Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | Android | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS | More
Emotional Intelligence, Discretionary Effort, and Building Teams That Actually Work Together
Introduction
Hey, everybody. If you’re in a leadership role, do you understand what emotional intelligence really may mean? It’s a it’s a popular word that’s used a lot. And I think most people don’t have a good grip on what it really means and how, more importantly, it can be a value to you as a leader. We’re also going to talk about another little bonus topic that I’ll open up as we get going here. My guest is a fellow coach and gentleman who lives on the West Coast. His name is Michael Neuendorf. Michael, welcome to the show.
There’s a lot, Doug. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation with you.
What Emotional Intelligence Really Means for a Leader
Absolutely. So let’s let’s dive right in on this theme of emotional intelligence. First, if you will, let’s let’s level set. Let’s kind of try to give a simple explanation to people on what emotional intelligence really means to a leader.
Sure, I would say is the human side of leadership.
It is the ability to connect with people on an emotional level, and to understand how your style impacts other people on an emotional level. Being able to regulate your own emotions so that you’re coming across the way that you’d probably like to come across when people talk about you and when they experience your leadership.
I love that. Really making that human centric side of things come to life and clearly as, or at least those of us that are in the coaching realm have come to know there are there are levels of expanded or improved emotional intelligence. can can you share your version of where some of those boundaries are drawn in terms of the depth at which someone operates with emotional intelligence.
The Levels of Emotional Intelligence
Sure, I would say that at a first level, people think of emotional intelligence as empathy. There’s a word that that’s thrown around a lot. That just be a more empathetic leader and that’s good. There’s nothing wrong with starting with empathy. Other leaders might start with self-awareness, just just being aware of how I’m coming across. So those are those are two ways that leaders usually start to express emotional intelligence in the workplace.
Taking it to a second level, which is going to be more difficult, is being able to self-manage, because it’s one thing to be self-aware, but the next is can I actually control my emotions to the degree that I’m not hotheaded or I don’t swing wildly and become very enthusiastic one day, and another day I just don’t seem to have energy. Can I? Can I manage my emotions? And then next is. Can I sense the emotions of other people? Leaders are often moving so fast. They’ve got so many things swimming around in their head that this idea of stopping and noticing and sensing what someone else might be going through is challenging. Because it takes time. It takes time, effort, energy, and and a and a presence that some leaders are finding really challenging in today’s fast paced world. So that’s that’s the next level. And then of course, being able to impact that other person’s emotions and how they feel, their level of engagement, their level of enthusiasm, their commitment to a healthy culture.
When you can inspire and connect with other people on a human level, a lot of good things can happen. So those are some of the the levels that I would say people can imagine.
Why Bother? The Engagement Payoff
Now, as you were describing that and working up through that scale, I heard some of the eye rolling in the audience. People going. You got to be kidding me. I’m supposed to be doing all that. We’re, people are getting paid to do work. Why am I supposed to do all of that?
Well, I hope that with the eye rolls, they also caught. Caught the word engagement or healthy culture? because, engagements, usually in the low 30s. You know, Gallup, Gallup organization been measuring employee engagement for many years. And the US actually leads, leads many other countries and employee engagement. And yet we’re crowing about like 32%. That’s that’s not that high. If we can raise employee engagement a few tick marks, that could have real impact on results, retention, being able to attract the highest quality people in the workplace because they think this is a great place to work.
Isn’t that what most leaders want? Apart from feeling like, oh yeah, I got to do these things, but I want the results to improve. Rod.
The Two Gears: Discretionary Effort
You know, and to your point on that engagement, I talk about it in terms of every individual that comes to work, and bosses included, have two gears. They can operate in the gear. Gear number one is is kind of the bare minimum. You know, what is my job description? Say what is my KPI? I’ll produce that. I’ll fulfill that part of the expectation. No challenges, no questions. I’ll just show up. Clock in, do my work and go home. Gear one. Undeniably. We need that. We need everybody operating at that level as a as table stake or minimum. But the thing you’re talking about, I call it gear two, which is this idea of discretionary effort. I can choose as a human being to go the extra mile on a task. I can work a little harder, I can I can stay a little later, I can, I can do some extra that I might not otherwise need to do to simply fulfill my job description, but I choose to do it because I know it’s going to serve the greater good.
I know it’s going to benefit the people I’m working for and more importantly, the customers I might be serving. So I want to do that. I want to give that extra gear. And, I talked to a lot of my clients about the noble goal of inspiring your team. You can’t you can’t treat them like farm animals. You you have to connect at a human level and, and work on building all facets of trust to get them to show up with a desire to go that extra mile, you know, voluntarily. That’s why we call it discretionary effort. They can choose to give it or not. They can leave it in the bottle and just go home. But, as a leader, if you can get people contributing that discretionary effort, you’re going to have a lot better outcome for anything you might be doing.
I think you’ve put it really beautifully there. Discretionary effort is voluntary, as you said. And if a person is more engaged and they’re more engaged because you’re more engaged in connecting with them on a human level, more so than they’re used to, then they will feel like you’re the type of leader I want to work for and go the extra mile for.
And that’s really what most leaders want. They don’t want to have to tell someone to work overtime to tell someone you, you’ve got to do this. They would rather have the person voluntarily do it because they believe in the organization’s mission and purpose, and they love working for that leader.
When the Team Has Your Back
Yeah. And I told the story. I’ve seen it displayed by a team who, you know, the leader walks out on the floor and looks around and says, Where’s George? And another person says, oh, George got a call from his kid’s school. He had to rush to school. There’s a there’s a problem. And the leader might be inclined to say, well, wait a minute. He didn’t tell me that you know who’s going to cover his work? But the teammate says, oh, we know what he’s got going. We know what his priorities are. We got it covered. We’re going to, you know, do the extra lift and we’re going to take care of it. And they that’s that voluntary aspect of, you know, the supervisor didn’t even need to know the guy was gone because the the teammates stepped up and said, no, we got we got your back.
We we got this covered. We’re going to take care of it for you. And when you can build a team environment where that’s the way people are operating and they’re expressing their own empathy for their teammates and their own collective willingness to pitch in and go that extra distance. It’s it’s a winner.
I couldn’t agree more. There’s a team development program that I’ve run for many years called the Five Behaviors program. In that first level in that program is trust. And it’s not predictive trust, but vulnerability. Trust, which is that willingness to open up and say, hey, I gotta go take care of this thing with my kid. I hope it’s okay. I hope you guys don’t mind. I know I’m going to not be producing as much today, but I need to take care of this. And the rest of the team would say, no worries, we got it. And it doesn’t reflect poorly on my ability as a colleague because we cover for each other as necessary. We can bring ourselves to work and and open up about some of the challenges that we’re having at times.
That’s emotional intelligence and action to be able to be vulnerable and share when we need help, when we need support, we need a little extra from someone else. I’ll cover you at another time when you need it.
The False Assumption of Command and Control
One aspect of, I think developing and using emotional intelligence for leaders that are rising up in an organization, I think, and I hear this talked about occasionally, one thing people are afraid of is that the predecessor boss was maybe more command and control oriented. Not touchy feely, not not empathetic, not, you know, it’s all business. And they have inferred the requirement to be like that, to be successful in the new role they’ve been promoted into. And when we begin having that discussion, I always ask them the first question, has anybody told you you have to be that way? And they often say, no, I just know that’s true. And I challenge that. I say how? How do you know that’s true? You know, is it really true that that’s the way you need to be? And is it possible you got selected? Because in fact, the company wants a different hand at the wheel and they’re kind of happy.
The old guy left, and, you know, they they want you because of what you’ve already exhibited in the way of having a little more emotional intelligence and little more, ability to improve that engagement, that employee engagement element.
If those people, Doug, who are working for that up and coming leader are in their 20s and 30s, that’s exactly what they want. They don’t want a command and control leader. They actually want a leader who cares for them as people, who is willing to mentor them, coach them, and help them develop to be the the up and coming leaders themselves. So I think your question is just right on the money. How do you know that’s what actually is expected of you. Yeah.
In 99% of the cases I’ve worked. I think that that notion is it’s a false assumption and and really has to be, you know, vetted in a different light. you mentioned something in what you just said about the leader being a coach. I know you and I talked about that in the green room.
tell us a little more about your ideas on the emerging expectation that leaders provide some coaching for their people.
The Leader as Coach
I’ve been in the coaching field for a long time, since 2008. And, over that time, I developed my coaching, capabilities to the point where I could join, coaching school and actually teach other people to coach. And what I’ve pleasantly discovered over the last seven years or so that I’ve been running coach training programs, is that more and more leaders are coming in wanting to learn the coaching conversation, not because they want to create a side hustle, or they’re thinking about becoming an independent executive coach or even an internal coach, but they actually want to understand, like, how do I have a conversation that’s different than directive? It’s not a conversation where I’m just providing the answers and telling people what to do, but actually empowering people, giving them autonomy, being more curious, being a better listener, asking questions that I don’t have the answers to. How do I have that kind of conversation? Because I sense that more and more, this is what the newer generations coming into the workplace are asking for.
This is the type of conversation they want to have with their manager, not just, hey, I got this problem. Yeah, okay. Do this. All right. Thanks. That they don’t want that. They want to be more empowered and and have growth oriented conversations. And that’s what a coaching conversation does.
Yeah, I agree with that idea. I see it more and more that there is a need and an expectation. And as you were describing that, I was thinking about an engagement I had a year or two ago. I was asked to coach several individuals of a large national brand. And, the specific task was they they wanted some assistance in helping these leaders build long range personal development plans. So we spent some time doing that. And at, at, you know, later stages, the client was supposed to present this to their boss, and I was supposed to sit in in a three way form and just observe and give feedback. And the first candidate went in and gave his pitch to his boss, and the boss said, well, this is good, but you left out something that I really want you to put in your plan.
And he said, oh, what’s that? And he said, developing others, coaching others. And we had a discussion about what it meant for this leader to become a coach for his people, so on and so on in the story. Will the second individual I had, lo and behold, reported to this same senior executive. So I, as a coach, was put in a little bit of a conundrum as we were making the final review of the plan, I had this factoid in my mind. I was aware of what the seniors expectation was, but I chose not to tell my client. I wanted him to hear it from his boss in an organic, native way. And sure enough, same thing happened. And the senior executive looked at me and he said, Doug, you know, that’s my expectation. Why didn’t you tell him? And I told the boss. I said, because it’s more impactful for you to be telling him, you know, it’s going to mean more for you to have said what you just said.
For him to take it away than for me to pass it on anecdotally that that’s now part of the landscape. And the senior thought I’m in it. And he said, yeah, you’re right about that. He said he said, I appreciate you doing it that way. He said, I think it is important. And you know, my my direct client said the same thing. He said, yeah, I get it. So the point is, I think the ultimate point is that there are companies where senior leadership, top of the House, is recognizing the need to do this development as part of the long range HR plan and talent management plan to develop people. You know, companies, particularly the publicly traded ones, they have Sarbanes-Oxley requirements to demonstrate their succession plan, have it documented, and so forth. But what about all of the workers on the team and at all levels, in all departments? How are they being developed for ongoing continuity of the business? And that’s where I think individual leaders can step in and do more, for providing that.
Appealing to the Nobler Motive
It’s so true. I want to seize upon this one, one element of what you shared there about succession in that, of course, there are succession plans, usually at the highest levels, but at the mid level in the lower levels, when you start having these kind of developmental conversations and showing people that you care about their growth and development and want to take an active hand in it, then people will usually meet you halfway and they’ll rise to the occasion. In in in my Dale Carnegie training many, many years ago, one of his principles was appealed to the nobler motive. You know, give a person a reason to step up and do well and believe in their capacity to do that. And when you take an active hand in persons in a person’s development plans, it’s showing that I care for your future and I believe in you. And they will rise to that occasion. You’ll find that your succession planning becomes a whole lot easier.
“If I Train Them, They’ll Leave” — Debunked
Well, and on that point, I, I have had discussions in my career with leaders who are, what would be the right term, bearish on the idea of training somebody to.
Well, because their attitude is, well, if I teach them everything I know, they’re going to leave and go do that somewhere else. And my pushback on that mindset has always been, so what if they do? We’ll have a better world. You know, we’ll it’ll be a better place if your influence on that person allowed them to go do that. And there are people that when we get into that discussion, they’re they’re not buying it. They’re, they’re really negative on on that kind of development. And I just think it’s just flat out sad that that’s a mindset that still might be there. I have always tried to be supportive of of the people that have worked for me, and if they come to me one day and say, I got a better job offer at another company, I’ll say, good for you. Godspeed. I wish you nothing but the best. And and, you know, I even add if if there’s anything I can do to help, you know, down the road, give me a call.
I’m happy to weigh in. And people are shocked and surprised by that, you know, that it’s kind of that, you know, Godspeed kind of farewell. Because a lot of people, when a lot of managers, when somebody comes in their office and says, I’m giving you my resignation, I’ve got a better offer. It’s. It’s like you’re dead to me. Get out of here right now. You know, and I think that’s such a horrible old school mindset that I wish we could get rid of.
It makes me think of the coach of the Golden State Warriors basketball team here in the Bay area. Coach Kerr. He he believes in developing his people and and people that have worked under him have gone on to to greatness in other organizations. I think the, the coach of the New York Knicks, who just won the championship, used to work for Coach Kerr. I think he was in Coach Kerr’s organization. And and imagine how proud he must feel that someone that he invested in and developed has gone on to that to achieve at the highest level.
You know, winning. Winning the championship after decades and decades of misery for New York fans, right? Yeah, yeah. I think it just just speaks to the quality of what you’re saying, that if you take the long term view, you may find that you’re actually even more gratified than the short term view of now. We need to keep them right here. They can’t leave.
Self-Regulation: Turning Failure Into Feedback
Let me ask you this. I’m going to go back to the emotional intelligence ladder a little bit. because I do a lot of corporate work with middle and upper managers that are just starting their journey up the ladder. I often hear kind of a description of when there’s a moment of challenge on an idea or a project, and this junior leader is feeling pushback on something they’re trying to do. I observe a phenomenon. A lot of them take that, call it negative energy, and they all take it inward. And it it’s it’s a it’s a shot to their confidence. it’s, you know, it’s really unsettling. Even almost fearful kind of processing.
And I encourage people to not allow that energy to happen. There’s a difference between taking some commentary and finding a learning opportunity in it. Embracing that and leaving everything else aside, and use the energy of the moment to point back to that greater good. You know what? Okay. I got bad feedback on this. What can I do to turn it around and move it to the greater good? But don’t take it all the way in to say, oh, I must be a failure. I, you know, I’m, I’m not processing correctly. So I say all that to say where I’m tying it in is your rung on the ladder that says, you know, I’ve got the awareness of where I am and regulating, trying to regulate my own emotions is what this is about, and really leveraging that self-regulation to not be so negative that you’re you cripple yourself for future performance.
We’re unable to process failure in a positive way. Then we’re going to reach a ceiling, because as you move up, you’re going to take bigger risks and bigger risks.
Always have that that chance that they’re not going to go through, that they are going to fail. But that’s what’s expected of leaders to take risks and be willing to accept failures as a lesson and a learning for how can we come back and try again the next time and win the next time? But if you can’t, can’t handle that failure and process that in a positive way, then someone else will take your place and come back the next time and take take the bigger risk. Right. I mean.
Yeah, Yeah. And it really is so critically important, I believe in an individual’s leadership toolkit to have that regulator in there somewhere that, allows you to sort of learn the landscape, learn the territory you’re in and responsible for and, and make good objective decisions about what data is coming at you and whether it’s a true indicator of a need to adjust something in your leadership style or ability versus just knocking you down because you happen to be standing on the podium.
Yeah, yeah, failure is feedback.
Yeah. If we if we can look at it that in that, that lens and, and then process it emotionally in a positive way, then we can come back stronger from that. Yeah.
Reading the Symptoms of a Struggling Team
My Michael, I’m going to delve into a third area that does come to mind. You alluded to it. Your your team coaching. what are some of the common I’ll call it. Well, we’ll speak in doctor’s term for a minute. What are some of the common symptoms that appear when you’re asked to come in and work with the team?
Boy there’s a juicy question because I, I’ve been I’ve been called in multiple times over the years to work with teams and there were a couple of them working with right now. one, one thing is obvious and that’s just we’re not rowing in the same direction, right? We’re we’re operating in a siloed mentality where we are a team, but we’re acting as a group of individuals that are looked at as a team. But behind the scenes, we’re not really working together as a team.
We are more aware of the people working for us than the people working with us. And this is a first team concept. Which is this is my first team, not this. And that’s a challenge. That’s a challenge for most leaders to really accept that concept that this is my first team. And at we, we talked earlier about the person who had to leave and go, go deal with with their child at school. And the other people said, I’ll cover for you. Can you have that same level of mentality that this is my team and if I need help, you’re going to come in and cover for me? Well, if we’re operating in a siloed mindset, no, no, you’re on your own. You know, you’re on your own. You take care of your stuff, I’ll take care of my stuff. And that’s not truly teamwork. Second is, if I’m operating with that mindset, then I don’t want to be accountable to you and have you question what I’m doing. My ideas, my plans, my strategies.
I want you to stay in your lane. I hear this term a lot with teams that aren’t getting along well. Stay in your lane. Well, teams that that operate as a first team. It’s one lane. It’s it’s not five lane. It’s one lane. We don’t we’re all in the lane together. So this this concept of staying in your lane is usually an indicator that a team is divisive and not working along well together. And then the third thing is the leader of the team not actively taking an interest in helping that team work better together. The leader usually has an agenda that requires them to just constantly be on the move in dealing with a variety of stakeholders around them, which is terrific. That is their set of responsibilities. But if they can’t carve out some time to work with the team on how the team works together and not just have it be an incidental situation when the team is completely melting. That’s when we bring someone in, like me or you, that it shouldn’t be like that.
The team should never get to that depleted estate before you bring in someone to help. That should just be a regular cadence of responsibility and investment in the team.
Alignment Is Not Agreement
Yeah, I’m often intrigued when there’s a, organizational realignment of some kind and new teams are spun up that that the new group doesn’t always spend enough time talking about a sense of their, their purpose and charter as a team. You know, why did the organization decide to structure us this way? You know what? What do we need to glean from that? Or maybe even there’s a specific directive, but can they really rally around that? And I think a key concept here is to strive to find alignment to your point so that they’re rowing in the same direction. They don’t have to agree on it. Alignment does not mean agreement. But you as a leader of that team, I would argue that one of your first jobs is to find that alignment. You know, and and part of that is back to our earlier discussion about the greater good or the greater cause, you know, why did we get constituted as a team? What’s the implied directive and what can we do to fulfill this greater good now that has been envisioned? And that’s our North Star.
That’s where we’re going as a team. And if you’ve, you know, if you’ve got any contrarian ideas, well, this is the forum to discuss them and not bud. But and at the end of the day, we’re we’re going to road toward that North star.
It. It seems so simple, Doug. And yet there are so many teams that are struggling because they just don’t put in the effort. They don’t do the upfront effort because what you were talking about is up front effort, how we should work together, how we should respect and appreciate and trust each other and develop each other so that we’re operating as a unified team, working towards a common purpose. that upfront work, it pays dividends down the road, but if you don’t do it, it’s actually harder later, because now the team has gone astray and is working and working at odds and going into different directions, silos and all of the problems that we talked about. And it’s just takes double, triple the effort to get us back to where we should have been back when we started out.
“We Are Now Them”
I think one of the most brilliant words of wisdom I heard a leaders ever speak, I was working with a team that that had been newly constituted in a giant corporate reorg. And this leader I was invited to sit in on on their inaugural meeting, and this leader had the wisdom to say to the team, do you remember back when you were at a slightly lower level in the organization, and you used to get your buddies together and you would say, those guys pointing upward in the organization. You know, those guys are this and those guys are that, and if they would only understand blah, blah, blah, he said, guess what folks? We are now them. And and you could hear a pin drop. There was a there was a, you know, mic drop moment there. we are now them. So, you know, part of his message was, let’s don’t forget how we used to think and feel about those guys, and let’s shape our actions and responses more positively and more forward thinking so that we don’t become those guys.
You know, we you know, we have an opportunity here to set a different tone in a different direction for this organization. And I challenge everyone here at the table. That’s what we need to be thinking about. And everybody got excited about it. They said, wow, that’s brilliant. Yes. That’s that’s great. Let’s let’s talk about that. What does that look like? What will that be? And we began the work of laying out a charter and a ultimately a contract on how the team would operate together. And it was interesting, as I was explaining the concept of doing a team contract, one guy spoke up and he goes, we don’t need that. We know how we work with each other. We know we all know each other. We’ve worked together before, you know, blah, blah, blah. And there was a lady sitting next to him and she said respectfully, no, we don’t know each other. I don’t think we do know each other like you think we do.
And he kind of. He kind of half received it, but he didn’t. He stopped. You know, he kind of stopped being a naysayer and got on with the rest of the work. And when the couple of hours we spent really diving deep into this concept of what we needed as a contract for that team, he spoke up at the end of all that, and he looked at her and he said, I want to publicly apologize. He said, you were 100% right. I have learned a lot in this time, and I obviously have a lot more to learn. And I’m eager and excited to be here. And, you know, thank you for this chance. So you know, it. It’s it’s kind of all these preconceived ideas that people bring to work have to be dealt with and explored. And we’re back to the trust issue, you know, put out on the table to get a fair rendering of fair hearing without condemnation or ridicule. But, you know, bring it into the light of day so it can be discussed and people can be understood.
Why People Love Working for Humble Leaders
I love the humility displayed in that story by that leader. I recently read, read this little snippet in, Harvard Business Review, where a study found that, people like working for leaders who are humble. Being kind of makes sense. But a study determined that that’s for sure, that people like humble leaders because, they are more likely to have emotional intelligence and be willing to have feedback that helps them to learn about themselves and increase their self-awareness and think about, oh, okay, yeah, I guess I could do something differently. I learned something from that experience, and I’m willing to share that. I learned something from that experience. right? He didn’t hide it. He said, I apologize that I’ve learned something and benefited from this, so that’s great. I really like that. I wish more leaders would be willing to do that.
Closing Thoughts and How to Reach Michael
Yeah, it was a great moment. Well, Michael, I’m looking at the clock here and I think we’re about up on time for today. But thank you so much for sitting in and sharing with us.
Tell people the best way to get in touch with you.
Absolutely. Well, first off, I just want to thank you, Doug, for this time together. I’ve enjoyed it very much. And and I think we’ve had had a good conversation that I hope leads to some, some stimulated thinking, you know, some some opportunities to maybe remake the way you approach leadership. you can reach me on LinkedIn at just search my name, Michael Neuendorf, you can visit my website, Bay Area Executive coach. Very simple name to remember. I’m in the Bay area and I’m an executive coach, so look for me there. And I also have a lot of videos on YouTube. If you’d like to learn how to approach conversations with a coaching style, catch my channel on YouTube. Bayer executive coaches a lot of videos there to help you.
Wonderful. Well, as always, folks, we’ll have those links in our show notes and in the posting on this episode, so feel free to match those links and check out the rest of Michael’s work.
I do want to remind you, I do have a YouTube channel channel by the same name. Leadership powered by common sense. Go over there and check us out. Leave us a comment, join the channel if you will, and drop me a line suggesting a topic or a guest that you might be interested in hearing from, but I think that’s it for now. We’re going to sign off, say goodbye, and go out there and make it a great day.
Meet Our Guest
Michael Neuendorff, founder of Bay Area Executive Coach, is an executive and team coach, trainer and facilitator. His specialty areas are employee engagement, emotional intelligence and executive presence. He is an ICF-accredited Professional Certified Coach and a faculty member of the Center for Executive Coaching. Michael has been in the field of professional development since 2008. He holds an Advertising degree from Arizona State University and a post-graduate certificate in Business Administration from Heriot-Watt University.
Connect with Doug Thorpe
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dougthorpe/
- Doug Thorpe Website: https://dougthorpe.com/
- Podcasts: https://podcasts.dougthorpe.com
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/dougthorpe_com
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/headwayexec
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/dougthorpe_com
- YouTube: https://youtube.com/@dougthorpe
