Monthly Archives: March 2012

Emotional Intelligence and Your Job Search

Posted on 30 March 2012 by | Leave a comment
SAN MATEO, CA - JUNE 07: A job seeker collect...

Using emotional intelligence really can help you succeed in your job search.

But what is emotional intelligence, and why is it that success in life sometimes seems unrelated to intelligence and how hard you are prepared to work?

It has been said that your IQ can land you a job but your lack of EQ (Emotional Intelligence) can get you fired. However, demonstrating emotional and social intelligence is becoming more and more important in your job search.

Many more recruiters and employers now appreciate that emotional intelligence and social intelligence are great determinants of the success you are likely to achieve at work.  A study from Virginia Commonwealth University  has shown that “high emotional intelligence does have a relationship to strong job performance  — in short, emotionally intelligent people make better workers.”  As a result, companies like Microsoft and Deutsche Bank now use EQ tests in their recruitment processes.

Derren Thompson, Manager, Diversity Recruiting for Sodexo, one of the largest services companies in the world reminds readers in their  blog that the “businesses that will succeed in the 21st century will be the ones that allow employees to bring the whole of their intelligence into the work force – their emotional and intellectual self. Not only does this impact morale, but productivity increases, too.”

Recognizing the significance of this, means you can use emotional intelligence to help you succeed in your job search.

But what is emotional intelligence?

In 1996 Daniel Goleman wrote his groundbreaking book “Emotional Intelligence“. His exhaustive research had confirmed that success in life is based more on our ability to manage our emotions than on our intellectual capability or our physical strength.

According to Howard Gardner, the influential Harvard theorist, “Your EQ (Emotional Intelligence Quotient) is the level of your ability to understand other people, what motivates them and how to work cooperatively with them,”

Emotional intelligence is the ability to identify, assess, and manage your own emotions, the emotions of others and also group emotions. It can also be a way of engaging with others that draws them to you.

EQ requires four capabilities;

  1. Self-awareness,
  2. Self-management,
  3. Social awareness
  4. Relationship management.

But EQ can do more for you in your job search than just impress a potential employer, it can help you decide what kind of role to go for.

One way to begin is to ask yourself two questions:

  • First, when do you feel excited or curious? This will help you be clear about your interests and passions.
  • Second,  work out what makes you upset, depressed and angry, and why? This helps you identify your core values and that often makes the difference in whether a job or career will be the right fit for you.

Understanding your emotions can also help you maintain your optimism and cope with stress during a long job search – it can help you stay positive while you find the right role for you.

If you would like to know more about emotional intelligence and how it can help you at work as a manager and leader, go to our sister site WiseWolf Talking– Leadership, Management, Career and Personal Development.  If you would like to know what emotional intelligence might mean for you in your life outside work then please visit WiseWolf’s Your Happiness Factor.

If you would like to read Dr Goleman’s book click on the picture link below and if you would like to try out an EQ test try this link http://testyourself.psychtests.com/testid/3038

Wendy Mason is a Life and Career Coach.  She helps people have the confidence they need to be successful at work and to change career. You can email her atwendymason@wisewolfcoaching.com or ring ++44(0)2084610114 

 

 

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Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

Posted on 30 March 2012 by | 4 Comments

Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions

Using emotional intelligence can help you succeed as a leader. But what is emotional intelligence, and why is it that success in life sometimes seems unrelated to intelligence and how hard you are prepared to work?

In 1996 Daniel Goleman wrote his groundbreaking book “Emotional Intelligence“. His exhaustive research had confirmed that success in life is based more on our ability to manage our emotions than on our intellectual capability or our physical strength.

Dr Goleman describes five main elements of emotional intelligence:

  1. Self-awareness.
  2. Self-regulation.
  3. Motivation.
  4. Empathy.
  5. Social skills.

The ability to call on these five qualities can help you to succeed as a leader.

  1. Self-awareness means you are in touch with your own feelings and emotions. You understand how they affect your behaviour and how they influence those around you.  You can strengthen your self-awareness by keeping a daily journal where you record how you feel each day and then reflect on what you have written.  Take time during the day to monitor yourself, your feelings and how you are reacting to things.
  2. Self-regulation means you don’t let fly with negative emotions or make rushed judgments about things or people.  Successful leaders stay in control of themselves and they are prepared to be flexible while being accountable. To help you do this, you need know your values and where you are not prepared to compromise. Spend some time thinking about what really matters to you.  Make a commitment to be accountable for what you do and practice staying calm. A relaxation technique can help – try this technique on our sister site WiseWolf’s Your Happiness Factor.
  3. Motivated leaders have a clear vision and work consistently towards their goals. Do you have that clear vision and is it still appropriate to you and your organization?  Find out more about developing the right vision at this link. If you get to the point where you are responding to events, rather than being proactive, then take action because your lack of motivation could put your organization at risk.
  4. For leaders, having empathy is critical to managing a successful organization or a successful team.  Empathy means you can put yourself in someone else’s situation. Leaders with empathy help develop their teams as they develop themselves. They make sure that people are treated fairly, and they listen.  As a result they earn respect and loyalty. Practice imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes – put yourself in their position.  Listen carefully to what people say and pay attention to body language – respond to feelings!
  5. Leaders with social skills are good communicators – they communicate well and often. They’re just as open to hearing bad news as good news!  Leaders who have good social skills have the confidence to resolve conflicts before they threaten the team or the organization. Learn to talk to your team and if necessary do some formal training in communication skills and conflict resolution.

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage both your own emotions, and those of the people you lead.   Having a high EQ means  knowing what you are feeling, what this means, and how your emotions can affect other people. For leaders, having emotional intelligence is essential for success. Take time to work on self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills.  They will certainly help ensure that you succeed as a leader.

If you would like to know more about emotional intelligence and how it can help you in job search go to our sister site WiseWolf Leaving the Public Sector.  If you would like to know what emotional intelligence might mean for you in your life outside work then please visit WiseWolf’s Your Happiness Factor.

If you would like to read Dr Goleman’s book click on the picture link below

You can try out an EQ test at this link http://testyourself.psychtests.com/testid/3038

Wendy Mason is a Life and Career Coach.  She helps people have the confidence they need to be successful at work and to change career. You can email her atwendymason@wisewolfcoaching.com or ring ++44(0)2084610114 

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Team Work; Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning. Part 2 – Managing the Storming Stage

Posted on 27 March 2012 by | 7 Comments

In a recent post at this link, I introduced the Tuckman theory of how groups/teams develop. Most groups go through a formation process like that described by Dr Tuckman. Understanding the model can help you to lead, manage and facilitate teams and work groups more effectively.

Some group leaders find the stages uncomfortable – they can be challenging to handle. Some stages seem slow and a waste of precious work time. But going through them means that a more cohesive and efficient working group is formed – a group that allows everyone to contribute their best!  A skilled manager can observe the stages happening and help the process along.  That means you get the best outcome for all in the least time.

In this short series of posts, I discuss how you can lead your group through the stages to achieve a good result. In my last post (at this link) I discussed Stage 1 Forming. In Stage 1 we described how the group will be looking for some ground rules. In Stage 2, as you will see, they set about testing what they think those ground rules might be.

Stage 2 – Storming.

If the team leader has taken the advice set out for moving from Stage 1, the group will now have some goals.  But they are not yet organized so that they can achieve them.  By now they have been together long enough to stop needing to be on their best behaviour.

They may begin to debate how they should go forward. What are the priorities going to be and who is going to take which role in the team?  What systems and processes are going to be put in place?

Differences of opinion and beliefs can lead to conflict and they may begin to jockey for position. Power struggles may break out, particularly if you have a number of strong personalities vying to lead.  They may begin to challenge you as group leader and cliques may form.

Leading the group through Stage 2 – Storming

So what can you do?  The team needs to be focused on its goals to avoid becoming distracted by relationship and emotional issues.  Some compromises need to be made and you need to help them find the middle ground. You need to start selling ideas and the benefits of what you are trying to do.  There needs to be lots of communication. The group needs to understand the importance of the task, the processes needed and their roles.  If all is going well the group will move quickly through this stage to agree some “norms” for working together.

What if they get stuck in Stage 2 – Storming

If necessary, your may need to set down the ground rules for group behaviour and get the group to agree that they should treat each other with respect.  You need to keep a close eye on the debate – if it is about ideas, that is a good sign and they can be left to work it out if time allows. But if the debate becomes personal then you will need to intervene.  Don’t suppress conflict completely because the group will stagnate and not learn to work together very well.  This is where planning social events can help so that individuals begin to see each other in a more rounded way.

If necessary, tighten up the goals and targets!  Get the group to focus very sharply upon them and the benefits which will be lost if people are not prepared to compromise and reach agreement.  If cliques have formed, try putting people to work with others outside their chosen subgroup so that new relationships can be established.

Now we are moving towards the real work  – the next post will be about Stage 3 Norming

I’d welcome your thoughts and your questions.  Please share your own experience of handling Stage 2. What lessons do you have to pass on to others?

Wendy Mason is a Life and Career Coach.  She helps people have the confidence they need to be successful at work and to change career while maintaining a good work/life balance. You can email her at wendymason @wisewolfcoaching.com
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3 ways you can develop the confidence you need to become self-employed

Posted on 23 March 2012 by | 1 Comment
confidence

Today we have a guest post from Antoinette Oglethorpe.  Antoinette  specialises in helping business leaders and professionals take control of their careers and realise their ambitions. Her special report on “How to become self-employed confidently & successfully” is available at www.takingtheplungeseries.com

3 ways you can develop the confidence you need to become self-employed

To move successfully into self-employment you need to believe in yourself, your capability and your ability to make things happen.  In essence, you need to know you can make it a success whatever happens.

No-one is going to be totally self-confident all the time.  As a very successful business man once said “If things are going really well you can’t get over-excited because you’re not a genius; but if things get difficult you can’t get too downhearted because you’re not a fool either”

Sometimes the biggest risk is doing nothing and without risk there is likely to be no reward.

Here are 3 ways you can use a simple 1 to 10 scale to develop the confidence you will need to become self-employed.

  1. Personal reflection.  Thinking about a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is that you have total confidence you can make a success of self-employment and 1 is no confidence at all, where would you put yourself today?  Now the typical inclination of most people is to then focus on all the reasons they’re not at 10.  Instead of that, I’m going to suggest that you think about all the things that put you as high as you are – however high that is – and not lower.  What knowledge do you have that will help?  What skills do you have that will help?  What experience do you have that will help?  What aspects of your personality will help?  What other transitions have you made in your life in the past?  What helped in those cases?
  1. Feedback from others.  Think about all the feedback you have had from others – friends, family, colleagues, and previous bosses.  What do other people know and say about you that gives you confidence?  Ask them for their honest answers to the above questions.
  1. Focus on small steps.  Focussing on trying to get to 10 can have the opposite effect to the one you’re trying to achieve.  It can seem such a far way off that it paralyses and demotivates you.  So don’t worry about 10 for now.  Instead, think about what would be different if you were just one point higher up the scale.  Would you have developed a particular skill? Would you have obtained feedback from other self-employed individuals?  Would you have researched your business idea or something else?   What needs to happen to increase your confidence by one point?  What small first steps could you take to move towards that?

By thinking about what’s already giving you confidence, getting feedback from others and focussing on small steps you can break it down to some immediate, manageable actions that you can take to make progress.

Antoinette Oglethorpe specialises in helping business leaders and professionals take control of their careers and realise their ambitions. Her special report on “How to become self-employed confidently & successfully” is available at www.takingtheplungeseries.com.

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Be Self-Confident – Confidence and the Personal Development Mindset

Posted on 20 March 2012 by | Leave a comment


A Black wattle (Acacia mearnsii) sappling

The second characteristic of a Personal Development Mindset  is self-confidence.

What is self confidence?

You are self-confident when you believe in you and your own abilities.

It doesn’t mean that you always get things right. But when you don’t, you still think you are OK, you are not lacking or incomplete.

It is the self-confidence that allows you to have a go at new things – you are OK and so you can try something new!  Self-confidence means you can integrate mind and body and focus on what you want to achieve.  You believe “I have the ability to do this”!

Self-confidence leads to success

Self-confidence is at the root of many other abilities and traits.

If you do not have self-confidence, what you do will never be truly fulfilling. You won’t believe that any success you achieve was really down to you. And you may not have the confidence to try new things and new experiences.

Self-confidence is the first step to progress, development, achievement and success! With self-confidence, you can venture out into the world and have adventures.

Success builds on success and so strengthens your confidence further.

Others tend to like, respect, believe and trust people who are self-confident and so more opportunities come your way.

What can you do to improve your self-confidence?

To improve your self-confidence, you can learn to;

  • Appreciate your own abilities and achievements.
  • Start to use a daily affirmation – “I am a strong, confident and decisive person”.
  • Spend five minutes every morning imaging your coming day with you strong and confident – make your picture very colorful.
  • Each evening spend a few minutes writing down the day’s achievements and the good things you have done – yes, everything, even smiling at that old lady in the supermarket.
  • Act and speak as if you are confident (practicing self confidence leads to self confidence).
  • Practice confident body language – standing straight and proud, and giving good eye contact
  • Practice speaking firmly and decisively
  • Help others just for the sake of helping. You will gradually gain more and more confidence as you focus on other people!.
  • Be active and enthusiastic. Lose yourself in your enthusiasm – don’t be afraid to be passionate and to show it.

Coaching for self-confidence

Don’t be afraid to work with a coach or counsellor.  Confidence plays such a big part in success in life, that it is really worth making an investment in you with coaching.  There are lots of good coaches around and you can find out more about the confidence program I provide at this link.

I wish you well and I wish you self-confidence.  I would love to hear about your results!

Wendy Mason is a Life and Career Coach with an interest in management, leadership and in change – both personal (career and life out side of work) and within organizations. You can email her at wendymason@confidencecoach.me or ring ++44(0)2084610114 

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