Today's posts explores the last two of the four areas of Emotional Intelligence (EI).
Area 3 is about Self-Management.
Our ability to manage our emotions and motivate ourselves is critical for virtual teams. Helping team members understand why we get triggered or other is important
Self-management is about building onto what we know about ourselves and being able to manage accordingly based on our awareness.
Our ability to follow through, motivate ourselves and adapt to change is part of this skill set.
Skills which reside in this area, according to Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee, are :
Self-control
Transparency
Adaptability
Achievement
Initiative
and Optimism
Activities to help teams with self-management usually involve helping team members identify what are their triggers, and what are their habits. It usually involves enhancing their self-awareness as well.
Here's a quick activity to build self-management:
Get team members to reflect on the following questions, and potentially write them down:
1. What are the top 3 activities that provide you with the opportunity to achieve? What are the habits (or things you do consistently) that help you be successful in this area?
2. Think of a time recently when you had to adapt tin order to be successful? What was the situation? What did you do to adapt? What did you learn from this experience?
3. Think of a time recently when you had to self-manage? What triggered you? What did you do to react? how did this reaction influence the situation? What can you do in the future to aim for a successful outcome next time you are triggered?
4. What are two or three areas you can demonstrate more initiative in, in the new year? What would it look like? What impact would that have?
The arena of optimism is another area you might want to explore with team members. There is a continuously growing body of knowledge and practice around optimism. To explore these question you may want to look at:
What is your mindset around optimism? Are you a glass half full, or half empty individual?
What impact does your mindset have on results?
Think about
The fourth area of Emotional Intelligence is that of Relationship Management – Being able to navigate relationships and work effectively with others.
Building relationships virtually is a key priority for virtual team members, perhaps to an even greater extent. In the in person realm, people are very close in proximity and spending time with peers and other co-workers is an every day occurrence. In the virtual space we need to be more intentional in building relationships. Business still occurs through relationships, whether you are virtual, work remote or work beside someone else.
I'll be following up with a deeper dive in the fourth area next week Tuesday as we look at an activity for building relationships in your virtual team.
With best wishes,
Jennifer
Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
Team and Leadership Development | Coaching | Retreats.
Author of From One to Many: Best Practices for Team and Group Coaching (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Effective Group Coaching (Wiley, 2009)
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Phone: (416)996-8326