Did you know that Conflict Management is a competency that you can develop? We define the Conflict Management competency as, "understanding, addressing and resolving conflict constructively."  Who do you know who is highly skilled at Conflict Management?

With practice, you can grow and develop this skill just like other "hard skills" you might be good at like cooking, public speaking, employee coaching, or playing golf.

How do I grow as a leader: Conflict Management?

Those with a highly developed skill of Conflict Management exhibit the following:

• Demonstrates genuine concern for others.
• Respects and values people.
• Wants to ensure people experience positive emotions.
• Expends considerable effort to impact the needs, concerns and feelings of others.
• Advocates for the interests, needs and wants of others.
• Demonstrates sensitivity and understanding.
• Takes personal and/or professional risks for the sake of others.
• Recognizes and enjoys the good...

Did you know that Conceptual Thinking is a competency that you can develop? We define the Conceptual Thinking competency as, "analyzing hypothetical
situations, patterns and/or abstract concepts to formulate connections and new insights." Who do you know who is highly skilled at Conceptual Thinking?

With practice, you can grow and develop this skill just like other "hard skills" you might be good at like cooking, public speaking, employee coaching, or playing golf.

How do I grow as a leader: Conceptual Thinking?

Those with a highly developed skill of Conceptual Thinking exhibit the following:

• Demonstrates the ability to identify patterns, themes or connections not
  noticed by others.
• Gathers hypothetical or abstract concepts to formulate new insights.
• Evaluates many patterns to formulate connections.
• Recognizes unique or unusual perspectives.
• Envisions hypothetical situations to formulate new concepts.
• Utilizes patterns to develop new ways to process information.
• ...

So far, we've gone over three of the five areas you need to understand to be a great leader who grows a healthy team: Driving Forces, Behaviors, and Emotional Intelligence. Next, we're going to cover Competencies or soft skills. 

All people have all of these personal skills to one degree or another. Everyone can't be good at everything, however, so you want to focus on developing the competencies that

• A) You are already strong in 
• B) Focus on the ones that you need to be strong in for your current and future roles.

Over the next few lessons, we will be investigating each of these 25 abilities one at a time to help you grow as a leader.

How do I develop as a leader?

Developing your skills as a leader is just like developing any other skill, it takes practice and lots of it. The trouble is, it's not always as easy to identify how developed our skills are at work, especially in "white-collar," creative or knowledge work. In fields with lots of technical skill...

Did you know that Appreciating Others is a competency that you can develop? We define the Appreciating Others competency as, "identifying with and caring about others."  Who do you know who is highly skilled at Appreciating Others?

With practice, you can grow and develop this skill just like other "hard skills" you might be good at like cooking, public speaking, employee coaching, or playing golf.

How do I grow as a leader: Appreciating Others?

Those with a highly developed skill of Appreciating Others exhibit the following:

• Demonstrates genuine concern for others.
• Respects and values people.
• Wants to ensure people experience positive emotions.
• Expends considerable effort to impact the needs, concerns, and feelings of others.
• Advocates for the interests needs and wants of others.
• Demonstrates sensitivity and understanding.
• Takes personal and/or professional risks for the sake of others.
• Recognizes and enjoys the good qualities of others.
• Provides...

Social Regulation is your ability to influence the emotional clarity of others. You do this through a proficiency in managing relationships and building networks. There are numerous and varied abilities involved in building a network of good relationships. Leaders with high social regulation can “take the emotional temperature” of others and then respond and adapt in ways that build rapport and common ground.

Are you a socially regulated leader?

You are probably in a leadership role because you have already developed your social regulation skill to some degree. The most effective leaders are not only able to regulate their own emotions, but they are good at reading and regulating the emotions of others. If the members of your team are in a good emotional state, they will likely be much more productive. That is the time to capitalize and bring on new projects and challenges. If the emotional state of the team is weak, however, it may make more sense to pull back and work...

Social Awareness is the ability to understand the emotions of other people and how your words and actions affect them. Another name for this is empathy. When you are with another person, how well are you able to notice, understand and empathize with what they are feeling?

Everyone is in their own unique emotional state every day. This affects their work and how they relate with others. Working on your own Social Awareness skill can improve your interactions and overall effectiveness. Just as you can practice taking your own emotional temperature throughout the day, you can make a point of becoming more observant of others’ feelings too.

Are you a socially aware leader?

As each of us go through our day, we experience both positive and negative events and emotions. The influential negative endorphins (cortisol) are greatly compromising innovation and creativity when it is needed most. Just as negative and threatening experiences have dire consequences to the chemistry of our...

Motivation is a passion to work for reasons that go beyond one’s external Driving Forces and are based on an internal drive or propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence. It’s been a while now, but you may recall from our series of emails on the 12 Driving Forces that they help us understand what external factors propel us into action. But what happens when none of them are present?

Are you a motivated leader?

Are you able to pursue your goals with energy and persistence in the absence of your external drivers? This is a skill which you can be developing as you seek to strengthen your leadership. Once again, let’s use an example from your team to help understand this concept. First, we need to imagine a situation where you know you need to do something that you don’t want to do. For the sake of the example, let’s say that one of the members of your team is struggling in an area and the best course of action for you to take as the leader...

Self-Regulation is the ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods and the propensity to suspend judgment and think before acting. We have emotions about things as they happen, and our emotions may affect the decisions we make. Self-Regulation is a skill we use to manage our emotions in the moment that an event occurs so we can take more thoughtful actions. High self-awareness also enables us to take responsibility for our feelings and to self-regulate when things are not going well.

Are you a self-regulated leader?

The skill of self-regulation follows self-awareness because the more developed a person is at knowing what they are feeling the more they will be able to harness and manage those emotions in their actions. However, as more and more people have tried to ignore or over-control their emotions in general without first understanding what they feel with any specificity, it is possible for a person’s self-regulation skill to be more developed than their...

Self-Awareness is the ability to recognize and understand your moods, emotions, and drives, as well as their effect on others. For a long time, emotions have been misunderstood and, in many cases, seen as something we need to control, ignore or work around in order to be most effective, especially in the workplace.

As more research is uncovered, we now realize that the most effective people are actually the ones who have the strongest understanding and awareness of what they are feeling. Once we are aware that we are feeling something and then able to name and understand exactly what we are feeling, we can engage these God-given emotions in leadership and collaboration.

Are you a self-aware leader?

Self-aware leaders know and understand what is happening in their bodies as they go through their day. They know how to notice what is happening inside of themselves, what they are feeling, the good, the bad and the ugly. As we move through our days, interacting with others and with our...

Now that we’ve reviewed DISC, the science of observable human behavior, and Driving Forces, the “why” that propels us into action, we’re going to explore Emotional Intelligence, which is also often referred to as EQ or “Emotional Quotient.”

Emotional Intelligence is a quality that people possess at a root-level that can impact our ability to use our skills or talents to be effective. Another way to say this is, a person’s ability to sense, understand and effectively apply the power of emotions to facilitate higher levels of collaboration and productivity.

Our emotions are a significant part of our whole selves as human beings and in order to truly understand ourselves, we must be aware of what we are feeling. Harnessing our emotions, motivating ourselves and understanding and influencing the emotions of others are also key indicators of effectiveness at work and in life.

Are you an emotionally intelligent leader?

Our EQ assessment measures...