evaluation Archives – KCC Positive Business Psychology

Emotional Intelligence: 4 Ways to Build Your Self-Awareness Skills

Emotional Intelligence: 4 Ways to Build Your Self-Awareness Skills The core of great leadership is understanding people. It’s understanding how to motivate them, how to find their strengths and harness them for your team. One powerful tool leaders use in effectively motivating and communicating with their teams is emotional intelligence. This is the skillset that helps leaders read the room and change their approach based on the kind of feedback or direction their team members need in the moment. One of the key pillars of emotional intelligence is self-reflection and self-awareness. Counter to what you may be thinking, the way to get better at self-reflection isn’t through introspection. When we rely only on our perceptions of ourselves, we often get it wrong. Why? We have a tendency to be our own blind spots. We already know and understand our own perspective, but what’s missing, without the input from others, is how what we say and the way we say it makes them feel. Though we may have meant something as a straightforward statement of fact, it may have come across like a cutting insult depending on our timing and facial expression as we delivered this information. When we ask for feedback from others, it helps us to fill in those blind spots. It gives us new information to consider, and it helps us understand the gap between what we tried to express and the message others received. Here are 4 ways to build better self-awareness and boost your emotional intelligence. 1. Choose Feedback Givers Who Can Afford to Be Honest Flattery isn’t honest feedback, and it certainly won’t be helpful in allowing you to build accurate perceptions of yourself. So, who do you ask for feedback? Ideally, you ask people who can afford to be honest. Choose people who don’t need something from you rather than people who are depending on your feedback on an employee review or a critical piece of a collaborative project. If you’re asking people to evaluate a specific situation, it’s best to ask someone who was actually in the room when it happened. That way their reaction isn’t impacted by your version of events, which will always be limited to your perspective. Ask multiple people. Your team members and the other people around you are not a monolith. One person might find a comment you made to be deeply offensive while someone else maybe didn’t even catch that you said it. Asking multiple people gives you the opportunity to spot a trend. If multiple people were uncomfortable with something you said or did, it’s likely a situation you need to take a look at again so you can accept responsibility for anything that was out of line. 2. Ask Open-ended Questions We’ve all had those conversations where someone asked a question in such a way that made it clear there was only one right answer. If you ask leading questions, you’re more likely to get biased answers. (You don’t think I was being too harsh [...]

Vital Leadership Question: What Does Our Organization Reward?

A Good Leader ListensWhat sets leaders apart? Good leaders not only ask good questions, but they actually listen to the answers. Ask people in your organization: "What does our organization REALLY reward?" Listening to the answer may help you achieve a huge increase in results.Over the years I've worked with thousands of leaders, and I've learned that many organizations reward the wrong things.Some organizations may pay lip service to rewarding people for what is viewed as the right things: getting the right results in the right ways. But what they may really reward, often in terms of promotions and job perks, are things like "not rocking the boat", seniority, managing their image, working HARD, but not SMART.Transform Wrong Rewards into Right ResultsHere is a way to transform wrong rewards into right results.1. Find out what your organization really rewards. Take some time to ask the people in your organization what brings them the highest rewards. The answers may surprise you. Resist the urge to get caught up in those answers. Don't make value judgments. At this stage, you are just an observer. Simply compile the list and ask them what they would find more motivating.2. Execute a "Stop-start-continue" process. Gauge each item on the list against results your organization and employees really need. Does it help get results? Does it detract from results? For each item, identify the problem and who controls the solution. What reward do you stop, what do you start and what do you continue?3. Evaluate what your leadership rewards. When your leadership rewards the wrong things, you're getting a fraction of the results you're capable of. However, since we see the faults of others more clearly than our own, it may be more difficult identifying and dealing with your own issues rather than your organization's. Work with a trusted team member to be sure you're giving yourself a fair assessment. Use the stop-start-continue method to improve your own leadership reward behavior.Continue to Pursue the Healthy Reward System in Your Organization--Set aside special times and places to have your team focus exclusively on rewards evaluation, making sure they continually link the answers to what's important to them, thus increasing results.--Keep the link between right rewards and better results in sharp focus. This is not an academic exercise. It's not meant to simply make people feel good or vent their frustrations. Don't devolve into name-calling and finger-pointing. The idea is not to use the rewards evaluation to punish anyone or as a platform for stirring up dissatisfaction but instead for what it is meant to be: a powerful tool to get people engaged.Commit to Ongoing Evaluation for the Best SuccessYou'll get results, but don't expect overnight success. Just keep asking, What does my organization really reward? In the long run, when tackling the challenges that comes with listening to the answers, you'll be getting better results as well as sharpening your leadership skills.People often complain about a lack of recogntition, let's stop talking about it and start doing [...]