Career Strength for the Future: Show You Care

What’s the most important thing to learn if you want to advance your career?

Should you gain diverse experience? Specialize? Go back to school for an advanced degree? Attend workshops? Get a coach?

While all of these career decisions may undoubtedly prove beneficial, book smarts don’t guarantee good teachers, nurses, doctors, businesspeople or leaders.

In today’s emerging right-brain economy, most professions require a set of skills and characteristics that cannot be taught in schools. Professionals who have the edge — those singled out for high-potential programs — are skilled at forging meaningful relationships.

The adage “No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care” has never been more relevant.

While a good education is important, it’s no longer enough. Unfortunately, most business schools aren’t teaching the emotional competencies future leaders require. Perhaps these skills are far beyond a classroom’s reach.

Leadership: Combining Smarts with Heart

Human connectivity requires the right combination of IQ (intelligence) and EQ (emotional intelligence). Unless you can connect with colleagues and clients at a deep level, bringing both your professional expertise and emotional commitment to relationships, you will not advance in your career as quickly or as far as you desire.

IQ may get people hired, but EQ gets them promoted. Leaders who are rewarded with promotions demonstrate both smarts and heart.

To improve your leadership potential, start talking. Have meaningful, real conversations. Develop your personal relationships with colleagues and customers. Show your expertise, but show you care even more. If necessary, work with a professional coach to develop and improve your conversational and interpersonal skills.

Leadership: The Boss Is Last

A Princeton University study explored how individuals felt about spending time with associates. Interactions with clients and customers topped the list, followed by interchanges with coworkers. Interactions with the boss came in dead last — rated, on average, as less enjoyable than cleaning the house.

The Gallup Organization conducted a famous study of workplace attitudes, asking 8 million people to respond to the following statement: “My supervisor, or someone at work, seems to care about me as a person.”

 The results show that people who agree with this statement:

1. Are more likely to stay with an organization
2. Have more engaged customers
3. Are more productive

Perhaps you’ve had a similar experience. When a boss treats you like a friend and cares about your life, you feel more enthusiastic and committed to your work.

We spend 50 percent more time with our customers, coworkers and bosses than we do with our friends, significant others, children and other relatives combined. To be sure, finding a few strong office friendships will help anyone become more engaged and productive.

Training Leaders for Future Complexities

Leaders and managers can study, train and be coached, but failure to work on interpersonal skills will derail them when faced with more complex responsibilities.

Almost all professional development programs focus on the individual and self-improvement, or on managing teams and influencing groups of people. Thousands of managers receive training each year, with an emphasis on leading others.

Unfortunately, very few programs focus on how to develop interpersonal relationships and conversational skills.

The best managers in the world are not only experts in systems, processes and technical competencies; they’re also proficient at managing emotions (their own and others’).

“As a leader moves up in an organization, up to 90 percent of their success lies in emotional intelligence,” notes Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence (2006).

In other words, nine out of ten executives who fail lack emotional competencies. A leader's most valuable currency is relationships, emotional capital and the ability to connect with others.

Sadly, most people’s experience with bosses falls short.

Leadership Skills for the 21st Century

While a good education is important, it’s no longer enough. Unfortunately, most business schools aren’t teaching the emotional competencies future leaders require. Perhaps these skills are far beyond a classroom’s reach.

Conversational skills, interpersonal abilities and emotional savvy are, in fact, the leadership abilities that will be highly valued in the future — and they can be developed.

Smart and engaged leaders who pay attention to improving these skills — those who value human connections — are the candidates most likely to be hired or promoted.

So, what happens when organizations place emphasis on hiring the most intelligent and educated individuals instead of the most personable and emotionally competent?

Several studies indicate that education and experience don’t necessarily produce good teachers or doctors. In one study, researchers measured whether a master’s degree made a difference in the quality of a teacher’s classroom performance, as measured by children’s achievements. The results: Neither a teaching certificate nor advanced degree separated the best educators from the average teachers.

In another study, Dr. Wendy Levinson, an international expert in the field of physician-patient relationships, examined why some doctors who made mistakes got sued and others didn’t. She found that patients filed lawsuits against doctors they didn’t like, while well-liked physicians were not sued.

Numerous studies confirm that physicians who avoid lawsuits take a little more time to talk with their patients — about three minutes more — than physicians who do get sued. Further, the quality of doctor-patient interactions has a tremendous impact on potential litigation.

When researchers reviewed surgeons’ conversations with patients solely on the basic of tone of voice, the doctors whose voices sounded more concerned and less dominant were less likely to be sued. Conversely, when surgeons’ voices were perceived as dominant, they were more likely to be sued.

In the end, the outcome seems to depend on respect, which in its simplest form is communicated through tone of voice. And by adding a few minutes of conversation, doctors strengthen the value of their interactions — an outcome that professionals in all industries should strive to achieve.

Managing with Effective Communication

Effective managers will change the intentions of their communication to meet the objectives of the situation.  Those intentions could be to enlighten and motivate, inform and persuade, or clarify and question. 

Ten step-by-step phases can serve as a template for more meaningful conversations:

1. Prepare to have your conversation in person, without distractions.
2. Clarify your intentions.
3.  Prepare your opening statement.
4.  Name the issue.
5.  Select a specific example that illustrates the behavior you want to change.
6.  Describe your emotions around the issue.
7.  Clarify what’s at stake.
8.  Identify the ways in which you contribute to the problem.
9.  Indicate your wish to resolve the issue.
10.  Invite your partner to respond.

Once you’ve made a trial run with these guidelines, debrief with the other person. You can say something like: “Thank you for hearing what I had to say and for sharing your perspectives. Your success is important to me, and I applaud your commitment to action. I’d like us to follow up on this later.”

Managing for High Performance

Change is all about growing and improving the way we do things.  Part of creating a high performance organization requires that you take a reality look how things are currently done.  The art of fierce conversations is an evolving practice — one that must be initiated and repeated on an ongoing basis. In her book Fierce Conversations and Fierce Leadership, Consultant Susan Scott describes four critical goals:

1.      

I       Interrogate reality

In business, marketplace realities, technology and global demands shift rapidly — and if you’re like most people, you try to fix the same problems with the same solutions, expecting different results.

If you fail to explore differing realities, you’ll spend an inordinate amount of time mopping up the aftermath of plans torpedoed by people who resent their organizations’ refusal to value their experience, opinions and beliefs.

Regularly interrogate reality. Ask yourself:

·         What has changed?

·         Does the plan still make sense?

·         If not, what’s required of you? Of others?

·         Which realities should be explored before important decisions are made?

2.       Provoke learning

Learning cannot occur in a conversation unless both parties agree to non-judgmental explore all sides of an issue. One common error occurs when you’re entering into a conversation with a fixed agenda, such as trying to persuade someone to alter his or her point of view.

a.       Begin with an open mind and the willingness to step out of judgment mode.

b.      Make a clear and succinct statement that describes the behavior or issue from your point of view.

c.       Proceed with an invitation, such as: “Please tell me what’s going on from where you sit. I want to understand your perspective and learn your thoughts.”

d.      Don’t ruin a conversation by yammering for too long about your own perspective, without giving the other person a chance to respond. Don’t interrupt to voice disagreement. You don’t want the person on the receiving end to tune out or go into defensive mode.

e.      Stop talking and start listening. When necessary, let silence happen.

f.        Facilitate openness by asking questions nonjudgmental.

3.       Tackle tough challenges

To have real conversations, you must be willing to identify and address the relevant issues in a truthful and courageous manner. Ask yourself: “What are the most important issues I should be addressing? Which issues am I avoiding?” Sometimes, this involves problems everyone knows exist, but rarely acknowledge or discuss.

4.       Enrich relationships

Each conversation you have is an opportunity to enhance a relationship. But for many hard-charging and competitive high achievers, conversations are used as opportunities to show off their brilliance and wit.

Fierce conversations are not competitive. Each participant must agree to communicate as an equal.

Conversations must no longer be about you, but centered on others. This requires asking questions and listening with total focus and attention on the other person.

“To effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.” Anthony Robbins