CYNTHIA INDRISO
We’re a coaching and consulting services company that helps create more engaged, healthy lives and workplaces where leadership comes to life for a more positive impact on the world.
Womenleaders: Yourhighself-awarenessisn’tenough. The best leaders demonstrate high self-awareness.
And research shows that women leaders generally have higher self-awareness than men. Women also rate themselves higher on their level of self-awareness than men do, and so do their direct reports, managers, and peers. Women also respect and recognize how important self-awareness is for career development and success. So if women leaders are so plugged into their self-awareness, why aren’t more of them on equal footing with their male counterparts? Why are they generally paid less and underrepresented in the workplace? The self-confidence myth While gender inequity has wide-ranging causes, much of our work with our women leaders focuses on helping them develop greater self-awareness.
Underestimating value-added Where our women leaders do struggle,how ever, is in assessing how others perceive their value-added. This naturally affects their behavior. A lot! Reality-check tools. A prelude to training emotional intelligence. PRACTICING MINDFULNESS : In a previous blog post of ours, we defined mindfulness and wrote about how it makes you a better leader.
A prelude to training emotional intelligence Regular introspective practice allows your brain to fully relax and reduces your tendency to lead on autopilot. You reclaim all of the mental and emotional territory you lose to distractions outside the present moment, which gives you more choice and control in how you respond and react in the present moment. Your self-knowledge from this vantage point helps form the foundation for the emotional intelligence skills of a great leader. The Practice We don’t use the word “practice” lightly. Focus on your breath as you inhale and exhale, without trying to change anything about it.When your mind wanders (remember, 50 percent of the time, on average), notice it without judgement.Bring your attention back to your breath.When you notice it has wandered off again, repeat the cycle.
Leading with Feedback : Two Essential Tips for How to Receive It. We All Love Getting Feedback – As Long As It’s Positive Feedback has always been a hot topic in business.
Leading with Feedback : Two Essential Tips for How to Give It. To help people excel, point out their excellence, not their failure How do you give feedback in ways that get people to actually listen and change?
It’s not a new challenge in leadership circles. Every leader we work with, all over the world and at every level of management, struggles with it: I sugarcoat it. It’s easier over the phone, because I don’t see the face of the other person. There’s a ton of research, tools, and opinion out there to address what’s always been a hot topic in business. Netflix Stirs the Debate WSJ authors Ramachandran and Flint, whospoke to more than 70 current and former Netflix employees, describe what Netflix calls their “real-time 360” feedback, delivered overs dinners and lunches where coworkers take turns giving feedback to others at the table. The solution they offer on how to help people excel is to look for positive outcomes of behavioral excellence and respond to those occurrences. There’s a big and important distinction here. Compassion VS. Empathy in The Workplace? C-Suite — “C” is for compassion The current 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, along with business thinker and psychologist Daniel Goleman, explores the science and power of compassion and its role in addressing the world’s most intractable problems in Goleman’s recently published book, A Force for Good.
Compassion vs. empathy in the workplace? There’s an important difference between the two. In another blog post of ours about empathy and its role in emotional intelligence, we describe Goleman’s definition of the three kinds of empathy that are important to a leader’s emotional intelligence: Cognitive empathy – the ability to understand another person’s point of viewEmotional empathy – the ability to feel what someone else feelsEmpathetic concern – the ability to sense what another person needs from you.
Leading Across Culture? Fine-Tune Your Executive Presence. Culture matters Your credibility as a leader, regardless of gender distinctions, has its roots in the culture of the country you’re working in, as much as it does in the culture of your workplace itself.
In countries like the UK and the US, for example, rising leaders are expected to be more authoritative, while in Asia, a more reserved style is expected. In short, your words and behavior as a leader are interpreted based on your listener’s cultural orientation. Not understanding the cultural norms and expectations around leadership presence and communication style in a global environment has high costs. It makes your team building efforts challenging at best, and at its worst, can cost you your job. Master the “pivot” “Pivoting” among stakeholders is a core competency of global executives, according to an HBR study of leaders and rising talent in 11 global markets.
If you’re a woman, you need to pay even more attention HBR authors Hewlett and Rashid explain with this example, Leading with Feedback : Two Essential Tips for How to Give It. Leading with Feedback : Two Essential Tips for How to Receive It.