Anatomy of an Emotionally Intelligent Leader

This is Conner the Communicator, and he has dropped by the Breakfast Blog today to help us with Emotionally Intelligent Leadership.

As you can see Conner has some special articles of clothing on today, which provide us with anatomical representations of EI in  Leadership! The five features of emotionally intelligent leadership are Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, Motivation, Empathy, and Social Skill. On the diagram of Conner there are five arrows pointing to items corresponding to each of the features of a Leader with high EI.

1) Thinking Cap: Conner’s thinking cap is his favorite cranial attire, it comes complete with a lantern above the bill, which comes on much like the light bulb in your head when you have an idea! Emotionally intelligent leaders have lots of “aha moments.” Unlike most leaders, however this special group gets these ideas about themselves and their own behaviors. This is Self-Awareness! This is the ability to think deeply about ourselves, our deepest desires and how our behavior affects others. This ability allows a leader to better interact with their followers, understand how people make them feel, and how to make their emotions constructive.

2) The Heart: Conner has a big heart that allows him to do more than just share his emotions and passions. Conner’s heart has the ability to keep his mouth in check. This is Self Regulation. The ability to keep oneself calm in the emotional storms of life is important for a leader in times of turbulence for a group. Importantly, self-regulation is the function that bears us integrity by preventing impulse driven behavior. For a leader, the ability to hold your self back from making self promises allows you to build credibility. Integrity builds ethos. When people can trust us to do the right thing for the right reasons, they become easily convinced that we indeed have a big heart.

3) Fire in his belly: Conner like many great leaders has a blaze lit deep in his gut. That fire is what keeps him going even in the darkest of times. This fire represents his most inner motivation. Leaders who know their motivation love their work, and like to practice their trade. Truly motivated leaders live by the “practice makes perfect” concept. Although these leaders like to keep score and constantly compare themselves to others, which can cause friction, they are extremely loyal and committed to the team.

4) Someone else’s shoes: Conner has two different shoes on, and that has a lot to do with the fact that the black shoe isn’t his. See Conner is a very empathetic, and is taking the time to walk a mile in another persons shoe. Empathetic people consider other peoples emotions before making a critical decision. Empathy is perhaps the function of EI that is the most desired in the world today. Empathy can build team understanding and chemistry crucial for successful goal completion. More importantly when we understand the emotions of others we can keep up team morale in the face of external issues. Unfortunately, empathy for all its need, is by far under represented in the work place.

5) Social Skill: Lastly, Conner has a foam finger on his had to represent one of the many things the arms are capable of. Arms have the ability to hold you up when your weak, pat you on the back when you’ve done well, and point you out when your not being accountable. Arms like leaders with EI can cheer and jeer you for the betterment of the team. Social Skill encompasses all of these ideas, and is the cumulative product of the other four components of emotional intelligent leadership. It is defined as friendliness with a purpose, but perhaps could be better defined as constructive and collaborative interaction. When a leader with EI works with his followers from their level with the intention of improving the team dynamic he is exercising a level of social skill.

Conner is an emotionally intelligent leader who uses his whole self to lead the people that matter to him. Team CHARM would like to thank him for stopping by for a little show and tell.

Cam

What is your BEST Emotional Intelligence Quality?

http://uquiz.com/P9dFT3

Follow the link to determine your strongest quality of Emotional Intelligence and Leadership!

Angie

Football Player Motivation

This is a young high-school student who was interviewed following a big win after a football game. This athlete uses strong words of encouragement to not only motivate his team his but the mass media as well. Being able to motivate yourself is an attribute of a transformational leader and is clearly demonstrated through this clip.

This particular athlete is a transformational leader because he is a model of integrity and fairness, provides support and recognition, sirs the emotions of people, and inspires others to reach for the improbable. One major trait that this athlete demonstrated was his ability to inspire loyalty and trust to his team. Due to the loyalty and trust from his team, they were able to win. This athlete is also a transformational leader because he realizes that perfection doesn’t happen right away. In the interview he elaborates that his team was really struggling during the beginning of the game. He understands that in order to succeed as a leader, you must work on your own skills and set aside time for personal development.

Rob & Angie

Braveheart – William Wallace Transformational leader

In the movie Braveheart Mel Gibson plays the role of a transformational leader. He does this in 4 ways. The first way that he is a transformational leader is he has a vision throughout the whole entire movie. His vision is that the Scots will win their independence from the king of England. He creates a plan in his head that he wants to achieve and throughout the movie he is envisioning the plan working and never gives up on his hopes. Part of vision is that as a leader you are also working on inspiring others to share the same vision that you have. As a leader you must be enthused, confident, and be able to picture success.

Next transformational leaders must be authentic. They can not just think about personal gains and expect good things to happen. Transnational leaders must be able to work with others and not only think about themselves. If a leader only cares about what they want then it will be hard to get followers on board with what you want. Sometimes taking different viewpoints will open more options and the leader will be willing to change ideas or work off them. Part of working well with others is being able to motivate each other. Transformation leaders are always setting the bar higher and higher each step of the way while working with its followers.

Thirdly transformational leaders must have a growth mindset. What I mean is that they always have to be thinking on how they can better the group. They always want to be setting new standards for themselves as well as their followers. Once they achieve one goal they want to make another benchmark and reach that. In the movie Braveheart Mel Gibson shows this by at first his goal was to become a leader in the Scots army. Since he achieved that he set another goal; this goal was to defeat the English. Transformational leaders can also recognize individual growth as well as followers growth. A term that can be exchanged for growth is results. They don’t only care about themselves but, they also make sure the followers are achieving what they want to.

The last point is that transformational leaders are very creative. They encourage team members to create new ideas as well as embrace originality. They allow measured risks. This last part is very important in the sense of taking risk. Transformational leaders are not afraid to fail and have something not work. They take that as a new risk and try again. They never want to be doing the same thing for a longtime.

As you can see all 4 of the steps are very close, and the majority of them overlap each other. Transformational leaders must work well with their followers, share a common goal, motivate others and be authentic. The leaders can’t just worry all about themselves, they must work well with the followers.

Rob

What’s your SPACE JAM!

In this video the Kid President shares with you his vision for a better world. He wants YOU and he wants ME on the same team. He wants us to lift each to lift each other up in the bad times so we can all reach our full potential. Kid President believes we all have the potential to create something in the world that will have a positive effect on others. He calls this creation your Space Jam, after the great contribution of Michael Jordan. This Space Jam represents your Purpose in life, and Kid President wants you to find it, and more importantly share it with others. In this video he gives Encouragement to you and the rest of the viewing public. He wants you to believe in your ability to make the world dance! We can see that he really tries to motivate others, for example he dedicates the “Pep Talk” to his sick friend Gabbi! Part of being able to motivate others is motivating yourself, and being willing to go the extra mile to achieve Mastery. Kid President probably took hundreds of takes to make sure his Pep Talk was just right. In fact, he probably was willing to go to an outside source to perfect his message. This video shows that even as a young person with limited experience we can still achieve a place of leadership, but we may have to serve first.

Cam & Rob