Strength or Weakness? It’s all Situational…

We have provided many illustrations of how our personality and emotional capabilities are either going to put “wind in our sails” or cause us to “drag, drain or drift”. In a very real sense these capabilities are neither good or bad but should rather be viewed as being both good and bad or productive and counterproductive to term it more accurately.

Why is this? Quite simply because most jobs, but especially leadership roles, place a wide range of and often contradictory demands on us. A manager for instance in some situations needs to be cold, clinical and objective. In other situations he may be required to be empathic and supportive. In one situation a person needs to be assertive, influencing and persistent while in others he needs to be open, receptive and a good listener in order to be effective.

People are very rarely both ends of the same spectrum. They tend to either be more clinical and objective or more empathic and supportive; more assertive and influencing or more open and receptive; more team orientated or more individualistic. Jobs, but more especially leadership roles, call for situational responses. In this situation I need to dig in my heels; in that situation I must be flexible; in this situation I must be cautious but in that situation I must be bold; in this situation I must be trusting but in that situation I need to be vigilant. Because our default tends to lean in a particular direction - for instance to be trusting rather than vigilant - we may handle some situations well and others not so well. As a result we all have development areas. Our development areas are usually in our blind spot and that is what catches us out and as you have seen from some of our case studies can have profound consequences for an organisation.

We have therefore developed a set of coaching and development reports that help people to understand where their development areas are; and address their development areas by developing a wider repertoire of behaviours that will enable them to respond situationally rather than stereotypically to job demands. The reports raise awareness of a person’s development needs and also provide coaching advice on how to grow in the development areas.

We also offer a comprehensive online training program called MY EQ. My EQ takes individuals on an intensive journey which facilitates Personal Mastery and the development of Emotional Competencies