Dutra Associates

Unleash Your Peak Potential

  • Home
  • About
  • Approach
  • Coaching Services
    • Talent Development
    • Career Management
    • ReIgnitement™ for Boomers
  • Training
    • Leadership Development Training
    • Team Development Training
    • Employee Development Training
  • Blog
  • Testimonials
  • Contact

Developing These Six Behaviors Will Help You Become a Better Leader

December 2, 2020 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

Copyright Genos International EU. Used with permission.

There is an abundance of research on the impact emotions have on an individuals’ performance in the workplace. It shows that people often perform their worst when they experience unproductive feelings, such as feeling frustrated, concerned, stressed, inadequate, and fearful.

Research also shows that people perform their best when they feel involved in purposeful work that develops who they are… and when they feel valued, cared for, consulted, respected, informed and understood.

So, how can developing your leadership help ensure your people feel and perform their best?

Leadership is fundamentally about facilitating performance, supporting others to do their best, and to do their work effectively and efficiently. One of the most robust, consistent findings in the area of social sciences is that there is a direct link between the way people feel and the way people perform. As such, leaders need to be skilled at identifying, understanding and influencing emotion within themselves and others in order to inspire performance.

Emotionally intelligent leadership is about leaders intelligently using emotions to facilitate high performance in themselves and others.

How, then, do leaders develop the skills to do this effectively? In the virtual Emotionally Intelligent Leader program, participants first engage in a personal Genos EI Leadership Assessment, in order to understand “how they are showing up at work.”

Participants will improve their understanding of emotions and emotional intelligence. They will also explore and practice tools and techniques for applying emotional intelligence in leadership and creating conditions for others to achieve high performance.

In the program, participants will:

  • explore the neuroscience of emotions and emotional intelligence,
  • examine tools and techniques for effectively asking for, and responding to, feedback,
  • explore techniques for developing self and other awareness,
  • examine how we can use reactive and proactive techniques to build our resilience and effectively manage strong emotions,
  • explore an approach for facilitating engagement discussions with staff members, and
  • explore techniques for applying EI in leadership and creating high performance in others.

The material for the program is based on the Genos Emotional Intelligence Leadership Model.

The Genos model of emotionally intelligent leadership has been developed from over a decade of research work examining how effective leaders use emotional intelligence abilities in their leadership of others.

The model comprises six emotionally intelligent workplace competencies. These competencies represent skills and behaviors based on underlying abilities and experiences that are measurable, observable, and critical to successful job performance.

The six Genos EI Competencies are:

  1. Self-Awareness
  2. Awareness of Others
  3. Authenticity
  4. Emotional Reasoning
  5. Self-Management
  6. Inspiring Performance

Self-awareness is about being aware of the behaviors you demonstrate, your strengths and limitations, and the impact you have on others. Leaders high in this skill are often said to be present rather than disconnected with who they are. Self-awareness is important in leadership because:

  • a leader’s behavior can positively or negatively impact the performance and engagement of colleagues
  • leaders need to know their strengths and limitations in order to continuously improve and maintain success
  • leaders’ interpretation of events at work is both made by, and limited by, their intelligence, personality, values and beliefs.
  • In order to objectively evaluate events, leaders must know how they interpret the world and how this helps and limits them.

Awareness of others is about noticing and acknowledging others, ensuring others feel valued, and adjusting your leadership style to best fit with others. Leaders high in this skill are often described as empathetic rather than insensitive to others and their feelings. Awareness of others is important in leadership because:

  • leadership is fundamentally about facilitating performance, and the way others feel is directly linked to the way they perform
  • awareness of others is necessary in order to take effective steps to influence and facilitate others’ performance
  • to bring out the best in people, leaders need to adjust their leadership style to best fit with the people and situation they are leading.

Authenticity is about openly and effectively expressing yourself, honoring commitments and encouraging this behavior in others. It involves appropriately expressing specific feelings at work, such as happiness and frustration, providing feedback to colleagues about the way you feel, and expressing emotions at the right time, to the right degree and to the right people. Leaders high in this skill are often described as genuine, whereas leaders low in this skill are often described as untrustworthy. Authenticity is important in leadership because:

  • it helps leaders create understanding, openness and feelings of trust in others
  • leaders who are guarded, avoid conflict, or are inappropriately blunt about the way they feel can create mistrust, artificial harmony and misunderstandings with those around them
  • leaders need their people to be open with them. If, as a leader, you do not role-model this behavior, your direct reports will be guarded with you.

Emotional reasoning is the skill of using emotional information (from yourself and others) and combining it with other facts and information when decision-making. Leaders high in this skill make expansive decisions, whereas leaders who are low in this skill often make more limited decisions based on facts and technical data only. Emotional reasoning is important in leadership because:

  • feelings and emotions contain important information, for example, if a colleague is demonstrating frustration or stress, these feelings provide insight that they are going to be less open and supportive of new ideas and information
  • the workplace is becoming more complex and fast-paced; this requires quick, solid decision-making where all the facts and technical data are not available (gut feel and intuition are important in these environments)
  • people are influenced by emotion; if you fail to consider how people are likely to feel and react to decisions made, you may not achieve the appropriate buy-in or support for your decisions.

Self-management is about managing your own mood and emotions, time and behavior, and continuously improving yourself. This emotionally intelligent leadership competency is particularly important. Leaders high in this skill are often described as resilient rather than temperamental in the workplace. The modern workplace is one of high work demands and stress, which can cause negative emotions and outcomes. Self-management is important in leadership because:

  • a leader’s mood can be very infectious and can, therefore, be a powerful force in the workplace; one that can be both productive and unproductive
  • this skill helps leaders be resilient and manage high work demands and stress
  • to achieve, maintain and enhance success, leaders need to pay conscious attention to the way they manage time, how they behave and to continuously improve how they lead others.

Inspiring performance is about facilitating high performance in others through problem solving, promoting, recognizing and supporting others’ work. An individual’s performance can be managed with key performance indicators. This is important, however, research has shown that this “compliance” style often fails to drive discretionary effort and high performance. Leaders who combine this with a more inspiring style often empower others to perform above and beyond what is expected of them. Inspiring performance is important in leadership because:

  • leadership is fundamentally about facilitating the performance of others,
  • managing performance with rules and key performance indicators usually produces an “expected” result rather than an “unexpected” high-performance result
  • people often learn and develop more with this type of leadership style, resulting in continuous enhancements to performance year on year.

Strong leadership has never been more important as we navigate the impact of COVID-19. If you’d like to learn how you can bring this virtual program to your organization to support your leaders in becoming more emotionally intelligent, contact me at 603.595.1588 or via email at Sherry@DutraAssociates.com.

Adapted with permission by Genos International EU

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.

 

Filed Under: career, career success, emotional intelligence, emotions in the workplace, employee engagement, engagement, Leadership, motivating a team, motivation, performance, resilience, results, trust Tagged With: career success, emotional intelligence, leadership, motivation, performance, relationships, resilience, results, trust

Trust: A Foundational Element to Leadership Success

August 24, 2020 By Sherry Dutra Leave a Comment

During COVID-19 and the move to work from home, many managers have had difficulty in navigating the challenge of leading a remote team. What has been revealed is that the lack of trusting relationships is one element that is seriously impacting the success of these teams. David DeCremer said, in a recent opinion piece, that “research shows that establishing trusting work relationships makes companies perform better over time and even outperform companies that do not have a strong trust culture”. To help managers who are experiencing this struggle, I am re-posting a blog I originally shared in 2017, with minor updates, which still provides relevant tips for building trust in today’s environment.

Trust Fosters Engagement and Motivation

Consider your career for a moment. Like me, you have probably had the joyful experience of working with people you trusted as well as the dreaded experience of working with those you had to guard against at every turn.  Now, put yourself in each of those situations.  When did you feel most engaged and motivated?  I can place a pretty strong bet that working with and for people you trusted elicited the greatest engagement and motivation.  Now, let’s turn the tables. How well have you built trust with your team and colleagues?  Imagine the impact of creating a trust-based workplace on your quality of life as well as on your organization’s success, especially as we deal with the massive changes to the work environment over the past six months.

The importance of trust has been a consistent theme for years, both with leadership clients as well as in publications. An article by Melissa Balmain, published in Success magazine, was one that I particularly enjoyed and find it quite relevant for today’s circumstances. I’ve summarized her 8 Steps of Trust-Building below. You can read the full article here.

8 Steps of Trust-Building

  1. Be open
    Set clear and realistic expectations with your team. Help them to see the alignment between their goals and the impact on the organization.
  2. Walk Your Talk
    Reflect on your most important values and principles and whether you are actually living by them. Tie the actions you are taking with the values and principles that drive them. Even when you make difficult decisions that not everyone agrees with, you will be respected for staying true to your beliefs.
  3. Listen First
    Stay present with what the other person is saying. Ask powerful, open-ended questions that elicit insight and are thought-provoking. Acknowledge that you’ve heard the other’s message by paraphrasing what they’ve said to check for understanding. Then, share your own thoughts, openly, honestly and without defensiveness.
  4. Say What You’ll Do, Do What You Say
    As the article states, “Nothing boosts others’ faith in you like doing what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it”. Therefore, don’t overcommit. Be realistic when you make a promise to someone.  This not only reduces your overwhelm because you won’t be working all hours to deliver on time, but also allows you to build trust, through actually following through on your commitments.
  5. Admit Your Mistakes
    If something goes wrong, the worst thing to do is to try and hide it. Instead, share what happened and identify a solution to resolve the situation.  By doing this, you encourage others to be open when things go awry and to use those situations as opportunities to learn and grow.
  6. Be Sincere
    If you are talking about someone else, pretend that they are present to the conversation. Nothing destroys trust faster than wondering whether someone is going to say bad things about you behind your back.
  7. Avoid Stereotypes
    Stereotypes exist for just about everything from gender, to race, to generational differences, etc. Ignore them. The reality is that we all have more in common than we think. Treat each person as an individual and trust will grow.
  8. Dive in
    This is not about blind trust but what is referred to as “smart trust”. Stephen M. R. Covey states that “smart trust means weighing your impulse to trust against other people’s credibility and the opportunity and risks at hand”. Overall, the chances are pretty good that your smart trust in others will be worth it.

Your Trust Building Tips

What trust building tips have worked for you?  Please feel free to share, in the comment section, both those that you’ve observed as well as ones that you have implemented yourself.

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.

Filed Under: employee engagement, engagement, Leadership, management, motivating a team, trust Tagged With: leadership, team-building, trust

Trust: A Foundational Element to Leadership Success

August 8, 2017 By Sherry Dutra 1 Comment

Trust Fosters Engagement and Motivation

Consider your career for a moment. Like me, you have probably had the joyful experience of working with people you trusted as well as the dreaded experience of working with those you had to guard against at every turn.  Now, put yourself in each of those situations.  When did you feel most engaged and motivated?  I can place a pretty strong bet that working with and for people you trusted elicited the greatest engagement and motivation.  Now, let’s turn the tables. How well have you built trust with your team and colleagues?  Imagine the impact of creating a trust based workplace on your quality of life as well as on your organization’s success.

The importance of trust seems to be showing up more often, especially recently, with leadership clients as well as in publications. In July’s Success magazine, there was an article by Melissa Balmain that I particularly enjoyed. I’ve summarized her 8 Steps of Trust-Building below. You can read the full article here.

8 Steps of Trust-Building

  1. Be open
    Set clear and realistic expectations with your team. Help them to see the alignment between their goals and the impact on the organization.
  2. Walk Your Talk
    Reflect on your most important values and principles and whether you are actually living by them. Tie the actions you are taking with the values and principles that drive them. Even when you make difficult decisions that not everyone agrees with, you will be respected for staying true to your beliefs.
  3. Listen First
    Stay present with what the other person is saying. Ask powerful, open-ended questions that elicit insight and are thought-provoking. Acknowledge that you’ve heard the other’s message by paraphrasing what they’ve said to check for understanding. Then, share your own thoughts, openly, honestly and without defensiveness.
  4. Say What You’ll Do, Do What You Say
    As the article states, “Nothing boosts others’ faith in you like doing what you say you’ll do, when you say you’ll do it”. Therefore, don’t overcommit. Be realistic when you make a promise to someone.  This not only reduces your overwhelm because you won’t be working all hours to deliver on time, but also allows you to build trust, through actually following through on your commitments.
  5. Admit Your Mistakes
    If something goes wrong, the worst thing to do is to try and hide it. Instead, share what happened and identify a solution to resolve the situation.  By doing this, you encourage others to be open when things go awry and to use those situations as opportunities to learn and grow.
  6. Be Sincere
    If you are talking about someone else, pretend that they are present to the conversation. Nothing destroys trust faster than wondering whether someone is going to say bad things about you behind your back.
  7. Avoid Stereotypes
    Stereotypes exist for just about everything from gender, to race, to generational differences, etc. Ignore them. The reality is that we all have more in common than we think. Treat each person as an individual and trust will grow.
  8. Dive in
    This is not about blind trust but what is referred to as “smart trust”. Stephen M. R. Covey states that “smart trust means weighing your impulse to trust against other people’s credibility and the opportunity and risks at hand”. Overall, the chances are pretty good that your smart trust in others will be worth it.

Your Trust Building Tips

What trust building tips have worked for you?  Please feel free to share, in the comment section, both those that you’ve observed as well as ones that you have implemented yourself.

About the Author: Sherry Dutra is a Talent Development and Career Coach and Facilitator who believes we each have far more potential than we typically tap in to. She helps you learn how to step into your full potential so you can create consistent, optimal performance for yourself and your team with less stress and more enjoyment. 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.

Filed Under: engagement, inspiration, Leadership, motivation, trust Tagged With: engagement, leadership, motivation, performance, success, trust

Articles

  • 10 Keys to Success in Your New Role
  • How are Your Teams Feeling Right Now? Measure the Emotional Culture
  • There’s an Uptick in Retirements: Is Your Organization Ready?
  • The Connection Between Sleep and Leadership: It’s Time to Take a Snooze
  • Losing Employees? – Try This Simple Leadership Approach to Engage and Retain Your Team

Copyright © 2022 Dutra Associates LLC. All Rights Reserved. · Website By: A. Piper Creative

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Disclaimer

Website security