What can IT people and organizations do, learn, practice, to raise EQ in all 5 areas?
Remember in Blog 2 when we talked about the pattern of weak areas for individuals with IT, engineering and project management job titles? If you need a memory boost, those weak EQ skills were:
Emotional self-awareness (part of Self-Awareness)
Emotional expression (part of Self-Expression)
Empathy (part of Interpersonal)
These are the areas on which we in IT need to focus.
While improving one’s EQ is not a lock step sequential process, it does go more rapidly if one starts with self-awareness. After all, if you are unaware that your words, body language, tone of voice ot actions are upsetting people, or at least making a bad first impression, then there is no chance you will do something to correct the problem.
“But I have to be me!” many IT people have said to me. Of course you do. But you do NOT, in the process of being yourself, have to offend others. Please understand: all behavior is chosen. If you are not self-aware, your behavior may often be unconsciously chosen. I compare choosing your behavior unconsciously to using “factory default settings” for IT equipment. The factory default setting is almost never the best one for your specific situation; it is just one that “will do in a pinch” if you are not skilled enough to know the best settings for your environment. Let’s not accept factory default settings for our behavior at work. Let’s be self-aware and choose our behavior carefully.
There are many ways to become self-aware, for example by using psychometrics. Various profiles and instruments including the EQ-i 2.0, Pearman Personality Integrator, Myers-Briggs (MBTI), DISC, Pearson and others describe your personality and its associated behaviors. Going through coaching or a workshop to develop your personal leadership brand or taking a 360 instrument (input from those above, below and on same level as you) and having it interpreted can also help you become self-aware. You can also ask close friends, kind family members or personal advisors (religious leaders, coaches etc) to tell you how others perceive you – and not to give you only the positive aspects.
Once self-aware we need to work on self-expression. We can have all the good intentions in the world, but if others do not perceive them, they accomplish little. Improving self-expression entails learning to “read” other people and choose our own behavior to best communicate with, and influence decisions of others.
Topics to study to improve self-expression include the following: Active listening, Building credibility/trust, Body language, Speaking/presenting, Crucial conversations, Influencing, Conflict resolution
All of these topics help individuals work, collaborate and communicate better with others – whether peers, project teammates, direct reports or internal clients. While you do not need to constantly seek the approval of others, it helps you work with people if you have consistently treated them with respect, acknowledged and deferred to their area of expertise and delivered what you have promised (services, completed tasks, updates – anything you have made a commitment to do.)
Now we come to empathy. How does one learn empathy? All you need to do is make it your habit to stop for two seconds and think to yourself when you are talking to someone, “What is this person thinking and feeling right now? What should I say or do to either keep the good mood going or give him/her reassurance that things will get better?” Empathy is not feeling sorry for someone, it is understanding how that person is being impacted and how they feel about the impact. And remember, that impact may come from something you are doing or changing (software upgrade, new ERP, process redesign, different support person or IT liaison etc.) Empathy and listening are skills critically important in helping people adapt to change.
Finally, what can IT managers, directors and executives do to help their people and organization improve EQ? Here are a few things that help:
· Give your people not only formal training, but also stretch assignments which provide them opportunities to apply their new skills.
· Coach, mentor and guide your people in whichever EQ skills you have in abundance. (i.e., Are you a good listener? Do people come to you to resolve conflict? What non-technical/people skills could you teach someone?)
· Get your people to coach or mentor each other informally (peer mentoring.) Examples of this include having people debrief their peers when they return from a class, conference, regional internal meeting; or pairing people who have complementary skills (A is good at planning; B is good at executing – they can help each other.)
READ! Pick an EQ topic that you want to improve and find books by experts on that topic. Some authors and titles that come to mind:
John Kotter, Leading and Managing Change
Daniel Pink, Social Trends
William Bridges, Managing Transitions
The EQ EDGE, Steven Stein
Sometimes gaining the concept through reading, then seeking out a coach to help you practice, can make you an expert in a skill very quickly. This is not that different from going to a class to learn a new technical skill then seeking out someone who has had that skill for some time to help you through your first few projects.
We in IT learn new things constantly – let’s focus some of our intelligence, learning aptitude and analytical skills on raising our collective EQ so we can help our colleagues weather the 4th Industrial Revolution.
Jana is an experienced IT management consultant and organization development (OD) professional. She founded The Collective Mind after a 15 year career as a systems engineer at IBM. Clients include NASA, Sears, Hilton Hotels and the US Army Corps of Engineers. She is the co-author of, Shifting Sands: The People Side of Project Management. Jana holds a BS in Computer Science from Vanderbilt University and a MS in Organizational Psychology from the University of Memphis. She is certified in Emotional Intelligence.
