EFFECTIVENESS as a leader is often measured in quantitative outcomes.

It is our ability to reect on our relationships however that makes these goals achievable. Relationships represent a unique strategic resource and the primary source of emotional capital in an organisation, says Martyn Newman, Ph.D, D.Psych, author of the international bestseller, Emotional Capitalists The New Leaders and the Emotional Capital Report, the worlds rst scientically designed tool for measuring emotional intelligence and leadership. What is the best way to communicate a difficult message? How do I persuade someone that his argument is faulty? These are complicated issues that require sophisticated relationship skills and a high degree of empathy. Just like technical skills that are used to solve problems or create products, emotional and social skills have a structure and a set of behaviors that when combined can solve emotional and social problems. Newman works with senior executives in blue chip companies, many of whom have highly developed technical and commercial skills, but who may lack the necessary emotional and social skills.

First we benchmark their emotional skills. Once they begin to focus on developing these skills, the improvements in performance are measurable and impressive. We have seen enormous gains in emotional intelligence of more than 19 per cent in a few months and equivalent gains in productivity and engagement scores as a result, says Newman.
Dr. Martyn Newman is a Consulting Psychologist and Managing Director of RocheMartin and author of Emotional Capitalists The New Leaders. John Wiley & Sons, 2008

ANYONE CAN BECOME AN EMOTIONAL CAPITALIST. Major

breakthroughs in neuroscience have destroyed the myth that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Our brain has a plastic quality and it continues to adapt and change in response to continued practice. We can continue to develop new skills even as we age. Newman thinks a leaders single most important job is to inspire people with a vision of the future. To achieve this, a leader needs self-condence, a belief in your ability to rise above the pressures of the external environment and the articial limits the environment threatens to place on you. Making the decision to like and believe in yourself and your ability is the surest way to generate the emotional energy necessary for sustained success, asserts Newman.

TEXT: SATU RM

HOW AM I DOING? (AM I DOING ALL RIGHT?)

Become an emotional capitalist

We lead through our relations with others. Before you can lead other people successfully, you must know yourself. Build your emotional capital, train your brain, and remember to laugh a little.

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GEOFFREY WEBB works as a Principal Consultant with a global business execution company McKinney Rogers. In his blog Webb writes enthusiastically about reective leadership and gives practical tips on how to grow as a leader. 75 PERCENT of our job success is predicted not by intelligence, but by optimism. You can train your brain to be happier. Shawn Achor, CEO of Good Think Inc. ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_ happy_secret_to_better_work.html

Stephen R. Covey. The 7 Habits of Highly Eective People. Free Press. 1989, revised edition 2004.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one of the bestselling business books of all time. The author, the late Professor Stephen R. Covey, was the founder of a leadership consulting and training company Franklin Covey whose clients today include 90 percent of the Fortune 100 companies.
THE SEVEN HABITS ACCORDING TO COVEY Be proactive. Your decisions are the primary determining factor for eectiveness in your life. Begin with the end in mind. Create a mission statement. Put rst things rst. Prioritize, plan, and execute your weeks tasks based on importance rather than urgency. Think win-win. Value and respect people by understanding a win for all is ultimately a better long-term resolution than if only one person in the situation had gotten his way. Seek rst to understand, then to be understood. Synergize. Get the best performance out of a group of people through encouraging meaningful contribution. Sharpen the saw. Balance and renew your resources, energy, and health to create a sustainable, long-term, eective lifestyle.

georeywebb.com

Laugh. It inspires productivity. Leader, read this blog

You can use Toolbox materials at work or when giving a presentation, link them to your blog or forward the entire Toolbox to your colleagues. The background ideas are available in a variety of web sources.

The Seven Habits of Highly Eective People

As slides: www.slideshare.net/AaltoEE In pdf format: www.scribd.com/AaltoEE The whole magazine: www.issuu.com

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PEOPLE CAN TRAVEL BACK AND FORTH in time in their minds, they can examine issues from dierent perspectives and zoom in to check details or take a look at the big picture. The brain is an extremely complicated organ with great potential. It is often said that we only use 10 per cent of our brain potential. This is not the whole truth, says Kiti Mller, Director and Research Professor at the Brain and Work Research Centre at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health. The brain has a numerous amount of brain cells and neural networks. We now know through functional brain imaging that information processing, underlying thinking, activates neural cells in several dierent brain areas. On the other hand, specic areas of the brain specialize in handling certain types of sensory cues. Due to the specialization of neural cells, the myth of using only 10 percent of our brains actual capacity has more to do with the fact that certain activities activate specic neural networks and others are in a more resting state, she explains. Dierent neural network structures become active in dierent situations. The areas most used get stronger. The parts not actively used, on the other hand, are somewhat dormant. MANS BRAIN HAS GREAT LEARNING POTENTIAL. You can activate new neural networks by doing new things. As individuals we gain dierent knowledge and skills, and when several active brains come together, theoverall potential increases. An organizations collective human brain potential is a huge asset that has a major eect on the organizations success. The question is how to best take advantage of that potential. One way to train the brain is to learn to do new things. Go wild and try something new: play the piano or play chess, paint or learn the rules of football.

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Even if the new exercise activates certain regions in the brains, for example, painting activates the areas that process visual information, the benets of learning new things leak into the other regions as well, Mller says. Learning something new pays o. It gives new perspectives and encourages us to think dierently. If you do not use your brain, it will stien. However, Mller encourages people to set themselves limits. The brain likes reasonableness. Do not try to overachieve in learning new things. When the brain is exhausted it starts to do routine things which means that creativity and problem solving start to suer. HOW DOES ONE KNOW IF ONES OWN BRAIN IS OVERHEATING? That is a good question. People react dierently. Some of us cannot relax. If you nd it dicult to be quiet and do nothing, it might actually be a sign of exhaustion. Exhaustion of the brain can also express itself as anxiety, feeling blue or a desire to be alone and avoid meeting other people. Taking care of your brains wellbeing is rather simple,but often hard to put into practice: work out, eat well,do things that you enjoy and devote time to recovery. After running a marathon you do not run another marathon the next day. The same logic applies to business. Between busy projects, take some time o. Relax.

Take care of your brain

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CHECK OUT http://www. slideshare.net/ cdterrell/360degreeleadership

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THE SMALLER THE DISPARITY between our self-image and reality, the more likely we are to experience inner peace. If there is a gap between how you perceive yourself and how your employees see you, your eectiveness as a leader will be diminished. How do other people feel about your leadership behaviour?
CHECK OUT Find out by taking this quick test: dkmanagementtools. com/free-leadershipself-assessment-tool

YOU

do not have to be the top person to exert inuence in your organization. If you inuence even one person, you are a leader. Leadership is not a title or a position, says pastor and business author John Maxwell in his bestseller The 360 Degree Leader. In his book Maxwell explains how you can make a signicant impact on your organization. Lead people beside you, below you, and above you 360 degrees!

John. C. Maxwell. The 360 Degree Leader. Nelson Business.

Test your leader behaviour

This book expands your inuence

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