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Since the onset of the COVID crisis, there has been a very lively and rich discussion around what this all means for leadership under the extreme conditions we have been going through. What follows is a very personal contribution, based on my initial training as a social historian and 37 years of experience in the Learning and Development space.

Even with the tremendous advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, human beings (and by extension, leaders) will continue to play a critical role in the success of organizations. But this raises a new series of questions: who we recruit, who we promote, who we decide to invest in for L+D spend, how we recognize and reward. There are a few leadership models out there with 6 dimensions and perhaps the TALENT “proto-model” proposed below could make a small contribution to how we can collectively consider updating our pre-existing models on leadership for the COVID Era.

Lean

Lean has a well-proven track record in terms of improving industrial performance. Could we apply some of its basic tenets more systematically to Leadership? In my opinion, one of the key learnings of the lockdown is that business performance was not necessarily negatively impacted by fewer meetings, less bureaucracy and the suddenly forced experimentation with remote/hybrid working. When we consider the well-known Eisenhower Matrix (with 4 quadrants – on the vertical axis “importance” and on the horizontal access “urgency”), I think that the lower right-hand quadrant (non-urgent/ unimportant) has proven to be much larger than 25%.

Source: https://theblogrelay.com/eisenhower-matrix-for-decision-making/

In terms of the LEAN dimension, could sociologists help us better understand what we need in terms of leadership for this COVID Era? François Dupuy (whom I had the great pleasure of meeting on a number of occasions) – wrote a seminal work back in 2011: Lost in Management. He very knowingly speaks of how organizations – by creating rules and processes to ensure “homogeneity and clarity” – actually create what he calls “intermediary bureaucracies”. In a famous quotation of the Franco-Austrian sociologist Erhard Friedberg (my loose translation): “Rules are not important for what they say but how the actors make use of them”. In a nutshell, organizations have proven to be very effective in adding layers of bureaucracy and paying people to manage all of this (processes, reporting…). Could we use this period of “forced reflection”, to get leaders to more deeply reflect on the cost-benefit analysis of corporate processes? The clear risk is that our new hybrid working mode – back-to-back Zoom/ Teams/ Cisco meetings – could actually replicate and in fact reinforce existing corporate bureaucracies. Could we rather seize the occasion to re-think, re-set and reframe (something around “Back to the Basics”?). Could LEAN methodology in terms of leadership help us here? There has always been a fine line in balancing the well-founded need to create a robust corporate process whilst fostering innovation (along with getting a maximum out of our increasingly diverse talents). In a nutshell, how can we benefit from adding more fluidity and flexibility to our modes of leadership? We also need to think about what this means for “scaling-up” in fast-growing organizations, where remote working has become dominant.

As we will be seeing in the TIME dimension below, some leaders have difficulties in changing their management practices for COVID-era hybrid working (e.g., continuing to control and supervise the schedules of their team members). These ‘old-school’ leaders already had a preference for spending most of their time in meetings. The ever-provocative Elon Musk has recently pleaded for CEOs to spend less time in meetings and reduce their use of PowerPoint.

Food for thought:
How can we most effectively apply LEAN to our leadership behaviours?
How can we “protect” our teams from corporate bureaucracy whilst maintaining a minimal level of control?

The Covid 19 pandemic has been re-shaping our lives for more than a year now. We had to change the way we work, connect with others, and live our lives. Many were able to actively focus on learning new skills to deal with technology allowing them to continue working remote, others to get organized to home-deliver all sorts of goods. In general, organizations had to quickly make changes to grant their employees to work safely and remain productive.

Change is natural, even refreshing when it is approached in a gradual way. With the pandemic, change struck the world abruptly and unexpectedly.

As the urgency required to focus on the day-to-day necessities, the emotional intelligence part had to be left aside in most cases. That is why today many employees report feeling tired or even exhausted.

Emotional Intelligence is, “The capacity to be aware of, understand, and manage one’s own emotions, mood, time and behaviour effectively” and “Perceiving, understanding and acknowledging the way others feel”

Over the past decade, leaders from all industrial sectors have come to recognize the importance of EI to enhance motivation, engagement and performance. Just as the opposite has demonstrated to occur, that is a drop in performance and disengagement when leaders lack self-management, empathy, and the ability to engage and inspire. It is true that even in the best of times managing emotions and staying emotionally connected to the team can be a challenge for many leaders. But during and following the Covid 19 tragedy, EI skills have gained an even more important role. Remote work and social distancing require an even higher level of Emotional Intelligence readiness and competency for leaders and teams, as employees need to be heard and crave feeling safe and valued.

What strategies can be adopted to help EI grow in organizations?

• Measuring Emotional intelligence in the organization and employ resources to develop EI competencies.
• Start rewarding leaders and employees who demonstrate self-management, care and empathy and use emotional information to make decisions.
• Stop rewarding leaders and employees who get results but break relationships in the process and make decisions that do not take into account the impact of emotions.

That can be achieved by taking some courageous steps such as:

• Providing training, coaching and mentoring to leaders and teams to enhance their emotional competencies.
• Create ways to celebrate leaders and teams for their Emotional Intelligence. For example, how they managed to create engagement and bonding via Zoom or helping their people to get to know each other by intentionally mixing teams and assigning mentors.
• Sustaining trust by creating a climate of openness on feelings, difficulties, or obstacles. Regular check-ins can provide the structure for this kind of authentic sharing and support.
• Use meetings to reinforce engagement. Leaders can build time in meetings to see how smart the team is. For example, showcasing one person per meeting, letting them talk about their work, or highlighting their strengths for them and giving positive feedback in public, or doing quick introductions each week allowing people to get answers to their questions and to the challenges they face. In so doing, meetings become a time when engagement and trust can be built.

To quote Mark Nevins:

“If you don’t have the basics, you’re not going to excel post-Covid.”

We need to realize that we will not go back to the pre-Covid way of working. Many organizations report that they are thinking of creating some sort of mixture between work in the office and remote.

For example:

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, suggests if you have 100 employees
you won’t need 100 desks, maybe 60.

Unilever workers will never return to their desks full-time, CEO Alan Jope has stated.

Emotional Intelligence will be more and more crucial in the workplace and represent the true area of strength for leaders and teams.

Learning and Development

GENOS Podcasts – Check out the latest podcast by GENOS on “Real Stories and business insights on the power of EI in the workplace.”

Exploring EI – Virtual classroom – To help you understand the principles of the Science of Emotions, the fundamentals of EI behaviours and the core EI dimensions – On-demand

Leading with Emotional intelligence – Series of 6 virtual classrooms – To help you explore all the key competencies that can make you an Emotional Intelligent leader, using your EI in your leadership of people – On-demand

Coaching for Resilience – To help leaders and teams bounce back and forward in effective and positive ways with one-on-one or team coaching series of sessions fine-tuned to your needs – On-demand

Since the onset of the COVID crisis, there has been a very lively and rich discussion around what this all means for leadership under the extreme conditions we have been going through. What follows is a very personal contribution, based on my initial training as a social historian and 37 years of experience in the Learning and Development space.

Even with the tremendous advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, human beings (and by extension, leaders) will continue to play a critical role in the success of organizations. But this raises a new series of questions: who we recruit, who we promote, who we decide to invest in for L+D spend, how we recognize and reward. There are a few leadership models out there with 6 dimensions and perhaps the TALENT “proto-model” proposed below could make a small contribution to how we can collectively consider updating our pre-existing models on leadership for the COVID Era.

Agility

The COVID Era has certainly made Agility more critical than ever. VUCA has been around since the US Military developed it in the 1980s, but it is my feeling that the acronym has been abused and misused in many corporate and governmental environments. Most of the time we have been paying lip service to agility, imagining scenarios with say a potential of 15-20% deviations (what we could call “VUCA light”). In fact, we should probably have heeded the advice of those arguing for a more robust model – VUCAE – with an E for exponential. Over the years I have had the privilege of connecting with Singularity University in the Silicon Valley. If collectively we had onboarded their reflections on the incredible exponential element of change, we could have potentially managed the current crisis more effectively. It is my feeling that this “E-dimension” will be critical over the coming years.

During my stint as an L+D leader in a major global multi-national, I had the opportunity to experiment on the subject of agility with a very senior group of VPs. We used the KornFerryHay Agility Questionnaire and were rather taken back by the results. While the individual reports remained confidential, we were provided with a collective picture that demonstrated just how relatively low the overall agility of this very senior sample size was. Based on this experience, I have reflected on the following: are we hiring, promoting and developing the right profiles in terms of agility? Can we in fact develop agility? More on this below in the NOVELTY dimension.

I would suggest that there is a fundamental link between an organization’s capacity to be agile and cognitive biases. Daniel Kahneman has been a pioneer in exploring this for many decades, winning the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2002 and publishing a best seller – Thinking Fast and Slow – in 2013. During the height of the pandemic this Spring, Olivier Sibony, Professor of Strategy at HEC Paris, presented a very interesting analysis of how these cognitive biases impacted decisions made during this period. [2] To cite a few examples:

1. The bias of our mental model: we focus our analysis of current crises on seemingly similar past events (e.g., SARS 2002-2003). But we are obviously in a very different ballpark.
2. Exponential growth is in fact counter-intuitive – it’s way out of our comfort zone. Collectively, we did not see it coming (an example of “VUCA-light”?).
3. There was clearly an NIH (“Not Invented Here”) syndrome in our initial reaction to the virus (think of Trump’s infamous Chinese virus proclamations). This is what Sibony refers to as “exo-group and endo-group bias”. It could never happen to us.
4. There seems to have been a clear phenomenon of “expert group think” back in the Spring of 2020. Of the 18 top scientific experts cited in Sibony’s study – only one “outlier” was close to predicting what has unfortunately panned out.

In terms of the above, how can we encourage and develop leaders to be more agile – and more aware of their cognitive biases – when we are affronted with the next major crisis. How can make sure that the “outlier” voice is at least listened to? This is most likely going to be a very rich collective learning experience.

A very striking paradox of the COVID Era is that for larger organizations, the corporate planning function has probably become more vital than ever. In our VUCAE era, we need to think more broadly and radically in terms of scenario planning. Perhaps we need to reflect on the profiles in this corporate function – are we sufficiently open to including original thinkers (or to use another term “outliers”). More on this below in the NOVELTY dimension around the idea of Groupthink and “deferring to the creative types”. [3] Finally, what is the relationship between AGILITY and risk assessment? How can we equip leaders to be more “risk-savvy” than ever?

Food for thought:
What have I been doing to become more agile in these challenging times?
How can I help my team become more agile?
And perhaps a more basic question, can we develop agility?

The job of a diplomat is complex and multifaceted. By its nature, it requires one to operate in environments of great diversity. In order to be successful, diplomats, while defending their countries’ interests, must maintain an awareness of the perspectives of host nations. The most successful among diplomats do not rely solely on their own education or knowledge (and perhaps language) of the countries where they serve. Rather, they seek out and rely on the expertise of the diplomatic mission’s locally-hired employees, or LE staff. Indeed, effective collaboration between the two groups requires a clear understanding and practice of the principles of diversity and inclusion.

LE staff provide continuity for the diplomatic personnel and possess local language and cultural expertise. In the case of the United States, LE staff support of foreign policy at more than 270 U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide. They form an integral part of the team dedicated to representing the U.S. abroad.

Beyond providing institutional knowledge, LE staff are institution-builders too, carrying out the daily tasks that enable the managing officer to focus on program management. They represent the continuity of a diplomatic mission and, as such, carry the torch long after their individual supervisors have moved on to other postings.

LE staff not only fulfill their functional duties; more importantly, they are also negotiators, facilitators and no small part of the bilateral relationship. Their native knowledge and understanding of the reality on the ground, and the relationships they build and nurture with a broad range of contacts, are essential elements of informed analysis and pertinent reporting. In essence, they serve to bridge two cultures.

As a U.S. diplomat for over 20 years who worked in seven countries on five continents, I can attest to the importance of building a productive and mutually respectful professional relationship with LE staff. Achieving this, however, does not come naturally. Even seasoned diplomats and LE staff must apply the necessary skills inherent to diversity and inclusion to account for the multitude of personalities they encounter. How, then, to ensure a win-win result?

Practicing an inclusive approach in a diverse environment starts with building trust. Within the first weeks in a new job, a meeting with each staff member sets the initial tone. Demonstrating a sincere interest in them fosters open communication and a fruitful professional relationship. Once mutual confidence has been established, listening to their advice on local affairs and including them in the decision-making process enhances the feeling that they are valued.

Finally, it is essential to recognize that, even within one small country with a relatively homogeneous culture, numerous sub-cultures likely exist. For example, Togo in West Africa is about the size of Denmark (with double the population); the official language is French. Two indigenous languages, Ewé and Kabiyé are national languages and a third, Mina, is widely spoken in the south. According to some sources, however, a total of 44 languages are spoken throughout the country. Woe be to the diplomat who ignores the subtleties in cultural differences between people from the north and the south.

Acquiring a deeper understanding of the diversity around us also adds richness to our own lives. For example, soon after I began working in Togo, I noticed that, following an initial greeting, locals would ask, “et la famille?” – meaning, “how’s your family?”. Before long, I added this phrase to my own greeting repertoire both in professional and social encounters. With three simple words, I not only demonstrated knowledge and respect for a local tradition but also established an immediate rapport that paid dividends on a number of levels. It may come as no surprise that inquiring as to someone’s family is also well received in non-African contexts.

Technology and travel bring us into contact with an ever-growing number of diverse communities. The trend is irreversible, despite recent setbacks resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. We do not have to be diplomats to apply the elements of diversity and inclusion discussed here in order to achieve a higher level of performance. When we do, we create allies, establish more harmonious professional and social settings, and continue to expand our personal horizons. That is a recipe for success no matter how you cut the cake.

Since the onset of the COVID crisis, there has been a very lively and rich discussion around what this all means for leadership under the extreme conditions we have been going through. What follows is a very personal contribution, based on my initial training as a social historian and 37 years of experience in the Learning and Development space.

Even with the tremendous advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, human beings (and by extension, leaders) will continue to play a critical role in the success of organizations. But this raises a new series of questions: who we recruit, who we promote, who we decide to invest in for L&D spend, how we recognize and reward. There are a few leadership models out there with 6 dimensions and perhaps the TALENT “proto-model” proposed below could make a small contribution to how we can collectively consider updating our pre-existing models on leadership for the COVID Era.

Trust

It goes without saying that trust “makes the world go round”. It is the bedrock, cornerstone and foundation of everything we do in both our professional and personal lives. We can think of Leoncini’s well-known 5-tiered pyramid around Team Performance, with trust being the foundation of everything. Beyond the leader-contributor relationship, trust is clearly key in all stakeholder ecosystems (shareholders, suppliers, customers, NGOs…). While trust is certainly universal, there are a couple of important intercultural distinctions: cognitive trust and affective trust. This difference has been very clearly explained in INSEAD Professor Erin Meyer’s very readable synthesis of intercultural theory. According to Meyer, “cognitive trust is based on the confidence you feel in another person’s accomplishments, skills and reliability” (on the extreme end of the scale, we can find Anglo-Saxon cultures). “Affective trust, on the other hand, arises from feelings of emotional closeness, empathy, or friendship” (Latin American, Middle East cultures, for example). My hunch is that affective trust – even in predominantly cognitive trust countries – will become increasingly important for team leaders when a majority of interactions may be done remotely.

In the current situation, I think it is useful to go back to Covey’s well-known trust equation, where Trustworthiness equals (on the numerator side) Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy, with Self-Orientation on the denominator side. To simplify, leaders who are perceived by team members and other stakeholders as being driven more by the “collective interest” (and the development and the performance of the team) than in pursuing a personal agenda will tend to engender a higher level of trust. In view of this, those leaders with “toxic” leadership behaviours will be even more dangerous for organizations (with a negative leverage effect on employee engagement). Stanford professor Bob Sutton wrote a visionary and deliberately provocative book on this in 2007 – The No Asshole Rule. Even a small minority of bad apples can have a very damaging impact on an organization’s level of engagement. We can also remind ourselves of the well-proven adage: most people quit because of their boss. This is the moment for leaders to take the courage to eject the “toxic leaders” from their organizations. These toxic leaders not only have a very negative impact on the engagement levels of their teams but on those they are trying to influence in their respective corporate eco-systems with what we could in fact call their “fake leadership”.

It is my gut and far from the original feeling that trust will become even more critical in the COVID Era. With the emerging hybrid model of working, travel restrictions and severely reduced face-to-face “quality time” in meetings, seminars, conventions, etc., leaders need to give even more explicit attention to this. Gallup has done some very interesting research in this domain, with a particular focus on employee engagement. This is the first time Gallup has observed macro-factors (in this case COVID-19 and the BLM protests) having a strong influence on employee engagement levels, in strong contrast to SARS, the Avian Flu and even the Great Recession of 2008. In terms of remote working, those with the highest level of engagement work remotely 40-60% per cent of the time. On the extremes (0% or 100%), engagement levels fall dramatically. Another very interesting finding is that “having meaningful feedback on a weekly basis, and not just frequently allows maximum engagement for all degrees of remote working”. But in actual fact, there is a massive gap in terms of employees’ perceptions: only 2 in 10 strongly agree that their managers are providing meaningful feedback and only 3 in 10 state that their managers are good at helping them set work priorities”.

It is clear from this that leaders need to put a much greater emphasis on giving impactful feedback which has been carefully prepared and takes into account Emotional Intelligence which will be discussed in the EMOTION dimension. Multi-dimensional feedback – between the manager and the team member and vice versa as well as among team members- has become ever more critical. Perhaps managers need to ask their reports more frequently: “how am I doing?”, “as your team leader, how can I more effectively enable you and the team to perform and grow?”, etc. This will require both managerial and employee courage to share frankly, openly and transparently on the key issues. We could perhaps learn from our Dutch colleagues who place such an important value on these “real conversations”. We also need to get team members to feel comfortable giving themselves feedback in the most constructive and trust-boosting manner. For a lot of organizations, instilling and/or reinforcing such practices will inevitably necessitate important cultural shifts (with a need for C-Suite sponsorship and exemplarity).

From an intercultural point of view, perhaps we should all strive to be relatively more “low context” than “high context” in terms of how we communicate. These concepts came out of the pioneering work of a couple of Social Anthropologists, Edward T. Hall and Mildred Reed Hall, who transferred their research on Native American tribes to looking at business practices around the globe. Low context communication is relatively more explicit (“the mass of information is vested in the specific code”) whereas in high context communication “most of the information is in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message”. [6] As a lot of the research has shown over the past decades, clarity – in terms of such things as vision and purpose, what is expected of me, how I am recognized and rewarded is fundamental in achieving higher levels of employee engagement and team performance. During a very interesting meeting with Virgin Australia a couple of years ago, the HR Director outlined their approach to employee empowerment: “freedom within a framework” (seeking an appropriate balance between giving employees maximum leeway and very clear guidelines in terms of overall expectations). In the current stressful working environments, leaders will need to be all too aware that giving more freedom can also lead to greater employee uncertainty and stress. To put it simply, things need to be really clear, well-prepared and above all explicit.

In my view, one of the keys to maintaining and enhancing trust will depend on more impactful performance management. If we agree that there is a clear causal link between leadership behaviours and business performance, have we gone far enough in ensuring that our performance management systems are up to the challenge? With the rapid acceleration of hybrid working – and the consequence of a greater need for effective delegation and empowerment – leaders will need to deal with team members who are under-performing or poorly-performing (as well as recognize and reward those who enhance trust amongst team members).

Finally, in our digitally-challenged environments, one of the most critical responsibilities of leaders is to ensure that their teams comply strictly with cyber-security protocols. With the new hybrid way of working, there has been a blurring between the private and public spheres. Leaders need to ensure that their teams make a clear distinction between their professional and personal devices. Over the years, I have often militated for embedding “Finance for Dummies” in senior leadership programs (e.g., within my zone of responsibility, what can I do to improve my company’s cash situation?). In the same fashion, leaders will need to be increasingly cyber-aware to lead their teams effectively and protect their respective organizations.

Food for thought:
How can I maintain and improve trust as a leader in this new hybrid working environment?
How can I get feedback on the level of trust I am creating?
How can I best share my “trust learning curve” with peers?

Since the onset of the COVID crisis, there has been a very lively and rich discussion around what this all means for leadership under the extreme conditions we have been going through. What follows is a very personal contribution, based on my initial training as a social historian and 37 years of experience in the Learning and Development space (business school, Adjunct Professor at HEC Paris, corporate and consulting). My 12 years of corporate experience – running the global leadership programs for a major aerospace defence player – have been critical in developing my ideas here. In addition, I am attempting here to add some inspiration from the social sciences (sociology, anthropology, history…) along with some intercultural insights to consider the degree of « universality » of the issues we are dealing with. I will be citing some well-known and less well-known sources for those who want to dig a bit deeper on certain subjects.

How will armchair historians look back at COVID 2020 10 or 20 years from now? Will they view its impact on leadership as truly revolutionary or more of a paradigm shift in the sense of Kuhn’s immensely influential Structure of Scientific Revolutions published back in 1962?  We humans (and therefore leaders) have a natural tendency to fall back on old habits and behaviours, as those of us in the L+D space know all too well. If we look back at a few cataclysmic events in the past, we can observe that: the Roman Catholic Church survived the Black Death of the 14th Century; that the plight of many African Americans didn’t substantially improve after the Emancipation of slaves in 1862; that those courageous women who “manned” the factories during World War II most often returned to being suburban “Desperate Housewives” in the 1950s; and, to take a more recent example, the Arab Spring (with the exception perhaps of Tunisia) has hardly laid the foundations for robust democratic societies in the Middle East. When the “virus dust” finally settles, will we return to predominately hierarchical, top-down, often bureaucratic, relatively “non-distributed” leadership or will there be a significant or even radical change? Of course, the jury is out – who knows where we will be in even a few months. At the moment of writing, it seems most likely we are moving towards a hybrid mode of working (2/3 days at home with 2/3 days at the office). This in itself will have a very significant impact on leadership, which means that a collective reflection on all of this is more than critical. In what follows, I will try to make the case that we are in for some very major changes indeed. Unlike some recent crises, COVID clearly seems to be in the “perfect storm” category: an unprecedented acceleration in digital transformation (which was of course already well underway); economic turmoil not seen since the 1930s (in spite of the “whatever it takes” approach by most governments), there seems to be a visceral fear regarding future economic well-being and security; and finally, there is a “life or death” layer to the discussion (will I get infected and will I infect loved ones and colleagues?). Even Hollywood might have lacked the creative juices to imagine such a scenario.

Why an acronym?

I have chosen the search for a new acronym as the underlying structure for my reflections on leadership. While acronyms can rightly be viewed as being partially superficial, over-simplistic and artificial, they do have the power to focus our thoughts. Think of the GROW model for coaching or VUCA (which has been perhaps banalized and misused– see below). I would like to propose a 6-dimensional acronym TALENT: TRUST, AGILITY, LEAN, EMOTION, NOVELTY and TIME. As with many models, there are clear inter-connections between each of the dimensions. For example, we can hardly expect Novelty without Agility or Empathy without Trust.

Why TALENT?

Even with the tremendous advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, human beings (and by extension, leaders) will continue to play a critical role in the success of organizations. But this raises a new series of questions: who we recruit, who we promote, who we decide to invest in for L+D spend, how we recognize and reward. There are a few leadership models out there with 6 dimensions – most notably the KornFerryHay Leadership Styles model based on the pioneering work at Harvard in the 1960s [5]. Perhaps the TALENT “proto-model” proposed below could make a small contribution to how we can collectively consider updating our pre-existing models on leadership for the COVID Era. As a final conclusion to the discussion, I will provide a few suggestions on how L+D and other HR professionals can reflect on how they could think about updating their approaches, methodologies and processes (in a word, the “HR cultures” of their organizations). Of course, leaders in general should be actively involved in the conversation and not simply “out-source” the issue to their respective HR communities. In short, leaders (and even more importantly, C-suite leaders) need to take an active role in leading their talents more than ever.

The World Economic Forum has just published its ranking of the top 10 leadership competencies for 2025 [6]. I think that there is a certain fit with the proto-model I am proposing: for example, around the dimension of NOVELTY (innovation, creativity, originality, ideation…); and AGILITY (dealing with ambiguity, flexibility, reasoning…), and EMOTION (leadership and social influence, resilience, stress tolerance…). In the number two position, here is what I would call a hugely important transversal skill of “active learning and learning strategies”. One of the key challenges, as we move forward, is to empower leaders (as well as to get leaders to empower their teams with a true coaching approach) to become “self-learners”, taking full responsibility for their individual and collective “learning paths”, in line with the 70/20/10 learning model.

Food for thought:
How can I share my reflections on of all this with my team and my peers?
In what contexts?
What should we share on?
What are the strengths and drawbacks of models?

What do you think or feel when you hear the word “conflict”? This is a typical question we ask at the beginning of many of our programs on Conflict Resolution. If you are like most people, you will probably experience some level of discomfort. The fact is that conflict can involve uncomfortable emotions and threaten relationships.

The topic of Conflict Resolution has been profusely explored in the context of Organizational Development. Book shops and libraries are full of excellent volumes on how to manage conflict effectively. If we followed their advice, we would be in a much better place. In many ways, effective conflict resolution is very simple. The techniques to reach collaborative conflict-solving are straightforward, but most of us fail to apply them successfully. As a result, individuals and organizations, families, communities, and countries suffer the consequences of poorly managed conflicts.

Then… How do we resolve conflicts?

Ever felt like solving a conflict this way?

Before we can manage a conflict, we need to examine our own definition of conflict, our beliefs about conflict, and our behaviour during a conflict situation.

The classic Thomas-Kilmann model for Conflict Resolution -which proudly stands the test of time- presents several ways that we can use to respond to conflict, each of which reflects a different attitude toward ourselves, the other party, and the conflict at hand.

Each response focuses our attention either subjectively on the people with whom we are in dispute or objectively on achieving a goal or result. As a consequence, when we are in conflict, we are likely to adopt one of the following five responses or styles: Avoiding, Accommodating, Competing, Collaborating, and Compromising.

But this article is not about the Thomas-Kilmann model, which you all may be well familiar with. Today, we would like to illustrate these different approaches to conflict resolution through the lens of some Hollywood classics.

So sit down, grab your popcorn and a glass of your favourite drink and enjoy…

Indiana Jones – Raiders of Lost Ark

A perfect example of when to use the competitive style.

The famous “sword vs gun” scene at the market is among the top 10 favourite moments of any Indiana Jones’ fan. Indiana/Harrison is outnumbered in a fight that takes place in a market. His girlfriend has been kidnapped by the “villains”, and he needs to move fast. In the middle of this fight, Indi finds himself suddenly facing a menacing opponent waving a huge sword…

According to Thomas-Kilmann, the competing style is particularly indicated in situations when quick, decisive action is vital — for example, in an emergency, or when you need to protect yourself from people who take advantage of non-competitive behaviour. Well… enough said!

For those of you who may not have seen the movie -is there anyone, really, on this planet who has not seen this movie?-, we will not do a spoiler.

Twelve angry men

In this Hollywood classic, eleven jury members are convinced that the 18-year old defendant is guilty of murder, and only one juror, the role played by Henry Fonda, believes that there is a reasonable doubt, that there should be some discussion before a verdict is made. This is the trigger factor for a conflict that increases in intensity as the personalities of the men emerge.

Thomas-Kilmann recommends the use of the avoiding style in situations when we need time to let people cool down, or when gathering more information outweighs the advantages of an immediate decision. In a persuasive and persistent manner, this is what Henry Fonda masterfully manages to achieve.

If you have not seen this classic, go look for it immediately!

Casablanca, a classic among the classics

One of the reasons for accommodating or giving in to conflict is when the issue is much more important to others than it is to you. This and only this is the reason why Ilsa/Ingrid, in the famous end of Casablanca, leaves the love of her life, Rick/Humphrey, to follow her husband Victor Laszlo and support his cause in WWII.

No matter how many times you’ve seen the movie, you still hope that at the last minute Ilsa will change her mind and stay with Rick in Casablanca.

And if you have not seen Casablanca… What can we say… You’ll always have Paris!

The Godfather

Or when collaborating and/or compromising is the only possible way to resolve a conflict and achieve your objectives.

This famous film series presents the story of the Godfather “Don” Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) -head of the Corleone mafia family in New York, and a major figure in American organized crime- and his youngest son and successor Michael Corleone (Al Pacino). But other powerful and rival mafia families also want to sell drugs and “get a piece of the cake”.

The constant treacherous fight among the families is causing not only a lot of bloodshed but also significant losses in benefits.

Perhaps one of the most famous scenes is the meeting of the five families, where a compromise is reached in yet another attempt to find a solution to the never-ending conflict.

And we will not reveal the plot… Let’s just say that this scene happens in Part 1, and there are two more movies…

This “Hollywood classics trivia tour” shows us how each conflict style can be useful for dealing with conflict in certain situations. There will be times when the most effective approach is to walk away or to surrender. There will also be times when there is no alternative other than aggression. However, it is clear that the best and most satisfying results are produced by responding with collaboration… Unless your opponent belongs to the mafia, of course, and then… You may want to write the script for The Godfather 4.

One of the greatest challenges for any organization is the recruitment and selection process. That marks the first step in what can become a fruitful relationship or a true nightmare. The real issue is that until recently candidates were evaluated solely on their knowledge, skills, experience and in some case – personality. That is all very well and relevant of course.

The question is, is that enough to guarantee a successful fit?

That is why more and more companies are beginning to introduce Emotional Intelligence tools alongside other assessments in their recruitment process.

You may be wondering, why is that? Let’s consider some key reasons.

1. Published psychometric studies have shown that scores on the GENOS assessment for selection correlate with important workplace dimensions. The higher people score on the GENOS scales, the higher they tend to score on assessments that measure:
   • Workplace performance
   • Leadership effectiveness
   • Sales and customer services
   • Resilience
   • Teamwork
   • Engagement
2. Research shows that IQ is responsible for about 20 to 25% of the variation of typical performance in any job. Personality is responsible for about 10 to 15%. Emotional Intelligence for about 20 to 30% (Source: GENOS). For organizations, it means that no single assessment per se is sufficient to predict the performance of an employee. A set of assessments is needed for hiring managers and stakeholders to gain all the information they need to make a decision.
3. It is worth recalling the results of the survey carried out by the World Economic Forum in 2016 that brought to the conclusion that EI was to be considered by leading global employers to be one of the top skills leaders and workers will be needing. The new report that has been issued recently confirms that Emotional Intelligence related skills are among the top 10 of 2025.
4. 2020, and the unprecedented sanitary emergency that had a heavy impact on everyone in the world, made us realise that resilience is now an Emotional Intelligence skill that cannot be overlooked. It may be interesting for recruiters to understand where their candidates stand concerning that particular quality especially if they are a fast-changing organization. People that in EI assessments are high on resilience are less stressed and more capable of facing challenges. More resilient leaders tend to create a more positive climate and a mentally healthy workplace.
5. Finally, a very interesting piece of research worth considering is one that focused on leadership gaps. It reported that all gaps had one aspect in common: they were all related to interpersonal effectiveness and emotional intelligence. Researchers underlined that these gaps did not include other factors like business insight, financial acumen, strategic mindset, managing execution or driving results. They were all on the softer side of leadership competence. (Source: The Business Journals)

Whether you are an HR manager, a hiring manager or an external consultant, GENOS has developed an Emotional Intelligence assessment for recruitment that can support you in the screening process.

To this end, GENOS has developed a Model based on 7 scales. In this Model, each dimension is measured against 10 emotionally intelligent workplace behaviours. Responses are then compared to a sample population of almost 5000 respondents and benchmarked accordingly.

EI Practitioners will notice that there is one additional competency of the Model used by GENOS in development assessments.

• Emotional Self-awareness is the skill of perceiving and understanding one’s own emotions.
• Emotional awareness of others is the skill of perceiving and understanding others’ emotions.
• Emotional expression is the skill of expressing one’s own emotions effectively.
• Emotional reasoning is the skill of utilising emotional information in decision-making.
• Emotional self-management is the skill of effectively managing one’s own emotions.
• Emotional management of others is the skill of influencing the moods and emotions of others.
• Emotional self-control is the skill of effectively controlling strong emotions.

A real asset of this assessment are the validity indices that are aimed at ensuring the accuracy of responses. 12 items among those presented respondents with detect 3 areas:

• Inflation – that provides insight into whether the candidate tends to have an overly inflated view of their ability.
• Manipulation – indicates any conscious attempt to misrepresent their responses to achieve more desirable scores.
• Inconsistency – that allows the system to evaluate whether the candidate responded to similar items in a consistent fashion.

Besides, respondents are being timed. To complete the assessment 12 to 15 minutes are sufficient. The time limit is 30 minutes. If a candidate takes such amount of additional time, it may mean that they were doing a web search or asked for help to respond more desirably. That data is provided to the hiring manager / stakeholder who can decide how to evaluate that information.

The assessment produces a report that is not for the candidate but only for the hiring manager/stakeholder. It is a rich document that gives data on how the candidate scored on each of the 7 EI scales, how the person is likely to behave in the workplace, and how they could develop on each of the competencies.

The GENOS EI Selection report:

• Not for the Individual
• Should be used by the “Hiring stakeholder”
• Overviews (model, process)
• Scores:
  • Summary for each skill (3 lowest scoring items)
• Interview
  • Questions
  • Scoring
  • Summary

The Report also offers an important section on guiding the hiring manager/stakeholder through the interview with the candidate to gain more qualitative information on their scores.
Each scale has 6 interview questions and a scoring key to calculate if the candidate high or low results on each dimension. Of course, it is up to the hiring stakeholder to decide which dimensions to explore during the interview. What is really important is to ask the questions in the sequence presented in the Report. The reason is that the questions have been assembled according to a precise model – Mindset/Toolset/Skillset.

• Mindset – two questions explore the knowledge the candidate has of that scale, what they understand of it
• Toolset – two questions look at what the person has done to put that scale into practice
• Skillset – two questions look at what skills the candidate has developed and what outcomes can they speak of having generated

The Report ends with an Interview scoring summary of all the scales, and a Candidate evaluation summary where the person’s strengths and development areas, as well as the areas they may require further probing, can be noted down.

This new GENOS assessment can really help in making the best hiring decisions.

Organizations cannot afford to overlook Emotional Intelligence during the hiring process nowadays. GENOS assessment provides the information that is needed to make the best possible decision, alongside other tools.

Please, contact our team of EI experts for further information and to support you with your next recruitment process.

Learning and Development

GENOS Emotional Intelligence Certification – Virtual classroom – This programme is designed to train participants to the GENOS EI assessment tools applied to leaders and the workplace. If you are interested in learning how to administer and debrief GENOS assessment questionnaires both for leaders and the workplace (Self, 180, 360), join us in the next programme that will be delivered by PeopleSmart in Paris in March 2021.
This training will be delivered in French.
The training is available also in English and other languages – on demand.

Exploring EI – Virtual classroom – To help you understand the principles of the Science of Emotions, the fundamentals of EI behaviours and the core EI dimensions – On-demand

Leading with Emotional intelligence – Series of 6 virtual classrooms – To help you explore all the key competencies that can make you an Emotional Intelligent leader, using your EI in your leadership of people – On-demand

We often fail to consider what role we ourselves play in the difficult relationship. If you’re having trouble with someone, first put the focus on yourself and consider what you can do to transform the relationship. Consciously reflect and take a look at the judgements and opinions you have that are blocking progress in the relationship.

If we think the problem lies outside ourselves it’s easy to blame and finger point and typically try to change the other person which of course leads to them resisting, digging their heels in and causing further issues.

Alternatively, we avoid engaging with that person and fall into the ‘victim’ mode. This can lead to passive-aggressive behavior which is inauthentic and helps neither party.

Another, often unseen, danger is our tendency to ‘fix’ or ‘box’ people in a certain frame. Once we’ve decided what the difficult person is like, their intentions, their faults and so on, we only see them out of that lens we’ve created and behave accordingly. And nothing changes. This does not allow the person to move out of that box. And at the same time, it does not allow us to understand the multifaceted person in front of us and explore other possibilities for the relationship. It is amazing how by scratching beneath the surface one can find out things about the other person that can completely transform the way we view her or him. Information is key. It is all too easy to dismiss people without giving yourself and them a chance to see what’s ‘behind the curtain’.

Over the years I have used real, authentic storytelling to resolve conflict and build trust in dysfunctional teams. It’s a simple technique but when individuals share their personal stories with the team it can help team members see each other in a completely different light. You get to know team colleagues on a more personal level. This connects people and opens channels for the difficulties to be resolved.

Now here’s a radical idea: you could take the higher ground! Remember difficult people are human! Don’t demonize them. Rise above. You may be able to help them. Yes, instead of ‘canceling their vote’ or bringing them around to your way of thinking, consider that maybe they have bigger problems than you do? Who knows what stresses and issues your ‘difficult person’ is experiencing in their personal lives? What pain are they suffering? There are many factors that cause ‘difficult’ behavior.

And this leads me to the core of how best to deal with difficult people. If you genuinely care about others and their well being, are compassionate and lead from the heart, you will want to learn and employ all the good tools out there, like DISC, MBTI and the whole array of Emotional Intelligence skills, to excel at the ‘how to’s’ that are much more powerful when underpinned by a desire to explore and discover the best in other people.

This takes seeing beyond aberrant behavior, or behavior you don’t like, and connecting with who that person really is behind their pain, hostility or inauthenticity. It requires moving beyond your own desire to triumph in battle. It means letting go of your own self-interest and being willing to discover the good in that other person.

And of course, as I mention in the sub-title, we need to be willing to take an honest look at ourselves to explore how ‘difficult’ we are being in the ‘difficult relationship. One has to be willing to do the inner work on ourselves to explore what aspects of oneself are contributing to or causing the problems

I’ll finish with a short story to illustrate the points I’ve made:

As a young man I used to work with criminalized Jamaican youth in South London. Michael Smith was an extremely troubled young man. I warned him I would have to ban him from the community center if he pulled a knife on a younger kid again. He did and, despite my fear of the knife, a physical struggle ensued. I managed to get him off the premises while all the time he was shouting at me “You white Natzi!!” and so on. As he walked out and up the road, continuing to curse me, I was shouting back at him “I love you!! You ____ idiot I love you!!” I didn’t argue or defend my position or verbally accuse and attack him.

A day later he appeared at my office door with a big smile on his face and said “I’m sorry man, I want to help you build this place.” He reached his hand out and I shook it. The power of love can transform even the most difficult relationships.

Deep down I knew he was a good kid. And even when he was threatening me, I was coming from that place I mentioned earlier. I rose above the personal, including my own safety, and asserted my truth. If I was someone else who didn’t know that his parents had left him with his grandmother in Jamaica years before and that he had jumped into her grave when she died, I would probably not have understood his pain and need to be loved.

You can take the lessons from this example, and the other points I’ve raised in this article, and apply them to all those people you find difficult, in work and life in general, and do your best to discover the person behind the veneer so you can build a channel for resolution.