Are You The Right Kind of Smart?

March 8, 2010 -- 12:21 pm

Your IQ – your hardwired intelligence (actually your ability to learn) accounts for 4 – 10% of your career success. Important, but not the most important.

Your EQ – your emotional intelligence (your ability to know yourself, manage yourself and get along with others) accounts for 40 – 60% of your career success. Very important.

Today’s workplace is a service-based (relationship) workplace. Since employees are paid to think through their responses to customers, and they control their minds, managers must now engage and inspire employees to activate their performance. Today’s managers must be able to listen, hear, watch and connect – they must be relationship builders, connectors and communicators.

To be a relationship builder requires strong EQ – a clear knowledge of yourself and how to successfully relate to others. This enables a manager to better connect with and understand employees – to know their talents, values and interests to put them in the right jobs, motivate them and activate their performance.

To improve your EQ:
1. Become more aware or your responses, reactions and emotions. Noticing how you react helps you assess its effectiveness and ineffectiveness.
2. Manage your emotions to improve your ability to listen, respond and successfully react with others.
3. Watch the behaviors of others; understand their moods and communication method to improve how you connect with them. Learn to listen so people will talk, and talk so people will listen.

Smarts – defined today – relate more to your ability to know yourself and to connect successfully with others rather than just what you know. Though some people are naturally better at “connection” and EQ, studies support all of us can improve. Improving your EQ has a direct impact on the quality of your work and life relationships, the quality of your work and the quality of your life.

Leave a Comment   

Half-full or Half-Empty?

March 4, 2010 -- 5:55 am

Are you a half-full or a half-empty kind of person? Are you optimistic or are you sure to find the down side if there is one to be had?

One of my favorite books is Arianne de Bonvoisin’s First 30 Days. In it, she outlines nine principles of handling change and building a more positive perspective. Her first principle is “People who successfully navigate change have positive beliefs.”

Positive beliefs come from you – you may not be able to control the things that happen to you but you can control how you respond to them. You can choose to see “half-full” – upbeat, optimistic and confident – or choose to see “half-empty” – down, pessimistic and unsure.

Consider these ways to build a more positive perspective:
1. Notice when you become negative and immediately focus on something positive. Have others help you see your behavior.
2. Read a power quote or an inspirational passage to start your day on a positive tone.
3. Create an upbeat “break” during the day. Focus on 3 things that have gone well so far.
4. Choose your friends wisely; associate with positive and confident people.

To make the point, here are some great half-empty/half-full perspectives from the website www.businessballs.com.
o The project manager/engineer says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. 

o The bar fly says is not about whether the glass is half full or half empty, it’s about who is paying for the next round.
o The consultant says let’s examine the question, prepare a strategy for an answer, and all for a daily rate of…
o The worrier frets that the remaining half will evaporate by tomorrow.
o The fanatic thinks the glass is completely full, even though it isn’t. 

o The entrepreneur sees the glass as undervalued by half its potential.
o The computer specialist says that next year the glass capacity will double and will cost half the price.
o The Buddhist says don’t worry, remember the glass is already broken.
o The personal coach knows that the glass goes from full to empty depending on the circumstances, and reminds the drinker that he can always fill the glass when he wishes.
o The grammarian says that while the terms half-full and half-empty are colloquially acceptable the glass can technically be neither since both full and empty are absolute states and therefore are incapable of being halved or modified in any way. 


You control your attitude. Know yourself; choose to be positive and upbeat. It is great for your health and happiness.

Leave a Comment   

Get More Done With Less

February 28, 2010 -- 3:45 pm

Today’s recession has forced many organizations to reduce their staffing. Headcount is down but workload is not. So fewer employees have to get more things done.

I am not talking about overworking employees; if you overwhelm them, they may stay for now but will leave as soon as things get better.

I am talking about having the right people in the right jobs – because when your employees are good at what they do and love doing it, performance soars.

The challenge for many organizations is the wrong people have been in the wrong jobs for a while. Today’s recession has created the need to make important changes throughout the organization to align talent to the right roles to better use the performance power of each employee. Each employee is now more critical; each must contribute his best. This can’t happen if they are in the wrong roles.

To start a meaningful realignment process, ask your employees these questions:
1. What are you great at?
2. What do you love to do?
3. What is your least favorite aspect of your job?
4. What is your favorite aspect of your job?
5. What do you wish you could do more of?

This gives you critical information about employee attributes and interests. Use this information to assess for employee “fit.” Realign as needed. Hire the right people from the outside from today’s extreme choice of unemployed talent if the talent you need does not currently exist. Create your A-Team – this team will need to get more done with less.

Leave a Comment   

Don’t Let Little Things Become Big Things

February 25, 2010 -- 5:24 am

Day in and day out little nuisance things happen to us – little things – you stumble, drop some papers, take a wrong turn, spill a cup of coffee or lose your cell phone connection. In our busy and over-scheduled lives, little events become big events. And when already frazzled, a truly large event now becomes completely unmanageable.

In 2004 Dr. Robert Sapolsky published a book titled, Why Zebra’s Don’t Get Ulcers. In it, he presents that animals and humans are equipped to handle both calm and danger. The parasympathetic system runs all of the routine internal body systems, day in and day out (periods of calm). The sympathetic system is designed to help us survive in a period of danger, stress or euphoria, and interrupts the parasympathetic system.

I am not a scientist, so here is my simple summary of his findings. When we are calm (we are not affected by the nuisance events), our internal maintenance systems respond – we stay healthy.

But when we get upset (the brain senses danger – big or small), it activates a fight or flight response. The body calls all its resources to be ready for something big, shutting down its focus on the daily support functions. We are now ready for a fight or a flight.

Here is the point. The body is designed to handle a temporary fight or flight response. Animals know this. And according to Sapolsky, when the lion gets his prey, or the zebra gets away, the fight or flight response ends and the body resumes its normal response. But humans are different. When we experience recurring nuisance events, we move our systems into a state of perpetual stress; we constantly signal to our bodies to be ready to fight or hit the road. And when this happens, the regular, healthy and maintenance functions of the body are interrupted. The result – a challenged immune system resulting in ulcers, cancer, diabetes and other illnesses.

How we perceive events activates emotions; emotions activate neurological and biological responses in our body. We must train ourselves to manage our emotional responses to all types of events – to know what is danger and what is only a nuisance- to stay healthy and sane.

So consider this:
1. Is this a nuisance and you should laugh it off? (Laughing is great for our health).
2. Is this truly serious and worth the attention?

Life throws out small tests to get us ready for larger ones. Manage your responses and use fight or flight only when it is needed – the body was designed that way. Learn from the zebras – they don’t get ulcers. They don’t let the little stuff get them down. That way, when they need to run, they are really ready – and they survive. And at every other point, they are loving life.

Leave a Comment   

Make Work “Personal”

February 22, 2010 -- 11:35 am

If you want the best from your employees, they must feel personally connected to their work. This “personal” focus is new to the workplace; many businesses have not learned how to make work personal and it is showing in the results.

Here’s what I mean. When we were an industrial (make things) economy, workplaces were very impersonal. Your personality, interests, emotions and attitudes were kept out of the workplace; you had your procedures to do over and over – and that was work.

Today, our workplace is an intellectual and service workplace (much of manufacturing has moved offshore). Business happens in the relationships and connections our employees make with customers; employees are face-to-face and phone-to-phone with customers. Relationships, feelings, emotions and connection matter – in fact, these are today’s profit drivers. The humanity of your employees is what attracts and retains customers.

Consider the following ways to make your workplace more personal:
1. Spend time with each employee to learn his/her talents, values and interests. This will allow you to customize jobs around particular interests and strengths.
2. Ask employees not only what they think, but what they feel about events. Much of business is conducted on feelings; workplaces that encourage employees to be emotionally connected to their work encourage stronger customer relationships.
3. Appreciate each employee’s diversity. Think of your employees as M&M’s – you hire them for their thinking (the filling) but you celebrate and appreciate their diversity and culture (the candy coating). See my article “A Sweet Diversity Lesson.” Openly appreciating and celebrating employees’ diversity personalizes the workplace – they feel included.

Remember, how you treat your employees is how your employees treat your customers. Make it personal with your employees and they will make it personal for your customers.

To catch up and personally connect your employees, see the tools, resources and articles on www.LiveFiredUp.com, click “For Managers.”

Leave a Comment