Ever since Daniel Goleman published his amazing book Emotional Intelligence, business training has changed its focus. Organisational leaders know that they cannot become great without their team possessing very competent people skills. What has happened since then?
Most business trainings in emotional intelligence, although professionally packaged and well presented, only address the cognitive aspects of emotions. This is effective in making leaders consciously aware of their degree of emotional incompetence. It is as if they assume that everyone’s reaction to stress and disappointing feedback were the same. This is something that cannot be packaged. It must be processed thoroughly in each individual.
Since our behaviour patterns are embodied from early in life, their transformation is always a process and not an event , book or training segment. We can only modify our behaviour with our will for so long. This is not an easy task , but a worthwhile one.
Some of the more significant aspects of dynamic social skills (EI) include: self awareness, empathy, compassion, authentic listening, respect, encouragement, mentoring and in addition modelling: discipline, decisiveness, passion for life/work, high energy, loyalty, trust, creative imagination, communication skills, genuineness, power, task completion and conflict resolution skills. These skills require a degree of class and sophistication that many times are intangible and have a lot more to do with the spirit of the individual than their grades at business school or IQ.
The good news is that these skills can be learned just like business finance, engineering innovation, marketing, sales or negotiating skills. Just like any other learning process, emotional intelligence has four stages:
1. Unconscious Incompetence: Blindspot: “I am not aware that I criticise the staff in public.”
2. Conscious Incompetence : After being made aware of this embodied trait, I seek processing.
1. Conscious Competence: With passion and persistence I learn to embody effective feedback.
2. Unconscious Competence: Over time I master feedback effortlessly and inspire everyone.
Accordingly, the ten million dollar question is how do you obtain processing that embodies excellent emotional intelligence skills and disembodies skills that divide the organisation?
First and foremost you have to be aware that EI is not mastered cognitively but instead with facilitation that holds a container for processing emotional and spiritual energy. It should be pursued organisationally from the top down and individually with feedback from leaders, mentors, coaches and human resources where applicable. In other words it is in fact a team effort whereby the leader’s vision sees the big picture of what greatness is composed of.
Robert Kirby is the creator of The 4 Pillars of Greater Success & Energy. He is a psychotherapist and executive coach who specialises in Body ~ Mind ~Soul Integration and works from Paddington, NSW.
Please visit www.robertkirby.com or email robert@robertkirby.com
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