Empathy Archives

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 EQ Coaching?

April 5, 2021Dana AckleyExecutive CoachingAssertiveness, Define EQ Coaching, Empathy, Executive Influence, March 2021, Negotiation

You might think that EQ executive coaching is simply a method for building EQ skills in leaders. But it goes deeper than that. EQ skills aren’t taught or practiced in a vacuum. EQ Coaching is an integration of EQ skill building into the broader context of executive coaching, which means that we deal with all of the topics that executives deal with. Let’s take a look at two of those topics: 1) influencing and 2) negotiating. Influencing: Leaders must be able to influence their followers if they want them to unite behind a shared vision willingly and enthusiastically. As Ken Blanchard says, “The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.” John (not his real name) needed to get his team to make a dramatic shift away from their comfortable and familiar set of goals to a very different destination. This shift involved a whole new way of thinking…