Coaching For Emotional Intelligence:
The Secret to Developing the Star Potential in Your Employees
Performance management has traditionally focused on establishing objectives grounded in measurable outcomes to define accountability. But recent research on emotional intelligence has changed the ground-rules for performance management.
In high-IQ professions or in environments requiring people to do complex work, the competencies associates with emotional intelligence accounts for up to 80% of the variance in discriminating those employee who will stand out as star performers. In today’s workplace, sheer brainpower and training accounts for as little of 20% of the variance in determining success at work.
While performance objectives will always be necessary to determine what people do, leaders must now be equipped with the coaching strategies to address how people get their work done. Coaching for emotional intelligence requires leaders to address much more subjective and personal topics than performance objectives:
How Emotional Intelligence has Raised the Bar for Coaching and Development
Coaching for emotional intelligence requires the development of new coaching skills. Managers must be prepared to address behaviors that are more personal, subjective and challenging to describe. They must also be equipped with strategies to minimize defensiveness and respond to it effectively when it does occur.
All too often, the only thing standing in someone’s way of being effective are personal or interpersonal characteristics that undermine their ability to work with people. Given the personal nature of this kind of coaching, leaders must build a relationship with their directs that is marked by a genuine commitment to helping every member of the team be successful.
They must provide much more performance-based coaching - both praise and developmental feedback - than most managers currently do today. Frequent developmental coaching, properly handled, contributes to building the trust necessary for providing coaching that is much more personal.
Infinite diversity: The influence of life experience in developing emotional intelligence
Essential requirements for successful coaching
Descriptive skills: The foundational skills for coaching
A structured format for praise and developmental coaching
Structuring developmental coaching
When informal, spontaneous coaching fails
Making the call: When to coach and when to cut bait
Personal courage and the committed coach
Go to Publications
While performance objectives will always be necessary to determine what people do, leaders must now be equipped with the coaching strategies to address how people get their work done. Coaching for emotional intelligence requires leaders to address much more subjective and personal topics than performance objectives:
- Are employees aware of how they are perceived by others?
- Do they control and express their emotions appropriately?
- Do they understand the needs and feelings of their colleagues, customers, and vendors?
- Do they deal with conflict professionally or do they do damage that undermines their credibility?
- Do they actively establish influence or do they cave in at the first sign of disagreement?
- Do they lack confidence around senior management?
- Do “personality quirks” undermine their ability to build effective working relationships?
How Emotional Intelligence has Raised the Bar for Coaching and Development
Coaching for emotional intelligence requires the development of new coaching skills. Managers must be prepared to address behaviors that are more personal, subjective and challenging to describe. They must also be equipped with strategies to minimize defensiveness and respond to it effectively when it does occur.
All too often, the only thing standing in someone’s way of being effective are personal or interpersonal characteristics that undermine their ability to work with people. Given the personal nature of this kind of coaching, leaders must build a relationship with their directs that is marked by a genuine commitment to helping every member of the team be successful.
They must provide much more performance-based coaching - both praise and developmental feedback - than most managers currently do today. Frequent developmental coaching, properly handled, contributes to building the trust necessary for providing coaching that is much more personal.
Workshop Overview
Understanding emotional intelligence
- The personal and interpersonal competencies necessary for success at work.
- An overview of current research on emotional intelligence and career success.
- Why leaders must become students of emotional intelligence.
- Personal assessments of strengths and developmental needs: A pre-workshop
- activity.
Infinite diversity: The influence of life experience in developing emotional intelligence
- Why people with good intentions undermine their own effectiveness at work.
- How we develop blind spots in our self-perception.
- Expanding self-awareness: Opening the door to personal change.
Essential requirements for successful coaching
- Leaders must be continually improving the expression of their own emotional intelligence.
- Personal mastery of vision and values.
- Building strong relationships with your direct-reports.
- The frequency of genuine praise in building trust and receptiveness to coaching.
- Developing communications skills and strategies for coaching.
Descriptive skills: The foundational skills for coaching
- Ambiguity: Why so much coaching misses the mark.
- Describing performance: Grounding coaching in specific and behavioral terms.
- The challenge of describing personal characteristics in need of change.
A structured format for praise and developmental coaching
- Frequent acknowledgment: The all-too-often missing ingredient in coaching.
- Praise: Such a small effort for such a huge return.
- How to deliver effective praise in less than twenty seconds.
Structuring developmental coaching
- How to organize and formulate corrective coaching.
- How to deliver developmental coaching spontaneously.
- Developmental coaching: Improving performance and emotional intelligence.
When informal, spontaneous coaching fails
- Gathering observations: The “Coaching Preparations Worksheet.”
- Organizing your observations: The “Coaching Interview Form.”
- How to structure a coaching conversation with someone who has been reluctant to change.
- Strategies for keeping the conversations on track.
Making the call: When to coach and when to cut bait
- How far off the mark is the employee’s performance or behavior?
- Does the employee take ownership of the need to change?
- Has too much damage already been done?
- Do conditions permit you to invest time bringing the person up to speed?
Personal courage and the committed coach
- Why manager avoid or delay difficult coaching conversations.
- The impact on the organizations when managers fail to take corrective action.
- A call to action: Making coaching the cornerstone of your leadership.
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