In today’s emerging right-brain economy, the hard skills taught in schools provide only the baseline of what is required in most professions. Professionals who have the edge — those singled out for high-potential programs — are also skilled at forging meaningful relationships.

The adage “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care” has never been more relevant.

While a good education is important, it’s no longer enough. Today’s leaders need to add the development of emotional competencies to their professional learning agenda.

Leadership Skills for the 21st Century

The ability to engage in meaningful dialogue, to interact with other people effectively, and to be emotionally savvy are, in fact, the leadership abilities that will be more and more highly valued in the future.

The good news is that these skills can be developed.

Smart and engaged leaders who pay attention to improving these human connection skills are the candidates most likely to be hired or promoted. Regardless of what sector you work in – for profit, nonprofit, government, or education, the ability to connect and communicate is an important leadership capacity of the future.

Several research studies now bear out the added value of emotional competence:

• In one study, researchers measured whether a master’s degree made a difference in the quality of a teacher’s classroom performance, as measured by children’s achievements. The results: Neither a teaching certificate nor advanced degree separated the best educators from the average teachers.

• In another study, Dr. Wendy Levinson, an international expert in the field of physician-patient relationships, examined why some doctors who made mistakes got sued and others didn’t. She found that patients filed lawsuits against doctors they didn’t like, while well-liked physicians were not sued.
• Numerous studies confirm that physicians who avoid lawsuits take a little more time to talk with their patients — about three minutes more — than physicians who do get sued. Further, the quality of doctor-patient interactions has a tremendous impact on potential litigation.
• When researchers reviewed surgeons’ conversations with patients solely on the basic of tone of voice, the doctors whose voices sounded more concerned and less dominant were less likely to be sued. Conversely, when surgeons’ voices were perceived as dominant, they were more likely to be sued.
• In the end, the outcome seems to depend on respect, which in its simplest form is communicated through tone of voice. And by adding a few minutes of conversation, doctors strengthen the value of their interactions — an outcome that professionals in all industries should strive to achieve.

Training Leaders for Future Complexities

Many professional development programs focus on the individual and self-improvement, or on managing teams and influencing groups of people. Thousands of managers receive training each year, with an emphasis on leading others. When you have these opportunities, make sure that an important component of your study, training, and coaching includes a focus on how to develop interpersonal relationships and dialogue skills.

The best managers in the world are not only experts in systems, processes and technical competencies; they’re also proficient at managing emotions – their own and others’.

“As a leader moves up in an organization, up to 90 percent of their success lies in emotional intelligence,” notes Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence (2006).

In other words, nine out of ten executives who fail lack emotional competencies. A leader’s most valuable currency is relationships, emotional capital and the ability to connect with others.

The Boss Is Last

Sadly, most people’s experience with bosses falls short.

A Princeton University study explored how individuals felt about spending time with associates. Interactions with clients and customers topped the list, followed by interchanges with coworkers. Interactions with the boss came in last — rated, on average, as less enjoyable than cleaning the house.

The Gallup Organization conducted a famous study of workplace attitudes, asking 8 million people to respond to the following statement: “My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.”

The results show that people who agree with this statement:

1. Are more likely to stay with an organization
2. Have more engaged customers
3. Are more productive

Perhaps you’ve had a similar experience. When a boss treats you with respect and cares about your life, you feel more enthusiastic and committed to your work.

We spend 50 percent more time with our customers, coworkers and bosses than we do with our friends, significant others, children and other relatives combined. To be sure, finding a few strong office relationships will help anyone become more engaged and productive.

Combining Smarts with Heart

Human connectivity requires the right combination of IQ (intelligence) and EQ (emotional intelligence). Unless you can connect with colleagues and clients at a deep level, bringing both your professional expertise and emotional commitment to relationships, you will not advance in your career as quickly or as far as you desire.

IQ can help people get hired, but EQ is often referenced when people get promoted. Leaders who are rewarded with promotions demonstrate both smarts and heart.

To improve your leadership potential, start talking. Have meaningful, authentic, and real conversations. Develop your personal relationships with colleagues and customers. Show your expertise, but show you care even more. If necessary, work with a professional coach to develop and improve your conversational and interpersonal skills.

Should you gain diverse experience? Specialize? Go back to school for an advanced degree? Attend workshops? Get a coach? Yes, those can all be good ideas, but through all your skill building and experience gaining, make sure you are also developing those relationship muscles – authentic dialogue and understanding and caring about those around you.

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Yes! You may use this article by TheCoachingAssociation.com Executive Director Barbara Demarest in your company newsletter, blog or website as long as you add the following bio box:

Barbara Demarest (www.barbarademarest.com) received her MBA from the Babcock School of Management at Wake Forest University and her BA from Duke University. After 20 years at the Center for Creative Leadership, Barbara launched a strategy consulting practice focusing on people leading change in associations, foundations, universities, nonprofits and knowledge businesses.  You can find Barbara’s executive coaching profile on www.thecoachingassociation.com.

Ball #1: Jabulani

A bunch of the world’s soccer goalkeepers are having fits about the new Adidas Jabulani ball. As the World Cup approaches, the goalies are near-unanimous in their complaints: Too light, too curvy, too sleek, too slippery, too unpredictable.

Here are some quotes about the Jabulani from the goalkeepers of several teams playing in the Cup this summer:

Hugo Lloris of France: “A disaster.”

Iker Casillas of Spain: “Like a beach ball.”

Gianluigi Buffon of Italy: “Shameful.”

David James of England: “Dreadful.”

Fernando Muslera of Uruguay: “The worst I’ve ever played with.”

Ball #2: The Worst Call in Baseball History

And on Wednesday, the Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga was one out away from a perfect game (only 20 of these games have been pitched in the history of Major League Baseball) when first base umpire Jim Joyce completely blew it and incorrectly called a runner safe with two outs in the ninth.

Galarraga’s response at being cheated out of a history-making achievement? “[Joyce] probably felt more bad than me. Nobody’s perfect.”

Wow.

While the goalkeepers are already making excuses for the goals they haven’t yet allowed, Galarraga responded with more grace and integrity than I can imagine.

Arguing with Reality

Here’s my confession: While I would love to say I would have reacted like Galarraga, I act like a whiny goalkeeper much more often.

It’s so easy, after all, to blame the world for what it’s withholding from me.

Even when it’s a patent absurdity, such as a soccer ball that will challenge all teams equally.

But as Mick Jagger and Buddha so wisely remind us, You can’t always get what you want.

And as one of my teachers, Byron Katie puts it, “arguing with reality” is a sure cause of misery.

After all, the Jabulani ball is equally bad for everyone. Kind of like the other excuses I like to trot out when the world doesn’t deliver exactly what I want: the market, the economy, the labor market, the demands on my time.

Unless I pay attention, I can become a veritable font of excuses that can keep me victimized, aggrieved, and helpless.

Accepting Reality

Contrast that attitude with Galarraga’s, whose near-instant acceptance of the irreversible bad call has made him synonymous with hugeness of spirit.

He showed us all how to make friends with reality.

And by “reality” I don’t mean anything more than what is actually going on right now. As opposed to the constant comparison with the story of how things should go.

Suppose Galarraga had done the “normal” thing and yelled and protested and complained and told the world he had been robbed.

Would that have changed anything?

Clearly not, as it didn’t work when the Tigers’ manager.

Here’s what it would have changed: Galarraga’s experience of the event. As it unfolded, he ended the game with a big smile, a huge ovation, and what looks suspiciously to me like inner peace. A tantrum would have erased all that good stuff.

Plus, as my friend Brian pointed out, his story has become a resonant social fable far beyond baseball. Millions of people with no interest in baseball admire and will remember him.

How many of you can name the men who pitched the first two perfect games this season? If you’re not a baseball fan, I bet you can’t. (FYI: I can’t. Despite being a baseball nerd in my teens, I quit cold turkey after the 1978 season, reasoning that for a Yankee fan, life could simply not get any better.)

The Power of the Invisible Sun

Just to add a bit of irony to the goalkeepers’ moaning, the World Cup is being played for the first time in South Africa, a land with great energy and great challenges. I spent two months in South Africa this past year, and I’ve seen enough of childhood poverty to last me a lifetime.

While the high-tech Jabulani balls are slipping through fingers in goalkeepers’ recurring nightmares, many South African kids dream of owning a soccer ball that consists of something more rugged and aerodynamic than rubbish and garbage bags held together with string.

Photographer and philanthropist Bobby Sager, who took the above photo, teamed up with former Police frontman Sting and inventor Tim Jahnigen to create an indestructible soccer ball.

Instead of a bladder that can be punctured, the new ball can be stabbed with a knife, run over with a car, and rolled over broken glass without any problem.

The bright yellow balls, inscribed with the words “Hope is a Game Changer,” are being handed out by the thousands all over the world.

Why? Sting answers, “This is instant joy. Kids need fun, too. Imagine living in a refugee camp. I mean, what is there to look forward to? Very little. This is concrete. Very, very substantial.”

(To support this effort, go to The Power of the Invisible Sun.)

My fantasy is that one day a child who grew up in a South African informal settlement will grow up to be goalkeeper for the South African national team. I bet you he – or she – will be very happy with whatever ball is used.

And that, like Armando Galarraga, he or she will realize that the greatest victory is not the final score, but the way we conduct ourselves no matter what life throws at us.

So from my own humble place of learning, my gratitude goes out to my teachers: Armando, Bobby, Sting, Tim, and Byron.

May I be inspired to accept reality with grace and confront it with courage.

And so may we all.

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Howie Jacobson, PhD (www.askhowie.com), is a business coach and trainer, skilled in turning learning into action for his clients.  Howie coaches entrepreneurs who want to succeed because of their gifts and quirks, rather than in spite of them.  Howie’s undergraduate degree is from Princeton and his master’s and PhD are from Temple University.  Howie is the author of Google Adwords for Dummies; is a regular columnist for the performance improvement site for financial advisors, HorsesMouth.com; a frequent contributor to the entrepreneur’s resource, RoundOne.com; and author of the Training Magazine article, “Yes You Can Measure the Business Results of Training.” In addition, Howie combines his marketing expertise with his background in and passion for health and fitness at FitFam.com, a resource for parents struggling to raise fit and healthy kids in a crazy-busy world.

]]> http://www.thecoachingassociation.com/a-tale-of-two-balls/feed/ 0 http://www.thecoachingassociation.com/creativity-now-the-most-important-ceo-leadership-quality/ http://www.thecoachingassociation.com/creativity-now-the-most-important-ceo-leadership-quality/#comments Tue, 18 May 2010 12:13:34 +0000 Barbara Demarest http://www.thecoachingassociation.com/?p=1110 Fast Company has recently published information from a study conducted by IBM that is the largest known sample of one-on-one CEO interviews.  The global picture of what CEO’s identified as the most important leadership qualities in the next five years is outlined in the article. The top 3 qualities, even amidst the economic downturn, that were cited in the poll are:

• Creativity at 60%
• Integrity at 52%
• Global Thinking at 35%

Other cuts of the data include a resounding 88% of those interviewed in this global study agree that “getting closer to the customer” is key to business success in the next five years.

Source: Fast Company post, May 18, 2010

Click here to watch the video.

A continuation of the “do great work theme” that Box of Crayons promotes, this little video is a fun prompt to remember to :

• Get Focused
• Be Creative
• Use Your Wisdom
• Take Action

Small and Do-able Ideas

Great, lots of people are writing about that topic with big ideas and plenty of criticism to go around.  Not Professor Kanter, her ideas are small and do-able, and instead of criticism, helpful observation and positive, applicable ideas.  Granted, she still doesn’t share how someone without an income can make it while they work to find work, but I at least appreciate the attitude!

Advice for the Jobless Middle Manager

Here’s Kanter’s advice for the well-educated manager whose job has disappeared and is no longer even counted in the unemployment statistics because they’ve given up.

“What do I tell these jobless professionals who are holding their lives together with duct tape? I can say: Hang in there. Don’t give up hope. Develop a big idea to use later. Start your venture. Volunteer at a community organization. Find partners. Think internationally. Befriend immigrants with ties to an emerging market. Restore your sense of purpose. Remember what truly matters”

In the meantime, I think that there is other good advice out there for those in the well-educated middle:

• Now is a time to try that thing you never thought you would try.  What do you have to lose?
• Focus on some other aspects of your life.  Are you using this down time to exercise, eat right, learn a new skill, language, or perspective?
• Remember when you dreamed of working a shorter week or part-time?  What were you going to do with those hours?  Can you do that now while you keep working your “job” of finding a job?
• Are you reading and writing every day?  Are you practicing something new?  Are you finding ways to push your limits — and not just your limits of frustration at the slow pace of job recovery?
• Take advantage of what your community has to offer – use the library, visit local sites, go to a park, find a new local diner, get to know the world that is right around you that you’ve never had time to experience before.
• Meet people – reach outside your first circle to your second or third.  Have a cup of coffee and broaden that network.  It may be more and more tangential to your job search, but sometimes the innovative idea is on the periphery, not in the core.

Asset Maps for Middlers

And another idea for “middlers” — I don’t mean those related to Bette, but those in the middle of their job transition and maybe even tired enough to be approaching things now in a bit of a middling way — draw your “asset map.”  You’ve probably already thought about the assets you are bringing to your job search, but what about the assets you have to offer to others?

Kanter mentions small ideas that collectively could build jobs.  She’s calling for a movement of small ideas based on all our assets – what do you have that you can offer to the solution of job growth in America?  “Imaginative small actions could aggregate to bigger impact. Underutilized office space can become an incubator for others starting a business. Shared work and living spaces are becoming more common for recent graduates working on new ventures; communities should encourage and facilitate this. Those with international business ties can encourage business partners to invest in the U.S.; good people and cost-reducing incentives are available now.”

I like Kanter’s small ideas and I hope more individuals and organizations will embrace them.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could see a movement across the United States?  I am hoping that organizations will get creative and think about different ways to do things.  It would be a wonderful thing to see a boom of creativity and diversity in how we do things – our work, our products, our services, our decision-making, our politics, our day-to-day lives and our perspectives.  Thanks Professor Kanter.

Yes! You may use this article by Barbara Demarest in your company newsletter, blog or website as long as you add the following bio box:

Barbara Demarest (www.barbarademarest.com) received her MBA from the Babcock School of Management at Wake Forest University and her BA from Duke University. After 20 years at the Center for Creative Leadership, Barbara launched a strategy consulting practice focusing on people leading change in associations, foundations, universities, nonprofits and knowledge businesses.  You can find Barbara’s executive coaching profile on www.thecoachingassociation.com.

Get better. Get better at making promises, keeping promises and delivering more than you promise.

Get real. Find facts and face them. Face facts and deal with them. Deal with facts and take action on them.

Get moving. If you can’t run, walk. Put one foot in front of the other. And if that’s more speed than you can handle, take baby steps, just keep moving.

Listen more: Listen to what you don’t want to hear. Listen to what you need to hear. Listen to clarify, to understand, to fill the gap between what you see and what others see differently than you.

Agree more. Find reasons to agree, occasions when you share common ground, and times when there’s more that connects than separates you from one another.

Trust more. Trust facts. Trust others. Trust your gut. Trust more than you doubt, more than you dare, and more than you care to admit.

Open up more: Wherever you are, be there. Let people see who you are, know what you want, acknowledge how you feel and why you care as much as you do.

Clarify. Say what you mean. Say what you want. Say why it’s important to you.

Deliver. If you say it, do it. If you do it, do it right. If you do it right, do it on time. If you do it on time, do it with grace.

Confront. Go there. Be there. Address the issue that stands between where you are and where you could be. Find a way to accommodate what you want with what someone else needs.

Resolve. Get it done. Get it finished. Get it out of the way to make room for what’s next.

Work smart. Put most of your time where you get most of the benefit. Put most of your effort where you put most of your time.

Work hard. Work on what is worthwhile. Work on what you value. Work on what creates value for others.

Turn your talent into strengths. Turn what you do most easily into what you can consistently do well. Turn what is a gift into a treasure. Shape what you take for granted into what defines you.

Work more in your strengths: Do more with what you do best. Learn more about what you enjoy most. Give more of what is easiest for you to give.

Be credible: Create more substance than style, more actions than words, more outcome than expectation.

Be relevant: Stay in the conversation. Stay in the game. Learn more today than you knew yesterday. Advance your thinking by expanding your perspective.

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Yes! You may use this article by Executive and Career Coach, Joyce Richman, in your blog, newsletter or website as long as you include the following bio box:

Joyce Richman (www.richmanresources.com) has been specializing in executive and career coaching since she started her own practice in 1982. She works in a variety of environments including: higher education, manufacturing, sales, marketing, media, technology, pharmaceuticals, medicine, banking and finance, service, IT, and non-profit sectors. A member of the adjunct faculty at the Center for Creative Leadership, Joyce is certified to administer a number of feedback and psychological instruments. Joyce is a weekly guest on WFMY-TV and the career columnist for The Greensboro News & Record. She is the author of Roads, Routes and Ruts: A Guidebook to Career Success and co-author of Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job. A popular speaker, Richman conducts seminars and workshops throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. Her coaching profile can be found at TheCoachingAssociation.com.

Resolve

by Gail Fritz

Resolve.  That was the word I picked for 2009 after my son told me about how his pastor (at Port City Church in Wilmington, NC) encouraged his congregation to choose one word to focus on for the coming year.  In essence, the word becomes a goal or a compressed New Year’s resolution.

Up for the challenge, I started thinking of several different words like peace and perseverance but settled on the word, resolve.  After a long marriage, I had been going through a sad and drawn out separation that frankly, baffled me.  I had allowed myself to stay in a tumultuous state for far longer than most might consider “normal”.  I kept hanging on to my Pollyanna-like optimism or perhaps my self-indulgent stubbornness believing that things would resolve they way I wanted them to.

After two years, at the end of 2008, I lifted my head just enough out of the mire I had been wallowing in to commit to moving on or at least to taking more steps forward than backwards.  For some people stepping into uncharted territory is an adventure, for others it provokes a form of paralysis.  I fall in the latter category.  But, with bootstraps in white-knuckled hand I resolved in 2009 to move ahead.

Dictionary.com has 18 definitions for the word, “resolve”.  Sixteen of the definitions use it as a verb, with or without an object and two as noun.  I think when the word first popped into my head it was in the form of the noun.  Resolve, a firmness of purpose or intent.  But as I was recently reading through the list of definitions and the word origin on the website, I think in hindsight I might have tweaked or expanded on my own definition of my 2009 word of the year.

The word resolve originated from the word resolven, which means to unfasten, loosen, or release.  In looking back over 2009 I was doing just that.  It was about moving forward, redefining who I was or wanted to be, but it was also about loosening, but not necessarily letting go of, the past I so wanted to continue to be my future. I needed to loosen what was binding me from moving forward, literally or figuratively, but letting go or releasing seems, I don’t know, more haphazard, less determined, less resolved.

The other definition that I really liked for the word resolve was used in the form of music.  This definition of the word is “to cause, to progress from dissonance to consonance.”   Even though I am not musically inclined there is something about the cringing image of a nascent middle school band or orchestra finally coming together to achieve a single harmonious note that resonated with what I was trying to accomplish in 2009.  There were so many individual pieces that I exhausted myself trying to sort out and make sense of.  But somehow in 2009, I unconsciously loosened, but admittedly have not totally released, this need to figure everything out.  Focusing, okay ruminating, on each individual issue or conundrum just caused discombobulated noise in my head.  When I was able to pull back a little and take more of an audience’s view of my situation, the discord faded some and I was able to begin to see a more purposeful crescendo to the last couple years of my misery.

To be honest, I didn’t think much about my word after the first week or so of 2009.  It went on the back burner in my mind along with other New Year’s resolutions that were quickly growing cold.  It wasn’t until this December that I really thought about my word.  Amazingly, when I looked back over the year I realized that my personal “resolve” in a number of areas brought about resolution.  Even though as I told my friends, “I never had to work so hard to get a divorce I didn’t want”, I did the painful work that was needed to close that paramount chapter of my life.  I realized with the help of wonderful friends and family that this step helped me to get on the rim of the mud hole I had been wallowing in for years.  I started writing.  I went back to school for the first time in 30 years to begin pursuing a new career.  I started a program to help others deal with grief and divorce.  And most poignantly for me, I started figuring out how I liked my eggs, a metaphor I latched on to from The Runaway Bride movie.

For the past 26 years I defined myself first and foremost as a wife and mother, two roles I dearly cherish and of which I am most proud.  Though I still do not fully understand the why, I do know, because I have prayed it to death, that God is releasing me for some reason.  His own definition of the word, resolve.

With my 2009 word behind me, I spent some time thinking about my word for 2010.  I thought about, “peace”, but through my journey I already experienced a peace I never knew was possible in pain.  I first picked the word, joy.  I have always taken life too seriously, carried burdens that weren’t even mine to own.  I nearly always did the right thing, was loyal, responsible and reliable.  Although I am proud of many of these traits, as they have served others and me well, I was missing the joy component.  I looked at life too much as a chore, something to do but not necessarily something to enjoy while doing.  I regret what I missed and what I cause those closest to me to miss by not relaxing more and embracing a carpe diem attitude. Ah, “embrace”.  I like that word.  There is certainly a joy component to it and a relaxing, peaceful feeling as well.   As I say good-bye to resolve, loosening or unfastening 2009, I look forward to embracing 2010 and all that it has to offer.

As I move forward, I am going to give some unconventional undergirding to my word, embrace, by borrowing a line in the bestseller book, Same Kind of Different as Me by Ron Hall and Denver Moore.  Denver who is talking about not needing a calendar or a clock when he was working in the cotton fields says, “ain’t nowhere you got to at ‘cept where you’re at.”  Heeding his words, in 2010 I’m just going to be, be fully present, wherever that may be and whatever I am doing, enjoying and embracing the road ahead.

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Yes! You may use this article by Strategy and Executive Coach, Barbara Demarest, in your blog, newsletter or website as long as you include the following bio box:

Barbara Demarest (BarbaraDemarest.com) received her MBA from the Babcock School of Management at Wake Forest University and her BA from Duke University. After 20 years at the Center for Creative Leadership with executive roles in global marketing, new product development, knowledge management, and fundraising, Barbara launched her own executive coaching practice. She helps executives, entrepreneurs, and individuals in career transition to leverage their ideas and position themselves, their products, and their organizations. Barbara is also the co-author of Getting Your Kid Out of the House and Into a Job. You can find Barbara’s profile on TheCoachingAssocation.com.