Initiating real and positive change is often easier said than done, especially when there is lack of trust. It is here that emotional intelligence plays a vital role.
Let's start with a small exercise. Think about a situation when you tried helping someone, but they just refused to follow. And then he got in to trouble just because he didn't listen to you. What was your reaction?
Agitated and upset with an 'I told you so' reaction, or were you calm and composed? Normally one gets agitated and tends to lose his or her emotions. Most of us fall in this category.
If you have authority, people are forced to listen to you and obey your orders. But with no authority or position as such, it is very difficult to make people understand follow your lead to a change. Leadership is all about change (i.e.) Unfreeze-Move-Refreeze-in most cases, without any formal authority.
It is not an easy task. People will not listen to you until and unless you develop a trust factor, where they are comfortable taking your advice and sharing their thoughts with you. This is where 'emotional intelligence' comes handy. As a leader, if one doesn't have 'emotional intelligence', it would be very difficult for one to bring out a change in the system. Without 'emotional intelligence', all other great qualities would simply go in vain.
I am reminded of a situation when Lead Cap organized its first international conference. The conference team was headed by a person from one of India's top management institutes. Being the first of its kind, Lead Cap's top leadership team was closely involved, supporting the team with lots of ideas on how well they could achieve things.
Unfortunately, it all fell on deaf ears. The project leader would not listen at all, but would search for ways to prove why the idea would not work and adopt his own way of doing things-some of them quite contrary to common sense. After two weeks, we realized that the team has not made any progress and we were running short of time.
I was quite surprised with the way the main person behind the Lead Cap vision handled the situation. Instead of getting agitated with the project leader, he decided to stand by him and protect him from all problems. He was of the opinion that the project leader would soon become mature enough to handle the situation in an ideal manner-that he would soon acquire the necessary 'emotional intelligence' to pay heed to others' ideas and to distill the ones best suited to get the job done.
Slowly, but steadily he broke the ice and made the team leader realize the situation. Once that realization dawned, everything else became a dream run.
Emotional intelligence is:
The ability to control your emotions and drives
To analyze your doings and figure out the right and wrong
To view things from others' perspective
To build rapport with people
To make people around you feel special
Helping people to come out of their pre-conceived notions
To motivate people to achieve the impossible
Change is something that everybody resists. One needs to be calm, composed and emotionally strong to turn around things. Emotional intelligence makes a leader shine like a well-polished diamond.
Vishal Agrahari, Online flight Booking
No comments:
Post a Comment