An Insider's Guide to Outstanding Leadership
Studies show that socially intelligent leaders do more than just make people happier at work. In a survey of employees at seven hundred companies, the majority said that a supportive boss mattered far more than how much money they earned.
It also showed that caring bosses drive increased productivity and encourage employee loyalty to the organisation.
The brain and emotional intelligence
Emotional self-awareness is a significant leadership competence, building a bridge between how the brain works and the development of effective organisational leadership. Key points made by neuroscientist Dan Siegel in the book include:
- there are neural net processors around the heart and the gut that affect and inform judgement
- the body plays a big part in decision making - it's not a purely logical process
- signals from the body & spontaneous non-rational sensibility are primarily input into the right hemisphere of the brain - experienced on an analogue spectrum
- the left hemisphere, in contrast, is more analytical and digital (either/or)
- both are vital to every situation - the right focusing on context and the wider picture; the left focusing on the detail
- self-aware leaders are conscious of these two ways of processing, honour the importance of both and integrate them appropriately
How leaders build trust
Trust can be fleeting. A leader can spend 30 years building trust and then have it disappear overnight if people feel they have been betrayed.
In conversation with authentic leadership expert Bill George, they identify several key points:
- distrust occurs when leaders put self-interest first
- leaders who have lost trust can get it back, but they have to prove themselves
- the real test is how leaders behave when under pressure - if you can stay true to your values, people will view you as authentic and therefore trustworthy
- to build trust you have to spend quality time with people at all levels of the organisation
- it's vital to really listen to people & respond in earnest, honouring what they say
- Most importantly, he says: "To maintain that trust, you need care about your team, want to be out there with them, and love the business. You really do have to love it! I can’t stress that enough. If you don’t love it, don’t do it."
"...once you are in that field, emotional intelligence emerges as a much stronger predictor of who will be most successful, because it is how we handle ourselves in our relationships that determines how well we do once we are in a given job."Daniel Goleman