly didn’t reflect the airline’s publicly declared “we care about our customers” mantra.
Come on, Oscar. We’re rooting for you, especially if you can get your airline to give a snot about its passengers. We see how hard you’re working to convince your employees that you’re a people person, but the rest of us are people, too. And we’re the people that pay your peoples’ wages.
Hollow promises are the hallmark of a milquetoast leader, and we’ve decided that Oscar Munoz has been the milquetoastiest of Triangle’s Leadership Milquetoasts in 2017
Leadership Laggard
As much as we thought Steve Ells, former CEO of Chipotle and July’s Leadership Laggard winner, displayed poor leadership in 2017 during the continued outbreaks of various maladies at his restaurants, he didn’t make the Worst of the Worst cut. Maybe because he knew when to step down… better late than never.
Instead, we picked a CEO we haven’t mentioned since September of 2016, “Fast Eddie” Lampert of Sears Holding Corp (SHC) infamy. The announcement that more than 100 Sears and Kmart stores are going to close in 2018 was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
We predicted a bankruptcy ‘I told you so’ moment if he didn’t change his ways, and his performance during 2017 didn’t disappoint – us, anyway. Fast Eddie loaned the company another $600 million to stay afloat in 2017, while Sears and Kmart closed another 358 stores (with 63 more closing this month).
Damn. What am I missing? Can someone tell me what Lampert’s game plan is?
Lampert, the hedge fund manager who engineered the merger of Sears and Kmart in 2005, has managed to lose the company more than $10 billion in the last six years. Lost SHC, that is, since his hedge fund controls Seritage Growth Properties, the REIT that Lampert spun off to own and manage the properties Sears and Kmart now lease. And with every closing, Seritage gets to lease the property to someone willing to pay more than Sears and Kmart are paying under the current structure.
Oh, and then there’s the Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores, a slimmed-down version of Sears primarily focused on selling home appliances, lawn and garden equipment, tools, and hardware. They seem to be doing better than the SHC big box stores, so Lampert bought another 95+K shares last month, after buying almost 220K shares in November 2017. Between him and his holding company, they control the majority of shares of the only profitable endeavor SHC has going.
Not to paint a grisly picture, but Fast Eddie kind of reminds me of an assassin bug (you can look it up). The bug impales its prey and sucks it dry, then attaches the entire corpse to its back. Never again let it be said “you can’t get blood out of a turnip” … the SHC board and investors seem perfectly willing to tolerate Lampert draining the lifeblood out of a company that survived two world wars and the Great Depression.
For being worse than the worst of all our 2017 Laggards, we have to declare Edward “Fast Eddie” Lampert Our Leadership Laggard of the Year.
Yes, leadership development can cost money. Most of us believe the returns are well worth it, and I’ve had the professional pleasure of working with many of you in improving the skills and behaviors in your leadership staffs. Plus I do this stuff for a living, and I like getting paid.
But you know what? Most of the more significant things that leaders can do are free.
That’s right. Gratis, free of charge. No sales tax, shipping and handling, or any other spurious expense. What, then, can we do to take advantage of this FREE leadership development? Nothing more than some simple effort on your part.
Without going into ad nauseum detail, suffice to say that there are three very simple things that a leader can do to set him/herself apart (positively) from the pack:
Ask for input. Even when you already think you know the answer. Here’s the funny thing, and those I’ve worked with have heard me say this countless time: ask frequently for others’ input.
If you ask all the time, people don’t get offended when you don’t “take” their suggestions each and every time proffered. If you only ask once per year, that person will fully expect you to use their input in a meaningful way… after all, why would you finally ask if you weren’t going to take it?
Besides, keep on asking, even if you don’t believe you’ll get a meaningful response. Even a blind squirrel gets a nut every now and then, and who knows? Maybe that employee will just get lucky…
Say please and thank you. Face it — no employee with the brains of a rock believes when their boss “asks” them to do something, it’s really a choice… what does it hurt, then, to always — ALWAYS — say “please,’ and “thank you?”
At the end of the day, you’ve got the business card. You can always be a jerk and say “do it my way.” Just don’t lead with that.
Admit mistakes. Freely. And don’t water them down with that passive-aggressive crap, like “I probably shouldn’t have done that, but…” or “In hindsight…” Call it like it is — I SCREWED UP! I made a mistake, and I hope to do better. Then LEAVE IT ALONE!
Credibility can skyrocket when leaders accept full (not conditional) responsibility for their actions.
Warren Buffet, the Gandhi of all investing, recently apologized to the world for buying a poor-performing stock. He didn’t blame the subsequent losses on the market, the mortgage industry, or the government. He said, “…I have been dead wrong. The terrible timing of my purchase cost Berkshire several billion dollars.”
Several billion dollars?? If Buffet can fess up to a mistake costing more money than the GDP of 90% of all the world’s countries, surely we can own up to some near-trivial misstep during our regular workday?
These three things — all by themselves — can help leaders stand out from the mediocre masses. You’d think it was pulling teeth, though, since none are as common as they should be.
But you know what? Most of the more significant things that leaders can do are free.
ALWAYS — say “please,’ and “thank you?”