Leadership – Dutra Associates

10 Keys to Success in Your New Role

May 4, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Congratulations! You decided to make a move in your career. You networked, navigated the lengthy interview process, and were offered the job. The time for celebration is at hand! You might be thinking, “the hard work is over, right”? Well, the first stage of the hard work is over. Now you are faced with the first ninety days in your new role which are critical to your long-term success.

How do you hit the ground running? Not in the way you might imagine. Often, we have the urge to dive in and quickly make a big impact. Yet, slowing your pace a bit and getting the lay of the land before jumping into action yields the best results. A misstep at this point, can earn you a reputation that can take quite some time to turn around.

Keys to Success

Here are 10 key tips to set yourself up for success in a new role.

Be clear on expectations. There are both spoken and unspoken requirements of a role. Gain a clear understanding from your manager of not only the measurable performance expectations but also the intangible ones. What informal rules exist on how to accomplish your job?
Support your manager. What are your manager’s aspirations? How can you support them in a way that helps them achieve their goals? Get a sense of how they prefer to receive communication, i.e., face-to-face, via email, via text, etc. Understand how frequently they want updates from you. What are the things you need to avoid doing when interacting with this person? How can you make life easier for your manager?
Take time to observe and learn. New managers and executives sometimes make the mistake of equating success with making rapid changes. Determine how long you have to observe, learn, and then make well-informed decisions about planned changes. The length of time you have available for this will vary with the situation. The point is that you’ll likely have at least a couple of months to map out a plan forward. Resist the urge to jump in too quickly. Hasty decisions often do not end well.
Create your vision and strategy. If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never know if you’ve arrived. Identify the key people who should have a voice in establishing a vision for your area of responsibility. Develop a shared vision, determine the strategy to realize it, get buy-in, and communicate the vision and path to get there. Then, ensure you have clear measures of success and hold key players accountable for their contribution to the execution of the vision and strategy.
Evaluate your team. Take the time to get to know the people on your team. What are each person’s strengths, areas for development, aspirations, motivations, and results? Begin to set expectations with each person. Understand what support each individual needs from you and how you can add value to the team. Determine if you have the right mix of people. What adjustments might need to be made to ensure you have the right team to implement the vision and strategy?
Align with the culture. What is the culture like in this new organization? Which behaviors are expected, and which behaviors are not tolerated? What are the values of the organization and how are these lived, or not, in day-to-day operations? How does your style fit with the culture and values of the organization? Where do you already fit in well? Where might you need to modify your style (without compromising your own values)?
Build strategic relationships. There are formal and informal leaders in every organization. Who are the key players in yours? These leaders may be found amongst executives, high potentials, project leaders on key initiatives, and top performers. Which are the most impactful relationships for you to begin building? Building relationships in a strategic way will help to lay the foundation for success.
Understand the political landscape. Stepping into a new role may bring with it potential land mines. Asking questions that will reveal where to tread lightly will go a long way toward your success.
Create a personal development plan. Development never ends. With each new step comes a need to deepen one’s knowledge of the industry, the business, or to expand one’s leadership skills. Learning should be a life-long pursuit. Be sure to create a development plan for yourself within the first 90 days in your new role.
Small wins build momentum. Where are the places where you can begin to make progress without large scale changes? Find some small, impactful, early wins that get the ball rolling while you set the stage to excel in your new role.

Which of these key tips have you successfully used? What others would you like to share?

Adapted with permission by Center for Executive Coaching

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development, Career and Retirement Coach and Facilitator who works with corporate leaders in small to mid-size businesses, across the span of their careers. She helps them to accelerate business outcomes and team performance, navigate their own career path, and transition to retirement with ease using proven methodologies and strategies that get results. If you would like to uncover and address hidden challenges that may be sabotaging your success, leverage your strengths, and accelerate your progress toward the results you desire, contact Sherry for a complimentary consultation.

How are Your Teams Feeling Right Now? Measure the Emotional Culture

April 1, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

A lot of different elements underlie organizational success. You’ve got to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right product and with the right people. But even with the best of these, a great workplace culture truly matters. Do you know the emotional culture in your organization?

Eventually competitors can come along and replicate your best practices, strategies, and processes. As Herb Kelleher, co-founder of Southwest Airlines, once famously said, “All airlines have airplanes.”

According to Kelleher, “We’ve never had layoffs. We could have made more money if we furloughed people. But we don’t do that. And we honor them constantly. Our people know that if they are sick, we will take care of them. If there are occasions of grief or joy, we will be there with them. They know that we value them as people, not just cogs in a machine.”

So consequently, culture matters.

Culture is defined many ways. One of the more commercial ways of thinking about it is this. Culture is the degree of alignment between strategy and the way employees think and behave.

In 2016, HBR ran an article titled Manage Your Emotional Culture. The article talks about and distinguishes between Cognitive Culture and Emotional Culture. It goes on to talk about the fact that emotional culture is rarely managed as deliberately as cognitive culture and that it’s often not managed at all. It gives some great examples of how much companies suffer as a result. Employees who should be showing compassion (in health care, for example,) become callous and indifferent. Teams that would benefit from joy and pride instead tolerate a culture of anger. People who lack a healthy amount of fear (say, in security firms or investment banks) act recklessly. The effects can be especially damaging during times of upheaval, such as organizational restructurings, financial downturns and, as we all have experienced, global pandemics.

WHERE TO START IN UNDERSTANDING EMOTIONAL CULTURE?

To discuss and understand the concept of emotional intelligence and emotional culture, first we need to look at the underlying science of emotions. Why do we react the way we do and how does others’ behavior impact us the way it does?

We all experience a wide range of pleasant and unpleasant feelings at work as we interact with colleagues, customers, suppliers, and others. These feelings influence our decisions, behavior, and performance.

Pleasant feelings have a ‘broaden and build’ effect causing us to think more broadly, engage more deeply, and perform better.

Unpleasant emotions tend to have a ‘narrow and limiting’ effect, causing us to be more closed-minded, less engaging, and poorer at performing. Collectively, these emotions impact the bottom-line for better or worse.

Let’s start with the positive/pleasant emotions. Think about your experiences in the workplace for a moment. When people feel relaxed at work, they tend to be solution focused. When they feel valued, they often promote the brand. When they feel cared for by the company, they go above and beyond in the level of discretionary effort they put towards the company. Finally, employees that are empowered are often the hardest working and innovative team members.

Conversely, let’s look at negative or unpleasant emotions. When people feel anxious, they are more likely to be reactive. When stressed, we can become aggressive. It’s human nature. When an employee feels fearful, they can sometimes blame others. Finally, when people feel disempowered, they can assume lack of responsibility and ownership for their work. We’ve all been there.

Research shows that people in high performing organizations experience more positive emotions and fewer negative emotions than those in low performing organizations. (Boedker et al. 2011)

So, why aren’t more organizations working to focus on understanding how their people are feeling and managing their EMOTIONAL CULTURE?

DO YOU KNOW HOW YOUR PEOPLE ARE FEELING RIGHT NOW?

Emotional culture surveys are the most direct and impactful way to measure emotional culture because they measure three distinct things to help identify whether or not emotions experienced need to shift. They measure:

Experienced emotions
Expected emotions
Ideal or desirable levels of emotions

When you understand how your people are feeling, how they’d ideally like to feel and where the gaps are – you can do something about it. It allows you to more easily understand where the differences are – so you can be informed in making decisions for your L&D, training and development of your teams, and workplace culture. You can continue to strive to be a great place to work.

We’d like to give you the opportunity to do so by experiencing The Emotional Culture Index from Genos International.

The Emotional Culture Index is designed to measure three dimensions of emotions at work.

Current state – How often your people experience certain feelings at work.
Expected state – How often your people think it’s fair and reasonable to experience these feelings at work given the nature and context of your workplace.
Ideal state – How often your people think they should ideally experience these feelings in your workplace to be effective.

It also allows participants to share confidential free text responses on key areas. You can customize the survey by department, team, region, or a particular demographic or group.

It takes only a few minutes to complete. You will receive a complimentary report with its findings and can discuss the results privately with me, a Genos Certified Emotional Intelligence Practitioner.

NEXT STEPS

As we enter the work of AI, automation and machine led learning, our ability to feel and be human is what makes us unique. We encourage you to take this opportunity to uncover your emotional culture. Please contact Sherry Dutra at sherry@dutraassociates.com to find out more about this limited time offer.

Article in collaboration with Genos International Europe.

There’s an Uptick in Retirements: Is Your Organization Ready?

March 3, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

The conventional wisdom has held that 10,000 baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) are expected to retire, on average, each day in the United States through 2030. This loss of expertise and knowledge was already having an adverse impact on many organizations. Now, the impact of COVID-19 has accelerated that trend. According to a Pew Research Center report, the pace of retirements amongst baby boomers in 2020 (3.2%) more than doubled the 2019 rate (1.5%).

On the one hand, this is excellent news for those getting ready to enter the next chapter of their lives and an opportunity for younger workers to step into new roles. On the other, how prepared is your organization for a more rapid brain drain?

Based on pre-pandemic research conducted by the authors of Critical Knowledge Transfer, one company reported that in the next anticipated wave of nearly 700 retirements, they would experience a loss of 27,000 years of experience. If that’s not enough to have you sit up and take notice, I’m not sure what will, especially as the trend ticks upward. That said, not every vacated position is created equal. Some will certainly be easier to fill than others. Perhaps the appropriate level of expertise and skill is readily available on the job market or you have done the work to ensure that someone within your organization is ready to take on the role. Unfortunately, this is the exception rather than the rule.

Taking a Proactive Stance – 5 Key Tips

Knowing the average age of your employee population is not enough. That still keeps the potential problem at hand difficult to define. Take a closer look at the specific roles held by long-term employees and seasoned managers who are within a few years of retirement age. Which positions require critical skills and experience that are not easy to find on the open market? Long term employees across and at all levels of the organization often hold critical, hands-on experience of how to get things done through their comprehensive knowledge of processes, company historical information, clients and customers. Without a proactive approach, your organization runs the risk of realizing, too late, that you have a critical skill shortage that is adversely impacting your business performance.
Consider implementing a mentoring program that effectively engages both older and younger workers in accelerating development and bridging the knowledge gap. Providing training for both mentors and mentees can help to ensure that a mutually beneficial mentoring relationship is created and both parties find the experience a valuable one.
Utilize knowledge capture methods to gather critical expertise and make it available across a wide range of people. There are many ways to store and manage institutional knowledge including online forums, podcasts, webinars, and videos, to name a few.
Pay attention to employee engagement. Younger members of the workforce have an average job stay of roughly four years. Ensure the right managers are in place who truly care about their employees’ success. Robin Reilly, a Senior Consultant at Gallup has written that such managers “seek to understand each person’s strengths and provide employees with every opportunity to use their strengths in their role. Great managers empower their employees, recognize and value their contributions, and actively seek their ideas and opinions.” Increasing employee engagement will assist in keeping younger workers from jumping ship.
Provide professional and leadership skill development to your employees to develop your associates and prepare those great managers. The on-going opportunity to build on strengths and expand one’s comfort zone through training and development programs advances the growth of your internal talent pool and demonstrates your commitment to their success.

It is a critical time to proactively address the seismic shift that is accelerating in terms of talent shortages in the workplace. These are just a few of the tips that can help you to mitigate your risk. Don’t wait another day to identify where your organization is most vulnerable and take the steps now to ensure a smoother transition.

The Connection Between Sleep and Leadership: It’s Time to Take a Snooze

February 4, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Calling all leaders!

How did you sleep last night?
What amount of sleep did you get?
How refreshed did you feel when you woke up?

How Does Sleep Play Out in Your Life?

Personally, sleep has always been something that I’ve, mostly, prioritized. Of course, there have been times when certain projects have led me to work late into the evening. So, at times, sleep has gone on the back burner. No matter how old I was at the time, I always felt the ramifications of skimping on sleep. Lack of concentration, lower energy levels, and less ability to focus are a few of the symptoms I’ve experienced. What about you?

For most of my adult life, though, I have done my best to get at least 7 ½ hours of sleep each night. Honestly, I haven’t shared that with many people before. In a society that seems to thrive on 24/7 availability and activity, it might seem weak or unproductive to not work all hours of the day and night. Yet, it’s time to stand up for the importance of getting a solid night’s sleep. The evidence is in from numerous scientific sources that sleep is critical to our health and our ability to function. Without enough of it, we open ourselves up to an array of potential health risks and we diminish our brain’s ability to function properly. And, if our brains aren’t functioning properly, how does that impact our ability to lead?

What the Research Has to Say

In the book, Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker, PhD, shares research that shows how the pre-frontal cortex is adversely impacted by lack of sleep – anything less than 7 hours per night. What’s so important about the pre-frontal cortex? It is the area of the brain where executive functioning takes place. This includes an array of activities such as, decision-making, coordinating and adjusting complex behavior, ability to control emotional reactions, focusing attention, and predicting the consequences of actions. Needless to say, all of these activities play a role in leadership effectiveness.

Over the years, many of my clients in leadership roles have shared how little sleep they often get. They struggle with an expectation that they must immediately respond to emails and texts that come at all hours of the day and night. They have an enormous number of projects on their plates and have difficulty slowing down their active minds when they try to sleep. Stress, anxiety, and worry can make for a restless night’s sleep as well.

In Walker’s book he shares that during sleep, our brains go through an amazing process of washing out harmful proteins through the glymphatic system and glial cells. In this way, our brain heals during a restful and complete night’s sleep. This nightly cleanse has a profound impact on our overall health and our capacity to function effectively as leaders.

Some of you might be thinking, “that doesn’t apply to me. I can get by fine on 5 or 6 hours a night.” The research would beg to differ. In one study, conducted by David Dinges at the University of Pennsylvania, one of the groups studied obtained 6 hours of sleep per night – the amount that many of the people I’ve worked with tend to get. At the 10-day mark, they were as “impaired in performance as going without sleep for twenty-four hours straight” – that is, a 400 percent increase in microsleep, the inability to pay attention, where your brain loses its ability to perceive the outside world for a brief moment.

Call to Action

So, if you want to improve your health and set the stage to be the best leader you can be, target 7 – 9 hours of sleep per night. It’s not a nice to have but a MUST have. Productivity never comes from non-stop activity. Sufficient rest is key, for yourself, and for those on your team.

What can you do to help achieve that goal? Here are a few tips:

Shut down all devices at least one hour before you go to bed.
Set limits on how many hours you expect others (and yourself) to work each day.
Only send emails and texts during normal working hours.
When you and those on your team take vacations, commit to making them work-free.
Meditate before going to sleep to relax your body and calm your mind.
Exercise regularly, but not within 3 hours of going to sleep.
Minimize caffeine consumption later in the day, as it can stay in your system for up to 6 hours.
Spend a few minutes at the end of the workday, preparing for the next day’s top priorities. This helps to free up your mind and promotes relaxation.

What strategies have worked for you?

Losing Employees? – Try This Simple Leadership Approach to Engage and Retain Your Team

January 3, 2022 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

“The Great Resignation” is something that we are hearing and reading about on a regular basis. Now, more than ever, employees are leaving their roles at an amazing rate – in May of 2021 alone, 3.6 million Americans quit their jobs. According to Gallup, “48% of America’s working population is actively job searching or watching for opportunities”.

While the term ‘employee engagement’ can sound like just another buzzword, it’s anything but. For U.S. employers, the lack of employee engagement is estimated to result in $450 – 500 billion in lost productivity on an annual basis. For over 20 years, Gallup has been researching employee engagement and the percentage of engaged employees has barely budged in the United States during this timeframe. Based on 2021 research, Gallup has reported that 36% of U.S. workers are engaged, 49% are not engaged, and 15% are actively disengaged.

What is Employee Engagement?

What exactly is employee engagement? According to Gallup, an engaged employee is one who is “involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace”. Someone who is experiencing this type of engagement is most likely to be aligned with their team and organization’s goals and making key contributions to producing desired results. Organizations that do the best job of creating employee engagement achieve earnings-per-share growth greater than 4 times that of their competitors. Additionally, other business boosting results are enjoyed by those companies who exemplify employee engagement. These include higher customer engagement, increased productivity, lower attrition, and higher profitability.

A Simple Approach

There are a multitude of methods available for increasing employee engagement with varying ranges of complexity, time commitment and cost. Yet, the solution may be simpler than you think. When we talk about employee engagement, we often speak in generalities. It can sound as if there is a group called “employees” that we must direct something towards collectively. A one size fits all approach has less of an opportunity to positively drive your engagement levels than one simple opportunity that many leaders have, at every level, including the C-suite. This opportunity, the key to engaging employees, is to get specific about each person.

One Employee at a Time

Engaging employees happens one person at a time. The place to start is to get to know each person on your team uniquely. How much do you already know about each employee and what makes that person tick?

How many of these questions can you answer right now about each employee on your team?

What are their career aspirations?
What personal aspirations do they have?
What motivates them?
What are their most important values?
What key strengths do they bring to the team?
What type of behavioral style do they favor?
What professional development needs do they have?

Call to Action

As you begin the new year, if you can’t answer all of these questions for each employee, I invite you to make it a priority to schedule 1:1 meetings to discover those answers. Then, look for the opportunities to:

let them use their strengths each day,
take on assignments that build the skills for their future career path,
communicate with them in a way that matches their style.

Your employees want to work in jobs that allow them to do what they do best, to grow and develop professionally, and feel a sense of purpose in what they focus on each day. What drives engagement and motivation is unique to each individual. So, get started by getting to know your team. Look for ways to align what is important to each person with the work they are doing, and watch your results begin to shift.

If you would like support in increasing employee engagement in your organization, please contact me to have a conversation. We offer a simple yet powerful and practical methodology to support you in improving employee engagement.

Shifting Your Relationship with Stress

October 11, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Change is inevitable – after all, nothing really stays the same. But in today’s challenging times, it seems like we’re on “uncertainty” overload, never knowing what will happen from one moment to the next.

With uncertainty comes stress and confusion, and while most of us would be quick to say that we want less stress and more certainty in our lives, what we really want is less of a stress reaction to what life throws our way.

We can’t choose what happens to us – but we can choose our responses to the situations we encounter. Let’s take a look at five different responses that people have to stressful situations. As you read, you may want to think of a recent stressful event or news that you may have received, and see what your reaction to that event can teach you about how you habitually respond. You may have one type of response at work, and another at home, or you may react differently depending on who else is involved.

The first and all too common response to stressful events is to suffer and be a victim to it. People who respond this way don’t take action. Things happen TO them – and though they may complain and be generally miserable about it, they don’t take any steps to do anything. They allow life to control them, instead of the other way around. This way of responding is certainly not recommended, and eventually, it will take its toll on one’s physical and mental health.

The second type of response is to accept the situation. Someone with this response may say “so what,” or perhaps get some perspective on the situation by asking if it will matter in a year – or a week – or even in a day.

The third way to respond is to actually take steps to change the situation – taking action to bring it to resolution (or at least move toward resolution). This is a very powerful response, and one that many effective leaders employ.

The fourth way to respond is to avoid the situation. People responding this way make a decision not to get involved in a situation that they don’t see as concerning them, or upon which they can’t make an impact.

The fifth and final way that people generally respond to stress is to alter the experience of the situation. When we look at a situation differently, the experience itself changes. Changing perceptions is probably the most challenging of the responses, because we tend to be stuck in our own interpretations and assumptions about what’s happening, but it is also perhaps the most powerful of all.

It’s your world, and you can create it as you wish. Remember, what one person sees as stressful, another person barely notices, or sees as exciting and full of opportunity. How are you going to choose today?

Why the Best Leaders Develop Mindfulness

June 29, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

What have Google, Samsung, Aetna, SAP, and P&G all got in common? All of these world-class organizations recognize that one of the fastest growing segments of our working population is burnt out leaders. They responded to this by implementing mindfulness leadership programs to help their leaders not only excel in work, but in their personal lives as well.

Decades of solid research show a direct connection between mindfulness and emotional intelligence in leaders and the bottom-line results they achieve. Being good at ‘what you do’ is no longer enough…you must also be resilient enough to effectively manage your emotions, reactions, and decisions in challenging business situations – and to help the people you manage, or work with, to do the same.

Great leaders are always searching for ways to take their leadership practices to the next level. Mindfulness has been the source of much focus over the last number of years and organizations worldwide are now realizing that sometimes there is more to a successful leader than meets the eye.

Developing emotional intelligence and mindfulness can truly transform the impact and ability of a leader. Following the Genos Leadership Model:

When you develop self-awareness, you become an Aware Leader. Aware leaders understand the impact that their behaviors have on others. They are consistent in what they say and do, and they demonstrate awareness of their mood and emotions.
Developing awareness of others allows you to become a more Empathetic Leader. Empathetic leaders make team members feel appreciated and adjust their style so that it fits well with others. They acknowledge the views of others and balance achieving results with others’ needs.
Working on authenticity creates more Genuine Leaders. Genuine leaders honor commitments and promises, they are open and honest about mistakes, and they facilitate robust and open debate.
Leaders high in emotional reasoning make Expansive decisions as a leader. Expansive leaders consult others in decision making, they make ethical decisions taking the bigger picture into account.
Leaders that work to develop self-management are Resilient Leaders. Resilient Leaders manage their emotions well in difficult situations. They strive to improve their own performance, and they learn from their mistakes.
Effective leaders that inspire performance become Empowering Leaders. Empowering leaders provide constructive feedback, maintain a positive work environment, and facilitate team member development and career advancement.

Do you or the leaders in your organization need to develop the above behaviors? They can do so by participating in the Genos Mindful Leader Program facilitated
by Dutra Associates, LLC, a Genos Certified Practitioner.

If you’re interested in hosting a Mindful Leader Program in your organization, please contact Sherry Dutra at Sherry@DutraAssociates.com or call 603.595.1588.

Article in collaboration with Genos International Europe.

3 Keys to Maximizing Business Value

May 4, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

How ready is your company to be sold? If yours is like most, there is probably much to be done. A primary reason for the lack of readiness is that the business is often too dependent on the owner. Consequently, millions of business owners will never maximize the value they have worked so hard to create over years and years of effort.

To prepare your business to be sold for top value, consider these three keys:

Develop the right mindset. Your success largely depends on what goes on between your ears. Many business owners stumble into a trap of keeping their businesses dependent on them. Have you ever said or thought, “I can’t trust anyone to do the job the way that I would”; “It’s got to be perfect”; “This is my baby and I can’t give up control”? Business owners who realize the most value for their businesses have a different way of looking at things. They empower others to take on more responsibility and trust their decision-making. They give up full control. They refrain from micromanaging. They recruit people who are smarter than they are and provide the time and resources to prepare and develop them for senior roles.
Create the infrastructure to recruit, retain and develop leaders who can seamlessly keep the company growing on their own. A company that establishes a strong infrastructure sets the stage for success by making it possible to develop a talent pool of leaders who are capable of successfully running the company without you. Key elements of this infrastructure include:
- clear roles and responsibilities,
- performance metrics for accountability,
- a clear organizational chart,
- a recruiting process that brings in top talent,
- a talent development process,
- a culture that engages and retains talent,
- clear career paths for key roles,
- systems and processes that allow for efficient company operation,
- a performance management system that is fair and stretches people to grow and
- the encouragement of behaviors that create cohesive, team performance.
Implement an ongoing succession planning process that continues to develop and grow new leaders. Once you have the previous pieces in place, the final puzzle piece is an ongoing succession planning process. In some businesses, succession planning is only visited when a need arises, such as the retirement of an executive. Instead, succession planning must be a regular process to identify high potential performers, develop them, and continue to challenge them with the learning, assignments and opportunities that will prepare them to move up.

Companies that have done the hard work to have these three keys in place are in a position to keep growing. Consequently, the business owner is now freed from the weeds of day-to-day operations and can focus on strategy and setting standards of excellence. Also, when leaders within the business are empowered, it offers the owner a better integration between their work and personal life. Finally, the company is made more valuable with these elements in place. This sets the stage for the owner to gain a substantial return on their investment of time and effort over the years and to leave behind a thriving company for their team.

Adapted with permission by Center for Executive Coaching

6 Keys to Managing Your Most Important Work Relationship

March 6, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

While all work relationships are important, there is arguably one that is most important. That is the relationship with your manager and it’s often overlooked. Sometimes this is referred to as “managing up” which is primarily concerned with how effectively you work with and can influence your manager.

What makes this relationship especially important? Your manager ultimately determines the types of projects and assignments that are on your plate. Additionally, your manager has influence on your career path and can help connect you to resources within the organization to help you reach your team’s goals.

Here are six keys to help you strengthen this relationship:

Ensure you are clear regarding your manager’s expectations. The job description for your position may provide you with the formal performance requirements for your role, but your manager will likely have additional expectations. Have a discussion with your manager to ensure that you are aligned on the key measures of success, the priority initiatives to execute, and the principles and values that should be reflected in how you carry out your role.
Get to know your manager. What communication style does your manager prefer? What is important to them, both personally and professionally? In what way do they want to receive information and updates from their team members? What types of things are a natural source of frustration for your manager? If you are aware of the answers, you will be better positioned to help your manager be successful.
Look for the good. As humans, we have a natural tendency to be on the lookout for danger, which can cause us to focus on traits and attributes in managers that we don’t like. Even if your manager can be difficult to work with, focus on the things that your manager does well. Look for the opportunities to learn from your manager and acknowledge their contributions and support.
Consider how you can adapt to your manager’s behavioral style. For example, let’s say that your manager is someone who drives for results and you are more of a process-oriented person. It would be important for you to learn how to present your ideas and other communication in a quick, high-level summary format.
Make your manager look good. Doing something that reflects poorly on your manager is a quick route to damaging your relationship. What might you do to increase the level of trust, respect, and confidence that your manager has in you?
Discover ways to free up time and reduce the hassles your manager deals with. Doing so allows your manager to focus on what’s most important and supports their success. So, take the initiative, be solution oriented, provide possible ideas for resolving issues that you must escalate. Be a leader!

The only behavior you can control is your own. Don’t leave the full responsibility for the relationship in your manager’s hands. Some managers are amazing at creating relationships with their team members. Others, not so much. Regardless of the type of manager you report to, being proactive in building a strong relationship with your manager will not only help their success, but also yours.

For more ideas about how to improve relationships and alignment up, down, and across your organization, contact us at Sherry@DutraAssociates.com.

Adapted with permission by Center for Executive Coaching

Emotional Intelligence in Hiring – What You Need to Know

January 8, 2021 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

The case for emotional intelligence is clear. Successful organizations all over the world are now incorporating EI into the development of their people and their leaders. There’s also a wide variety of research and articles on the importance of hiring FOR emotional intelligence. But in all those blogs and pieces of content, authors don’t talk about HOW to hire for EI.

When we understand our own emotions and the emotions of others – it’s a win-win situation. Our relationships grow, we become more resilient, and able to handle stress more effectively. Far too many employees lack basic self- awareness and social skills and too often, people aren’t aware of how their moods and emotions are impacting others in the workplace.

According to Harvard Business Review, “One of the reasons we see far too little emotional intelligence in the workplace is that we don’t hire for it. We hire for pedigree. We look for where someone went to school, high grades and test scores, technical skills, and certifications, not whether they build great teams or get along with others. And how smart we think someone is matters a lot, so we hire for intellect.”

The World Economic Forum lists emotional intelligence as the 6th most important job skill required for success at work by 2020. WorkSafe Victoria have also observed that more mental injuries get caused in workplaces now than physical injuries; and levels of EI positively correlate with levels of resilience and negatively correlate with levels of occupational stress. In other words, people with high EI feel less stressed and are more resilient at work. Organizations that are focused on emotional intelligence in their talent management strategies are taking the right steps to ensuring healthy and happy workplaces and teams.

Measuring emotional intelligence should be added to talent management and hiring processes, not to replace other strategies but to strengthen an existing process.

Yes, you still need a comprehensive hiring plan, but what’s now clear to business leaders everywhere is that EI skills and behaviors are as important as your intellect, experience and background in determining success at work and in life.

The Genos Emotional Intelligence Selection Report

Emotional Intelligence: a set of skills that help us better perceive, understand and manage emotions in ourselves and in others.

Collectively, being more emotionally intelligent allows us to make more intelligent responses to, and use of, our emotions. These skills are just as important as intellect (IQ) in determining success at work and in life. Emotions influence, both productively and unproductively, our decisions, behavior and performance.

Published psychometric studies have shown that scores on the Genos Selection Assessment meaningfully correlate with a number of important workplace variables. The higher people score on the Genos assessment, the higher they tend to also score on measures of:

Workplace performance
Leadership effectiveness
Sales and customer service
Resilience
Team work effectiveness
Employee Engagement

Here’s how it works:

The Genos Emotional Intelligence Selection Report is the best measure of how often a candidate demonstrates emotional intelligence in the workplace. The report allows hiring managers to utilize EI measures as an additional means to avoiding bad hires.

The Genos Selection model comprises a set of seven emotionally intelligent competencies. These competencies represent skills and behaviors, based on underlying abilities and experiences, that are measurable and observable. The Genos model captures the workplace skills and behaviors that manifest from emotional intelligence abilities.

Users first experience a high-level overview of the candidate’s total EI score along with a deeper dive into each behavior and its results.
Interview questions and an interview evaluation guide then allows the hiring manager to dig deeper into the EI of the individual.
Wrap up the process by using the summary section to help combine assessment and interview results allowing you to present recommendations to a client or HR decision maker.

The information presented in this report should be combined and weighted with other sources of information to determine the candidate’s suitability or lack thereof for employment. Emotional intelligence is one of many factors related to success in the workplace. If you’d like to learn more about this innovative new emotional intelligence selection tool, please call Sherry Dutra at 603.595.1588 or email her at Sherry@DutraAssociates.

Game changing for hiring, life changing for your new hires.

Article in collaboration with Genos International Europe.