Life would be so much easier without other people!

Most of the problems people want my 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 people. And many more.

People are complicated. Think about yourself for a moment. What really upsets you? What 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?

If I asked the person next to you at work, I’d get a completely different list. 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 team. All those other teams. Your suppliers. Your customers.

That’s a lot of people. Every single one of them has their own history, their own triggers, things that motivate them and things they hate.

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.

And the foundation to being good at leading people is knowing yourself. Because when you’re trying to help someone else, you have to be able to 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.

If I can help you do that, drop me a message and let’s have a chat.

#WomenLeaders #SelfAwareness #EmotionalIntelligence