The Skills That Make You a Great Leader

If you’ve been part of our community for a while, you know that our Work, with a capital W, is helping individuals, teams, and organizations succeed through increasing the leadership of each and every person, regardless of role or title.
 
As coaches and consultants, we work at the intersection of psychology and business and we know, from 30 years of experience, that the ability to lead requires that you:

• Pause and manage your reactivity so you can respond powerfully and effectively.
• Reflect on what’s going on inside of you.
• Have empathy for the experiences and feelings of others.
• Take action with an awareness of possibility, transparency of passion and purpose, creation of “we” centered goals, and the support of others taking action and learning from their experience.

Now, in “The Smartest Person in the Room,” an article written by Daniel Goleman, November 17, 2017, and published in Korn Ferry Institute’s Briefings Magazine, there’s more research that supports our approach to leadership success. In fact, it is the critical approach to success in general!
 
In this article, Goleman reports on research that demonstrates that it’s not a super high IQ that creates the most success in life and leadership, but rather it’s emotional and psychological intelligence that bring together the skills most needed to succeed.
 
To quote Goleman,

Emotional intelligence requires two broad sets of competencies.
 
The first set powers self-management and includes emotional self-awareness, achieving long-term goals, and similar capacities for managing and motivating ourselves.
 
The second set deals with how we relate to others, such as our relationships and awareness of other people. It includes empathy, organizational awareness and influence, among others.
 
They are crucial for teamwork, sales, handling clients and particularly leadership.”

If you have a well-developed emotional intelligence, this research will resonate with you. But if you don’t, don’t panic, you can learn how to grow these skills and nurture the leader in you.
 
There are books and trainings out there to support you, or you can learn our Leader in You leadership framework in a number of ways through our services.