Category: Articles

What does ‘life balance’ mean to you?

The definition of ‘life balance’ is entirely personal – it is founded on each individual’s values, experiences and relationships; shaped by their current situation, their hopes and aspirations and strengthened by their feelings of stability, confidence and optimism.

Now could be the ideal time to take stock. A great starting point is to get an understanding of what it is you hold to be fundamentally important. Once you are clear about that, you can work towards establishing firm anchor points and make some decisions about planning and implementing what you want to achieve as your journey into the future.

• On reflection, were you ‘in balance’ before the Covid-19 pandemic?
• Are you more, or less, ‘in balance’ now? What can you learn from this?
• What will being ‘in balance’ look like for you in the future?

As you begin to explore this, you will realise that there may be some tough decisions to be made, especially if you need to let go of aspects of the past in order to move forward …. and, if you decide that the pain of change is not worth the gain you may choose to adjust your plan or to do nothing. But that is healthy too! Making a positive decision to do nothing means that you can forget about the things that you are not prepared to address and move on to deal with the things that you are.

To achieve life balance, we can trust to luck, leave our destiny in the hands of others in the hope that they will have our best interests at heart, (which experience tells us is possibly not the case!) – or we can take a full part in driving the process – making it more likely that our lives will feel in control and we will feel fulfilled and stress free.

Use ‘The Life Balance Wheel’ below to score where you are under each heading at the moment. If the headings that we have selected aren’t quite right for you – change them!

What do your scores tell you?

• Are you working harder or pursuing some things to the detriment of others?
• Where and how would you most like to adjust your scores? Is that realistic?
• How can you go about doing that? What support will you need? What is the first step? When will you start?

What does ‘life balance’ mean to you?

Being ‘in balance’ is closely linked to having a sense of achievement – the feeling of somehow ‘making progress’. This can be given shape and definition by creating, and then achieving, clear goals. Why not allow yourself some time and space to think through your goals, perhaps using one of the methodologies outlined below?

Goal Setting – Method 1: Using the Life Balance Wheel

Phase 1, Step 1:	Review the scores that you gave yourself in each section of ‘The Life Balance Wheel’
Phase 1, Step 2:	Using a pack of stickies, brainstorm (one idea per sticky) what you would like to achieve under each of the section headings on the wheel. Try to get at least 3 ideas per section.
Phase 1, Step 3:	Divide a large sheet of paper in half, horizontally. Label the top half: ‘Must have goals’ and the bottom half: ‘Nice to have goals’. Transfer your stickies onto the paper, placing them either above or below the line, looking for clusters, sequences and any other links as you go. Add new stickies whenever they seem appropriate and discard those that seem to be less important to you, as you progress the exercise.
Phase 2, Step 1:	On a separate piece of paper, create a timeline stretching between 5 and 10 years ahead – (use whatever scale seems appropriate to you). Transfer your goals one at a time, so that you can see by when you would like to have achieved each one. Notice how they inter-connect and how achieving one, may help or hinder achieving another.

Apply SMART thinking to each goal

SSpecific	Make the words of your goal as specific as possible, basing it on specific actions and definite results. This will make it easier to measure your progress, to re-plan and to measure success.
MMeasurable	Ask yourself: • ‘What will be different as a result of achieving this objective?’ • ‘How will I know that I have achieved it?’ • ‘When will I know that I have achieved it?’ These three questions will enable you to achieve clarity and ensure that relevant success factors are in place.
AAction-orientated	By choosing language carefully and giving an action focus to your goal description (‘To achieve…; To deliver…’), you can also ensure that you focus on being proactive.
RRealistic	The goals that you set must be grounded in reality. They should incorporate reasonable stretch – something that is within the reach of a successful performer, but which will still pull you forward.
TTime-bound	Establish a start date, milestones, review and a finishing date. This is an essential pre-requisite to tracking progress and evaluating performance.

Use the checklist below to check that your goals are well set.

Question:

• Does this goal describe what you want in an accurate way?
• Where are you now in relation to the goal?
• When will you start working on the goal?
• What are the first steps?
• How will you know that you have achieved this goal?
• What will the outcome allow you to do?
• Is it really what you want? Is it achievable?
• What resources will you need?
• Will achieving this goal prevent you from doing anything else?
• What are the things (personal or external) that might stop you from achieving your goal?
• What do you need to do to overcome these obstacles?

Goal Setting – Method 2: Looking Back to Look Forward

The date is 5 years from today. It is June 2025 and you are about to move on from your current job, which you have been doing since 2020.

As it is your last day and as you begin to clear your workspace, think back over the last 5 years – way back to June 2020 and ask yourself:

• What has changed most about the way that I have organised myself overt the last five years?
• What have I contributed to the organisation or to my team? Where have I had most impact?
• What proactive business opportunities have I created or nurtured?
• What is the area of expertise that I am known for?
• What new skills have I learnt?
• What have I done that makes me most proud?
• Who have I worked with to the best effect?
• What are my colleagues likely to say about me when I have left? What is my reputation?
• What have I done to help my colleagues and peers to be successful?

Returning to the present day – how can you set yourself for success and make each of your answers (outlining how things will be in 2025 and which are really a list of aspirations), a reality?

Goal Setting – Method 3: The First 100 Days

Many politicians and business leaders think that their first 100 days in role are really important – so what about your next 100 days at work – or if you have been furloughed, in your first 100 days when you return to work?

Is your world certain and static? Think about your key areas of responsibility and decide what you would like to achieve in each one during these 100 days. In some areas you might simply be enforcing an existing strategy or attempting to use a different style or approach, whilst in others you will have the opportunity to bring about root and branch changes.

Imagine if you took control of your own destiny, what might you be able to achieve in the next 100 days?

The 5th capability in the Genos model of Emotional Intelligence is Self-Management. And the model makes it clear that if you do this well you become Resilient and if not you can become temperamental, buffeted and rocked by circumstances, suffering extremes of emotion and negative feelings as a victim of circumstances rather than choosing to be in control of your own destiny. The opposite of Resilience in the Genos Model is Temperamental and is all about unproductive drama!

Nowadays there are many helpful articles and videos about how to stay resilient in the midst of massive discontinuity in our lives. While a healthy lifestyle, exercise, meditation and good nutrition are all important you still have to choose to actually do these things. Sometimes we are overwhelmed and paralyzed by feelings of despair, depression, sadness, anger, frustration and so on. We become a victim of these feelings and find it difficult to bounce back from adversity. On these occasions a resilient person stays calm and recognizes that they are in the driving seat and in control of how they manage their feelings and negative mindsets. The Buddhists talk about not getting too excited when things go well, and not too upset when they go badly. The way forward is to self-manage yourself with equanimity (A calm mental state, especially after a shock or disappointment or in a difficult situation – Cambridge Univ.) You self-coach yourself into a resilient state.

As an old mentor once said to me decades ago that “The greatest test of the human spirit is to have things go right.” And being resilient when things go ‘wrong’ requires an understanding of the steps to take at any time on any given day. It’s not always easy to recover from a devastating crisis of any kind. But the good news is there is ALWAYS something to be gained from every crisis!

A test of my resilience level came the day the lockdown was first announced and all my exciting engagements in great locations like Sofia, Amsterdam and Paris were cancelled. I fell into a dark despair for twenty four hours until the next day I decided to discover an alternative future scenario to the one my mind had been obsessed with the day before. Instead of only imagining doom and gloom I realized the opportunity this lockdown would afford me. I could launch my podcast series after many months of delay due to ‘other’ commitments. My purpose and vision took over and, with excitement, moved forward letting go of the previous ‘possible future’. In recent times yours might be transforming your garden, finally writing that novel learning to bake bread or spending more time with your children.

In my case I transformed my mindset and therefore my energy. I had a purpose. Through envisioning a positive outcome from a seemingly desperate situation I was able to move through my paralysis and depression.

Have you ever had an awful morning when everything seems to go wrong, nothing flows and you just cannot get into gear and be productive? Of course, you have. We all have! If you’re present to yourself and mindful of your state, maybe frustrated, stressed, cranky, even angry, you can acknowledge your thoughts and feelings and instead of focusing on yourself and your ‘stuckness’ you can direct your attention and energy outwards and move beyond your mind into action. Your state changes, you let go of the previous state and you move on to something better because of a choice you made. Of course, some people choose to remain and even wallow in their pain and misery but that’s another story!

It’s like a sports team that reaches halftime several points down after playing badly. A good manager will facilitate the players to acknowledge the truth of how they played and how they’re feeling, and then, rather than feel sorry for themselves, choose to convert the negative energies and thought forms into a positive force so that they run out at the end of halftime with a different mindset and reality and go on to win the game!

And let’s not forget relatedness as an ingredient of resilience. Others can help you get through too. I was dying in hospital years ago and my friend Joe put his face into mine and shouted “Are you going to die?”. I shouted back “No!” and didn’t! Joe helped me to be resilient by helping me choose to live!

Heroes are good at resiliency. And life itself is always presenting us with opportunities to practice resiliency on a daily basis. Small acts of heroism abound all around us. Do resiliency well and be your own hero! I look back at how I almost died several times, lost all my money and a beautiful house on the Hudson River, suffered kidney failure and countless other periods of loss and misfortune and yet I’ve always got up again and become stronger, wiser and happier by transforming those situations, finding meaning and knowledge in adversity, and having a purpose to guide me through life. That doesn’t make me anybody special. Everyone has their own stories of how they bounced back.

Here’s a collection of suggestions for managing yourself resiliently when crisis hits:

• Be mindful, check your ‘state’ and remember that “this too shall pass”
• Exercise self-compassion
• Be present and let go worrying about hypothetical futures
• Choose to change your mindset (it’s not as ‘set’ as you think!)
• Envision a positive future, fueled by an overriding purpose
• Stay open to possibilities (recognize the opportunities inherent within the crisis)
• Courageously choose to get up and go again, and again, drawing upon your emotional and spiritual fortitude
• Let go and move into action, bypassing the mind to move through the uncomfortable feelings
• Transform the energy of stress, despair, anger and fear and direct that energy outwards
• Be grateful for all that is positive in your life
• Connect with others so you can help each other through
• Feel good and proud of yourself for being so resilient!

The Covid-19 pandemic is delivering us all with a massive amount of uncertainty. Businesses are battling for survival and trying to understand and address what the ‘new normal’ will demand of them and their people. Leaders and team members alike are worried about their jobs, their families and their future.

No doubt, some products and services will be defunct, or are in the process of being usurped by more innovative alternatives. Working patterns will change, commuting and travel will be considered more carefully and many more of us will be working remotely. Finding the physical space, having the right tools, connecting with others, maintaining a balanced family life and managing our own levels of motivation and mental health are all going to be an issue.

Covid-19 has been a catalyst for change. Senior leaders will be going through a process that feels like they are trying to keep the trains running, whilst laying new tracks. It is quite a balancing act and as we all know, during times of turmoil and change what people need is some certainty.

As the world returns to work, we will all need our people to re-adjust. We will need to pave the way to help them to feel they have purpose, know what is expected of them and are able to perform at their best, in a positive environment.

There will be huge value in thinking through how you can help your people to cope with the pressures of this changing world and to have the mindset and behaviours that will build resilience or ‘bounce-back-ability’.

Maybe PeopleSmart can offer some thoughts. People need:

• Clarity – keep your people informed. If the future is difficult and uncertain – tell them so. In any case, they will need to be reassured that their leaders – the people they look to in a crisis – are actually grappling with the challenges and have a plan.
  
  What are you doing about the organisation’s, teams’ and individuals’ short, medium and long-term goals? Can you offer a sense of direction, made up of achievable objectives for everyone – with a clear game plan, setting out the tactics to be used?
• Focus – as they return to work, or as the business landscape becomes clearer, your people will need a constant reminder of current key activities and outcomes. A mix of the short-term / urgent and the long-term / proactive, which will need to be reviewed and refined regularly. You may want them to have several areas of focus: getting back to work in a safe environment; re-connecting with customers and suppliers, re-building or creating new relationships, supporting colleagues, having a can do / will do attitude…
  
  What are the things that it is most important for you to focus them on?
• Encouragement – now is the time for some focused 1:1 Mentoring and Coaching. Encourage all managers to take a proactive lead and to be ‘on-message’. Now, more than ever, they need to get close to their reports and to the wider team. This means more than ‘going through the figures’ or ‘having a chat’ as they may have done previously. It demands care, understanding and real problem-solving skills – helping people to be on-board and ready to contribute to a proactive action plan for change.
  
  Who are you talking with about your business imperatives? How are you getting things straight in your own mind?
• Find some support – now, more than ever, it would be smart for you to find a mentor, a coach or a trusted advisor that you can work with. Who can you talk to? Where and how can you build your network right now?

Learning from sport – a winner mentality

Even in the world of sport, there are reports of athletes losing focus, their sense of self-worth and confidence whilst they cannot do their ‘job’ and are operating in isolation. However, they should know from experience that winners work hard to protect and pace themselves and engage in thorough preparation for what comes next.

• They build robust self-belief, based on their ability to analyse success and to learn from failure, so that they can continually push the margins.
• They give thought and effort to building their support structures (their ‘Team You’ – see over the page), a resource that they can draw upon as support and nourishment through difficult times.
• They take time for real recovery and right now as sports prepare to return to competition, athletes are being encouraged to prepare themselves by working on their levels of physical and mental match fitness.

Self-preservation
There are many great examples of how sports’ people protect themselves – ranging from the Olympic Athletes who take their own food stuffs to major competitions; the rugby players who travel with their own pillows and duvet to ensure a good night sleep and the boxers who live on ‘competition time’ in the days before an important bout in a different time zone. All of these performers are focused on detailed preparation, in a way that most of the rest of us are not.

What can you do to challenge historical or cultural norms and help to give your team an ‘edge’, so that they can ‘hit the ground running’?

Creating ‘bounce-backability’

Building your own ‘Team You’ – allowing others to build theirs

The ‘new normal’ will demand that people have a real work / life balance – taking each part of their life and combining in such a way that it becomes a component of a healthy eco-system, that energises, refreshes and allows them to grow. ‘Team You’ can help with this. It is made up of all those people who have the potential to be able and willing to influence and support your success – your boss, mentor, network, colleagues, community, family and friends. Getting them ‘on side’ and letting them help whenever and wherever they can is seriously smart.

Right now, many of us will be realising just how important a support network actually is. Some of us may even have come to understand that personally, we should have invested more time in it before the pandemic hit. As managers, we might also ask whether previously we have respected our colleagues’ time and space and their need to re-new sufficiently – or have we allowed ‘the needs of the business’ to put them under pressure to the detriment of their ability to build or maintain those support structures which are so important to carry them through this difficult period?

What more can you do now and in the future to build your potential ‘Team You’ and get it to want to bother to support you during your difficult times? How can you help others to build and nurture their own ‘Team You’?

Learn from the past. Live in the present. Plan for the future.

It is a mistake to think that around the world, as lockdown ends and social distancing restrictions are eased, we will simply go back to the way things were before. Up until now many businesses, individuals and organisations have used their historical success as an excuse not to change what they do or how they do it. In times such as these, their arrogance and complacency are likely to be found out. As some fall by the wayside, many businesses will be seen to have been successful historically, in spite of the way that they have been run in the good times – not because of it!

Top Tips:

• Encourage your people to understand the importance of building their personal resilience.
• As they return to work, encourage them to take breaks and exercise. Encourage them to think about exercise, their diet and rehydration, the ways they can support their colleagues, their work-life balance and how they can develop their own ‘Team You.’
• Encourage (and reward) positivity. Help colleagues to understand how they can add energy and build a success culture in your business by becoming a ‘zapper’ rather than a ‘sapper’ of energy.
• Take your own medicine and role model the behaviours that will lead to success.

The fourth dimension in the six dimensional Genos model of Emotional Intelligence is Emotional Reasoning.

We are making decisions every moment of every day in our personal and business lives. And some of those decisions are massively significant and affect many other people. So it’s obvious that we need to be wise about what elements we use in our decision making. Especially now when it’s more vital than ever that we understand how decisions affect peoples’ feelings.

Emotions, feelings and body sensations, are data from our bodies. This data is valuable information that needs to be taken into account if we want to make good decisions.

Reasoning on its own is a purely mental activity and tends to be logical, rational, and based on facts and beliefs, judgments and opinions. But using only reason in decision making without the emotional data can be dangerous.

For example, right now business leaders are facing tough decisions. Some are reacting out of pure survival, fear and panic and they’re making knee jerk reactive decisions and laying off people without carefully thinking through the consequences.

Others are sitting down with their colleagues and figuring out ways to keep their staff on board and their businesses running. I posted a Times article on LinkedIn the other day about Simon Rogan, the owner of Michelin starred L’Enclume restaurant in the Lake District of England. He is continuing to pay his lowest paid workers in full while he and his senior colleagues are taking zero income. That’s generous and brave and undoubtedly he will be remembered by the local community in the future as a kind, caring man who looked after people in a time of crisis. That will be good for his brand and, when you think about it, is also logically the best way forward to preserve his business and maintain his loyal staff.

Conversely we hear about business leaders who give open communication short shrift and peremptorily dismiss their staff without fully explaining the rationale or showing them empathy as they are thrown into the despair of impecunity. These leaders will also be remembered for that and their brands will suffer.

So Emotional Reasoning is about thinking about the impact your decision will have on peoples’ feelings before taking action. Of course logic must play a part too; the best decisions are made with both reason and feelings considered.

In the current environment, people are often defaulting to reaction versus response. This is where Emotional Reasoning has an inner aspect as well as an outer application. When we’re scared and panicked we can make quick decisions that aren’t necessarily the right ones. This is where Self Awareness and Self Management is needed. For example, the emotional data tells you that you’re scared but ideally you can stop yourself being impulsive and bring in some reason to provide a balanced action or decision. This is responding versus reacting.

So the balance between the head and the heart is ideal but also beware of the danger of erring too much on the side of feelings and emotions in your decision making.

Years ago I formed a business partnership with a lovely, professorial guy on the basis of liking each other’s company! The first year we went gangbusters and at the end of the second year we gave it all up. In retrospect feeling good about being in each other’s company was NOT a good enough reason to become business partners! What we failed to factor in from the outset was that we were both Fs on the Myers Briggs scale of T and F – Thinking and Feeling. To make it work we should have had a third partner who made decisions based more on logic and reason. Sadly we found this out too late and to our great (literal) cost!

In summary, in the language of the GenosModel, expansive decisions combine feelings and facts. Limited decisions are ones that are based purely on the facts and logic. Your decisions will either create teamwork, connection and community or they will alienate depending upon the degree to which you incorporate feeling data.

Ultimately feelings come from the heart, thoughts and ideas from the head. What we need at this time especially, are leaders whose decisions, in addition to facts, figures and logic, incorporate compassion, empathy and love.

PeopleSmart provides innovative learning solutions to organizations in many countries, cultures and languages, focusing on leadership and people development in the context of digital transformation, change management, culture change and the increasing need for Emotional Intelligence.

Common language can be very revealing under closer scrutiny. For example the ancient Greek word ‘krisis’ means a choice point. It’s a moment when one can go one way or another. And, in the context of the state of the world now, it’s an opportunity to grow or recede.

At times like these we can easily default to survival mode, focusing only on ourselves and how we can ‘get through’ this. May I suggest we all should be striving to ‘give through’ this harrowing experience? Getting is all about getting enough provisions in to hunker down comfortably, about making sure our jobs and income are maintained. Fair enough, and an understandable reaction to the current crisis. Giving may not come so easily. Giving can defy logic when your back is against the wall. The last thing you want to do is be over? generous when you’re up against it.

Leaders everywhere now are faced with this choice. More than ever we all need each other and the organizations that will fare better are those whose leadership boldly encourages a culture of giving in which the leadership gives as much as takes from their employees. Strong human relationships and connections are the ‘invisible Superglue’ that are essential to weather storms as well as be successful. So it’s the leaders’ responsibility to exercise their emotional and social skills to reach out to their people and maintain connectivity. This outreach must be prioritized.

When you’re sitting in your home office spending all day on Zoom calls with your CFO trying to figure out how to cut costs are you also cognizant of the need, sooner rather than later, to reach out to your direct report who’s struggling mightily with her supply chain issues in another remote part of the world? You probably are but it’s all too easy to put off making that five minute call that will help her feel connected and supported.

This is where a high degree of Emotional Intelligence can give you the edge.

Emotional Intelligence is about caring. It stems from the heart and how you feel. The more you care about other people and are in service to others, rather than service to yourself, the more likely it is that you will want this heart driven impulse to inform your daily behavior.

So going back to the leader’s choice. The choice is to either give yourself generously to your team despite your understandable fears and self-concerns. Whether you’re more cerebrally oriented than feeling based, or you’re naturally introverted rather than gregarious and outgoing, it’s your choice to communicate in ways that support others and build esprit de corps. Or not.

In the Genos Model of Emotional Intelligence the first and sine qua non dimension is Self-Awareness. When you’re sitting in your ‘office’ be conscious of those that need you. If necessary, wrench yourself away from the work you’re doing and make a supreme effort to schedule a Zoom call or simply in the moment get on the phone to find out how your team member in Spain is doing. Be aware of when you’re avoiding doing this and the thoughts and feelings that comprise your resistance to communicating. And then do it anyway!

The second dimension of the EI model is Awareness of Others: at the extremes Empathy as opposed to Insensitivity. Empathy is obviously a crucial tool in the leader’s toolkit. The current pain of change and loss (apply to loved ones, business, money, jobs as appropriate) can create a softening of the heart, a vulnerability and an openness that can trigger you to be more empathetic and compassionate. These are qualities that are vital to keep teams, organizations and colleagues united to better deal with the challenges we face.

The third in the Genos Model is Authenticity. As a leader being authentic engenders trust. Trust gives people a sense of security and comfort knowing that it’s OK to be real too, to be open about your feelings, to know you’re not alone and you’re all in it together. When you are on a call with your team be willing to share yourself as a person not just as an executive or business person. In the last few weeks, my Zoom conversations with other business people all over Europe have been more personal and energizing because the stiff barriers that often hold people in place in the corporate world seem to fall and the conversations become much more authentic and satisfying.

Years ago I formed a business partnership with a lovely, professorial guy on the basis of liking each other’s company! The first year we went gangbusters and at the end of the second year we gave it all up. In retrospect feeling good about being in each other’s company was NOT a good enough reason to become business partners! What we failed to factor in from the outset was that we were both Fs on the Myers Briggs scale of T and F – Thinking and Feeling. To make it work we should have had a third partner who made decisions based more on logic and reason. Sadly we found this out too late and to our great (literal) cost!

Tips and reminders:

• Be self-aware. Check you’re looking out with a wide angle lens and not tunnel vision
• Be aware of others. Have a mindset of “What can I give my colleagues” and What help might they need right now?”
• Ask questions that involve and include them which show you genuinely care
• Stay calm and do more listening than talking
• Be sure to respond not react and, without being fake, choose to communicate skillfully with appropriate tones of voice, facial demeanors, and energy levels
• Keep a list of people to hand to remind yourself to stay in touch with them

If you’re not already doing this already, schedule regular weekly virtual gatherings with your colleagues to share stories, lessons learned, fun and humour!

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SUMMARY

An old friend of mine, who is either Chairman or Board Member of a number of companies, the other day told a mutual friend that he’s noticed a split between half ‘his’ companies responding brilliantly to the current emergency, being generous with how they deal with staff and their salaries, planning director pay cuts and other concessions, and the other half are simply reacting without the EI wisdom and context I’ve been talking about in this article. They will be remembered for that and it will hurt them in the long run. Half of these companies are good examples of a ‘giving culture’ and the other half are not.

As a Leader you always have a choice about how you respond in any given moment, in any given day, in any given ‘krisis’. What choices are you going to make? Where are you on the spectrum from service to self to service to others?

Dear Genos E.I Practitioners,

We hope you had a great start into the New Year. We wish you all to discover, grow and spread light in your work and in your life. Happy 2020!

With this in mind, our focus in this first EI Newsletter this year, is Selfawareness, the fundamental EI competency. We will share with you an article written by one of our best coaches and a very interesting Case-study. Then, some exciting news on our next trainings on EI.

Happy reading!

The article we would like to highlight this time focuses on the first and foremost EI competency, Self-awareness. This choice of words is deliberate as, to be able to demonstrate all the other EI competencies, we need to develop higher levels of Self-awareness in all aspects of our life and work. Think of Self-awareness as the starting point of all Emotional Intelligent behaviours. In fact, I really like the title of Michael Bank’s article: A great leader’s primary responsibility: to be self-aware. It is a responsibility indeed!

Here follows an expert. Should you wish to read the whole article, please visit Michael Banks’ LinkedIn Page here.

“The foundation stone and ‘sine qua non’ of Emotional Intelligence is Self-Awareness. It is the basis of great leadership. The kind of leadership that creates a safe environment in which people can freely express themselves, learn together and achieve amazing things. The kind of leadership that inspires commitment, loyalty and love. Leadership that engages employees at all levels.

Let’s explore how self-awareness leads to this kind of leadership.

The practice of Mindfulness is popular these days and is about developing the capacity to observe one’s feelings and thoughts as they flow one’s present reality. However, being mindful and self-aware is a state of being not doing.

How can we apply self-awareness in a very practical behavioural way to leadership? What skills related to self-awareness can be effectively employed in organizational life?

The key is to be ‘present’ at any time and in any place, whatever you’re doing. Pay attention in the moment to the feelings you experience in your body, the emotions, body sensations and the thoughts and judgements that are passing through your mind.

Greater self-awareness has practical ramifications in organizational life. If your desire as a leader is to enrol your people in collaborating to create a learning environment it’s important to be aware of the thoughts and feelings that may trigger you to cause negative outcomes. Stress can lead to poor communication behaviours, unless you are self-aware enough to know how it’s affecting you and how it can bleed out into the way you speak to others around you. Then you can manage yourself accordingly.

Apart from being present and mindful, feedback is the most important way in which one can develop self-awareness. A very senior executive at a global bank had a reputation for being a cold, insensitive bully and, criminally, none of her managers had ever given her feedback about her impact. Her behaviour was causing massive organizational problems affecting thousands of employees. She spent a very shocking and painful day listening to the verbatim feedback comments of colleagues around her. After this transformational experience her PA, who she reduced to tears on a regular basis, called me to ask what magic I had used to change her. She had gone into the office the day after the feedback session and the executive had hugged her and apologized for all the hurt, she had caused. And the culture of polarizing fear and breakdowns in communication across divisions began to disappear to the benefit of the whole global division of the bank. No magic: just powerful feedback had caused this shift in self-awareness.

Of course, these are extreme examples of feedback and a learning organization is one in which giving and receiving feedback on a regular basis is encouraged from the top down to engender learning and growth.

The leader sets the tone for a feedback rich culture and his/her job is to minimize fear. Co-creation and collaboration throughout the organization only occurs when you can trust that it’s OK to admit mistakes, as well as take up unpopular positions, criticize ideas, policies and strategies held by others especially senior leaders. This requires the leader to be aware of his or her own defensiveness, insecurity and so on and welcome feedback instead of suppressing and punishing. A leader who is self-aware and employs that awareness effectively in service of his or her organization tends to be compassionate, empathetic, humble, authentic and can laugh at themselves. This endears him or her to people and inspires them to give of their best.

A high degree of self-awareness in leaders can make a massive difference to organizational culture and performance.”

In preparing to write this article I asked my partner Karin what the word authenticity meant to her and the first thing she said was “Being true to yourself”. I then looked up various dictionary definitions and found the following: “The quality of being real or true” (Cambridge University), “Sincere and authentic with no pretensions” (Merriam Webster) and “The quality or state of being authentic; reliability; genuineness.” (Collins).

Authenticity also happens to be one of my three core values in life. It is the third skill in the GENOS Model of Emotional Intelligence. And as Laura Vanderkam wrote recently in Fast Company, “It’s a hot word in leadership discussions these days.” And it should be! In these times of media and political disingenuity and manipulation are not people desperate to be led by leaders who are authentic?

So what’s it like being around someone who’s authentic? Typically you feel refreshed, excited, energized and alive! This is because the energy of that person is clean and relatively uncluttered. By this I mean that she or he is not efforting to impress, to get your approval, to control you and so on. There’s no ‘agenda’ so you don’t feel manipulated, or only given a certain degree of truth and openness. And you feel comfortable to be more yourself in that person’s presence. That leader’s authenticity is giving you permission to liberate yourself and be free too. You resonate to it: there’s a relief in not having to be anything other than true to yourself and others

As we know in business, as in life, trust is crucial. And it’s a lot easier to trust someone who is authentic than someone who is holding back or not being open and straightforward.

So if you’re in a leadership role you will generate trust, loyalty and commitment if you exhibit these characteristics. You will create an environment of minimal fear and distrust that enables people to blossom and give of their best because you are being an exemplar of authenticity.

What is it about authentic leaders that makes them so attractive and magnetic? They set the standard for inspiration, charisma, trust and self-realization. We admire them and are drawn to them. We want to be around them and feel most alive when we are. They do not spend their time using up a lot of their energy in NOT being themselves; instead they maximize their energy in being effective without being held back by trying to do ‘the right thing’ or being false or fake.

All great so far. But being authentic is not about giving yourself licence to ‘be real’ without consideration for the feelings of others. Simply venting or expressing anger because you’re being authentic doesn’t necessarily lead to positive results. The key is to be ‘Skillfully Authentic’. We all know people who are authentically wild and eccentric but that doesn’t usually lead to success in the boardroom or client meeting! You need to be appropriate to each situation and make wise decisions about how you manifest your truth.

When it comes to the behaviors associated with authenticity and how they relate to the corporate world the GENOS six part model of Emotional Intelligence is particularly instructive. The third skill in the GENOS wheel is Authenticity which “Is about openly and effectively expressing oneself, honoring commitments and encouraging this behavior in others. It involves honestly expressing specific feelings at work, such as happiness and frustration, providing feedback to colleagues about the way you feel, and sharing emotions at the right time, to the right degree, and to the right people. People high in authenticity are often described as “genuine’ whereas people low in this skill are often described as ‘untrustworthy’.”

People say “But surely if you’re tailoring your communication to your audience you’re not being authentic”. Not so. If you accept that the primary definition of authenticity is to be true to yourself then you can know your truth and then make choices about what to do with that truth. If your intentions are good and you’re being genuine to yourself then you’re being skillfully authentic in the best sense – choosing actions and communication that are designed to achieve the best possible outcome for everyone involved.

The heart of authenticity is being true to yourself and then expressing that externally to the world in a skillful and constructive way.

Given that authenticity is such a key attribute of great leadership why do so many struggle to be that way? And how can one be more authentic?

I’m afraid there’s no magic bullet. It can take years to become confident enough in yourself to be your authentic self. Many report that as they grow older they care less about what others think of them. They start relaxing and letting go of their youthful attempts to impress, appear strong, gain approval, manipulate their way to success and countless other strategies that are borne out of insecurity and fear.

But if you apply yourself you can accelerate authenticity and become a better leader.

Here are some tips:

• Acknowledge your truth to yourself. This requires constant practice and vigilance but the reward is that you become more genuine towards others.
• Be conscious of your own tendency to self deceive; notice the tricks your mind plays on you.
• Be conscious of your truth and how you sometimes avoid acting on it.
• Be courageous about expressing your truth.
• And remember, don’t try to be like anyone else!

Stress can run high in the workplace. As managers you need to develop your self-awareness, understand and deal with your own stress and emotions so as not to impact negatively on your team. And not only that, you need to be able to recognize and deal also with your team’s stress. In a way, it is a circular process. The GENOS Model of Emotional Intelligence clearly helps making sense of this connection involving three fundamental EI competencies:Self-awareness, Self-management, and Awareness of others.

By being self-aware you become present and therefore able to manage your own mood and feelings. That will help you impact positively on others by noticing them and their feelings, and thus being able to understand if they need help to deal with pressure.

Here are the strategies suggested by the author.

1. CHUNKING INFORMATION

Chunking helps employees break down the overwhelm they are experiencing. This process involves breaking down information into smaller units that are easier to process. Having more manageable chunks of information can reduce the cognitive load.

For example, if a teammate is falling behind or producing low-quality work, pull him or her aside for a private meeting that brings up every day work pressures. Help this individual see that he or she might be trying to do too many things at once.

A senior executive once approached me because she felt like a bad mother and an inferior worker, but she didn’t want to give up either role. She said that work overwhelmed her, and she took this stress home with her. However, when she learned how to chunk tasks, she felt less burdened. Her brain, rather than sounding an alarm that she needed to complete a massive project, was much calmer. She knew that she only needed to address a chunk of it in a given time frame.

2. IGNORING MENTAL CHATTER

We all need to learn to ignore mental chatter. This requires an understanding of how to be mindful. Mindfulness helps the brain control emotional overwhelm. When someone is overthinking, the brain overheats, and being mindful helps it cool down.

Encourage teammates to set aside 5 to 15 minutes each day to close their eyes, attend to their breathing, and practice bringing their attention back to each breath every time their mind wanders. While this can be challenging at first, the exercise will bring serenity to overactive mental chatter.

3. CHECKING IN WITH REALITY

A reality check requires us to analyse using self-talk. When we face bad news or an aggressive deadline, it is easy to feel as though the situation is going to last forever.

If a team member is going through a stressful situation, encourage them to bring themselves back down to Earth with positive reality-check statements, such as “This too shall pass.” Third-person language can make this more efficient. Sure, this might seem silly at first, but taking the time to pause and recalibrate is much better than allowing the overwhelm to grow

4. ACKNOWLEDGING WHAT YOU CAN CONTROL

The control step is similar to a serenity prayer. It leans on knowing what can and cannot be controlled, which can ultimately improve well-being. To implement this in the workplace, learning to say “no” to energy wasters is just as important as saying “yes” to critical tasks. For this step, motivate yourself and others to ask, “How can I let go of things that I cannot control or things that waste my energy?” One approach to find such answers is asking what one would advise someone else to do in the current situation. This sense of objectivity can jog thought processes to come up with solutions outside of the current restrictive mindset.

5. SHIFTING YOUR ATTENTION

Attention implies that individuals must learn how to become unstuck from problems and seek solutions instead. When we are anxious, it’s natural to ruminate on things. However, it is possible to learn how to disengage from the worry. One way to do this is to designate worry-free times each day and encourage others to do the same. Even taking just 30 minutes to go out for a walk helps us be in a more solution-forward mind-set. This step allows us to unwind and, in turn, clear our minds of thoughts that influence analysis paralysis.

As a leader, you can follow these five steps and strive to nip employee overwhelm in the bud. Leading your employees through this process will not only help them better manage overwhelm in their lives. It will also free their minds, strengthen their valuable emotional skills, and improve your company.Disclaimer: the original article was written by Srini Pillay, MD and issued on FastCompany online. The version here has been adapted by PeopleSmart’s in-house EI Practitioners and Coaches.

People who seem to be unaware of other people and their needs. People who put their feet in their mouths and make tactless comments. Or people that when you say “I’m not feeling too good today” completely ignore this and quickly move on to another topic. How do these behaviors make you feel? Annoyed, upset, angry, even contemptuous at the levels of ignorance displayed.

Conversely, what about those people you warm to, who make you feel good about yourself, who are easily accessible and enjoyable to engage with? What is it about these kinds of people that creates these feelings in others?

In the GENOS International model of Emotional Intelligence after the competency of Self Awareness comes Awareness of Others. Here, on one end of the spectrum is Insensitivity and on the other is Empathy.

Let’s explore the roots of these differences and how you can move from insensitivity to empathy.

If you notice the times when you are oblivious to other people’s feelings you will notice also that you’re spending too much time in your head. By that I mean you’re being overly self-absorbed. It’s hard to appreciate what’s going on with other people when you’re in this state. I’m sure you know people who tend to talk a lot about themselves and their problems. What they say is often about everything that’s wrong with themselves, or sometimes everything that’s ‘great’ about themselves! Either way this is self-absorption in action and not conducive to good relations.

The key to increasing your perceptive capabilities is to choose to put your attention on others and what’s going on around you. This means directing your energy outwards and not inwards. It is a choice. And this is how to listen well. If you find yourself wandering off into your own world of thoughts you can bring yourself back into the moment. Again, you choose to do this. Of course you have to be aware enough to catch yourself in the moment and make that decision to re-engage with the ‘outside’ world. Performers do this. They literally bypass their minds and all the clutter it holds and project their energy outwards.

If you’ve ever done public speaking you know what happens when you worry about what people think of you. You lose connection with the audience. And fail to give of your best. This is because you’re ‘in your head’.

My first job after I left the very ‘heady’ and theoretical world of university was to work on an Adventure Playground in Peckham, South London. The manager there, Willie, had left school when he was 15 and had no formal qualifications. But he was very street savvy and I was really jealous of his ability to ‘read’ people. He was so perceptive: the opposite to me! Then, when I was 25, I had the good fortune to be given the opportunity to bust through the self-absorption borne of years of isolation in a cruel boarding school and four years in academia. Suddenly I was on a par with Willie. I had discovered the ability to go beyond my mind and reach out to better understand others and the world in general.

When sports people talk of being ‘in the zone’ they are referring to what the National Academy of Sports Medicine defines as “complete absorption in the activity, merge of action and awareness, loss of self-consciousness”.

In other words your attention is focused 100% on the ball, the game, your teammates and not on you! In a sense you are everything around you. That’s why Stefan Curry of the Golden State Warriors basketball team has ‘eyes’ in the back of his head when he makes a perfect behind the back ‘blind’ pass. In all human activities, in work and play, that heightened state of presence in the moment and connection to ‘other’ vs ‘self’ makes it easier to be more aware of others and how they are feeling.

Another way to increase your ability to empathize is to use difficult times as ‘empathy accelerators’. Your heart can open if you allow yourself to fully experience such conditions as pain, sadness and loss. This in turn can lead to increasing empathy, compassion and kindness; all key elements of Awareness of Others in the GENOS EI model. Wisdom can be gained from those times in your life when you have been ‘tenderized’. For example, in my case experiences such as kidney failure, financial meltdown and a near death experience helped me in this way. As you open up to yourself you can in turn become more caring and sensitive toward others.

By being sensitized to your own feelings while also taking your attention off yourself and putting it on to others you can become a better leader, manager, colleague and human being in life!

The foundation stone and sine qua non of Emotional Intelligence is Self-Awareness. It is the basis of great leadership. The kind of leadership that creates a safe environment in which people can freely express themselves, learn together and achieve amazing things. The kind of leadership that inspires commitment, loyalty and love. Leadership that engages employees at all levels.

Let’s explore how self-awareness leads to this kind of leadership:

The practice of Mindfulness is popular these days and is about developing the capacity to observe one’s feelings and thoughts as they flow one’s present reality. The Dalai Lama refers to this observing consciousness as the “fundamental innate wisdom of clear light”. The ability to observe yourself in action is central to being emotionally intelligent. Many people are now applying mindfulness to working in the corporate world.

However, being mindful and self-aware is a state of being not doing. How can we apply self-awareness in a very practical behavioral way to leadership? What skills related to self-awareness can be effectively employed in organizational life?

First, whether you meditate or not, the key is to be ‘present’ at any time and in any place, whatever you’re doing. Pay attention in the moment to the feelings you experience in your body, the emotions, body sensations and the thoughts and judgements that are passing through your mind. This is rich data that can inform your choices around decision making and how you communicate with others, how you manage yourself in the moment. You can practice being present and get better at it over time. And the better you get the more self-aware you’ll become.

Greater self-awareness has practical ramifications in organizational life. If your desire as a leader is to enroll your people in collaborating to create a learning environment it’s important to be aware of the thoughts and feelings that may trigger you to cause negative outcomes. Stress can lead to poor communication behaviors unless you are self-aware enough to know how it’s affecting you and how it can bleed out into the way you speak to others around you. Then you can manage yourself accordingly.

In this respect I distinguish between responding and reacting.

When you react, you are out of control, a victim of your feelings, thoughts, and attitudes. When you respond, you responsibly choose the outcome you want and choose what you say and how you say it to be appropriate to your desired outcome (no matter what feelings, thoughts, or attitudes you may have).

The ability to respond rather than react is a crucial factor in creating a trusting, safe work environment. For example, how can employees feel free to express their innovative ideas or their constructive suggestions if the CEO is defensive or aggressive?

So, very practically, you need to make sure that you listen and acknowledge, no matter what you’re thinking or feeling about comments you don’t agree with. In the heat of the moment decide what kind of communication would be appropriate to the situation. Then make sure that what you say is conducive to a positive outcome for both you and the other person or audience. This means making sure that your tone of voice, facial expressions and body postures are congruent with the message and result you want to achieve. This is emotionally intelligent communication. But it would not be possible without self-awareness.

Paying attention to these elements of yourself are crucial to how successful you are as a leader. I remember a CFO in Silicon Valley who instilled fear in everyone resulting in employees avoiding him even when they had important information to give him. Why were they scared? He never smiled! And he was unaware of this. Once he woke up to this habitual affect he started to smile and suddenly everyone found him so much more approachable and easy to deal with. Colleagues said: “He’s a different person now!”

Apart from being present and mindful, feedback is the most important way in which one can develop self-awareness. A very senior executive at a global bank had a reputation for being a cold, insensitive bully and, criminally, none of her managers had ever given her feedback about her impact. Her behavior was causing massive organizational problems affecting thousands of employees. She spent a very shocking and painful day listening to the verbatim feedback comments of colleagues around her. After this transformational experience her PA, who she reduced to tears on a regular basis, called me to ask what magic I had used to change her. She had gone into the office the day after the feedback session and the executive had hugged her and apologized for all the hurt she had caused. And the culture of polarizing fear and breakdowns in communication across divisions began to disappear to the benefit of the whole global division of the bank. No magic: just powerful feedback had cause this shift in self-awareness.

A Vietnamese General Manager of a biotech firm in Silicon Valley told me trustworthiness was his most important value. When he first entered the hotel room for his feedback session he checked to see if the door to the adjacent room was locked and looked down out of the window. When asked why he did this he said it was to check for possible escape routes. When he heard the feedback he was shocked that the majority of the people he led said he was untrustworthy! It was suggested to him that he was no longer in the war. This massive blind spot and its ramifications for his leadership disappeared as he became conscious of how the conditioning of his past had been determering his behavior in the present.

Of course these are extreme examples of feedback and a learning organization is one in which giving and receiving feedback on a regular basis is encouraged from the top down to engender learning and growth.

The leader sets the tone for a feedback rich culture and his/her job is to minimize fear. Co-creation and collaboration throughout the organization only occurs when you can trust that it’s OK to admit mistakes, as well as take up unpopular positions, criticize ideas, policies and strategies held by others especially senior leaders. This requires the leader to be aware of his or her own defensiveness, insecurity and so on and welcome feedback instead of suppressing and punishing. A leader who is self-aware and employs that awareness effectively in service of his or her organization tends to be compassionate, empathetic, humble, authentic and can laugh at themselves. This endears him or her to people and inspires them to give their best.

A high degree of self-awareness in leaders can make a massive difference to organizational culture and performance.