Primal Leadership Part 4

Part 4 Building Emotionally Intelligent Organizations

       

     Groups are smarter than individuals only when they show emotional intelligence. We’ve all heard of the mob mentality. The mob mentality isn’t so smart. Each member of an emotionally intelligent group must have some degree of emotional intelligence. This is especially true for the leader who sets the emotional tone of the group.  

            The true work of a leader is to monitor the emotional tone of the team and to help its members recognize any underlying dissonance. These can be difficult conversations. Unfortunately, most leaders settle for safer conversations about the team itself, the organization, the people, the strategy, and functional alignment while avoiding the more difficult subjects of emotional reality and the norms of the team. By avoiding these tougher topics the leader is only adding to the dissonance (negative feelings) of the team, and causes individuals to lose touch with their unique own best qualities as their passion fades.

            A company with employees who have a common vision is an emotionally intelligent organization that defines its vision in sync with its employees’ hopes and dreams for themselves. These spectacular companies create extraordinary moments or experiences that people go through together to create that tribal feeling, that shared mythology, which in return, creates a company that has empathy.

            Emotional intelligent leaders connect with a vision that moves a culture toward resonance (positive feelings) through what they feel, sense and think about the organization. They connect with the vision and notice the gaps that the typical data doesn’t identify. They collectively involve all in a deliberate study of themselves and the organization. They look at the reality and the ideal vision, identify gaps and go to work on closing those gaps.

            Ambitious leaders need to slowdown in order to speed up. Bringing in as many people as possible into the conversations about the culture and systems of the organization is critical. Leaders need to see the emotional, and then craft a meaningful vision with which people can identify on a deep and personal level. People need to feel they can reach the organization’s dreams without compromising their own dreams. People come first. Strategy comes second. Focus on what people really want and need, and then build a culture around that and build your dreams together.

            People don’t change because of another five year plan. Besides the era of Russian dictator Joseph Stalin is long over. People change when they are emotionally engaged and committed. Focus on the individual first, then the team second, and then the organization last.

            Our world is calling for change. We are in the midst of transformational change. Half of the business models out there will be obsolete in 2-5 years from now. We can’t be frozen in fear. We must manage our emotions and look for new ways. People can no longer be seen as expendable. The Captains of Industry era of the top-down approach is gone. The art of the relationship is rising to the top today. Emotional intelligence is a must for moving forward…

Dan Blanchard is an award-winning author, speaker and educator. To learn more about Dan please visit his website at: www.DanBlanchard.net. Thanks.

Primal Leadership Part 3

Part Three: Making Leaders

    

        We spent much of Part One of the blog about Primal Leadership talking about how emotional intelligence helps leaders, and the lack of emotional intelligence hinders leaders. The ironic thing is that the higher one travels up the ladder of success, the less likely this leader is going to receive honest feedback on his or her emotional intelligence. This phenomenon is called the CEO Disease.

            It takes a lot of courage to tell the boss that he or she has been performing poorly in the emotional intelligence arena lately. This is especially difficult to do when the boss has been a little rough lately and everyone is ducking for cover and trying to stay off the radar. People want to keep their job and continue to be able to feed their children.

            The bottom line is that many CEOs lose some of their self-awareness as they travel up the rings. However, the ironic thing is that study after study shows that self-awareness is greatest among companies doing well, and poorest among companies doing poorly. So, now it comes down to which poor soul is going to put their job on the line to tell the boss that he or she is out of touch and acting like a schmuck because it’s good for the whole company if the boss is made self-aware?

            As I said earlier, the good thing is that emotional intelligence can be learned. However, according to, Primal Leadership, most training and leadership programs only target the neocortex rather than the limbic brain. Leadership skills usually comes down to habits learned early in life. So, if we’re going to re-educate the emotional brain, they typical leadership program isn’t going to cut it. In order, to re-educate the emotional brain we need lots of practice and repetition aimed at the limbic centers of the brain. This kind of learning is very slow; but, that’s a good thing because once it’s learned, it’s learned very well, at a much deeper limbic level. Furthermore, this learning will be retained much longer than traditional surface level cognitive learning.

            The cycle of successful change through emotional intelligence consist first of discovering what our ideal self really is. Second, then unearthing who we exactly are. What is our real self? Third, we have to discover what our learning agenda is. Next, we have to practice our new thoughts and behaviors over and over and over. Lastly, we need to discover some supportive relationships. We need people who help us succeed.

            Emotional intelligence in leaders requires that they at least have some vision of their ideal lives. Through this vision they can uncover their real selves. This requires self-awareness though. Leadership strengths lie at the crossroads of where one’s real self matches one’s ideal self. Where it doesn’t are the gaps that one needs to work on.

            Improvement plans crafted around learning rather than performance outcomes have been found to be more effective for working on those gaps mentioned in the paragraph above. The best kind of learning is when one gets to focus on what one wants to become; one’s ideal self, rather than what others want him or her to become. One’s own life goals ignite their full range of talents. And the more parts of one’s life that can be identified as relevant to one’s leadership goals, the more chances one will have to practice and grow. Being handed a performance goal des the opposite. It undermines motivation. It causes anxiety, and decreases performance.

            Goals should be built on a person’s strengths, not their weaknesses. Plans of improvement should be flexible, feasible, and fit into their life and work, as well as fit into their learning style if it’s going to have the biggest impact on their development and growth.

            The problem is that people try to force leadership upon others and thus these poor souls learn it haphazardly by repeating what they saw others do while growing up, or their own poor previous attempts at it. The good thing is that one can improve in leadership by becoming aware of bad habits and constantly practicing a better way until one masters it. Having a good supportive relationship here really helps a lot in making this change.

Dan Blanchard is an award-winning author, speaker and educator. To learn more about Dan please visit his website at: www.DanBlanchard.net. Thanks.

Primal Intelligence Part 2

Part Two: The Power of Emotional Intelligence Continued

 In part one we talked about the emotional intelligence domains and the associated competencies that are a prerequisite to good leadership. Now we’re going to move onto the different leadership styles. The direct leadership styles discussed in Primal Leadership are: 1. Visionary. 2. Coaching. 3. Affiliative. 4. Democratic. These first four are good for building a resonance leadership that drives positive emotions and feelings that was discussed earlier. The last two of: 5. Pacesetting, and 6. Commanding can also be effective leadership styles, but must be used sparingly because they can cause dissonance, or negative feelings and emotions.

            A visionary leader gets buy-in from others because this leader helps people understand their “why”. This kind of leader is inspiring, and is empathic. A smart company realizes that vision offers a company its unique ‘brand’ or a way to distinguish itself from other companies in the same field or industry. Smart companies use this vision as a standard for performance and performance feedback. It helps employees see how they contribute to the big picture.

            The coaching style doesn’t scream bottom-line results, but in a surprisingly indirect way it gets results through the leaders really getting to know their people, establishing rapport and trust, and successfully linking their daily work to their long-term goals. Coaches are really good at keeping people motivated. And motivated people tend to improve the bottom-line.

            Affiliative leaders nurture personal relationships. They value downtime because it builds up emotional capital that can be drawn from when times get tough. They focus on the emotional needs of their people over goals and are good at healing rifts and bringing a team back together. They are good at solving conflict and creating harmony. These leaders also have some vision. Joe Torre, manager of the famed New York Yankees baseball team was a good example of an affiliative leader.  

            Democratic leaders are great at listening to others. They truly hear what people say. They are great communicators. Democrat leadership style works great when leaders aren’t certain which direction to go. They’re great at getting buy-in. They’re also great at implementing the vision that others haven’t been successful in doing. Democratic leaders actually execute the vision and tend to get fresh ideas all along the way from their workers on how to implement the vision even better.

            Now, onto the last two leadership styles. Pacesetting works great when one already has a team that is highly motivated and needs very little direction, and are competent. Since very few of us are leading the UConn Husky girls’ basketball team, we need to use the pacesetting leadership style sparingly. Coach Geno Auriemma probably doesn’t. This style can be misleading because in the beginning one can get results. However, pacesetting in the wrong environment usually turns our vision into just pure survival. It poisons the climate. And that’s bad for everyone.

            Of all the leadership styles, the commanding style, which is really the coercive approach, doesn’t just poison the climate, but it can destroy it! It destroys the morale of the workforce as people walk around on egg shells afraid to do anything. They spend a good amount of their energy, not being the creative genius that they were meant to be, but rather just trying to stay off the radar. Now, to be fair, there are still some commanding leaders left over in the military and medical fields, for example, who are still getting good results. But, unfortunately, many of these gains aren’t real or lasting.

            Their gains are usually short-term gains with an extremely high cost, especially to personal and human capital. When these commanding leaders are finally pushed out the door, that’s when what they really did comes unraveled and then it comes all crashing down, taking years to rebound; if ever able to rebound from the former wrecking ball. This is when it probably makes sense to find a good affiliative leader who can come in and heal the rifts and damaged relationships that the last leader left in his or her wake. 

Dan Blanchard is an award-winning author, speaker and educator. To learn more about Dan please visit his website at: www.DanBlanchard.net. Thanks.

Do you have Security Champions in your company?

Happy New Year 2016! I am continuing my series of posts on security topics of primary interest to businesses, as I mentioned in my first post on this blog. In this post, I focus on making sure you have some security-minded people on your team(s).

Starting the New Year Right

If you are like me, when the new year rolls around, you reflect on the past year and determine what worked and what didn't. You also make goals and plans for the coming year.

Because I focus on security, application security in particular, I usually think about the application security needs of my business and those of my clients. None of us wants to be in the headlines for a security breach. We know security is still important in 2016, but how do you make sure it happens? How do you make sure security is a priority in your products and services?

Early in 2015, there was a role mentioned in a few places around the internet that every software development team in a company should consider having: A Security Champion.

What is a Security Champion?

I first heard this term early in 2015 from Dinis Cruz in his blog post Does your team has a Security Champion? If not, get this Mug and Library and later What are Security Champions and what do they do?. There were a few others who talked about the role in 2015, including Gunnar Peterson in his blog post Security Champions Guide to Web Application Security.

Essentially, a Security Champion is someone on your software development team who takes on the responsibility of coordinating and tracking security issues and efforts. They are not responsible for implementing all security features in your products or services, but instead they help lead the efforts. They report status on security issues to the team leads. They also make recommendations and/or help make security decisions that impact your products and services.

Why do I need one?

You need a Security Champion on your team because security does not happen by accident. Also, while everyone should be thinking more about security in their everyday lives (i.e. don't blindly open that email attachment even if it seems like it came from someone you know, etc.), everyone can't focus on it exclusively. It helps to have someone or several people in your company who are more aware of security issues and who are willing to lead others in best practices.

My goals for 2016 and a challenge for you

This past year, and for several years, I have served as a Security Champion for my clients on several development teams and for several projects. I look forward to continuing to do so. In this past year, I also had opportunity to speak to more software developers in user groups and conferences about the Threat Modeling process and as I did I also tried to encourage a few to consider becoming Security Champions on their own teams.  I plan to keep speaking on these topics. In addition, I will also provide training for those who are also interested in being effective Security Champions.

My challenge to you: If you don't already have Security Champion(s) on your team(s), think about hiring one or determining who may take on that role. If you already have Security Champions, then by all means encourage them and help them be as effective as possible.

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below or get in touch through my contacts below.

About Robert Hurlbut

Robert Hurlbut, owner of Robert Hurlbut Consulting Services, based in Enfield, CT, provides software security consulting, architecture, and training. This includes software development, threat modeling, secure code reviews, and other kinds of security audits for your company. If Robert can be of assistance to your company, please get in touch through the below contacts.

Web: https://roberthurlbut.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthurlbut
Twitter: @RobertHurlbut

Upcoming security talk: Robert is speaking on February 9, 2016 on "Threat Modeling" at the OWASP Hartford Chapter meeting in Hartford, CT.

People Hardly Invested....

Did you know your employees have great ideas that could be saving your company thousands and thousands of dollars, but may not come forward out of fear or lack of trust? In order to achieve sustained competitive advantage, you employees must be engaged and invested in company outcomes.  For employees to be engaged and invested, there must be bi-directional trust between management and employees at all levels of your company.

For example, management introduces a new process and Jack knows a better, more efficient way.  Jack is not about to open his mouth and rock the boat out of fear of retribution.  Or worse yet, what if he looks foolish in front of his peers?  It is safer to stay quiet so he does.  The cost to your organization may be a brilliant idea that saves time and money, streamlines efficiencies or that improves customer service – which is lost forever in that moment.

An employee idea management system can help to bring transparency to people and systems problems.  People do not operate in a vacuum, and should be involved in the planning stages from the outset to prevent confusion and rework.  As in the example with Jack above – Jack could clearly see from the very start, that the new process would not work as he is the one performing the work and actively engaged with customers, suppliers, systems and processes on a daily basis.  If management had brought Jack into the goal setting and planning process – problematic issues would be identified up front and alternate solutions found – ones that Jack and his colleagues would buy into as well.

Idea Share Tip of the Month!

Your employees see 80 percent of all improvements that management can’t see.  However, most companies neglect the vast potential in the untapped ideas of their employees who know their job best. 

Sign up for the Idea Share Tip of the Week! at Frame of Mind Consulting

Frame of Mind Consulting understands the unique DNA of your organization, which is necessary to turn any organization into one capable of leveraging the full idea potential of its employees. Would you like to drive connectivity and ownership throughout your company?  Contact Page at (860) 559-7942 to set up your complimentary consultation during which you will receive some invaluable tips that you can apply to your business right away.

NEW MANAGER: TRUMPET YOUR INNOVATIVE LEADERSHIP!

     What differences in your department’s energy can immediately be noticed by others now that you have taken over the leadership role? 

 

Colleagues and internal and external customers engaging with your department should notice...something seems different. 

This creates buzz and offers your staff the opportunity to become emissaries for your innovations.  

  

The key is to share your tactics with your department. The more transparent you are with them, the better. Ideally, you will be able to ask them for input, which offers you another opportunity to strengthen your team. Additionally, it offers your staff opportunity for professional development.

Here are some ideas for ways to trumpet your impact and innovations:

•  Schedule your staff meetings, face to face and virtual,  on the company calendar so other departments know your event is taking place and that the room and time are reserved.

•  Does your staff interact in person with the public? Review, revise, and standardize their greeting script, manner, and timeliness of greeting.

• Are there appropriate outlines in place for your department's electronic correspondence and social media postings? Revisit and review them.

• Does your staff answer or initiate telephone calls? Provide each station with mirrors, so that they can check their smiles. Explain your reasoning to your staff.

•   Consider enlisting the aid of other departments. For example, you might test response time to internal emails--after ensuring your staff is aware of the exercise. Your staff are partners, as opposed to subjects. 

•  Stating your department intentions and goals publicly is a powerful tool. Write them and display them prominently in the department. Celebrate each time a goal is achieved. Make the achievements public. Display them and discuss them.

• Consider posting daily or weekly quotes in the department. This is more powerful if you allow your staff members to choose them--within your approved parameters.
  
  
  
  
  

  Jeannie Newman is the Chief Solutions Officer for JZN Associates. She designs and implements guided discussions,workshops and seminars for her clients. All her topics are rooted in psychological and Emotional Intelligence concepts. She is also known for her motivational skills. Connect with her on LinkedIn.