You have a choice. You can accept the status quo or you can step up and become the leader you are looking for.

Stop waiting and start leading. Leadership is not bestowed. It is not a title. It is earned through action and example.

“Leadership is not about titles, positions or flowcharts. It is about one life influencing another.”

~ John C. Maxwell ~

This series of articles is not about what your leaders need to do to turn you into a leader. This series is about what you can do for yourself to become a leader in your own right. Wherever you sit within an organisation, you can lead.

Magic happens when everyone leads.

Previously in this series “When Everyone Leads” I have explored the self-awareness component, self-management and social awareness components of emotional intelligence. Anyone wanting to lead needs to possess emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence skills are more important to performance than intelligence (IQ), experience or technical ability.

Relationship management

This week I am exploring relationship management.

Relationship management is useful when it comes to dealing with conflict; by engaging and collaborating with others earlier than later, we can prevent the inevitable blowup in the future.

Relationship management builds upon self-awareness, self-management, and social awareness skills.

Why it is needed

Your social competence is made up of your social awareness and relationship management skills; social competence is your ability to understand other people’s moods, behaviour, and motives in order to respond effectively and improve the quality of your relationships.

Relationship Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions and the others’ emotions to manage interactions successfully.

Developing relationship management

There are 17 relationship management strategies. Reproduced from getstoryshots.com.

1. Be open and be curious. Sharing things about yourself will leave less room for people to misinterpret you, and the more you know about someone else, the more clearly you can interpret their emotional signals.

2. Enhance your natural communication style. We can all benefit from understanding and adjusting our natural communication style. The authors suggest another writing exercise, with the positives of your style on one side and the negatives on the other. Ask friends or family to help you define the ups and downs, and pick a few of each to emphasise or to work on.

3. Avoid giving mixed signals. It’s possible to be saying something that’s on your mind while simultaneously exhibiting body language that shows a different emotion that is still lingering from a completely separate situation or conversation. Stay aware of your emotions to make sure that your body and voice match your words. If they don’t, explain why so people don’t get mixed signals.

4. Remember the little things that pack a punch. Add back some old-fashioned good manners into the way you talk if you’re not already in the habit of saying the little things like “please,” “thank you,” and “I’m sorry.”

5. Take feedback well. Appreciate the feedback you get, and be mindful of your response. Ask for examples in order to really understand what is being said, and thank the person for the feedback. It’s hard to give feedback as well as get it. Many of the previous points apply; consider sleeping on the feedback, or making an emotion vs. reason list.

6. Build trust. Start the trust-building process by being the first person to “be open” and share something about yourself. I’ll directly quote the authors for the steps to continue building trust: “Open communication; willingness to share; consistency in words, actions, and behaviour over time; and reliability in following through on the agreements of the relationship.”

7. Have an “open-door” policy. The point here is to find specific ways to increase your accessibility to others, not to make your time available to anyone at any time.

8. Only get mad on purpose. It is healthy to express anger in a way that communicates you have strong feelings, or that a situation is serious. Use anger sparingly and purposefully, instead of letting it control you. Again, the authors suggest putting pen to paper; write down things that make you angry, from the minor annoyances to the things that make you explode. Specifically define the degree of anger in each situation that would improve the relationship. If it’s not possible, anger isn’t appropriate for the situation.

9. Don’t avoid the inevitable. When you’re faced with a situation you don’t like, don’t withdraw; it will only make things worse. Apply your EQ skills to find something that helps you through the situation or improves it.

10. Acknowledge the other person’s feelings. Accept others’ right to experience their emotions without either pushing those feelings aside or making them a big deal. Respect the right to those feelings, even if you don’t agree with the feelings themselves. Listen and repeat back what you’ve heard to show your understanding and concern.

11. Complement the person’s emotions or situation. We often have a tendency to reflect the other person’s emotions, but responding to anger with anger, for example, will only make things worse. Take the time to consider some past situations you’ve experienced, and think about when someone else acted in a way that complemented your emotions, making the interaction a pleasant one.

12. When you care, show it. Small acts of appreciation can create powerful relationships.

13. Explain your decisions, don’t just make them. People need to understand why a decision was made in order to support it. Take the time to verbalise your decision process, including what the alternatives were and why you made the decision you did. Seek input before the decision if possible, and always acknowledge the effects of your decision. The authors suggest looking through your calendar to identify your next three upcoming decisions, consider who will be affected, prepare explanations, etc.

14. Make your feedback direct and constructive. The key to giving good feedback is to consider the person who is receiving the feedback, and to adapt your approach accordingly. Take the time to consider the person beforehand.

15. Align your intention with your impact. Times when your impact didn’t align with your intention will give you clues about the areas of your EQ you can improve. Think about times when you unintentionally caused hard feelings, or relationships that seem illogically strained.

16. Offer a “fix-it” statement during a broken conversation. Learn to recognise when a conversation is deteriorating, and say something like, “This is hard,” or “How are you feeling?” Offer a reset button to restore open lines of communication.

17. Tackle a tough conversation. Tough conversations will come up no matter how high your EQ is. The authors offer a six-part approach to managing them better:

1. Start the discussion with common ground.

2. Ask the other person to help you understand how he or she feels.

3. Don’t defend your point of view until you’ve heard the other person’s perspective.

4. Then help the other person understand your side – your reasoning, your feelings, etc. Apologise, if appropriate, for the difficulty of the situation.

5. Move the conversation forward once what can be said has been said. Obtain agreement on the next steps.

6. Follow up concerning what you’ve discussed at a later time as a means of genuinely addressing the issues.

Summary

Unlike your IQ, your EQ is highly malleable. As you train your brain by repeatedly practicing new emotionally intelligent behaviours, your brain builds the pathways needed to make them into habits. Before long, you will begin responding to your surroundings with emotional intelligence without even having to think about it. And as your brain reinforces the use of new behaviours, the connections supporting old, destructive behaviours will die off.