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 and self-management 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.

Social awareness

This week I am exploring social awareness.

Social awareness is a keen understanding of other people and their emotions. Additionally, it involves using this understanding to determine your interactions with the people around you. The emotional cues that people send you will help put yourself in the other person’s shoes so that you are able to empathise with them.

Why it is important

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

Your social awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on emotions in other people and understand what is really going on.

Developing social awareness

There are 17 social awareness strategies. Reproduced from getstoryshots.com.

1. Greet people by name. Using and remembering someone’s name is a basic way to engage them. Picture the individual’s name spelled out, and use it at least twice in your first conversation with them.

2. Watch body language. By becoming an expert reader of body language, you’ll be better able to recognise emotional cues and adapt accordingly.

3. Make timing everything. Focus on the other person’s emotional state and frame of mind, instead of your own, to ascertain the right timing for what you need to communicate. One simple example is not asking for a favour when the other person is in an upset or angry emotional state.

4. Develop a back-pocket question. Having a prepared open-ended question in reserve is useful in cases when the conversation is dead, the other person is closing up, or you just don’t know what to say. This should be used when you need to inject some life into the interaction, not for conversations that are already emotionally charged.

5. Don’t take notes at meetings. If you’re focused on taking notes, you will likely miss important cues in the conversation. Most communication happens nonverbally, so whenever possible you should focus on the individuals, not your notes. If note-taking is necessary, make sure to take breaks at regular intervals to observe the people in the meeting and pick up emotional cues.

6. Plan ahead for social gatherings. It seems a bit stilted, but the reality is that planning ahead will allow you to be more emotionally present at the event. Write down anything you want to be sure to accomplish, and you’ll forget less and notice more.

7. Clear away the clutter. This involves bettering your listening skills by focusing on the other person’s words and expressions instead of thinking about what you want to say next. The difference is your mental purpose: are you in the conversation to impress the other person with your knowledge, or to learn something?

8. Live in the moment. Being present wherever you are instead of wasting your time regretting the past and worrying about the future will allow you to be more perceptive of the people around you.

9. Go on a 15-minute tour. The authors suggest taking 15 minutes out of each workday to walk around and observe emotional cues: the look of people’s workspaces, the timing of people’s movements, the overall mood, etc.

10. Watch EQ at the movies. Take the time to watch two movies specifically for the purpose of observing the character’s emotions, body language, relationships, interactions, etc.

11. Practice the art of listening. This means practicing a conscious focus on the speaker, and the tone, speed, and volume of their voice.

12. Go people-watching. In order to improve your social awareness abilities, go to a coffee shop, grocery store, or other public places with the express purpose of observing people’s emotional states.

13. Understand the rules of the culture game. In today’s world, being socially aware requires that you develop emotional intelligence across the spectrum of the world’s cultures. This is a complex endeavour, as every culture has its own norms for personal, family, and business interactions. It will require patience as you watch and observe, taking extra time to understand the cultural expectations of people outside your own culture.

14. Test for accuracy. If you’re not sure what a cue is telling you about someone, you can always ask. State what you see (“You seem sad…”) and ask a direct question (“Did something happen?”)

15. Step into their shoes. Remember that people have different backgrounds and motivations. Put yourself in their situation, and from the perspective of how they would see things, try to understand why they are acting the way they are. When possible, check with them to see if your guesses are correct.

16. Seek the whole picture. Ask people about their perceptions of you, or send out a 360-degree survey to get feedback that will help you understand how you appear to others.

17. Catch the mood of the room. Moving from the perception of individuals to being able to read the room is a big leap in abilities. You’ll probably have a gut feeling, but you can also observe groups of people to see how they are talking, how they are moving, how they are grouped, etc. It can be helpful to do this with someone who is experienced in reading a room.

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.