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What makes a good leader? What kind of leaders do modern organizations need?
A good leader isn’t defined by the title. Ultimately, leadership in the workplace is all about dealing with people. And dealing with people, first and foremost, requires soft skills—attributes like empathy, compassion, and emotional intelligence.
With this in mind, here are three leadership qualities modern workplaces need.
1. Humility
Even though you’re the one occupying a position of leadership in the workplace, you should never let that go into your head. Good leaders are humble. According to Jocko Willink, the author of Leadership Strategy and Tactics, humility means recognizing that you’re not more important than anyone on your team. He argues that you can’t be a good leader if you aren’t humble because, without humility, your team won’t follow you.
When you occupy a position of leadership in the workplace, don’t ever consider yourself above your team. Doing this could cause your team to resent you and, as a result, they won’t follow you with much enthusiasm. Instead, work alongside your team with humility. If you demonstrate humility, Willink says you’ll influence your team to cooperate with you to achieve a common goal. This is because acting humbly will earn you respect, and when people respect you, they follow you.
Here are three ways you can practice humility and earn your team’s respect:
1) Don’t use condescending language. Just because you occupy a position of leadership in the workplace, it doesn’t mean you’re better than them. Rather, Willink says you should view your team as equally valuable individuals who deserve respect. So, you should speak to your team in a way that reflects this perspective. For example, if someone at work compliments you for leading a project successfully, avoid saying something that denotes a higher status, such as, “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.” Instead, consider saying something that places you on equal ground with your colleagues, like, “That project was successful because of our whole team’s contributions!”
2) Get your hands dirty. Because you’re equal to the people on your team, no task is below you. For example, if you’re in charge of an office, don’t consider yourself above necessary maintenance chores like taking out the trash, replacing printer ink, or cleaning bathrooms. Willink says doing daily tasks with your team will also give you an opportunity to connect with and learn about them.
3) Respond to conflict by giving a compliment. When you feel challenged by someone, it’s tempting to defend your pride by talking yourself up and diminishing the other person. Instead, Willink says to give the other person praise. For example, let’s say a coworker brags that they always arrive at the office earlier than you do. Instead of pointing out that you work later than them every day, or that you work harder than they do, tell them that you’re grateful they arrive so early to get the office up and running for everyone else. This act will demonstrate confidence. The person challenging you will respect this confidence and be more willing to follow you.
2. Emotional Intelligence
In addition to humility, another attribute every leader must have is emotional intelligence. According to Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis, and Annie McKee, the authors of Primal Leadership, emotionally intelligent leaders create resonance—an atmosphere where members of a group are emotionally synchronized. When a group has resonance, they’re able to reach their maximum potential for collaboration, productivity, and performance—the vital components for success.
Leaders are able to influence their group’s emotional state because it’s human instinct to take emotional cues from the most authoritative person in the group. So, the leader’s emotions will impact how the group feels and acts; therefore, success hinges on how emotionally intelligent the leader is.
| Updating the Emotional Intelligence Skill Inventory In Daniel Goleman’s earlier book, Emotional Intelligence, he defines emotional intelligence as consisting of five main skills rather than four he discusses in Primal Leadership. Emotional Intelligence asserts that the five main skills of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills. Self-awareness is defined almost identically in both Emotional Intelligence and Primal Leadership; however, the former notes that one of the keys to being self-aware is having an emotional vocabulary—knowing that the emotion “love” could be caused by feelings of acceptance or trust, or that the emotion “shame” could be due to guilt or humiliation. This emotional vocabulary helps you understand why you’re feeling certain emotions. Self-regulation is what Goleman calls self-management in Primal Leadership, but in Emotional Intelligence, Goleman adds that we should take particular care to manage our anger, anxiety, and sadness. If we don’t manage these emotions, they’re more likely to become common occurrences and negatively impact other parts of our lives. In Emotional Intelligence, Goleman defines motivation as being able to control your impulses, being hopeful, and being able to achieve a high state of focus while working toward goals. While Emotional Intelligence lists motivation as one of its main skills, Primal Leadership includes it, along with the associated skills of impulse control and hopefulness, as microskills of self-management. Empathy is also only a microskill of social-awareness in Primal Leadership, however, in Emotional Intelligence, Goleman lists it as one of the five major EI skills. He defines empathy as the fundamental skill that allows us to understand others along with their wants and needs. He notes that empathy is especially important in “caring professions” like sales, management, and teaching—an argument he discusses in depth in Primal Leadership. Social skill is the final main EI skill in Emotional Intelligence and is virtually the same as relationship management in Primal Leadership. In Emotional Intelligence, he breaks social skills down into four abilities: organizing groups, negotiating solutions, personal connection, and social analysis. These abilities closely align with the relationship management microskills of bringing people together as a team and resolving conflict, and the social awareness microskills of fostering an emotional climate and being able to read the politics, social networks, and power relationships of a group, respectively. |
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