Motivation aside, if people get better at these life skills, everyone benefits: The brain doesn't distinguish between being a more empathic manager and a more empathic father. -- Daniel Goleman
Joyce Gaufin, Executive Director, Great Basin Public Health Leadership Institute, in Salt Lake City, Utah, made a presentation about the Key Principles for Effective Crisis Leadership on April 5, 2006. She stressed the need for establishing crisis management competencies.
The skill set she identified included: Collaborative leadership, Systems thinking, Creativity, Emotional intelligence, Risk communication, Influence and negotiation, and Conflict management.
She noted a number of organizational crisis scenarios:
- Hostile take-over (change in political group in power)
• Financial catastrophe (budget reductions; loss of grants)
• Loss of facilities/resources
• Employee sabotage/ violence
• Executive scandal/defection
• Strike/boycott
• Act of war
• Natural disaster
• Industrial accident
• Terrorism
She elaborated on crisis management by listing several ways in which leadership plays a critical role:
- Leaders set the tone by their example and conduct
• Leaders must pay attention to the components of influence
• Leaders can have a significant positive impact on the very human, emotionally charged climate
• Leaders cannot rely only on authoritarian or fear tactics to get results during a crisis
Emotional Intelligence in such scenarios is a key component of skilled and effective leadership.
Learn more about emotional intelligence and how to develop and assess for it in your organization:
Consortium for Emotional Intelligence In Organizations – lists model programs
US OPM
Personnel Selection and Resource Center
1 comment:
Even if a manager is Emotionally Intelligent, it often can be difficult for that manager to implement emotionally intelligent local policies. There are a number of reasons for this:
1. Overall policy is often established in board rooms hundreds or even thousands of miles away from where they are put into practice.
2. These decisions are often based mainly upon the short term, financial bottom line. For example, since cost cutting improves the bottom line, and since salaries are a major expense, having one employee do the work of several employees is often the result. Also, workplace safety can be more expensive than a safer work environment.
Dan Vale
http://www.examiner.com/careers-in-baltimore/daniel-vale
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