Summer is over and September brings many “back to school” feelings and new energy to many. I’ve spent the better part of the past few months with a continued focus on my education and skills towards the “reboot” of my Executive Coaching practice and the launch of my blog “eq4it.com” – Emotional Intelligence for I.T.
After over 30 years [yikes!] as a technologist and technology leader, I decided that I had reached the appropriate crossroads in my life and set out to reinvent myself. There were many aspects of my career in tech that I look back upon with great memories (and others, well, perhaps not so much.) The one constant, though, that has consistently been a part of my daily life at work was to be available to and to be emotionally present for my teams, team members and colleagues whenever they needed me. Over the years, I’ve always been the “sounding board,” the “trusted advisor,” “the guy who gets it” and I’m extremely proud of that reputation. What better way, I thought, to apply my experiences and lessons learned than to coach others who face issues similar to the opportunities and challenges I’m most familiar with?
I became a Certified Executive Coach through Columbia University’s 3CP (Columbia Coaching Certification Program) which, while working full-time, took me 18 months to complete. I’m now working with individual clients, have been certified in administering and interpreting various behavior and personality assessments and running in-person workshops. Just as I imagined, I am finding my experiences to be highly rewarding, as I work with clients and can apply the coaching methodologies I studied along with the work and life experiences that helped shape me.
I have always been interested in human psychology and what makes us all different, what motivates us and what steers us to feel specific emotions or to behave in certain ways. After so many years in the corporate world, having the opportunity to delve more deeply into the areas of coaching, communication, leadership, Emotional Intelligence and personality theory has “lit up” many of the learning centers of my brain. Suddenly, I feel a sense of renewal that I haven’t felt in a long time. Thinking about the many roles I’ve played in different types and sizes of companies, I recognize more than ever how important and valuable the theories of Emotional Intelligence and personality type are to the success of the individual and to the broader success of the organization.
Why is Emotional Intelligence (EQ or EI) so important in workplace settings? We’ve all heard the stats: EQ accounts for upwards of 80% of the likelihood of success of individual professionals and 92% of the likelihood of success of teams. It’s also been shown that the lack of certain key competencies, like Emotional Self-Awareness, actually yields negativeclimates 78% of the time. There are many models of EQ and the topic has been studied and written about in-depth. Quite possibly, the cultural explosion of the awareness of EQ is due to the 1995 book by Daniel Goleman, “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ,” but there are countless other theorists and researchers on the topic.
Despite all the varying research, what seems to be the cornerstone of all EQ theories, though, is “Emotional Self-Awareness,” which is generally defined as having “an understanding of your own emotions and their impacts on you and how others perceive you.” There’s a lot packed into that simple definition, though. “Understanding your own emotions” can range from the simplest, “feeling an emotion and being able to name it” to more deeply understanding why you are feeling the emotion in the first place. “Your emotions’ impacts on you” speaks to how your emotions either help or hinder your ability to perform in multiple contexts and influence many facets of work and life, such as stress-management, effective communication, decision-making and problem solving. “How others perceive you” is all about having a realistic self-image rooted in an accurate sense of your strengths and limitations as others see them. This has a direct impact on your self-confidence or self-regard, and it has powerful implications on your abilities to have successful relationships, be an effective member of a team or be a good leader.
How does one become more emotionally self-aware? Genuine success here requires digging down a bit deeper, and consciously becoming familiar with your values and motivators and gaining perspective on your behaviors and communications with others. While there are multiple ways to approach a decision, problem or conflict, your natural tendencies will usually tilt the scales in a specific direction to result in some combination of behavioral responses. In other words, by being more familiar with what makes you and others tick and how you can adapt your observable (and incidentally, controllable) behaviors, you may be able to influence situations towards the most desirable outcomes.
This ability to check our natural tendencies and decision-making processes is all the more powerful when we incorporate it into our overall sense of emotional self-awareness. I like to think about it this way: What if, before taking important action or making a decision, a person is able to ask him or herself, “is this the emotionally intelligent way to be dealing with this? What parts of my personality are influencing me and are my instincts truly going to lead me to the right conclusions? If not, where can I make adjustments? How can I adapt?” If most people did this, do you think the world be a better place? Would workplace culture improve? Would engagement and performance rise? If we view it from this perspective, it’s apparent that emotional self-awareness opens the door to many other EQ competencies, including emotional self-control, adaptability, influence, conflict management and most importantly, empathy.
In the coming weeks and months, I’m going to share a lot of what I’ve learned and continue to learn about EQ, personality theory, and the impact that coaching can have on individuals and organizations. I will write about my own experiences as I evolved and grew from entry-level developer to CTO. While my reference points (at times) may be on technology and technology/product organizations, which has been my niche over the years, I believe that the concepts and stories I will share will have more far-reaching relevance. Most importantly, I hope to offer ideas and insights on how application of these topics or some combination of them can help create more successful leaders, more engaged employees and more effective and high-performing teams.
I hope that you’ll join me on this journey, and I most certainly welcome your comments and feedback.
