Coaching and Emotional Intelligence

Recently while teaching a group of administrators a review of the powerful work of Daniel Goldman’s, Emotional Intelligence, I could not help celebrating the fact that Coaching is a powerful vehicle for reflecting upon and continually developing “emotional intelligence.”

Simply defined, emotional intelligence is the intelligent use of emotions. A person with high E.I. uses emotions to guide behaviors and thinking in ways that will enhance results and outcomes. Operating like the building blocks of DNA, emotional intelligence is derived from four basic elements. The four building blocks are:

• The ability to accurately perceive, appraise, and express emotion.
• The ability to access or generate feelings on demand when they can facilitate understanding of yourself or another person.
• The ability to understand emotions and the knowledge that derives from them.
• The ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth.

If nurtured with reflective experience, these building blocks can be developed, dramatically increasing one’s emotional intelligence throughout life. Unlike I.Q., which changes little after our youth, emotional intelligence is largely learned and continues to develop throughout life to enhance our competence.

Emotional Intelligence is considered in two dimensions: Intrapersonal – how emotion is used in regard to self; and Interpersonal – how to be more effective with others. Daniel Goleman has identified a set of competencies that differentiate individuals with Emotional Intelligence. The competencies fall into four clusters:

Self-Awareness: Capacity for understanding one's emotions, one's strengths, and one's weaknesses.
A Coach provides the safe place to say what one really feels and to speak about fears and victories. A Coach provides the place to be totally real and look deeply into one self and figure out deep beliefs and forces.

Self-Management: Capacity for effectively managing one's motives and regulating one's behavior.
A Coach provides the confidential place to face one’s motives, goals, and dreams; to openly examine how one’s actions and behaviors are getting the intended results.

Social Awareness: Capacity for understanding what others are saying and feeling and why they feel and act as they do.
A Coach provides a place where it is safe to be mad, to kick the wall, and just get frustrations off one’s chest. A Coach can ask the loving question… “So how much time do you want to yell and scream before we start professionally working on your plan to tackle the issue?” A Coach can say, “Now that you have gotten off your chest what you can’t say publicly, how do you want to rehearse what you can say?

Relationship Management: Capacity for acting in such a way that one is able to get desired results from others and reach personal goals.
A Coach holds the goals and dreams every present and offers them as a beacon and target when planning pathways. “How will your language and actions further your goals?” “As you consider the team you will have at the ‘finish line’ what relationships do you want to support and grow?”

The competencies in the first three clusters must be in place in order for an individual to be effective in the last cluster. And, it is the competencies in the last cluster that drive successful organizational performance; these are the competencies that inspire organizations to greatness.

Organizations provide an enormous gift to leaders when they provide Leadership Coaching. Goleman says that perhaps the most visionary approach to success is pioneering coalitions among local governments, schools, and businesses aimed at boosting the collective level of emotional intelligence in the community. I say the most visionary approach is beginning with the individual -- and the most powerful coalition of all…the leader and his/her Coach!

By Kathryn Kee, Board Member

References:

• Goleman, Daniel. Working with Emotional Intelligence. ©1998
• Weisinger, Hendrie. Emotional Intelligence at Work. ©1998

TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES

NOTABLE QUOTES

Goals. There's no telling what you can do when you get inspired by them.
There's no telling what you can do when you believe in them.
And there's no telling what will happen when you act upon them.
Jim Rohn

Give yourself something to work toward--constantly.
Mary Kay Ash

People do not lack strength; they lack will.
Victor Hugo

The results you achieve will be in direct proportion to the effort you apply.
Denis Waitley

Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin

You don't concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results.
No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done.
Charles Yeager

The content of your thoughts and personal beliefs can be proven by
a single indicator – your current results.
James A. Ray

Setting a goal is not the main thing. It is deciding how you will
go about achieving it and staying with that plan.
Tom Landry

NEWSLETTER ARCHIVES

http://www.coachingschoolresults.com/newsletters/index.html

Newsletter Editor & E-News Contact, Kathryn Kee, Board Member