I just want a magic wand

Most of the problems people want help with are to do with other people. How to get their team to do what needs to be done? How to motivate people. How to give difficult feedback. How to manage upwards. How to get recognition and reward. How to change things without upsetting

Sometimes clients talk about hoping for a miracle or a magic wand. Sadly, that’s not possible, especially when it comes to other people.

People are complicated. Think about yourself for a moment. What really upsets you? What really makes you anxious? What conversations do you dread? What people do you find it hardest to get along with? How do you feel when you’re put on the spot and you don’t know the answer?

That’s just you. If I asked the person sitting next to you at work, I’d get a completely different list. Because we’re all different. You know how some people don’t mind a good argument, while others are paralysed by fear and will do almost anything to avoid one? How some people can have a “robust exchange of views”, forget it and move on, while others brood for days or weeks about what it all means and whether anything will ever be the same again?

Multiply that by all the people in your team. And your peer group. Your senior leadership team. Your organisation’s executive Board. All those other teams. Your suppliers. Your customers.

Every single person has their own history, their own triggers, things that motivate them and things they hate.

And somehow you have to find your way through that as a leader and bring out the best in everyone in your team.

As a leader, even if you spend a lot of time talking to your people individually, you’re unlikely to get to the bottom of every single person’s issues and needs. But you have to try, because that’s the only way you can create an environment that allows each person to flourish.

That means you have to get really good at observing and listening. When someone is opinionated or vocal in a team meeting, what does that say about their underlying motivation or intention? How does everyone else react? Are there people who leap in and put an alternative point of view? Are there people who seem to agree with everything that gets said and never express a counter-opinion? Are there some people who go quiet when things get a bit heated? Are there some people who leap in and offer to help while others look around for someone to blame?

All these things are clues about each person. Some of them are obvious, some of them are subtle. Some of them are what people don’t say as much as what they do.

Noticing the body language. Noticing energy levels. Noticing the emotional undercurrents.

These are fundamental to having high emotional intelligence. Picking up on the emotional language and being able to work with it, sometimes right there in the room with the whole team. Sometimes it’s waiting till you have a one-to-one conversation and inquiring into what was going on and what support a person needs. It means trying out different strategies with each person.

Sometimes we shy away from “personal” conversations and I get clients who say “but I’m not their therapist.” Of course you’re not but you do need to know something of what’s going on inside them, and the easiest way to do that is to ask.

One of the biggest problems in managing other people is you never know what’s going to happen. Obviously, the better you know them, the better your chances of predicting how they will react. But even people you know well can surprise you.

Being surprised can be highly triggering in certain situations. The other side of emotional intelligence is being to notice and manage your own reactions.

If you get triggered by someone, your defences will kick in and you will likely either attack or retreat. Neither option is likely to get a productive outcome. You need to be able to step back from your own emotional reaction and keep your rational brain in charge. You can have a rant later! For now, your job is to seek to understand them.

Managing yourself is the foundation of being able to manage other people well. The more sophisticated you get at understanding yourself, perhaps surprisingly, the better you will find you can tune into other people. The better you get at it, the more instinctive it becomes. That’s when it starts to feel like you might have a magic wand after all.

#WomenLeaders #EmotionalIntelligence