Personal Leadership & Emotional Intelligence

By: Gabriel King Akpalu

Embarking on the journey to relevance as a youth is one that requires a focused direction, drive and resilience among a pool of leadership skills to arrive. In summary, you could say that everything you do as a leader can be grouped into two areas:

1. Engage (Engage yourself and the people to ensure commitment) which is the leading part
2. Achieve (Harness that engagement by focusing on process to ensure productivity) which is the managing part.

To succeed at every level  of progress you will need to deploy the elements of leading yourself and people  and managing the process among a collection of skills. Any skill possessed can be put to good use on the leadership stage;  the reverse upon consideration is true and your skills gaps actually become a liability. The best leaders have talents across four skill sets:

Now, it would be laughable to suggest that every successful manager masters all these skills to the same degree, but they do have talents in all these areas which allow them to:

Conceptual: see the big picture and ensure that the organisation, or that part of it for which they are responsible, is consistently in tune with a changing operating environment. They are good at recognising and analysing complex issues, problem solving and decision-making.

Technical: get to grips with the range of technical skills such as planning or financial management relevant to their level in the organisation.

Interpersonal: communicate effectively so that they really connect with others.

Leadership Style: adjust how they deal with and respond to the roller coaster ride that is life in organisations today.

INTERPERSONAL SKILLS

Relationship building is a vital part of the management role and  the quality of your interpersonal skills advances the establishment of strong and formidable relationships. As such, regardless of your current level of experience, you should pay a lot of attention to your strengths and weaknesses in this area because you can all develop your ability to better relate to others and doing so will help you lead more effectively. The prime interpersonal skill is the ability to communicate.

THE ART OF COMMUNICATION

You have probably heard the phrase ‘the art of communication’ before, but you might not realise just how difficult an art it is to master. Every day we see people around us interacting and assume that communication is happening. Sadly, we tend to equate quantity with quality in relation to how we tend to equate quantity with quality in relation to how we communicate. But lots of talking does not mean lots of communicating: it can often mean the opposite. It is a fact that, for all of us, our ability to communicate is a greater area for improvement than we might think. Most of us believe that we are good at it and rarely does someone openly admit that they are not. But if we all have such strong communication skills, then;

• Why are there so many communication breakdowns in our daily lives?
• Particularly in a work context, why are there so many communication related problems?
• Why are there so many misunderstandings and disputes?
• Why do two people often hear the same message, but end up with two differing perceptions of what it meant?

There must be something behind these and other failings and it is useful to explore the issue, so that you can clearly define steps to help you to improve your ability to communicate. One of the difficulties that arise in relation to how we communicate is the fact that it is seen as a natural activity, one which we have being doing in one form or another since we were born.

Even in the absence of being able to speak you could still let your feelings be known as a baby! You do not get up first thing every morning and think, okay, now I am going downstairs to interact with my family at breakfast. You just do it and it requires little thought.

That is part of the problem and our belief that communication is a natural process is actually one of the underlying causes for our collective shortcomings in this area.

ELEMENTS OF COMMUNICATION – CONTENT & CONTEXT

How you currently communicate is an example of conditioning (learned behaviour) and you may have to change or unlearn what you currently do, as a stepping stone to becoming a more effective leader. This is clearly not going to be easy, but it is achievable. First, you need to look again at the basics of how you communicate. From that you can

develop a roadmap to guide your improvement efforts. As you do so, we will primarily focus on the most common form of communication utilised by a leader at work, namely face to face interaction.

When you talk directly to an individual or group, you are in effect sending and receiving messages. Sounds simple, but as you know this isn’t always the case. To have real communication, there must be common understanding as a result. When you look more closely at what’s really going on, it becomes clearer why the process is more complex than it seems at first. When you interact directly with another person, you know that the message is made up of three components, Words, Tone and Body Language.

You might have been on training courses over the years where you were given a rule such as; any message is made up of Words 7%, Tone 38% and Body Language 55%, or something similar. Whilst this is useful in highlighting the importance of the tone and body language, it is not really very practical, as it tries to put something neatly into a box which may not fit on all occasions. Perhaps it is more appropriate to think of the messages you transmit as having two dimensions; content and context.

It is clear that the content of your messages is provided by the words you use, whereas the context is delivered by your tone and body language. Let’s totally forget about percentages and say that to be an effective communicator, the content and context of your message must always be in alignment. When you look more closely at the context of the message, you see that it is in fact made up of your emotions – how you feel about what you are saying. When happy, your tone and body language change as they do when you are sad, angry, hurt and so on. This is where the link can be made between your ability to keep in control and your effectiveness as a communicator.

COMMUNICATING MORE EFFECTIVELY

In seeking to become a better communicator, you naturally need to consider both content and context. Some basic points to think about when seeking to get the content right;

• Preparation is really important and the longer, or more important the interaction you are facing, the more you need to prepare.
• Even for short every day interactions, be clear as to what you wish to say and get your thoughts organised in your own head, before you open your mouth. Think, then speak.
• Match the content of what you have to say with the requirements of your audience, be that one person or many.
• Consider what they need to know, what they know already and how best to devise the message to make it ‘stick’ for them.
• Be clear, concise and don’t waffle.
• Be knowledgeable about your work and up-to-date with current trends. Take proactive steps to build your knowledge base.
• Avoid instances where you are put on the spot for immediate answers to complex issues. Naturally, there will be plenty of occasions where a quick answer is required and you will need to cope effectively with that.
• When you don’t have the answer, don’t bluff or lie. Be honest and tell them you will get back to them. Then make sure you do.
• Avoid overuse of meaningless jargon and buzzwords, or you could end up sounding like a walking cliché machine. Never feel that you need to join the jargon club – clear and simple is best.

THE PROCESS OF INFLUENCING & PERSUADING

The term ‘influencing’ means changing another person’s attitudes or actions without having to resort to force or authority.

In practical terms, to influence someone else, you have to prove to other people that accepting your proposal helps them to solve their problems or achieve their objectives.

COMMON MISTAKES WHEN SEEKING TO INFLUENCE OR PERSUADE

• Not being really clear on the outcome you want.
• Pushing too hard or not hard enough.
• Believing that because you see the benefits of your ideas that others automatically will too.
• Not ‘selling’ the ideas in terms that are meaningful to the target audience.
• Focusing on your needs, not theirs.
• Believing that you can treat people badly most of the time and then suddenly win them over when you need to.
• Having a personal style, or an approach to communication that ‘rubs’ others up the wrong way.

THE PROCESS OF INFLUENCING

It’s not necessarily a step-by-step process, but consider the following:

• Be very clear on what your objectives are. Maybe you cannot influence or persuade people to move fully in the direction you want them to go all at once. However, you can get them to take the first step now and then build on that later.

• When interacting with people, consider what you can achieve in the time available. If the meeting only lasts 30 minutes there is only so much you can achieve.

• Use emotion to win people over; be passionate

• Learn as much as possible about the people you are trying to influence. Try to anticipate how they might respond.
• Tailor your arguments to address their needs.
• Use hard evidence; such as facts and figures that can support your argument, or practical, simple, non-technical examples to illustrate your point.
• Listen to and address people’s concerns.
• Constantly monitor and measure progress. Are they moving in the direction you want them to go?