Emotional Self-Awareness Archives

Thought Experiment: Imagine that you are . . .

March 14, 2022Dana AckleyCoaching, Organizations"Fog of War", American Assumptions, American Biases, American Prism, Amygdala, Consequences, Cultural Learning Curve, Culture, Emotional Self-Awareness, Leadership Strategies, March 2022, Miscalculations, Organizational Culture, Prefrontal Cortex, President Zelenskyy, Slavic Cultures, Thought Experiment, Ukraine

Thought experiment: Imagine that you are Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s (yes, there are two y’s at the end of his name) executive coach. How might you approach this assignment? What are the issues that you would have to think through? What emotions might you experience? And finally, how might your thinking about this assignment inform the way you approach your real-life coaching assignments? For myself, I’d first have to get past the awe I have for Zelenskyy’s courage and accomplishments to date, even before the invasion. Being in awe of our clients rarely serves them well. Emotional Self-Awareness with regard to what we feel for our clients is essential. If we’re not tuned into those emotions, unhelpful ones could lead us astray. My own conceptualization of the problem goes this way: President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian people seem to have experienced an initial galvanizing adrenalin rush in responding to being…

Leaders Have More Choices

January 3, 2022Dana AckleyLeadershipAssertiveness, Coaching and Affiliative, Coaching Leadership Style, Coercive or Directive, Emotional Self-Awareness, Empathy, Interpersonal Relationships, January 2022, Leadership, Primal Leadership, Social Responsibility, Visionary, Workshops

Want to help your clients make their organizations more profitable? This is the third in a series of four blog posts that provide a model for you to do just that. Thus far, we’ve examined how an organization’s climate, profitability, and leadership styles relate, as reported by Goleman, Boyatzis, and McKee, in Primal Leadership: Companies with positive climates are much more profitable than those with negative climates. Leadership style directly controls 50 – 70% of climate There are a number of learnable leadership styles To maximize leader effectiveness, match leadership style to situational needs. In our previous post, we described two of the six leadership styles discussed in Primal Leadership: Coercive (or Directive), and Visionary. We looked at: times when each of those styles can work well times when they shouldn’t be used which EQ skills support their success, and the five steps which you, as a coach, can take…

The Conversation: How EQ can find and unleash our best

July 26, 2021Dana AckleyBlog - GeneralEmotional Self-Awareness, Empathy, July 2021

The Corporate Poet held the room. Four hundred high ranking, hard charging executives from such companies as IBM, American Express, and Merrill Lynch, as well as those of us who are behavioral consultants, were entranced by the poet’s deep, melodic voice. We were mesmerized by his hypnotic rhythm. Magically, the imagery of his poetry found resonance within our own minds, and took us on our own private journeys. “Corporate Poet” sounds like an oxymoron. Yet David Whyte makes a living by working with companies through his art. His passion for his craft becomes a tool for others to find passion for theirs, or perhaps more accurately, to find crafts for their passions. Whyte’s poetry helps leaders and leaders-to-be discover who they are. That may sound frivolous to some readers. In reality, to understand our deepest passions and align our behavior with them is one of the most difficult tasks we…

“What Is the Right Way to . . . ?”

June 14, 2021Dana AckleyCoachingBrain, Complex Thinking, Emotional Self-Awareness, Flexibility, June 2021, Leadership, Mental Models

A coaching client asked me one of those “right way” questions the other day. (I get them often.) In this case, he wanted to know the right way to lead his team. He worried that he would do it “wrong” and mess things up. Experienced coaches know that there are many right ways to lead a team. There are many right ways to do most of the complex tasks that are given to high performers. They don’t give jobs with simple answers to senior people. Of course, as we talked, my client recognized that there were many good ways he could approach his leadership task. Factors we considered in deciding which ways might work best included his personality, the personalities of his direct reports, the mission of his team, the culture of his organization, and the interests of the various stakeholders, among others. He developed a well-reasoned approach, which included…