EQ: Your Delivery System

Learn how to contribute effectively while contributing indirectly.

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EQ: Your Delivery System

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Episode Show Notes

This means that to achieve high performance, you don’t just need great technical skills, you need a great delivery system (EQ). Some organizations promote leaders and managers based on their technical skills alone. These leaders lack the interpersonal skills (EQ) they need to contribute effectively while contributing indirectly.

Humans in the workplace engage in millions of daily interactions. Some are effective, and some, well, aren’t. Your emotional intelligence (EQ) determines your ability to interact effectively with other humans. It’s your delivery system through which you share your knowledge, experience, and skills with others. If your delivery system is broken or inefficient, your influence won’t translate or make the right impact.

In this episode, hosts Tim and Junior discuss why leaders and managers are obligated to improve their interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence, and how to get started. If you're a manager and you're moving from direct to indirect contribution, if your primary job, purpose, and stewardship is to contribute indirectly through other people, then you have to improve your delivery system. There’s no other option.

Episode Transcript

[music]

0:00:08.6 Junior: Welcome back, everyone to The LeaderFactor. I'm Junior back with my co-host, Dr. Tim Clark, and today we're gonna be talking about our soft operating system, emotional intelligence.

0:00:18.8 Tim: That's intriguing.

0:00:19.9 Tim: Tim, how are you doing?

0:00:21.1 Tim: I'm doing great, how are you?

0:00:21.8 Junior: I'm doing well. I feel like I'm back in policy debate or...

0:00:25.1 Tim: You got a lot of...

0:00:25.3 Junior: You might feel like you're...

0:00:26.3 Tim: You got a lot of notes out there.

0:00:27.9 Junior: Defending a dissertation, I have like 15 pages over here. There's a lot to go over, and I'm excited to jump into today's conversation, I think it's gonna be an interesting one.

0:00:37.4 Tim: I'm too.

0:00:38.3 Junior: So EQ as our delivery system. So we're gonna talk about the assumption of competence that many organizations and many leaders make in regards to other people and their emotional intelligence, there's an assumption of competence that's really dangerous, and there's a pattern of incompetence as it pertains to emotional intelligence and our delivery system as leaders. So Tim, I wanna start off with a question for you?

0:01:06.8 Tim: Yeah.

0:01:08.9 Junior: Which is, you've coached a lot of CEOs, a lot of executives at many organizations, different sectors, different industries. How often is EQ an issue?

0:01:23.0 Tim: Well, let's think about failures. I would say, if I looked at the last 25 years and all of the executives, I would say that they fail probably 3-1 on the social side, on the true leadership side versus the technical side, I'd say 3-1 failure rate.

0:01:51.9 Junior: That's pretty amazing.

0:01:52.0 Tim: Yeah, I've been thinking about this because I saw the question in the notes Junior, and I knew you were sneaking up on me with this question.

0:02:00.2 Junior: Yeah.

0:02:01.1 Tim: 3-1.

0:02:02.3 Junior: 3-1. 3-1 is an interesting ratio.

0:02:08.2 Tim: It is.

0:02:08.7 Junior: It tells me that this is something I should pay attention. Right?

0:02:09.8 Tim: Yes. Very much so. Very much so.

0:02:12.1 Junior: Hence the question, I anticipated that it would be something like this.

0:02:15.5 Tim: But think about this, if you have moved to upper levels of management in an organization, there's a good chance that you have demonstrated the technical competency as you have moved along, especially when you move from individual contributor to your first management position. You met the technical requirements for your job, and they said, Hey, let's elevate this person to be a manager, so you had that covered, so there's a good chance that you met that threshold requirement for technical competency, right? And that we assess that early on in your career, and that you were distinguishing yourself, you were performing well, but as you move along and you move to higher levels of leadership, your influence has to be scalable and your interpersonal skills are really put to the test. Why? Because you're gonna... And we're gonna get into this, I know, but you're going... You have to contribute in a different way.

0:03:30.8 Junior: Yeah. And that's the objective of today's conversation, to help people understand how the nature of their contribution changes over time as their role changes.

0:03:40.1 Tim: Right.

0:03:41.7 Junior: So I ask the question as it pertains to executives and CEOs, what do you think about the failure pattern of front to mid-level leadership? Do you think it's a similar ratio?

0:03:52.9 Tim: I actually do, because often when they elevate, when you promote someone to management, they've... You can make as I said, the assumption that they've done well in their job as an individual contributor, so they've got some, a tracker of performance there, but they struggle to make the psychological transition and the skills transition to lead indirectly through other people. So I don't think it's that much different.

0:04:27.2 Junior: So we could probably say with a lot of confidence that leaders fail on the interpersonal side 3-1 compared to technical failure.

0:04:36.9 Tim: That's been my experience.

0:04:39.4 Junior: So if that's been our experience, our hope is to provide some tools, some frameworks, some exercises, and then some real practical things for us to do to avoid the fate of those three. In the 3-1, each of us has a work to do in this area, and if we don't, there will be a price to pay, it's not gonna be good for us or for the organization, we need to mature. And we talked a little bit about that in the last episode, that the nature of today's environment requires a different type of leader, we can't get away with a lot of what we've gotten away with in the past. We need to mature and go to the next stage.

0:05:17.6 Tim: Yeah. So what we're saying Junior, based on that assumption of 3-1 failure on the interpersonal side, on that leadership side, that is the biggest limiting factor, that's the biggest bottleneck that we see across the entire leadership population.

0:05:38.5 Junior: Let's share our first chart. This one is called the nature of a leader's contribution, and you're gonna see a couple of lines over here. We've got on this left side, going from top to bottom, direct contribution. What do we mean by this? We mean the level of contribution that is direct to the outcome, so...

0:06:02.3 Tim: You're creating the value.

0:06:03.4 Junior: You are creating the value yourself in direct contribution.

0:06:08.2 Tim: Right.

0:06:09.6 Junior: We have time on the X-axis. Right? So at the beginning of your career, we're expecting that you start right about here. What does that mean? It means that your contribution, the nature of your contribution is almost exclusively or is exclusively direct. You do the thing, you pick the Apple, you type on the keyboard, you press the button on the machine, you make the widget. That's what we're talking about when we're talking about...

0:06:40.3 Tim: Whatever it is.

0:06:40.7 Junior: Contribution. Now, as time goes on the level of our contribution will change, you can see it decrease over time, it goes from direct to indirect. So what does this mean? Help us understand, what is indirect if it's not direct any more than what's happening.

0:07:01.0 Tim: Yeah. You're contributing through other people.

0:07:03.5 Junior: Okay.

0:07:03.7 Tim: So you're coaching them, guiding them, directing them to perform the work, so your contribution goes from direct to indirect, that's a fundamental shift in the way that you contribute.

0:07:20.3 Junior: And is it binary or a spectrum? The contribution, is it all direct or all indirect or over time, does it become less?

0:07:29.9 Tim: Oh. Oh, it's a spectrum.

0:07:30.9 Junior: And we layers.

0:07:31.9 Tim: Oh yeah. It's not binary, no. And there are some things that you're still doing directly, right?

0:07:36.6 Junior: Sure.

0:07:36.8 Tim: So it's a matter... It can be gradual. It can go fast. It depends on the role, it depends on the expectations of the role. It depends on the function that you're in, it depends on a lot of factors.

0:07:48.9 Junior: So let's say that you are a first time leader and you manage a team of three people, and each of them is operating at the level of direct contribution, you're one step away from that direct contribution. What if you're the CEO of a 10,000 person multinational? How much of your contribution is direct?

0:08:12.5 Tim: Yeah, not very much.

0:08:13.7 Junior: Like zero.

0:08:14.2 Tim: Right.

0:08:15.3 Junior: And how many levels are you away from direct contribution?

0:08:19.8 Tim: A lot.

0:08:20.6 Junior: 10?

0:08:21.1 Tim: I'll give you an example, Junior, I was talking with the hospital administrator not long ago. And the hospital administrator said... I guess he was just reflecting on his role and he had just come out of a staff meeting with all of his direct reports that are in charge of all the divisions, clinical and non-clinical in the hospital, and he said, "You know what?" He said, "Tim, I can't do any of their jobs."

0:08:45.2 Junior: Not one of them.

0:08:45.6 Tim: "Not one of their jobs can I do. Because even the functional area that I came up through has changed so much, even if I went back to that to try to do that, I'm obsolete. My skills have become obsolete," he said, "I can't do any of their jobs." So talk about indirect contribution, assembling the team, getting the team to call less, giving them the guidance and the direction, and the encouragement and the inspiration to do their job. That's indirect contribution. And you gotta know how to do that.

0:09:20.1 Junior: You do. In the chart, there is another line. This line is the blue line. This is interpersonal skill or interpersonal skill requirement, and this is inversely correlated with the nature of our contribution.

0:09:35.7 Tim: Right.

0:09:36.5 Junior: So as our contribution becomes less direct, our interpersonal skill requirement goes up. Why? Because we're contributing through other people, it's necessarily true that we need interpersonal skill to contribute through other people.

0:09:55.3 Tim: You're enabling them.

0:09:55.8 Junior: So tell me about this transition. When people go from direct contribution to managing for the first time, it seems to me that in all the years, the pattern is most are ill-equipped, so is it... What's going on? Why are they ill-equipped?

0:10:17.5 Tim: I think that they try to do the job in the same way they were doing their old job.

0:10:27.4 Junior: Tell me more.

0:10:28.8 Tim: And so their mindset is individual contributor, so they're either trying to do things themselves or they are being... They think, Oh, I know what management is. It means directing people, it means telling people what to do, and so then they become over-directive, over-prescriptive, and they're trying to manage people that way. And so they immediately step into a mode of micro-managing others, and they think that constitutes management. Does that make sense?

0:11:03.7 Junior: Yeah, it does. What I've seen as well, is that if you are contributing directly, you're pressing buttons, you're turning dials, you're doing very mechanical things, and that affects the outcome. As you move from that into indirect contribution, and it's the first time you're often looking to do the same thing to alter the outcome, you're trying to press buttons and turn dials and do the actual work to achieve whatever your objective is, and for some reason, I guess it's not obvious, we're missing the fact that, Oh, there's this new human element and humans don't actually work that way. Also, we can't just say, Here's the problem, here's what you need to go do. Go do that. There's a bunch of other stuff going on. Now, if you approach that the same way you will fail. Institutionally, this is a failure pattern, we see organizations that identify people who have done really well in their technical roles, we promote them to management, and we don't give them the support and the infrastructure, the education to help them make the transition. And so many people fail their way through and they stumble and many try to correct it, and some do so well in spite of the organization.

0:12:32.3 Junior: Others don't fare so well, and yet the organization will look with surprise at the situation and say, Man, I don't know what's going on. We're failing. Why don't we have better leaders? It's because of this. It's because the interpersonal skill requirement has gone up, but we have not done any skill development to improve the interpersonal skill. Yet we're very ready to invest in the technical skill development of the person to help them go to the next level.

0:13:01.8 Tim: It's a bit ironic.

0:13:02.8 Junior: It is. And it's ironic that we're surprised at the end of that story when it doesn't work out so well, so that's the purpose of today's conversation, is to help identify this problem so that we as organizations can help solve it, and we as individuals can take responsibility for our own development and improve to become better leaders, because without that, no amount of technical skill will compensate for that deficit of interpersonal skill.

0:13:34.1 Tim: That's right. That's right. And Junior, I also wanna point out that it's a matter of skill, but it's also a matter of intent, and I know we're gonna talk about that. But it's both sides, and we often talk about the two pathologies that we see across every organization, we see paternalism, and we see exploitation, and there is no organization, it seems on the planet that doesn't have some level of paternalism and exploitation going on among the management population, right? So we see these pathologies and they persist, and so we know that we have work to do.

0:14:20.1 Junior: Yeah. So in this chart over here in interpersonal skill, I'm gonna write an equal sign, that's supposed to be an equal sign, and this is gonna be EQ. Interpersonal skill EQ. So what is emotional intelligence? How would you define emotional intelligence? Because this is the vein we're gonna take from here.

0:14:42.0 Tim: Yes. So we have a very simple working definition that we use. The ability to interact effectively with other humans. That's it.

0:14:53.8 Junior: That was technical.

0:14:54.2 Tim: Yeah. That was pretty long, pretty clinical, pretty academic. But if you go through the entire research literature in emotional intelligence, and it is a composite, complex, multi-faceted, multi-factorial concept, but the essence of the concept is to be able to interact effectively with other human beings. That's what it's all about.

0:15:28.8 Junior: And why is this important? This is important because work is a social ecosystem, you don't do things in isolation, you have to be able to manage, you have to be able to collaborate and ideate and communicate with other people. So the ability to interact effectively with other humans, EQ, can you be successful without that? No.

0:15:53.9 Tim: You can't.

0:15:54.6 Junior: At least there will be a lower ceiling than there otherwise would be if you had it.

0:15:58.9 Tim: So Junior, that is a binary proposition right there. You cannot be effective if you don't learn how to interact effectively with them.

0:16:09.9 Junior: Yeah. Well, and EQ would only be additive in any situation, so let's say that you're a brilliant technical mind, we see this occasionally. A brilliant technical mind. Let's say you're a programmer, and your idea of the world is that the better I become at programming, the more effective I will be at work. Is that true? No.

0:16:36.4 Tim: No, it's not.

0:16:36.7 Junior: It's not true.

0:16:37.4 Tim: Right.

0:16:38.3 Junior: If you're a heart surgeon, the better you become at surgery, the better surgeon you are in an angle, right?

0:16:46.3 Tim: Yes.

0:16:47.2 Junior: To a degree.

0:16:47.9 Tim: Yes.

0:16:49.4 Junior: But let's say that you're a computer programmer who stumbles upon this idea, this feature that would make a massive difference for the organization, what if you can't socialize that idea.

0:17:00.9 Tim: Right. What if you can't build a coalition of support?

0:17:04.3 Junior: You're done. It's not gonna go anywhere. I've seen this time and time again with technical people. If you can't build a coalition, if you can't socialize an idea, if you can't collaborate, there's a ceiling on your progress. You will stunt your growth really early if you focus just on technical, and then you'll cap out. And it is only additive, that is a point that I really wanna drive home. I cannot think of a situation in which better EQ would be disadvantageous to you regardless of your technicality. It's always going to help.

0:17:39.2 Tim: Right. But it's so interesting to see how technical skills reach a point of diminishing returns if you're in a management role.

0:17:49.1 Junior: Oh yeah, of course.

0:17:51.6 Tim: And if you're not paying attention to that, then your effectiveness is going to degrade over time.

0:18:03.6 Junior: Yeah. So once again, what is emotional intelligence? It's the ability to interact effectively with other humans, and the argument that we're making is that that's important. That's an obviously important thing to do. So we have three choices that we can make that we wanna highlight, we can stay where we are and increase our technical skill, understanding that our influence will be limited. So that's an option.

0:18:32.2 Tim: Yes.

0:18:32.3 Junior: The do nothing scenario.

0:18:33.4 Tim: And there are some people that want to stay on a technical track, right?

0:18:39.8 Junior: Sure, sure, which is fine.

0:18:40.3 Tim: Which is fine and we need that. But even they will reach a point of diminishing returns as they work with their colleagues, as they're trying to build things, design things, improve things, whatever it is they do, the need for interpersonal effectiveness is gonna be there.

0:19:03.3 Junior: Well, let's ask the question. Is there a scenario in which everything would be better if you were just by yourself?

0:19:10.2 Tim: No.

0:19:12.3 Junior: I mean, some people yeah, me. I just wanna be alone. Think about it.

0:19:16.4 Tim: Unless you're thorough and you wanna go to Walden's Pond. I don't know. I...

0:19:19.6 Junior: Well, he eventually he comes out of Walden Pond and is like, enough. Again, he does.

0:19:26.6 Tim: That's the interesting thing. He had had enough.

0:19:26.9 Junior: I'm done.

0:19:31.4 Tim: He's gotta go back to society. He's gotta go back to civilization. He needs some interaction.

0:19:33.0 Junior: We're social creatures.

0:19:33.7 Tim: Yeah. No, I've been looking at the fungus for too long here.

0:19:37.4 Junior: Yeah. That's enough. Yeah. So eventually we're gonna come to terms with the reality that we need other people and other people need us, and that so much of what is gratifying about work is the ability to interact with other people.

0:19:49.3 Tim: No question.

0:19:50.0 Junior: Now, it may be the case that we feel a little jaded because of experiences that we've had, and that interaction hasn't been healthy. But if you went to almost any person on planet Earth and said, Hey, would your life be better if we had a little bit better healthy social interaction? Could you do better with better friends and better leaders And better... Yes. People would say, yeah you know.

0:20:15.8 Tim: Every time.

0:20:16.7 Junior: Provided that the environment were safe and that I felt included and that I could do the four stages. Yeah. Absolutely. I would want that. So what happens if we stagnate and we say, you know what? We're just gonna hang out here. We're just gonna develop on that technical track, and we are gonna disregard the human element. This is what we are left with unrealized potential. This is sad 'cause we could be more effective and we're choosing not to be, but this is a choice that people can make. The other choice that we can make, or the next choice we can make is this one. We can ascend the organizational hierarchy using coercion and manipulation by faking or taking. That's what we can do. That's another option, right?

0:21:05.0 Tim: Faking or taking. Well said.

0:21:07.5 Junior: Well, there's this quote that there are fakers takers and makers. I love that idea. I love that idea. Which one are you gonna be? So if we ascend the hierarchy using those tools, what's the result? A wake of human damage. That is what we are left with. And we see this all the time in organizations way too often.

0:21:35.8 Tim: We do.

0:21:39.6 Junior: Way too often, a wake of human damage. One of the things that we use often is PS index. We measure the level of psychological safety, and we measure what we call red zones. Environments of punished vulnerability. These occur often where people say, well, I ask a question or I make a comment, or I do something and I'm immediately punished. This is real. A wake of human damage. You look at the social implications, the mental implications of what happens here. It's not pretty. Now we're left with this last option. Number three, ascend the organizational hierarchy by developing technical and interpersonal skill. What's the outcome? Achievement and healthy influence. Those are our three options as it relates to emotional intelligence. We stay where we are and we don't realize our potential. We ascend using coercion and manipulation, and we leave a wake of human damage, or we develop both technically and interpersonally, and we achieve and we have healthy influence. What do you think? Are these the choices? Are we missing anything? Does this account for most of it?

0:22:58.9 Tim: I think these are the choices, junior, but I wanna make another point to add to it a stronger point. And that is that if you have said yes to a management role, and you didn't have to, But if you said yes, if they tapped you on the shoulder and they said, we want you to lead a team, we want you to be a supervisor, a manager, whatever the role is, and you said yes, I think that you're under a moral obligation to develop your emotional intelligence so that you can do the job. That's what I think, right? There's a requirement there. So there's a moral, ethical obligation for you, a responsibility to develop the skills that are required to lead that team.

0:23:49.4 Junior: It almost seems like a foregone conclusion that people would say yeah, promote me, right?

0:23:55.4 Tim: Right. But they're not thinking about the implications and the moral obligation that comes with saying Yes. That's what I'm trying to say.

0:24:04.4 Junior: Well, that's my point in asking that question too. Which is, it seems in conversation that if someone said yeah, would you like to be promoted? Yeah. Who's gonna say no? I don't wanna be. Occasionally, that will happen, but most of the time people say, yeah, that's an increase in responsibility. Probably make more money. It will help me on my way. And the organization also doesn't call it out.

0:24:32.6 Tim: No, they don't.

0:24:34.0 Junior: This new responsibility.

0:24:35.7 Tim: One of the things Junior I think we have a point of view on this that sounds a little, I don't know strong.

0:24:51.0 Junior: Well, tell me and I'll tell you how it sounds.

0:24:52.3 Tim: Okay. And the point of view is that if you do not exhibit emotional intelligence, if you're not able to develop and demonstrate emotional intelligence and create psychological safety, those conditions that should prevail on a team, you should not be eligible for promotion to management.

0:25:17.1 Junior: That just sounds true.

0:25:18.3 Tim: That's what I think.

0:25:22.2 Junior: I agree with you.

0:25:25.8 Tim: Some people may think, oh, that's a little harsh. I don't think it's harsh.

0:25:31.3 Junior: No. I would be happy to have a conversation with that person. How could you argue?

0:25:35.5 Tim: That's your job. That's your job.

0:25:36.9 Junior: How could you argue that that's not a requirement.

0:25:39.2 Tim: It has to be a requirement. If you're a manager and you're moving from direct to indirect contribution, and your primary job, your primary purpose, your primary stewardship is to contribute indirectly through other people, and emotional intelligence is your delivery system by which you do that. How do you argue the point.

0:26:01.7 Junior: You don't successfully?

0:26:04.1 Tim: I don't think you do. I don't think you can.

0:26:06.3 Junior: No. You would have to be able to say, I'm going to promote you. And it's unnecessary for you to interact effectively with other humans. If you are leading a field of robots, maybe...

0:26:19.5 Tim: Yeah. Then you can do it. I think more evidence for the point is, look at instances where we have a technical genius that we move into a senior leadership role, and they leave a wake of human destruction behind them. What does that organization always try to do for that person? That technical genius, that amazing visionary. They try to surround that person. Well, they try to create a buffer.

0:26:50.0 Junior: They just insulate them.

0:26:52.9 Tim: They try to insulate them. They try to buffer that person so that they can kind of mitigate the damage. They can minimize it because they know it's gonna be there. So it's a workaround. That's what it is.

0:27:05.9 Junior: Yeah. Well, and it's hugely inefficient. It's massively inefficient.

0:27:10.0 Tim: But it's making the point.

0:27:11.4 Junior: Yeah. It is. There are many examples of that.

0:27:14.7 Tim: It's an exception that makes the point.

0:27:17.0 Junior: Yeah. And there are many obvious on where that's been true.

0:27:20.0 Tim: Yeah. We could point out some pretty high profile folks right now that would fit that mold.

0:27:28.4 Junior: Yeah. So if, here's another important point that we need to get to, which is I'll frame it as a question, Is EQ, this interpersonal skill that we're saying is so important, is it learnable? Because this is an important assumption. If we say, well, it's not, then well, we just have to screen for it. You either have it or you don't. And if you don't, I guess you're outta luck. You'll never be eligible. In our series on I don't know what series. At some point we've talked about the fact that it's a learnable skill. And that's been shown time and time again, this is not a fixed trait. It's something that we can develop over time. Will you say a word about that?

0:28:19.2 Tim: No, I think that's true. And there's an entire body of research that supports that with studies with children and adolescents and adults that demonstrate that you can make significant improvement in emotional intelligence if you want to. But these are learnable skills.

0:28:38.1 Junior: Yeah. As anything, if you want to, you can.

0:28:41.0 Tim: You can.

0:28:41.5 Junior: If it's a learnable skill, you can. So let's pop over to this slide, because I wanna break down EQ a little bit into its component parts. Now, we've said a word about this before, but many of you may not be familiar with this framework. So this is our EQ index framework. This is EQ in its component parts. There are three columns here that are important. What you believe, what you know, what you say and do. As that applies to yourself and other people. Then inside of those, you get these combinations. So what you believe about yourself is called self regard. What you believe about other people is called social regard, so on and so forth. Self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, and social management. The reason I wanna call this out is because when we say, well, it's your obligation to go and improve your emotional intelligence, it's not some amorphous thing.

0:29:40.2 Junior: It's not a unidimensional thing that you just go and improve all at once. It has component parts that you can break down. To me, this is really encouraging because if I go in here and I look at some of these, so inside self regard, I have these skill areas, independence, optimism, self-respect, confidence, and motivation. If I look at self-management, impulse control, emotional stability, resilience, these are things that I can gauge. I can measure even intuitively. We have an assessment for this. EQ index measures it. But if I'm just looking at these generally, like, well, listening and questioning. Not so good. Openness not so good. Influence conflict management. I'm pretty good at those, so on and so forth. Anyone could come in and this is just an example to say that there are things that you can identify on your own that you can improve, that you might be deficient in. And that could come through feedback from other people. It could come from your own self-awareness and observation, your interactions as you look back on the way that you've interacted in the past. And then you can go start working on these things. What do you think about this?

0:31:00.6 Tim: Well, this is what makes it learnable. We break it down. We operationalize the definition, we break it down into these six domains. We know there are internal domains. We know there are external domains, and then we have the beliefs and the awareness and the behavior. So there's a lot of work to do and you can't tackle all of this at once. But if you get an accurate baseline of where you are, then you can at least pick a couple of areas, set some goals, and start practicing and getting better. That's the good news.

0:31:34.9 Junior: That is the good news. Now, here's our plug unashamed. If you wanna know what your scores are in each of these areas, go take EQ index. It'll take you 20 minutes, it's 150 items. It's huge course, and you can go learn more about it on the site, but you can get scores for each of these and help to improve them. It's important that you do. Now, you don't have to go and take this assessment. You can do a lot of work by yourself, and we would encourage you to do that. If you want a little bit of extra help, this might be relevant for you, But the point that we wanna make is I'm gonna go all the way back up to the top here to talk about this first one, the nature of a leader's contribution. This is something that we will all be faced with.

0:32:19.7 Junior: So you may be over here, as we stated in the beginning, maybe your contribution is completely direct right now. Ask yourself, do you have any aspiration to lead? Do you have any aspiration to lead? If you do, you gotta pay attention to this line. The interpersonal skill requirement will go up. And as we've stated, it's not binary. It's something that will move over time. It will become even more important. Your ability to manage and interact with other people will be so important in the next few stages of your development. And that direct contribution will go down. It's not to say that you shouldn't sharpen technical skill, but you need to pay attention to this interpersonal skill or EQ requirement that will increase over time. What have you seen, Tim, in the leaders who have been the most effective, the CEOs with the highest emotional intelligence. How much of an advantage is that to them?

0:33:22.1 Tim: Oh, it's incredible because regardless of the situation, regardless of the adaptive challenges that they're responding to, they are able to engage their teams and release the full, really release the full potential of their teams. And it can only be done through the delivery system of their emotional intelligence. So it becomes an indispensable element. That's what I see. And I go back to what I said at the outset, which is 3-1 failure ratio on interpersonal versus technical. So if that doesn't get your attention, it should by now.

0:34:00.7 Junior: It should by now coming from you. I will take that with a lot of believability. Your believability index is high. You've talked to a lot of people and had the opportunity to train a lot of high powered executives across the globe in every industry, and we've seen this as a pattern. So increase your technical skill, but do not ignore the interpersonal skill requirement that will absolutely be there. So with that, we will wrap up. Say thank you very much for tuning in today. We would love to see your feedback in the comments. If you have any questions about anything that we talked about today, you have any suggestions for future topics that you would like to see us cover on the LeaderFactor, please let us know. We would like to see your favorite part of the episode and any feedback for us is greatly appreciated. So with that we will say goodbye and see you next episode. Take care, everybody.

[music]

Show Notes

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Episode Transcript

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

Static and dynamic content editing

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How to customize formatting for each rich text

Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

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