One Piece of Feedback That Changed Everything
In 2006, on an island in the middle of the Cape Canaveral National Seashore, I had a conversation that forever changed my perspective on what it is to be a leader.
Increasing Your Emotional Intelligence: Choice
In December of 2021, a friend and I decided to go for a hike on the White Horse Trail in the UK. Three things happened that day to remind me of the awesome power of personal choice.
Increasing Your Emotional Intelligence: Balance
In the first 3 installments of this blog series, we looked at how to increase your self-awareness by expanding your emotional vocabulary, practicing body awareness, and soliciting feedback. Now we are moving to the ‘Self-Management’ quadrant of Daniel Goleman’s model of Emotional Intelligence. The competencies here include emotional balance, adaptability, initiative, achievement orientation, and a positive outlook. Let us start with emotional balance.
Increasing Your Emotional Intelligence: Solicit Feedback
What if I told you that I had a gift for you? Not some cookie cutter gift store gift, but one that I picked out just for you. One that I really put some thought into. Would you be excited to find out what it is? Would you trust that my intentions are positive? What if I told you that my gift for you was the gift of feedback?
Increasing Your Emotional Intelligence: More Self-Awareness
There are a few different models of Emotional Intelligence (EI) out there. When I show Goleman’s model (above) to groups or individuals that I work with, their attention is generally drawn towards the competencies associated with relationship management. Skills like ‘inspirational leadership’ and ‘mentorship’ just sound cool and are undoubtedly super useful to have when working in a team. However, attempts to utilize these skill sets will show up as hollow or disingenuous when they are not built upon a foundation of self and social awareness.
Increasing your Emotional Intelligence: Self-Awareness
The foundation of EI (and most approaches to personal growth) is knowing yourself. Socrates went as far as to say that "the unexamined life is not worth living." While I try my best not to gravitate toward extremes, I believe there is a nugget of wisdom here. Emotional Intelligence begins with understanding and managing our own emotions. Here is one step you can take build this skill:
Swimming in the North Sea
As I approached my 40th birthday, I felt a fear emerging in my soul that I had never felt before. It took me a little while to name it, but after a fair amount of reflection I was able to identify the culprit as the fear of a shrinking comfort zone.
The 3 Realms of Virtual Facilitation
When conducting group work over a virtual meeting platform, a facilitator should be aware of the multiple layers of interaction that can be happening at any given time. The first, and most often overlooked, realm of virtual facilitation is the actual physical space from which a participant is connecting…
The Learning Curve - More Than Just Virtual Facilitation
On Wednesdays at 3:30pm a group of facilitators, coaches, and trainers from around the world gather together to learn from each other and try out new ideas. Over the past several months, this group has become like family and together we have tested the limits of virtual facilitation.