Every leader, organization, and family works in a constant state of change. When it comes to helping individuals and company culture, mindfulness and emotional intelligence training help create a tectonic shift in the norms of how you do business.
Emotional intelligence skills can be trained. According to Dan Goleman’s famous research, there are five key elements of emotional intelligence:
- Self-awareness
- Self-regulation
- Motivation
- Empathy
- Social Skills
At RethinkCare, we talk about this shift to being more emotionally intelligent as moving from the ordinary to the extraordinary. The ordinary is the state of affairs that most individuals live in and that most companies tolerate. It’s the negativity, gossip, politics, and lack of clarity and trust that drags leaders, teams, and company cultures down.
The Ordinary is:
- stressed
- anxious
- angry
- disconnected
- overwhelmed
- reactive
- sleepless and tired
- distracted and (increasingly) injured
Extraordinary is what we all want more of. It’s experiencing purpose, passion and connection on a more regular basis.
The Extraordinary is:
- calm
- focused
- kind
- collaborative and creative
- empowered
- proactive
- rested and energized
- situationally aware and (increasingly) safe
The following can help you determine what percentage of your time is spent in each set of behaviors. Attention and awareness training helps you to be more present. Once you’re focused and aware, you can’t help but shoot for being extraordinary.
According to the leaders in our Workshops, their ordinary includes:
- drama
- untrusting
- concealing
- overwhelmed
- about right/wrong ego driven political
- taking credit indecisive rationalizing/justifying
- controlling
- blame
- unclear goals
- us versus them
- defensive
- gossip
- risk averse
- avoiding conflict
- disconnected
- scarcity
- disengaged speculation
- loose language
- meeting driven
- feeling threatened
- too serious
- polarizing coasting stressed out
- negative/sarcastic
- impulsive
- frustrated from tolerating the ordinary
Those same leaders aspire to the extraordinary:
- compassionate
- transparent
- simple/authentic
- direct
- empathetic
- gracious
- sincere
- collaborative
- decisive
- present
- humble but kick-ass
- proud
- honest focused
- growing/learning
- best in class
- committed
- 100% accountable data-driven curious
- revealing
- wildly fun (and funny)
- vulnerable/courageous
- driven
- opportunistic
- encouraging
- hungry
- healthy
- diverse
- mindful
We all slip into the ordinary several times a day. Mindfulness improves the ability to know when you’ve slipped (when you’re distracted) and it gives you an anchor to come back to a point of focus to lead with specific intentions and values.
It’s not easy to be a teammate or leader these days, and even harder to be extraordinary. But making it a lifelong pursuit, a lifestyle, changes the way you think about yourself, your employees, and your mission.
