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The EISA: Self is a 50-item assessment that measures EI on 5 scales: Perceiving, Managing, Decision Making, Achieving, and Influencing.  It will help you better understand how emotional and social skills impact your performance and how you can strengthen your effectiveness by using these skills successfully.

It will also help you:
 * Discover the major components of emotional intelligence
 * Recognize the behaviours and characteristics of an emotionally intelligent person
 * Identify areas where you can apply emotional intelligence
 * Evaluate your own emotional strengths and opportunities for growth 

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Table of Contents

Based on Silberman’s Active Training program, this book provides 75 original activities, that help trainers at all levels engage the learner in active, experiential learning. Additionally, there are introductions to each activity that provide tips and techniques that will ensure success every time. The activities are organized into key training areas including: leadership and change management, team work and facilitation, creativity, conflict and negotiation, influencing, and communication among others.

A little while ago I was told I’d “reached a certain age” - an age that meant my eyesight had detoriated to the point I needed glasses for close work like reading. Although I resisted for a while (denial, vanity?) I eventually gave in - and was shocked at the things I started seeing!

Not only could I read more easily (and without holding everything at arm’s length), the food I was eating was suddenly more visually interesting. And I managed to hit the right pieces of food with my fork first time. I could also see the bits of food I was leaving on my shirt. But that’s another story …

The point is that as I’d adjusted to my slowly deteriotaing eyesight I had slowly but surely been missing details and struggling to see the real picture.

Which brings us to this wonderful observation from Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” 

“New eyes.” It’s like the story of the person who got sick of their house and started looking for a new one. The new ones looked so much nicer that they finally decided to sell. The real estate agent visited and said they’d draft up an advertisement so the old house could be sold. That weekend as the home owner prepared to go looking at new houses they looked through the real estate pages in the newspaper and came across an advertisement for a property that sounded perfect. So they called the agent to arrange an inspection … and were told that the advertisement was for their own property! 

I was once invited to a meeting at a large organisation that was exploring whether and how they might pursue a new market. As an “outsider” with some related experience, I suggested that they had so much in the way of resources, facilities, expertise, reputation and personnel that they were in a very advantageous position. Certainly, compared to the comparatively limited resources of most of their competitors they should have had no problem putting an attractive offer to the market.

But their response wasn’t enthusiastic. “It’s not that easy,” they said. “You don’t understand.” “Yes, but we don’t have …” Their eyes saw limitations, restrictions, inconvenience and challenges. ”New eyes” could see opportunities and possibilities. And a few years later new eyes did see those same things and the organisation engaged very successfully in its new market.  

So how can we apply “new eyes” to leadership roles? There’s a wise axiom that reminds us that “our focus determines our reality”. In other words, we shape our reality by what we see - and by default by what we don’t see. And if leadership is about “vision”, then what we see and don’t see is pretty important.

First, see through someone else’s eyes. You might adopt the perspective of a customer, a supplier or a board member. What would they see? Or maybe someone who has never heard of your company, department or organisation. Or put yourself in the office of your main competitor. What might they see - positive, negative and interesting - about how you and your people do things? 

This is, in part, why retail companies sometimes use “mystery shoppers”. It’s why 7-Eleven’s President and CEO went incognito as a new employee-in-training to find out how the company actually operated at the street level. (It’s also part of a new US tv show called Undercover CEO.)

You don’t have to be a CEO or have a tv show to do this, of course. Just imagine yourself in a different role, with a different set of expectations or experiences than those you take for granted.

Second, you might try recruiting some new eyes. This might be, for example, a new employee. Or it might be a conversation with a customer or a supplier or even someone unfamiliar with what you do. But remember: seeing with new eyes involves hearing with new ears as well - so it’s no good justifying, rationalising or ignoring. Ask, listen and reflect. It’s a good way to see things differently.

Another way of recruiting new eyes is to literally recruit them. Got a new employee or a new team member? They will probably be surprised at some things they encounter. They might have ideas or suggestions. So it’s important to encourage their questions and input. Because it only takes a few weeks before their new eyes start to see a pretty familiar landscape. Just like we do.

Finally, you can discover new things in your leadership journey by thinking with new eyes. “The ‘lateral’ of lateral thinking refers to moving sideways across the patterns instead of moving along them as in normal thinking,” says Edward de Bono in Think! Before it’s too late (2009). “If there is an obvious and attractive route in one direction, we are blocked from taking other, unknown routes. The path leads us that way and we don’t explore the edges or beyond.”

Formal alternative thinking tools like the Six Thinking Hats; Plus, Minus, Interesting; or Other People’s Views - all de Bono thinking strategies - are all useful means of enabling a journey of discovery within the realms of our existing landscape. All applying the principles of exploring with new eyes.

“Vision” is a part of leadership that’s easy to talk about but often challenging to do. So it’s worth considering what we’re seeing - and not seeing - in the vision we are leading and living. And how well we’re helping others to see the opportunities for growth and improvement that probably abound in our operating environment.

Aubrey Warren is a Situational Leadership® Master Trainer, accredited coach and experienced workshop facilitator.

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Group coaching is rapidly becoming the preferred coaching option for businesses and individuals. Effective Group Coaching is a practical, resource rich, hands-on guide for the group coaching facilitator in one of the fastest growing new disciplines.

Both new and seasoned coaches will find the book a practical roadmap and go-to guide when designing, implementing and marketing their own group coaching programs.

How aware are you of your leadership?

How aware are you of your effectiveness, your style, your impact, and your influence? Because here’s the thing: everyone around you is acutely aware of these things. And sometimes - and maybe more often than we’d like - they wonder if you see what they see …

Let’s take a quick look at three types of “leadership awareness” and consider how well each might be working to help us be as effective as we can be.

Self awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence. It’s the first step towards interpersonal competence - opening the way to self-management, awareness of others’ differences and relationship management (the other three domains of EQ, popularised by Daniel Goleman). 
 
Self awareness is often overlooked in business settings, Goleman notes in his book, The New Leaders (2003). ”Without recognising our own emotions, we will be poor at managing them, and less able to understand them in others. Self-aware leaders are attuned to their inner signals. They recognise, for instance, how their feelings affect themselves and their performance .. If a person is oblivious to his own feelings, he will also be tuned out to how others feel” (pp37-38). 

Of course, self-awareness is about more than just how we feel. It’s very much about what we do in response to how we feel.

Our behaviour is what determines our real leadership style. Regardless of the happy thoughts or strategic communications or tough logic going on inside our skulls, what we say and do is what determines our leadership style. It’s what others experience. And we can’t avoid that reality. We can, however, be oblivious to it. And we can choose to manage it.

“Everyone watches the boss,” notes Goleman. “Leaders ‘manage meaning’ for a group, offering a way to interpret and so to react emotionally to, a given situation” (pp9-10).

Which leads us to the second type of leadership awareness: being aware of others’ perceptions of your leadership - and power.  

People in leadership roles are frequently shocked to learn that information follows the basic rules of gravity: it tends to flow down much more easily than up! 

Despite the “door always being open”, information from below tends to be limited. Why? Because everyone learns pretty early in their careers that upward communication is risky. Power structures tend to discourage challenges to the status quo.

Even leaders who see themselves as being accessible and approachable are not always aware of others’ perceptions of their leadership roles and positions. Of the power they have at their disposal. Anyone in a position of authority has power -formal and informal. And the longer they are in the position the more comfortable they become with the power. Sometimes to the point of no longer seeing its potential to separate, to legislate, even to intimidate.

It’s important to be sensitive to the power that our position carries. And to the power structures that support us. It takes active and intentional commitment to not just encourage but elicit meaningful upward communication. And that commitment begins with the awareness of how our role and position is perceived by others. 

So how do you develop this awareness? First, take note of people’s behaviours, of their communication and their reactions to you. Are they demonstrating confidence, openness, responsiveness? Are you seeing caution, distance, unquestioning acceptance? Do people initiate conversations or do you have to? Second, you can always ask - but be sure to observe how people reply as well as noting what they say!

The third aspect of leadership awareness to highlight here is that of our awareness of others’ needs. 

This is something that is at the heart of effective Situational Leadership® - being able to determine the type of leadership others need from us in different circumstances.

This ability to lead according to what is required for the team or group or individual to be successful is, of course, built upon our self-awareness and our awareness of how we are perceived. Our healthy self-awareness alerts us to instinctive responses - e.g., taking control or offering encouragement - that may or may not be useful in different situations. In addition, our awareness of others’ perceptions of our leadership will alert us to their expectations and to how we can best use or counter those expectations in a given situation.

This article has made several references to the idea that leadership is about creating the conditions for others to succeed. So one of the ways to develop our awareness of others’ needs is to assess situations in terms of how the individual, group or team needs us to use our leadership position, power, influence, or experience to enable them to succeed.

These three aspects of leadership awarenees - self awareness, awareness of others’ perceptions of our leadership, and our own awareness of others’ needs - are like the three legs of a stool. By attending to all three we have a better chance of providing stable and reliable leadership.

Aubrey Warren is a Situational Leadership® Master Trainer, accredited coach and experienced workshop facilitator.