Month: October 2019

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Why emotional intelligence is leadership, team spirit and company culture

As all leaders experience the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, you will know you have been tested in ways that you never expected. And yet, somehow, we all prevail. Despite the frustrations, anger and fear, you will have learned a lot about yourself. You will be forced to recognise your own weaknesses and eccentricities, and discover reserves of strength that you had not known existed. In the process, you will become less judgmental and more accepting of yourself and of others.

No matter how large or small a company is, teams are vital to businesses these days, allowing them to maximise productivity and profitability when operated effectively. As such, it’s absolutely imperative for employers to nurture team spirit in the modern workplace.

That being said, employees should make the effort to connect with their team as much as possible as well. A genuine sense of camaraderie not only improves the morale and general mood of each individual member of staff but similarly helps them feel like an integral part of the organisation.

A united team’s greatest strength is undoubtedly the combination of skills present in collaborative environments with engagement into the company vision and mission. With a broader range of abilities and knowledge at the employer’s disposal, businesses can be more flexible, taking advantage of the greater number of opportunities open to them as a result. Close-knit teams are also better equipped to deal with individual shortcomings; for instance, if during the course of a project it emerges that a team member is lacking in a particular area, a strong bond makes it easy for the individual to simply defer to a colleague for support.

Likewise, working in a collaborative environment alongside trusted companions makes it easier for employees to discuss any ideas they might have for improving the firm’s operating practices, or even ask for assistance if they’re struggling personally or professionally.

Team spirit often produces a healthy dose of friendly competition; not in the sense that each individual is trying to outperform their colleagues, rather, as the group contribute to the overall success of the company, team members will work assiduously to avoid being seen as the weak link in the chain. Conversely, innate trust in a co-worker’s abilities enables one to concentrate fully on one’s own tasks and responsibilities, without fear of interruption.

Contented employees that are able to participate in traditional team-building exercises tend to be less stressed than more isolated workers, resulting in increased productivity, and a tighter connection between individuals; understandably, these effects are amplified if regular social outings are arranged. In addition, office disputes will be easier to resolve when team members feel able to communicate their grievances with each other openly, especially when there’s a professional and personal association.

From a practical perspective, cohesive team units often correlate with low staff turnover rates, saving the business money in a number of ways. For starters, as these employees are much happier in their work, businesses are spared the hassle of replacing staff on a regular basis; often a costly and time-consuming process. Furthermore, with fewer new starters each year, the company can save money on training staff and reduce the impact such transitional periods tend to have on productivity.

Company culture is an integral part of business. It affects nearly every aspect of a company. From recruiting top talent to improving employee satisfaction, it’s the backbone of a happy workforce. Without a positive corporate culture, many employees will struggle to find the real value in their work, and this leads to a variety of negative consequences for your bottom line.

According to research by Deloitte, 94% of executives and 88% of employees believe a distinct corporate culture is important to a business’ success. Deloitte’s survey also found that there is a strong correlation between employees who claim to feel happy and valued at work and those who say their company has a strong culture.

There’s a reason why companies who are named as a Best Place to Work see so much success. These organizations tend to have strong, positive corporate cultures that help employees feel and perform their best at work. Research gathered by CultureIQ found that employee’s overall ratings of their company’s qualities – including collaboration, environment and values – are rated 20% higher at companies that exhibit strong culture.

But why is corporate culture such an important part of a business?

The culture factor – 8 types of company culture

The 8 Types of Company Culture

A great quote we have all heard time and time again is: ‘No man is an island’, especially in a business organisation. Everyone in the organisation needs someone else’s help sometime or another, either as part of the regular workflow or during emergencies.

Whether it’s the CEO or the cleaning lady, every person in an organisation has to consider himself or herself as part of a team in order for a business to function smoothly. The moment a “That’s not my job!” attitude appears, you have the makings of a dysfunctional organisation and a decline in team and company performance

What Creates a Team Environment?

Creating a team environment in a company does not come easy. To effectively build teams, it is important to remember that:

Teamwork is based on a company’s culture. Companies that encourage open, honest communication and foster employee interaction are in a better position to have good teamwork among employees.

Team spirit comes from the top. Building effective teams with the right attitude emanates from the highest levels of an organisation. Only by flattening the traditional organisational pyramid can one expect to instil the right team culture.

People must fit the culture. Some people are team players and some are not. It’s partly a question of personality and partly a matter of training. One person in the team with the wrong attitude can undermine the effort of the entire team. Hiring only people with the right traits for teamwork is crucial in building effective teams.

Leaders that develop great teams around them have two things that they do well:

• they have a lot of emotional intelligence and
• are able to provide a clear vision for the team.

Well, you are probably wondering what the team members need to have:

The team members themselves also need to possess high emotional intelligence so that they interact with each other with the least amount of friction.

The importance of teamwork is essential in today’s multidisciplinary world. In the past, during the industrial era when most jobs were represented by people on a manufacturing line doing one thing all day – teamwork wasn’t as important as it is today.

When emotional intelligence first appeared to the masses, it served as the missing link in a peculiar finding: people with average IQs outperform those with the highest IQs 70% of the time. This anomaly threw a massive wrench into what many people had always assumed was the sole source of success—IQ. Decades of research now point to emotional intelligence as the critical factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack.

Emotional intelligence is the “something” in each of us that is a bit intangible. It affects how we manage behaviour, navigate social complexities, and make personal decisions that achieve positive results. Emotional intelligence is made up of four core skills that pair up under two primary competencies: personal competence and social competence.

At a recent World Economic Forum it was stated in a report named ‘The Future of Jobs’ that in 2020, the core skill sets in highest demand will be complex problem-solving skills and social skills, including emotional intelligence.

In today’s knowledge economy, most of our jobs involve interacting with others that are not even in the same line of profession. The need for effective teamwork is critical for any business.

The ability to simultaneously perform as an individual and together with your colleagues or employees in effective teamwork is key to attaining growth and success.

In every aspect of a business, the diverse skills of teams are needed for reaching success. Make use of every opportunity you have to engage in teamwork so you develop effective communication skills.

Steve Jobs changed the whole pattern of living with his innovative and creative mind. However, without his team of hard-working professionals and their abilities, his innovations would not have reached the hands of so many people around the world.

In effect, teamwork is important and essential in order to accomplish the overall objectives and goals of an organization.

The following 5 reasons summarise the importance of teamwork and why it matters to you:

• Teamwork motivates unity in the workplace

A teamwork environment promotes an atmosphere that fosters friendship and loyalty. These close-knit relationships motivate employees in parallel and align them to work harder, cooperate and be supportive of one another.

Individuals possess diverse talents, weaknesses, communication skills, strengths, and habits. Therefore, when a teamwork environment is not encouraged this can pose many challenges towards achieving the overall goals and objectives. This creates an environment where employees become focused on promoting their own achievements and competing against their fellow colleagues.

Ultimately, this can lead to an unhealthy and inefficient working environment.

When teamwork is working the whole team would be motivated and working toward the same goal in harmony.

– Listen to our teamwork fundamentals audio course:

• Teamwork offers differing perspectives and feedback

Good teamwork structures provide your organization with a diversity of thought, creativity, perspectives, opportunities, and problem-solving approaches. A proper team environment allows individuals to brainstorm collectively, which in turn increases their success to problem solve and arrive at solutions more efficiently and effectively.

Effective teams also allow the initiative to innovate, in turn creating a competitive edge to accomplish goals and objectives. Sharing differing opinions and experiences strengthens accountability and can help make effective decisions faster, than when done alone.

Team effort increases output by having quick feedback and multiple sets of skills come into play to support your work. You can do the stages of designing, planning, and implementation much more efficiently when a team is functioning well.

• Teamwork provides improved efficiency and productivity

When incorporating teamwork strategies, you become more efficient and productive. This is because it allows the workload to be shared, reducing the pressure on individuals, and ensure tasks are completed within a set time frame. It also allows goals to be more attainable, enhances the optimization of performance, improves job satisfaction and increases work pace.

Ultimately, when a group of individuals works together, compared to one person working alone, they promote a more efficient work output and are able to complete tasks faster due to many minds intertwined on the same goals and objectives of the business.

• Teamwork provides great learning opportunities
Working in a team enables us to learn from one another’s mistakes. You are able to avoid future errors, gain insight from differing perspectives, and learn new concepts from more experienced colleagues.

In addition, individuals can expand their skill sets, discover fresh ideas from newer colleagues and therefore ascertain more effective approaches and solutions towards the tasks at hand. This active engagement generates the future articulation, encouragement and innovative capacity to problem solve and generate ideas more effectively and efficiently.

• Teamwork promotes workplace synergy

Mutual support shared goals, cooperation and encouragement provide workplace synergy. With this, team members are able to feel a greater sense of accomplishment, are collectively responsible for outcomes achieved and feed individuals with the incentive to perform at higher levels.

When team members are aware of their own responsibilities and roles, as well as the significance of their output being relied upon by the rest of their team, team members will be driven to share the same vision, values, and goals. The result creates a workplace environment based on fellowship, trust, support, respect, and cooperation.

Final thought, without the ability to effectively work in a team environment, you could delay the success of developing, formulating and implementing new and innovative ideas. The ability to problem solve is reduced, as well as the attainment of meeting goals and objectives, in turn, limiting the efficiency and effectiveness of growing a successful company is hindered

No matter how much they want to be part of the team, some will always find it difficult to work collaboratively, whether that’s due to a lack of confidence, a clash of personalities, or simply that an individual prefers working alone.

Fortunately, most people – even those who’d describe themselves as shy – can succeed in a team environment given enough time, enjoying the benefits of a happier and more fulfilling working life.

One of the most important roles a leader has is creating a positive culture. Be sure to cultivate a positive culture that enhances the talent, diversity and happiness of your workforce. Building a unique, positive culture is one of the best – and simplest – ways to get your employees to invest their talent and future with your company.

As Paul Ryan once said:

‘Every successful individual knows that his or her achievement depends on a community of persons working together.‘

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The 4th industrial revolution debate across Autonomous Leadership

I recently had a very interesting conversation with a PhD in behaviour science – we were actually debating the issues and positives across micromanagement, after he had read my blog, ‘Is micromanagement delusional or can it be effective’, whilst I wrote this blog back in 2015, there currently appears to be much discussion around leadership and the 4th industrial creation of autonomous leadership, some genius believes autonomous leadership is the answer to ineffective leadership.

I thought it was time to refresh my thinking and look into the negatives and positives, and why autonomous leadership should be deployed across business.

Most leaders want employees who take the initiative, get involved, make decisions and generate ideas. In fact, because your team is likely made up of educated, competent, seasoned employees (some of whom you may have hand-selected), it’s natural to expect that they would need a little direction to take the proverbial ball and run with it. You have a vested interest in their success because, when your team performs well, everyone wins.

Likewise, employees of all generations share a desire to work autonomously toward the communicated vision. No one wants to feel as if they’re operating under someone else’s thumb, especially team members who are smart, ambitious and motivated.

If autonomy is an essential ingredient for promoting employee engagement and motivation, and given that both leaders and employees desire empowered environments, what keeps leaders from encouraging self-sufficiency in their employees? The short answer is a skewed perception of reality.

The breakdown often begins when leaders don’t see their employees making decisions and taking action quickly enough, or in the same way the leader would do it. In this situation, you understandably might question the motivation behind the employee’s lack of autonomy. Some executives I’ve coached have told me they wonder if their employees don’t care, if they’re not ambitious or competent enough to do the job. They often assume their employees need or want more direction because they seem to require help or feedback before moving forward. In other words, leaders often feel the problem is with their employees, not them.

Autonomy in the workplace is hard to implement and easy to abuse. It requires managers and employees to trust each other and communicate on projects, which can be challenging in their own rights. Too often, a communication breakdown leads to micromanaging or missed deadlines.

By tapping into information-sharing channels and mutual trust, it’s possible to increase team autonomy in the workplace. Here are a few examples of companies channelling information well and how employees become more autonomous because of it.

Many leaders instinctively want complete visibility of their team.

This is a recipe for micromanagement.

Interesting statement by Dr David Rock from The NeuroLeadership Institute, when he said: “Although we may not think about it often, everyone experiences the workplace as a social system. People who feel betrayed or unrecognized at work, experience it as a neural impulse, as powerful and painful as a blow to the head.”

He goes on to say that employees tend to limit their commitment and engagement if they feel undervalued. “They become purely transactional employees, reluctant to give more of themselves to the company, because the social context stands in their way.”

This type of situation can be the root cause of a low-performing team. Think about times that you have been part of such a team. It quickly demotivates everyone, plus rectifying the situation is very difficult once it takes hold. Your managerial challenge is to provide conditions where such a situation is less likely to happen, and giving the team a measure of autonomy in how to carry out their work is key.

Based on research and anecdotal evidence, there’s no denying workplace autonomy promotes employee happiness. A workplace survey by Gensler concluded that employees given more choices are more satisfied and higher performing than counterparts with fewer freedoms. Autonomy often inspires a culture of innovation, and allows employees an opportunity to become more self-sufficient. For executives, this means less time overseeing daily operations and more time focused on strategy and growth. But for a company that still hasn’t shifted to an autonomous environment, the idea of giving employees so much freedom can be a little unsettling.

Autonomy is quickly becoming the norm. Employees not only desire greater control over their work style and environment — they expect it. By exercising the above suggestions, you can help create a culture of freedom and choice without sacrificing efficiency, productivity and structure.

In order to make your team more autonomous, you need to establish communication and trust. Without communication, you’re leaving your employees without a safety net while your employees are working in isolation

Let’s look at some of the disadvantages of employee empowerment:

Lack of experience increases risk

While the handing down of responsibility promises to improve speed, agility and productivity, a concern is that decisions are now being made by less experienced and less expert personnel. This can increase the number of mistakes made and put reputation at risk.

The risk of work practices falling into chaos must be tackled by proper training, and by ensuring that supervisors maintain organizational standards. These standards must incorporate an organization’s values and beliefs: care must be taken that employees do not work in accordance with individual values that may be divergent to the corporate mission and vision.

Potential for decreased efficiency

When people are given the autonomy to make their own decisions, those decisions cease to be uniform. This lack of coordination can lead to problems down the line.
It is also the case that autonomous employees may decide to work slower on days when they feel distracted or lack the energy to forge ahead. Where some workers are performing more productively than others, without being rewarded for doing so, internal friction can increase. If not dealt with, this can cause confrontation or a spiral to the bottom as all workers decide to work at the pace of the slowest and least productive team member.

Failing relationships

Empowerment inevitably leads to a flatter, more streamlined management structure. The risk here is that professional relationships become blurred, and boundaries of authority become broken. This might require greater control over employees, not less.

Accountability issues may arise, leading to a blame culture that, if left unchecked, will lead to further discontent and an environment of mistrust. In such a situation, it is likely that employees will decide to take less responsibility for fear of repercussions should things go wrong.

Poor decision-making
If a team lacks the individuals with skills commensurate to the project, tasks, and work required, decision-making will be poorer. This will be to the detriment of the organization, as poor solutions lead to decreasing productivity and internal conflict.

Are you really a leader if nobody is following?

As a leader, you should have an element of magnetism to your style. What do I mean by that? I mean that people should be drawn to you; they should want to be around you – by choice, that is, not because it’s their job to take your direction. The greatest leaders have a natural following of people that are pointed in the same direction; people that want to accomplish the same goals; people that want to be on your journey!

These relational principals apply across the board. Just because you’re in a leadership position doesn’t mean that you’ve attained perfection. You’re human. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to have questions, and people will respect you more for owning that. Your transparency and honesty open the doors for you to engage others and rely on their strengths and expertise. Your team will feel needed and valued by you, and they will likely jump into help compensate for your weaknesses.

In addition to being authentic about yourself, leaders should realise the importance of being open and honest about the state of their organization, current and future. Leaders should be clear and candid in their communication to give everyone an accurate assessment of what’s going on and what’s needed to improve. This openness and authenticity create understanding and direction, and it minimizes the chaos of uncertainty.

The truth of the matter is that we cannot all be the leader in charge.

The end result is that many people want to be led. They need someone who can be visionary and inspirational.

Perhaps there is some overlap with this and some of the other points already mentioned, but I thought it was important to say it in this particular way. The reason for that is because this puts the focus on understanding what your people need. To do this, you must get to know your people. You have to ask questions, listen and engage. This is a critical component to understanding people and meeting their needs.

Which brings me on to ‘we are a direct reflection of our experiences’ – the way we behave and not all organisational cultures are created equal. Your company’s behaviors and norms can be unhealthy and unsupportive. But take heart: your organisation has the power to build a high-performance culture. A high-performance culture has behaviors and norms that lead your organisation to achieve superior results by setting clear business goals, defining employees’ responsibilities, creating a trusting environment, and encouraging employees to continuously grow and reinvent themselves.

Employee engagement is a direct outcome of a high-performance company culture. Why? Because high-performance cultures clearly outline behaviors and norms that are healthy and supportive.

Employees clearly understand their culture and what is expected of them. They feel connected. They feel involved. They feel supported. And, therefore, they feel engaged. A company that takes its people seriously will have a business strategy, vision, mission and values.

It’s alarming to know that eighty-seven per cent of HR leaders state that company culture and engagement are their biggest challenges. It makes sense. There are several reasons culture and engagement are rising as relevant challenges for organisations. To start, employer branding has become more and more important. Employees are very much like customers. With the changes in the job market, employees have greater opportunities than they had in the past.

This puts employers in the position of having to actively attract employees, all while employees’ perceptions about work are changing. For the most part, employees no longer prioritise staying at a single job until retirement and instead are very uncommitted, they are more likely to choose a job that interests them and aligns with their own passion and values at a moment in time. Your organisation needs to regularly invest in culture to regularly see the resulting engaged employee base.

By providing training opportunities, the latest in technological advancements, managerial support, and an open mind about what makes a great workplace environment, companies can evolve to keep pace with employees’ expectations to really drive success. The key is that this is an ongoing process. Engagement doesn’t just happen – you have to focus employee needs over time and use that to drive a strong culture, a good way to achieve this is with an HR development plan, which has the engagement of senior leadership, management and the board of directors.

Final thought, by supporting people we employ or our family members to develop themselves so that we can each reach a state where we are conscious that the interior work is as important as our exterior communication skills.

By learning to deploy those skills to give individual context and insight to host other conversations, which would be vastly more helpful than the kind of conversation that happens in the superficial contextual layer.

We nominally share a language with others; sometimes not even that. Language isn’t helping us bridge the divide of ideological differences effectively any more. Embodied dialogue methods, like constellations and storytelling, can open new perspectives in people’s minds.

I am not convinced in my lifetime that an intuitive or compassionate AI, or robot will even come close to this objective, we need better leadership to drive home performance and growth outcomes, based around passionate, committed and determined humans.

A great quote by John Maxwell, where he states:

“If you are leading others and you’re lonely, then you’re not doing it right. Think about it. If you’re all alone, that means nobody is following you. And if nobody is following you, then you’re not really leading.”