Coaching: Don’t Press Send On That Email!

Coaching: Don’t Press Send On That Email!

by | May 15, 2017 | Coaching, Impulse Control

Have you ever sent an email message and then regretted it after it was too late?

A rule of thumb should be that whenever you need to have a difficult conversation or give feedback, you do it face-to-face, never send an email.

Words in an email are powerful and can be misconstrued.

 

BODY LANGUAGE SPEAKS VOLUME

Did you know…only 7% of what people hear are words, 38% is the tone of voice, and 55% is body language.  Both the tone of your words, and your body language cannot be seen or heard in an email; therefore, email communication can often be interpreted incorrectly, and the message may not be received with the intention it was sent.

Workplace coaching face-to-face is necessary to ensure your feedback is received appropriately when the need for a difficult conversation arises. Michael Massari, the VP of Caesars Entertainment, discusses with Forbes the importance of face-to-face communication and its impact on collaboration. Regardless of the industry, all businesses require the need to create prosperous partnerships, and that is done through building trust and engaging others in face-to-face communication.

Now, if you are investing this time into business partnerships outside of your organization, you should definitely be investing the same time into your people.

 

So, what drives effective leaders to make email mistakes?

Impulse control.

One of the 15 competencies in EQ-i 2.0 model developed by Multi-Health Systems (MHS) is impulse control – the ability to resist or delay an impulsive, drive, or temptation to act.

It is your impulse control that leads you to spew off a clever and snappy reply to the person who just sent you a nasty email.

But wait, breathe and figure out a strategy on how you are going to broach the difficult subject in person, face-to-face.

Like building any muscle…you need to work it to become stronger. To have bigger biceps, you need to do more bicep curls.

In order to build your emotional muscles, you need to work them.  To become better at controlling your impulses, you need to resist the temptation and don’t send an email, even if you really, really want to.

 

Impulse Control Best Practices

Try these best practices for Feedback that Works from the Harvard Business Review:

  1. Focus on business outcomes
  2. Give feedback often
  3. Don’t assume you are right
  4. Ask questions
  5. Follow-through
  6. Gather feedback on how you give feedback

Use the business outcome as an opportunity to solve problems rather than criticize the person you are speaking with. This allows for the chance for you to align your goals and find a solution together.

“Difficult feedback is rarely about getting the facts right, it’s about conflicting views, feelings and values. Reasonable people differ about all of these things.” – Robert Witherspoon

When you are coaching someone you should be looking at the whole picture, the business goals, their perspective, and the follow-through if necessary. Conducting these meetings face-to-face will build rapport, encourage your team, and develop their commitment to growth, so don’t do it over email!

Take a minute to reflect on your impulse control, does it affect how you respond to your team? Do you fall victim to your impulse control and press send too quickly?

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Unleashing Your Creativity With EI

Unleashing Your Creativity With EI

by | Jan 15, 2017 | EI and Creativity, Emotional Intelligence

What is creative tension and how does it relate to creativity? MIT professor, Peter Senge, defines “creative tension” as the gap between the vision of the future – what could be, and the current reality – what is. If there were no gap, there would be no need for any action to move towards the vision. We would sit still and idle.

Ideation often starts with the tension in the mind–which, in-turn, can be the motivation or catalyst for acting on and/or achieving the stated vision. When leveraged, this (creative) tension can be used to support individuals to seek resolution, move forward, and explore potential to ultimately create innovative products or services that will soon revolutionize our world.

Every company has a storehouse of creativity, but only truly future-forward thinking organizations know how to effectively leverage and support the people that collectively comprise this creative asset.  Those special companies know how to:

  • Identify and leverage their high potential, change-making employees and their ideas
  • Ignite a spark within those key players so they are acting out of commitment and not simply out of compliance,
  • Build inclusive practices that fully engage diversity and lead to more collaboration and innovative designs, and
  • Foster a culture of authenticity, open-minded and courageous exploration, and relentless ingenuity.

The truly exceptional companies are the ones that have the ability to simultaneously attract, engage and motivate two unique types of individuals:

  1. The visionaries, dreamers, and game-changing innovators, who are not afraid to fail, and are totally infatuated by their vision of change – to find missing holes in society, untapped opportunities and/or areas that are not functioning effectively in the world
  1. The analysts, examiners, and relentless realists, who are not afraid to take a good honest look in the mirror and “get real”, and talk honestly and openly about the ways we limit and deceive ourselves from seeing what is.

It is only these extraordinary leaders that understand that you need both the power of the vision and the power of the truth to create the tension. No tension–no motivation to pull us forward. Motivation is about getting people to do what needs to be done because they want to do it. People always perform better when they’re truly dedicated and devoted to the cause.

A lack of motivation can keep us from committing to working harder and smarter, in the workplace, and in life. It keeps us stuck and prevents us from achieving what matters to us most. If there is no motivation, there is no movement.

Being able to have both personality types – the visionaries and the realists– working in lock-step is key to innovative success.  So, how do you connect with both types of risk takers, and tap into each of their unique abilities? How do we teach people to be mindful, authentic, and courageous? How do we create masterful marketers who can express and dramatize the juxtaposition of where you want to be when compared with where you are (creative tension)? And how do we connect with the heart and awaken the passion in others to move forward? This is done through developing the skills of leading with emotional intelligence.

Great leaders are able to energize and motivate their followers, while also being able to effectively communicate their vision to everyone. They are able to create an emotional connection, even in this era of electronic connectivity, and this is why a leader who understands the importance of emotional intelligence will often have a considerable advantage when communicating and interacting with others, virtually or otherwise.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is about awareness, expression, connection and influence. Creating an emotional bond with the entire person is the key to all business successes – increased employee engagement, richer collaboration, revolutionary innovation, stronger customer loyalty, and optimally, impressive bottom-line results. Emotional intelligence is, quite simply, a work of heart.

Most senior people typically possess superior technical abilities; however, they often lack the skills necessary to get the best from their teams. Therefore, it is extremely important to focus on the skills of working with others to increase the effectiveness of the leaders inside the organization.

In summary, whatever your current organizational challenge is, the answer lies in emotional intelligence. When people throw their hearts into their work, milestones are met, results are surpassed, and employees are engaged. Therefore, it is extremely important for leaders to show their employees how much they care, and teach them to connect with, and lead from, their hearts. As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

As a leader, you need to provide the time and space for the whole company to “get read” with itself, and take a good honest look in the mirror in a safe environment.

Collaboratively, you and your team should come together and discuss what’s really going on, connect on a deeper, more authentic level, and search for unified, forward-thinking solutions to your organization’s challenges.

Being aware of your emotions and those of others, and learning to lead with emotional intelligence are skills that can be taught. Emotional Intelligence training is truly the best investment your organization will ever make.

To get started with emotional intelligence training, you can check out our 5-part EQ Leadership Training course. You can also book our Emotional Intelligence Workshop, available in live or virtual delivery.

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