A641.5.3.RB_LeeDarrell - ICT at the Team Level

One thing that often catches people a little off guard about me is my love for hockey. Originally, I am from Texas. There, football is practically a religion. On Friday, people watch high school ball. Saturday is college day (I was in Lubbock so everybody was all about Texas Tech). Then, Sunday was the day to cheer for the Cowboys. I never cared to partake in any of it, though, so was a bit of a social outcast in that respect. It wasn’t until ’98 that I realized that I was actually supposed to be born a Canadian. (Not literally but I mean that I thrive in the cold and I love the ice.)

I always say that the biggest appeal of hockey to me is how much of a “team sport” it is. My friends often rebut that other professional sports are also team sports. I surely don’t disagree with that but hockey doesn’t really have many superstars. In football, the focus is pretty much on the quarterback and he (or she, if it is a women’s league) can make or break the team. In basketball, it seems that you always have the one person that gets all of the fame and glory. Hockey isn’t like that, though. Sure, you may have a goalie that is a brick wall but other than that, players or rotating on and off the ice every minute and a half or so. The high scorers spend more time on the bench than on the ice. It is all about the team coming together and I absolutely love that. (I also like that it is fast-paced and low scoring which means that every goal is a thrill.)

This week, we have been studying the Intentional Change Theory (ICT) which, in a nutshell, is our conscious choice to guide the path of our progression toward our ideal self which is “what you want out of life and the person you want to be – leading to your personal vision” (Boyatzis & McKee, 2005, p. 88). Intentional change is a continuous process that has five steps: the realization of the personal self, embracing your real self (how you actually are and how others see you), your learning agenda (capitalizing on strengths and working on weaknesses), experimenting with habits, and developing and maintaining relationships.

I would imagine that these star players exercise ICT every day. I am often encouraged by the story of Michael Jordan (Halberstam, 1999). When he was in high school, Michael Jordan was actually told that he was too short to play for the varsity team. He knew, though, that he was destined to be the best of the best. He committed everything he had to preparing for a future in professional basketball. He realized both his ideal self and understood how he was currently seen by others and found a way to work through that to push toward excellence. In his senior year, he finally made the varsity team and became a primary player for the team. The rest is history. He didn’t let anybody stop him from advancing.

We hear success stories like this all the time from every sport – superstars that were told that they were not good enough or that had all of the cards stacked against them yet were able to rise to the top. We are inspired by these stories to enact changes in our own lives to work toward our own ideal self. Perhaps we are looking to be more physically fit, increase our paycheck, or just have better relationships and a social life. We look to these stars and say, “If they can do it, I know that I can, too!” We then follow the steps of ICT and make it happen.

Here’s the problem. What happens when you have a team of people that are all trying to be the best version of themselves without regard to the rest of the team? I see this all the time even in Army recruiting. You have a bunch of individuals working toward their individual goals of being a recruiting superstar but they forget to work together to make it happen. Consider this. In the 1970s, the Russian hockey team was unbeatable. However, in the 1980 Winter Olympics, the U.S. hockey team did the impossible and worked together to take down the undefeatable giant. The team was made up of amateur and college players. After that, the team was replaced with NHL professionals. Team USA has not won gold since then even though the team is made of superstars.

When it comes to applying ICT to a group – in this case, a sports team (but you can apply this to any group) – “intentionality and shared ideals are the drivers of change and group transformation” (Akriyou & Boyatzis, 2006, p. 690). When everybody is just trying to be the best version of themselves, that isn’t necessarily conducive to a positive team. In 1980, the U.S. hockey team wasn’t playing as a collection of individuals but rather as a solid team with one goal in mind – to take gold. But how do you take a collection of individuals all striving to be the best and actually get them to change their focus to being the best team, instead? “In existing models of group development, negative emotionality was an essential, explicit and/or subtle underlying theme. Negative emotion was seen as a catalyst for change in the group” (p. 695-696). In other words, it takes a little bit of anger or even failure for the need for a change to even be recognized. If things are going well, even if the team is not performing at peak capacity, the realization of a better alternative isn’t even acknowledged. However, when competition against other markets or other teams is present, failure is naturally easier to gauge. This failure causes strong emotions. At that time, “positive motivation creates intrinsic motivation for intentional group development” (p. 696).

The bottom line – ICT can be applied at the team level. Sometimes, though, we have to experience a little defeat to recognize the need for change. At that point, we can begin to work together to be the best possible version of our team.

  

Akrivou, K., Boyatzis, R. E., & McLeod, P. L. (2006). The Evolving Group: Towards a

Prescriptive Theory of Intentional Group Development. The Journal of Management Development, 25(7), 689-706. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezproxy.libproxy.dbN.erau.edu/10.1108/02621710610678490

Boyatzis, R. & McKee, A. (2005). Resonant Leadership. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School 

 Press

Halberstam, D. (1999). Playing or Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made (First ed.).

New York: Random House.

A641.4.3.RB_LeeDarrell - Tipping Points of Emotional Intelligence

Every once in a while, I feel myself becoming a little frustrated with my assignments simply because I have a hard time relating to them. This is one of those times. It isn’t that what I am learning doesn’t apply to me. It is just that the Army is such a unique environment when it comes to leadership. Unlike a traditional organization, we are not producing a product or a service that adds value. We also have a unique approach to leadership that is deeply rooted in traditional hierarchies and, though society is changing, we can’t really change that approach because of the need for positive control in the battlespace. That means that we often have a very direct style of leadership where followership is not optional but rather mandatory. In other words, it doesn’t matter how crummy a boss may be. So long as they are not doing anything that is morally or ethically unacceptable, their leadership must be followed.

Even though I often face this frustration with relating my position to the assignments, I usually am still able to find some kind of a connection. The only thing that seems to keep me going is the understanding that I am laying the knowledge foundation for my future. This particular blog put me in one of those frustrated moods and it seemed to take all evening for me to figure out how to really connect it to my current position…but then it clicked.

Boyatzis (2006) conducted a study of 32 outstanding performers and a random sampling from 800 average performers in a firm to identify a “tipping point” in their competencies that moved them from average to outstanding. I won’t list all of the competencies here but will hit on the highlights. There were four “clusters” of competencies that, when displayed on a regular basis, were indicators of highly successful leaders. They were:

1.      Self-motivation cluster (planning, achievement orientation, self-confidence)

2.      Self-regulation cluster (taking a risky stand, self-control, adaptability, conscientiousness, values learning)

3.      People-management cluster (networking, leadership, coaching, empathy, facilities learning)

4.      Cognitive cluster (systems thinking)

Basically, these competencies were rated by how often they were demonstrated and seen by others. Each competency had a unique tipping point but, for the sake of brevity, I’ll just say that they competencies were all demonstrated more than “occasionally” and leaned to the “frequently” category.

I have been asked to share examples from my own career of tipping points. As previously noted, this is where a little bit of frustration seeped in because we are taught to lead in a completely different way than those in other organizations. However, as I thought about it more, I realized that yes, it is true that my previous positions were a little less applicable but with my current position, it is more important than ever. As a Station Commander for an Army recruiting center, we work remote from all other support and services. My job is essentially to evaluate the data support systems and ensure that I am placing my team in the right place at the right time with the right message to achieve our mission objectives. However, this means that I pretty much push my team out the door at about 10:30 or 11:00 every morning and send them off to work independently for the next six hours or so. That means that I absolutely must trust them to do what is necessary to be done to accomplish the mission. If I expect them to get out there and do the job instead of just taking off and going to take a nap for a couple of hours, I absolutely must hit a tipping point where I move from an average leader to an outstanding leader than can inspire commitment, trust, passion, and action.

I think there are two areas where I have really hit a tipping point recently were I went from being average to really setting myself apart which, in turn, set my team up for success. My first example comes from the self-motivation cluster, specifically focusing on the planning and achievement orientation competencies. Every morning, I have a meeting with my team which is called an In-Progress Review (IPR). I always say that this is a little like performing maintenance on a car in motion. We don’t stop anything to have the meeting but rather just huddle quickly and go over a few planning issues. Every day, though, I print a sheet that shows exactly where we are with mission accomplishment and then I direct the actions that I expect to happen during the week to close us out. There is always a plan. I will confide this in you, though – I don’t always know how or if a plan will work but I never tell my team that. I always just tell them exactly what I expect of them and how that will accomplish our mission. I have found that when you give a task and show them how the result affects the team, the members of the team do what needs to be done to make it happen. This IPR isn’t something that I do sometimes. It is something that I do every day. (It is mandatory but I know that many of my peers don’t do it as required.)

However, as great as that may seem, there is another area where I know that I really hit a tipping point on a routine basis and it is what is setting me up for success in the future. When it comes to people-management, my specialty is networking. I actually keep a rolodex of business cards that I go over once a week. I am one of those guys that sends Christmas cards to people that I encounter. This has resulted in friendships and partnerships with people, some very powerful, from all walks of life. A few examples - there is a man named Justin Constantine who was a Marine officer injured in combat. He is now a highly influential motivational speaker with several TED Talks. He just left my apartment a couple of hours after having dinner and playing cards for a while. Then, last night, I had drinks and a cigar with Rick Calero, the CEO of TIAA Direct. I also am connected with celebrities such as Geraldo Rivera and Gilbert Gottfried. How is it that I, a lowly Sergeant First Class in the U.S. Army, am in the inner circle with people such as this? It isn’t that I am better than anybody else. It isn’t that I am smarter, funnier, or more talented. It is only because I understand that when we connect with others, we share in the reach of their influence. I know that there is very little I can actually accomplish professionally or personally but I know how to connect the people that can. Just the other week, one of my friends reached out to me because he was hosting a Veterans’ benefit that included a Gold Star family but they were unavailable. Within an hour and a half, I had another family lined up for him and, in return, I had tickets to a hockey game.

Tipping points – moving from average to outstanding – is more than just about the competencies that we have, though. It is also about the vision that we have of ourselves and, more important, the vision that we have of our organization (Boyatzis, Rochford, & Taylor, 2015). There really are two ways that we can see ourselves. We can see our ideal self or we can see our ought self. Our ideal self is our personal image of a desired future fueled by hope that reflects our core identity. This is how we know we can be if we hit all of our tipping points and drive ourselves and our teams to the full potential. On the other hand, our ought self is the vision that others have of our future. In other words, it is their version of our ideal self. But since nobody knows us like we do, it is important that we embrace what we know is best rather than what others tell us is best. To reach our ideal self, though, we have to embrace both positive emotional attractors (PEAs) and negative emotional attractors (NEAs). Boiling them down to their basic elements, PEAs are the positive drives that we feel to move us toward our ideal self and NEAs are the negative emotions that we either wish to avoid or that we experience that drive us to avoid recurrence. We have to learn to embrace them both (but preferably we experience more positive than negative) to become our ideal self.

Ultimately, as I mentioned before, I may not have the typical work experience in a traditional organization so it is understandable that some of this was initially a little lost on me. However, I clearly see now how my tipping points that move me from ordinary to extraordinary don’t even lie in me but rather in others through networking. I also see the ideal version of myself in which I can take a step back and just orchestrate allowing others to excel. That is how I will be successful as a leader.

Boyatzis, R. E. (2006). Using Tipping Points of Emotional Intelligence and Cognitive

Competencies to Predict Financial Performance of Leaders. Psicothema, 18, 124-131

Boyatzis, R. E., Rochford, K., & Taylor, S. N. (2015). The Role of the Positive Emotional

Attractor in Vision and Shared Vision: Toward Effective Leadership, Relationships, and Engagement. Frontiers in Psychology, 6(670). doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00670

A641.3.3.RB_LeeDarrell - Working with EI: Getting Results!

One of the reasons that I chose to study leadership instead of management for my master’s program was because management applies to organizations whereas leadership applies to organizations and to life in general. Yes, I want to have the degree to land one of those nice six figure jobs but my primary objective is to become the best version of me possible.

As I write this, I am partaking in one of my favorite yearly traditions. I am watching the TCS NYC Marathon. I live on the northeast corner of Central Park at mile 22.5 so I love to take my posters downstairs and whip up some mimosas to take with me (I put them in a water bottle so as to not draw too much attention to myself since that is not exactly legal) and cheer on the runners. The first wave of elite runners should be here in about an hour and a half.  

I have never run a marathon myself but I have done several half marathons. Some may think that running is a mindless exercise but the truth is that it is a mentally and emotionally taxing ordeal. It takes an enormous amount of self-control and fortitude to take your body to the breaking point then to keep pushing. Imagine doing that surrounded by 51,000 other mentally broken people. How do they do it? It takes an enormous amount of maturity. It takes nothing less than a developed emotional intelligence (EI) which is what we have been studying in class this week.

Dr. Daniel Goleman (2012), author and psychologist, is on the forefront of the study and presentation of EI which has four primary attributes: self-awareness, self-management, empathy, and skilled relationships. Though they aren’t steps, you could almost look at them as such. Let’s quickly go over each of them.

Self-awareness – Again, this isn’t a “step” but before we can apply any other part of EI, we have to be aware of ourselves. This means that we know what we are feeling and why we are feeling it. I think about those runners that go by my apartment. Right when they pass me, they begin what is often called “Hell Hill”. It isn’t steep but it is a noticeable uphill straight for an entire mile when the runners are already beyond exhausted. When runners hit that, they may feel a mix of anger, fear, frustration, exhilaration, etc. A strong sense of self-awareness allows them to identify exactly what they are feeling it and why they are feeling it. Think about this in other aspects of life as well such as in our organizations. Perhaps we have looming deadlines, a lack of production, a loss of resources, a corporate restructuring, etc. To us, that may be our “Hell Hill” at work. It may bring a flood of emotions and we need to identify exactly what we are feeling.

Self-awareness is more than just identifying what we feel and why we feel it. It is also what gives us our intuition. These are the gut feelings that we have and we need to be able to understand why. This drives our moral compass.  

Self-management – Again, these are not steps as they all work together simultaneously but we have to have self-awareness to have self-management. Once we are aware of what we are feeling and why we are feeling it, we need to learn to control those feelings. Self-management is about handling our distressing emotions in an effective way so that they don’t cripple you. This doesn’t mean to repress those feelings but sometimes we can reframe them to where they aren’t quite so overwhelming. We can’t be delusional and think that our negative feelings can always be turned to positive. In fact, there are times that we need to tap into those negative feelings of fear and anger and frustration. It is okay to express that. Self-management is just about mitigating the effects of that. Again, relating it to the runners going up the hill – they can use those feelings of fear, frustration, and anger to dig just a little deeper and push just a little harder.

Empathy – This element of EI is pretty self-explanatory – we have to make the effort to feel what others are feeling. If we don’t, it will always be an “us versus them” mentality. We can relate this to just about every aspect of our lives. One of my favorite TED Talks is about learning to work together politically. Let’s face is – that is one of the biggest divides in the nation right now and it tears people apart. Arthur Brooks (2016) of the American Enterprise Institute talked about how to overcome some of the barriers between us. You see, sometimes true empathy is not possible to achieve. Sometimes we have to force it and that is okay. Let me repeat that – it is okay to force empathy. But how do we do that? We listen. Empathy begins with knowledge which can only come from listening and that leads to understanding. Then we can reframe our own thoughts to view them through the lens of those with which we disagree. For example, perhaps you are pro-universal health care. By listening and understanding the arguments from those that are opposed to it, you can say something like, “How do we ensure that everybody has medical coverage without crippling our economy?” Or perhaps you are pro-life as I am. I will never support abortion and I will never be able to feel the same way as those that but what I CAN say, “How can we reduce abortions while ensuring that the women involved are taken care of?” Sometimes it is just about framing our own thoughts so that they incorporate the needs of others. When we do that, we will begin to realize that we all pretty much want the same thing. In our organizations, we all want success. We just may have different views of how to get there. In our relationships, we all want to get along. We may just need to understand the needs of others as well as our own.

Skilled relationships – This brings us to the final element of EI – skilled relationships (or relationship management). This is how we interact with others and how we use the other elements of EI to exert influence and build teamwork and collaboration.

Goleman (2012) discovered something about EI. All of these elements seem so simple, right? They are natural. So why don’t we have a better handle on EI? The fact is that is must be practiced. That is why it is critical to study it. We can’t put into practice that which we don’t know. One of my friends recently asked me why I chose to study leadership. He said something along the lines of, “Yeah, but leadership is just kind of something that you learn from experience”. I explained that though that is true, we can also use the experience of others to learn how to be effective leaders and that requires a baseline of knowledge. Sure, we can develop EI on our own but is it not better to identify what it is first so we can work toward that?

We watched another TED Talk by Goleman (2007) this week that really tied this all together for me. In it, he talked about a few things that really struck a chord for me. First, he identified that it is human nature to, by default, relate to and help others. However, as previously noted, EI is a learned behavior (Goleman, 2012). That means that if we do continue to practice EI, we won’t necessarily know how to help others. Goleman (2007) talked about how he was here in NYC and there was a homeless man passed out on the subway platform. People just walked around and over him. They all ignored him. I am guilty of doing the same thing, I have to admit. However, he went over and tried to help the man. As soon as he did that, several other people came to his assistance as well. You see, our natural default – the way we are wired – is to work together. We are supposed to understand our own thoughts and we are supposed to be empathetic and we are supposed to manage our relationships but we don’t because we don’t know how. Sometimes, it just takes someone to show us. And that gives me great hope. We are learning how and we can show others how as well.

With that being said, it is about time for me to head downstairs with my posters and my mimosas in my water bottle. I have to tell these runners that I understand what they are feeling and I have to tell them that we are going to achieve this together – them through their physical efforts and me through my cheering!

Brooks, A. (2016, February). A Conservative’s Plea: Let’s Work Together [Video file].

Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/arthur_brooks_a_conservative_s_plea_let_s_work_together

Goleman, D. (2007, March). Why Aren’t We More Compassionate? [Video file]. Retrieved from

https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_goleman_on_compassion

Goleman, D. [Big Think]. (2012, April 23). Daniel Goleman Introduces Emotional Intelligence

            [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7m9eNoB3NU