LEADx

In the last 30 years, I've sold over $150M worth of leadership training. Looking back, I cringe to think of all the managers who never actually changed. But, I learned from my mistakes and spent the last 6 years devoted to creating training that changes behavior. What follows are my top 8 strategies, based on the 'coach approach.' P.S. Follow me, Kevin Kruse, for more leadership development posts like this. #leadershipdevelopment

We just launched the only completely free, validated EQ assessment. What You Get: - Unlimited free retests - Quick, meaningful results validated by a team of psychologists - Scores across each of the four core skills - Access to a 12-Week EQ learner journey. Includes microlearning, nudges, and more. - Suggested strategies to improve Take the test for free, and share it with your family, friends, and coworkers here: https://lnkd.in/gTzcfRux

As I helped build out our EQ training curriculum at LEADx, I read through a lot of studies, research, and scholarly articles. Here are 5 findings that I thought were fascinating (and 5 resulting EQ strategies): 1/ Adopting a mindset of curiosity can boost your energy by 20%. Strategy: Practice reframing your thinking as "curious." 2/ We cast our emotions out to the people around us like Wifi (and leaders’ emotions have an especially strong signal). Strategy: Notice when you’re picking up (or casting) unwanted signals. 3/ When a video played of shapes moving across a screen, 33 out of 34 people spun emotion-centered stories about the shapes. Strategy: Learn to recognize when you’re telling stories and be cautious of the stories you tell (about yourself & others). 4/ 95% of people can’t differentiate between “anger” and “disappointment.” Strategy: Get razor-sharp at emotion labeling. 5/ Constructive anger can increase focus, persistence, and action-taking. Strategy: Practice channeling your anger with positive intent. ___ P.S. Follow me, Evan Watkins, for more EQ posts like this one. ___ Sources:? 1/ “The Five Dimensions of Curiosity” HBR 2/ “Social Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman? 3/ "An Experimental Study of Apparent Behavior" by Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel 4/ Podcast EQ expert Marc Brackett w/ Andrew Huberman.? 5/ "Anger can lead to better results when tackling tricky tasks – study" #emotionalintelligence

Do extroverts have higher EQs than introverts? The research says no. But, that doesn’t mean personality and EQ don’t intersect. How well you KNOW your personality has a huge influence on your EQ. For example, as an introvert, you might leverage unique EQ strategies: 1/ Instead of holding big brainstorming sessions or talking things through, you set aside time to reflect & introspect. 2/ You err on the side of over-communication. Once you’ve communicated more than feels comfortable, you’ve probably struck the “right” amount of communication. 3/ You preserve your energy before social events, and you recharge after. 4/ You spend more time deepening connections with close friends, and you spend less time trying to expand your networking empire. ___ When you know your compulsions & tendencies, you can deploy the best-fitting strategies. EQ is about working WITH what you got. ___ P.S. Follow me, Evan Watkins, for more EQ posts like this. __ Sources: Marc Brackett discusses his research on EQ & personality on a podcast interview with Andrew Huberman. He found across a number of studies that there’s no relationship between any personality trait and EQ scores. __ #emotionalintelligence

A few minutes ago, Marcus Buckingham finished his keynote here at the Blanchard Leadership Summit in Dana Point, California. He announced that for the next ten years he will?focus on Love?+ Work, which is also the title of his new book. It's so great to see someone with his following lean into this idea. In Great Leaders Have No Rules, I wrote a chapter called "Lead with Love," and shared my favorite quote related to this idea. It comes from legendary coach John Wooden, who used to tell his players, "I will not like you all the same, but I will love you all the same." In a study of 3,000 people in 7 industries (Barsade and O'Neill 2014) researchers found high correlation between love and satisfaction, engagement, and even accountability. Too often, we withhold our feelings at work due to our own insecurities, or because we were taught, we need to stay aloof and unattached to remain objective. The truth is that more than ever before, this world needs more love. As Ken Blanchard himself once wrote, "Today if you send out loving feelings toward someone and don’t get any positive reaction, don’t give up! Because love understands and, therefore, waits." Do you find it easy or hard to love everyone at work, even if you might not like them? #blanchard #leadership

When a company buys an office building, this is “an investment.” When a company buys leadership development this is “a cost.” But, the research shows that investing in people equates to increases in stock value. We have to change our mindset around leadership development, or else it’s going to perish. ___ “I am worried about our tendency to over invest in things and under invest in people”. —Economist John Kenneth Galbraith P.S. Follow me, Kevin Kruse, for more leadership development posts like this.

3 unusually effective strategies for overcoming self-doubt 1/ Commit yourself to targeted recklessness Artist Marina Abramovi? is famous for her wild performance art: →?Giving the audience scissors and letting them cut up her clothes and her hair →?Sitting completely still in one position for 8 hours per day, for 16 days straight →?Running and colliding with her partner over and over for an hour And this is just her tamer, work-friendly list. You might expect Abramovi? to be fearless, wired differently from the rest of us. But the opposite is actually true. “I was brave in my art, but the truth was (and still is) that I went through hell before every one of my performances. Sheer terror. I would go to the bathroom twenty times," she explained. Only by committing entirely to her work could she overcome her fear. “The moment I stepped into the work, it was something else entirely…when it comes to my work, I cast caution to the winds.” __ 2/ Seek out people and spaces where you feel free One of the most insidious forms of self-doubt is "social self-doubt," or self-consciousness. Author Zadie Smith says, “Much of life can feel like a performance, where you’re trying to fit in, impress, or meet expectations. Even close friendships sometimes have this performative aspect where you’re not fully yourself.” Her solution is simple: Seek out spaces where you don’t feel that way. “Anywhere you can go where you’re not on stage, where you’re not having to keep up someone else’s idea of you, where you can just be yourself—that is freedom.” __ 3/ Embrace a mindset of excessive experimentation Novelist Karl Ove Knausgaard is one of the most prolific writers of our era. He’s written 16 books, and is currently writing at a rate of one book per year. But when an interviewer recently asked Knausgaard about his productivity, he mostly expressed self-doubt. “I think [my work] is boring,” he said. “I’m full of doubt always.” One strategy Knausgaard employed to combat his self-doubt was to embrace a mindset of experimentation. “I think of [this series of books] as an experiment to write an enormous amount of books very quickly,” he said. "There was this feeling that I shouldn’t do it. That this [approach] was forbidden. But it was the [attitude] of f^%ck it, I’m gonna do it for myself.” Similar to Abramovic, it’s as if his intense commitment cancels out his self-doubt. __ Any other unusual strategies you might add to this list? ___ Sources: 1/ Marina Abramavich from her memory, “Walk Through Walls.” 2/ Zadie Smith: Billy Oppenheimer’s Newsletter Interview on the Ezra Klein Show 3/ Knausgaard from Otherppl Podcast #emotionalintelligence

95% of people can’t differentiate between “anger” and “disappointment.” Here are a couple EQ takeaways from that statistic: ___ 1/ Specificity matters, a lot. The main difference between anger and disappointment is a sense of justice. - You get angry if you feel that a bad outcome is unjust. - You get disappointed if you feel a bad outcome was just. For example, if you apply for a job and you really want it… → you’d be angry if you felt you deserved it but got looked over because they hired their friend. → you’d be disappointed if you felt you weren’t up to par with other candidates If you don’t get to this level of nuance with your emotions, you don’t REALLY understand them. Nuance = Control ___ 2/ Emojis don’t communicate emotions as well as we think. Emojis do what neuroscientist Andrew Huberman refers to as “lumping.” “I just see emojis as lumping this incredible set of different [emotional] continuums within us…into a small icon,” he said in a recent podcast. So while we may feel like emojis are efficient and expressive, a single specific word is more efficient and expressive. ___ It’s a common trap to immediately try to “manage” your emotions. But how well can you manage your emotion, if you haven't determined whether you feel angry, disappointed, or something else entirely. You’ll get further faster by pinpointing exactly what you’re feeling and why. From there, managing your reaction gets much easier. P.S. Follow me, Evan Watkins, for more EQ posts like this. Sources: Andrew Huberman’s podcast with EQ expert Marc Brackett #emotionalintelligence

I just hung up with the head of leadership development at a fairly big life sciences company. She's putting together an emerging leader program (ELP). We talked about how easy it is to screw up an ELP. Orgs that mess up their ELPs tend to make the same mistake. And it's a matter of setting the wrong goal: →?They set out to prepare participants for management With this goal in mind, they focus on managerial skills: - one-on-one meetings - effective feedback - GROW coaching But, there are 3 major problems with this line of thinking: 1/ Limited Practice Opportunity. Participants don't have direct reports to practice with yet. 2/ Knowledge Decay. Training grows staler by the second as participants wait for a management position to open up. 3/ Unmet Expectations. Participants become frustrated and disappointed when they graduate and no management positions are open. Because these ELPs have the wrong goal, they're doomed to fail from the start. Here's what these orgs should do instead: → Set out to IDENTIFY and RETAIN high performers This means you focus on training self-leadership skills. You grow your high-performers in-role. You train skills like: - Growth Mindset - EQ - Resilience With this approach, you invest in your high potentials, equip them with skills they can practice on the job, and enhance their current performance. Getting these ELPs right is simple. You just have to set the right goal. Curious to hear from all of you. Are you: 1/ Designing an ELP for manager skills. OR 2/ Designing for self-leadership skills. #leadershipdevelopment P.S. Follow me, Kevin Kruse, for more leadership development content like this.