Category: Emotional Intelligence

empathy leadership awareness

Empathy – Towards Empathic Leadership
Posted on 15th July 2012 in Critical Conversations, Emotional Intelligence, Employee Engagement, Leadership Development

What is empathy? If you think it’s lightweight, airy fairy, post-modern self-help delusion, then check out this short animation from Jeremy Rifkin and the Royal Society of Arts. Could just be that we are all soft-wired for empathy and that it evolved as more of a pragmatic behaviour. If we embrace this notion, there could be a multitude of ramifications for how we live and work.

http://www.thersa.org/events/rsaanimate/animate/rsa-animate-the-empathic-civilisation

Survival of the most Empathic

Empathy is the lubrication that maintains strong relationships and allows us to build trust with others both personally and professionally. Putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes and seeing something as the other guy does are invaluable survival techniques. When a child sees an adult obviously in a state of upset, it’s common for the child to offer their favourite toy to that adult in a bid to cheer them up. Often this seemingly selfless action surprises us.

But perhaps deep within our collective unconscious, this ability or skill is as fundamental as any form of communication. Perhaps in ensuring all members of the tribe are healthy and happy, our ancestors ensured the overall tribe and therefore the “selfish” or individualistic survival needs of every member were met. In other words, by using empathy we look after the collective and in doing so increase our personal survival.

Empathy for Leaders

Actors are truly aware of how to use and display their empathy. In approaching a role, the actor has to use her own experience and memory of events and emotions to connect with a character in a play. To really get a handle on how the character talks, walks, acts and feels, the actor has to stretch herself and explore human behaviour as fully as possible.

What learning then could be transposed for today’s business leaders? Many of whom are focused on the bottom line, share price, their own stock options, their personal profile… As opposed to really understanding the wants, needs, motivations and emotions of the people who are the organisation.

It’s a well worn cliche that “our people are greatest assets” or words to that effect. If you’re a business leader, isn’t it time you carved out time to understand your greatest assets..?

Sartaj Garewal is the founder of Dynamic Presenting – a creative, leadership development consultancy, adapting theatre training to create leadership programs for business.

Dynamic Presenting – Enabling Powerful Communication

 

Be Authentic

Be Authentic – Attend a Conference as Yourself
Posted on 12th July 2012 in Communication Skills Training, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Development

How to be authentic? What does that actually mean? And who am I without my accomplishments – past, present or future? We all hang labels on ourselves and others. Indeed we’re pretty much trained to do this from the get go. We define ourselves by our jobs, specific roles, industry sectors, educational backgrounds, family backgrounds, race, religion…. But and this is kinda impossible to do, who are we if we could strip away those societal layers..? Would that stripped down person be our natural, authentic self..?

Meet New People

Intriguing and illuminating Harvard Business Review article on how to just be yourself when meeting new folk at a conference. https://hbr.org/2012/03/how-to-attend-a-conference-as.html

Many of us label ourselves according to our professional role and thats the prism we then view life through. When meeting people for the first time we tend to offer up “I’m an engineer” or “I’m an actor” etc quite readily. In so doing we label ourselves and attempt, albeit subconsciously, to restrict other people’s perceptions of us into the pre-determined arena we would rather they see us in.

It is controlling behaviour and smacks of inherent fear. Great advantages lie in store for those willing to temporarily suspend the importance of their titles, rank and status and just be in the moment. We are all imperfect and vulnerable. If we can trust ourselves to show some of that vulnerability to others, then those people will trust us – because they will see their own vulnerabilities reflected back – and so they will know us.

Allowing Ourselves to be Authentic

If we could allow our ego’s to chill out and just be in the moment, viewing the familiar and unknown with the same optimism then we get out of our own way. Then we strip layers of padding – our role, company etc – away and are more vulnerable and open to change and new experiences. Which in turn lead to new adventures as our authentic selves, personally and professionally.

Sartaj Garewal is the founder of Dynamic Presenting – a creative, leadership development consultancy, adapting theatre training to create leadership programs for business.

Dynamic Presenting – Enabling Powerful Communication

Emotional Intelligence growth decade

Emotional Intelligence – Decade of Personal Growth
Posted on 9th July 2012 in Communication Skills Training, Emotional Intelligence, Employee Engagement

Awareness of Emotional Intelligence has grown rapidly over the last 10 years. A crucial area of analysis in terms of personal and professional development. The phrase was first coined by leadership figure and journalist Daniel Goleman.

Emotional intelligence is all about understanding your own emotional state in any given moment and being able to understand that of those around you as well. There are great personal benefits in understanding why you feel any particular emotion and being able to clearly distinguish and articulate what you are feeling is immensely powerful. Of course, this meat and drink to those of us who work in theatre and drama, where fundamental emotions are our stock in trade.

Report on Emotional Intelligence

Intriguing read about the development of “Emotional Intelligence” over the last 10 years, now viewed as a crucial area of analysis in terms of personal development and leadership. This report looks at 15 or so key composite areas within the field of Emotional Intelligence and offers insightss based on industry, age, gender, culture etc. Interestingly the self-employed tend to have a higher overall level of EI – something to be said for living as a forager and not relying on the falsehood of job security and making things happen…?

http://www.jca.eu.com/pdf/DecadeofEIReport.pdf

Why do business leaders lack Emotional Intelligence?

Perhaps surprisingly and despite an avalanche of research, discussion and debate, many C-suite leaders are still emotionally inept. Why is that? A recent survey concluded that middle managers often have far more emotional intelligence than those at the top of organisations. Could it be that they are more skilled in people management as they have to make people related decisions everyday? Whereas the average CEO rarely has to encounter the same number of ground troops.

Perhaps organisations are still focused on tangibles and hard figures above all else. A decade of emotional intelligence is just the beginning…

http://www.inc.com/travis-bradberry/why-leaders-lack-emotional-intelligence.html

Sartaj Garewal is the founder of Dynamic Presenting – a creative, leadership development consultancy, adapting theatre training to create leadership programs for business.

Dynamic Presenting – Enabling Powerful Communication

emotional intelligence ten years

Emotional Intelligence. 10 Years Strong
Posted on 21st May 2012 in Communication Skills Training, Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Development

Emotional Intelligence has garnered a lot of focus and press coverage of late. Now, some 10 years after the concept was born, it has proven to be much more than just a fad. Indeed, as a concept it has gained a lot of respect amongst business leaders. There are many training courses offering workshops in developing emotional intelligence. And the phrase has now passed into common, everyday usage.

The higher up in an organisation you climb the more important it is to be emotionally intelligent. Managers who score higher on a test of EI report less stress, higher morale and experience less illness.

Safety & Survival

One of the first principles of human behaviour is safety and survival. To that end we are constantly scanning our environment for danger, both consciously and unconsciously. Emotions (fear, anger, sadness, joy & disgust) are one major and rapid pathway for alerting us toward challenge and threat in our environment. We also use emotions to communicate this information to others. Recent research has shown that the brain has specific areas dedicated to processing emotional information (Joseph LeDoux – `The Emotional Brain’).

21st century survival is as much about self-preservation in the social and psychological world as it is in the physical. So emotional intelligence is really about our ability to integrate our emotions with our cognitive thoughts. Thereby ensuring our everyday safety and survival in the modern world. And like other forms of intelligence some people are better at it than others.

Research into Emotional Intelligence

The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations was founded in 1996. It was set up to aid the advancement of research and practice related to emotional intelligence in organizations. The following research projects and articles are provided by the Consortium. http://www.eiconsortium.org/reports/reports.html

Some further recommended tools to test your emotional intelligence: http://emotionalintelligence.net/products/?gclid=CKKsyYCrkbACFYwQfAodakDgyg

Sartaj Garewal is the founder of Dynamic Presenting – a creative, leadership development consultancy, adapting theatre training to create leadership programs for business.

Dynamic Presenting – Enabling Powerful Communication

Role play mediation training

Role Play for Effective Mediation Training
Posted on 11th May 2012 in Critical Conversations, Emotional Intelligence, Forum Theatre, Mediation Training, Role Play

Using role play is an innovative means of training in many areas of business and particularly relevant for those interested in mediation.

Dynamic Presenting ran a sell out workshop on improvisation skills for qualified mediators. The event was organised in conjunction with CIArb – Chartered Institute of Arbitrators www.ciarb.org and took place at the offices of magic circle law firm Allen & Overy. Sartaj Garewal MCIArb and elite mediator Amanda Bucklow ran a very interactive, high impact session allowing delegates to experience the value of improvisation when the stakes are high. Role play in other words.

Keynote speakers included The Honourable Mr Justice Ramsey and Karl Mackie. The day involved various break out sessions addressing a wide range of relevant topics from ‘The Myth of Reality Testing’ to ‘Improvisation Skills for Mediators.’

Forum Theatre

The event began with a high impact forum theatre intervention where the audience of 50 or so invited delegates watched actors role playing a typical mediation scenario. The scenario was challenging and realistic and depicted two parties in conflict where the mediator (played by an actor) loses control of initial proceedings and the whole affair turned into a slanging match.

The scene lasted just a few minutes and was then re-run from the top, only this time the watching delegates were instructed to stop the action whenever the actor role playing the mediator character said or did anything they felt could be more effective. The actors would role play moments as advised with new direction and lines from the audience which in turn affected the behaviour and actions of the two parties in conflict, resulting in a completely different and far more effective outcome. All with a good deal of laughing and debating along the way..!

Experiential Training Works…!

With a keen, energetic audience, experiential training interventions such as forum theatre and role play can work wonders and all with absolutely no powerpoint slides or flip charts in sight…!!

Sartaj Garewal is the founder of Dynamic Presenting – a creative, leadership development consultancy, adapting theatre training to create leadership programs for business.

Dynamic Presenting – Enabling Powerful Communication