Leaders need strong interpersonal skills and an understanding of and appreciation for cultural diversity. Without these skills, leaders cannot communicate with and manage others effectively. Interpersonal skills have gained recent recognition among business leaders under the name of “emotional intelligence.” Emotional intelligence (EI) is the capacity to understand your own emotions and those of other people.
The company’s culture reflects the emotional intelligence (or lack) of the company leaders, and the company leaders reveal that emotional intelligence through their communication ability and style.
Reuven Bar-On, who developed the concept of emotional quotient in 1988, provides a technical definition of emotional intelligence. Emotional quotient (or intelligence) is emotional and social knowledge and the ability to:
Be aware of, understand, and express yourself.
Be aware of, understand, and relate to others.
Deal with strong emotions, and control your impulses.
Adapt to change and to solve problems of a personal or a social nature.
In Primal Leadership, Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee argue that leadership styles fall into six broad categories: (1) visionary, (2) coaching, (3) affiliative, (4) democratic, (5) pacesetting, and (6) commanding. These last two may have negative impact to the organization.
Personal Competence: These capabilities determine how we manage ourselves
Self-Awareness
Self-Management
Social Competence: These capabilities determine how we manage relationships.
Social Awareness
Relationship Management
The first-step toward emotional intelligence is self-awareness. What is important to realize is that you can develop your emotional intelligence and by doing so improve your leadership communication ability, but you need to understand your strengths and weaknesses first.
Psychological testing can help you gain insight into your behavior and how you interact with others, and also how others interact with you. You can benefit from knowing yourself better and identifying characteristics that may hinder your ability to interact effectively with others. With this knowledge, you can work toward modifying unproductive behaviors and perhaps, at a minimum, understand better why others respond to you as they do.
The MBTI consists of four dichotomies in 16 combinations. The dichotomies are as follows:
· Introvert (1) vs. Extravert (E)—indicates how are energized
· Sensing (S) vs. Intuitive (N)—suggests how you interpret or understand the world.
· Thinking (T) vs. Feeling (F)—shows how you make decisions.
· Judging (J) vs. Perceiving (P)—suggests your approach to life and work.
Many assessments are available on the Web, although some require a fee and psychologists to contact you with the results. You can take MBTI for free online, and you receive your score and a report immediately. It is particular useful in relating the test to the workplace and in explaining how different types handle different jobs and team situations.
This approach will allow you: (1) to assess your strengths and weaknesses, (2) to obtain feedback from others on your strengths and weaknesses, (3) to establish your goals, (5) to map out a plan to achieve those goals.
Categories of Nonverbal Communication
Appearance
Paralanguage
Kinesics
Occulesics
Proxemics
Facial expressions
Olfactics
Chronomics
The Following Suggestions to Improve Your Nonverbal Communication Skills
Learn as much as possible about any culture in which you will be interacting.
Do not judge someone’s actions out of context or leave the actions unexplored when important to you or the organization.
Develop your understanding or sensitivity to nonverbal cues.
Assess your own use of nonverbal communication.
Leaving: “listening out of any discussion of communication” means leaving out at least 40 to percent of the communication process. Good listening skills are essential, and the lack of them hinders many people’s careers. If you are not sure whether you are a good listener, you should take an inventory of your listening habits, either by making a list on your own, asking someone you trust to give you feedback, or taking a listening assessment. A little self-awareness will help you realize if improvement is needed and how much.
The mentor and the protégé must establish together an approach for working with each other and, if appropriate, set up a development plan with agreed upon objectives. They will also need to communicate regularly, but the protégé should be mindful of the mentor’s time commitments and be realistic in his or her expectations. Mentors, on the other hand, owe it to protégés not to commit to more than they can deliver and to establish boundaries.
The following steps should work effectively when providing feedback in most business situations:
Be well prepared for the feedback session.
Create a receptive environment.
Assume a comfortable demeanor.
Start by setting the context for the meeting.
Move quickly into your main objectives, which should not be so numerous they overwhelm.
Ensure throughout that the receiver understands your points
Be very specific about the actions you expect the receiver to undertake as a result of this feedback session and the timing for completing them.
Realizing the value of cultural differences is a key component of emotional intelligence. Only by understanding and appreciating cultural diversity can you know how best to communicate with all of the different audiences that form the complexion of most of the world’s corporation today.
Culture is learned and shared equally by others of the same culture whereas personality is highly individual and influenced by our genes and our environment.
Cultures and professions can be arrayed on a spectrum ranging from low context to high context. Low context cultures depend relatively little on existing relationships for meaning in communication and rely instead on explicit verbal messages. High context cultures rely more extensively on relationships to understand meaning and place less importance on verbal messages.
The importance of context in a culture, high or low, influences how individuals approach exchanges of information and determines how messages flow between people and levels of organization.
Time is a commodity and is meant to be measured and managed, conserved or wasted, spent wisely or foolishly. Events are sequentially, one at a time, and this schedule takes precedence over relationships and people.
Language has been described as the “central influence on culture and one of the most highly changed symbols of a culture or a nation. All cultural levels have language differences: industries, professions, functions, and even genders.
Cultures differ tremendously in how they view power and equality. Some believe in strict hierarchies with clear distinctions between levels and formalized respect for people at the higher levels of an organization. In other words, for some cultures, titles and position matter more than they do for other cultures.
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