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Questions for Covey: What's in It for Them?
August 01, 2007
This month's questions were submitted by SCC Soft Computer's Don Keller, director, educational services; Miami Children's Hospital's Loubna Noureddin, director & coach, staff & community education; and Wachovia's Patsy Kiser, vice president, leadership development.
DK: Knowledge workers—especially technical employees such as programmers and system engineers—don't always see the value in developing their people skills. Yet, our technical specialists now are dealing with external customers more often. Any suggestions on how to establish "what's in it for them" so they'll want to take the training and apply the techniques learned?
SC: The research data overwhelmingly indicates that emotional intelligence (EQ), even for technical specialists, is of greater value and importance than IQ. Technical professionals should be given access to this data so they become aware of its singular importance. It can be found under the subject of emotional intelligence almost anywhere.
Second, they should be involved in thinking through and developing a feedback information system that gets at how effective they are in their teams and with their clients. Information regarding their interpersonal effectiveness should come to them regularly.
Third, there should be some incentive built into the system to deal with this kind of "higher math," we could call it, instead of only financial accounting, which we might call lower math, so that they are psychologically, socially, and financially reinforced to develop other parts of their nature. Maslow taught, "He that is good with a hammer tends to think everything is a nail," and people who are intellectually very bright and technically expert often develop arrogance around their expertise and around their specialized language and jargon. They will learn in these processes to think strategically and to realize that in today's knowledge-worker age, social and emotional intelligence are just as, or more, important than IQ.
LN: Our organization-wide employee satisfaction survey results depict high trust in senior leadership and show poor results in terms of employee trust in their immediate management team (manager and/or director). Employees emphasized "keeping them informed," "small problem solving," and "recognition" as main downfalls in the management team. What would be a creative way to train leaders on the significance of communication and recognition?
SC: A creative way to train these people would be to get everyone involved in looking at the data very carefully, so they can come up with action plans to improve their mind-set and skill set along the lines indicated in the data itself. This will take time and patience, but the rewards are infinitely worth it.
PK: How are the 7/8 habits for highly effective people being received/accepted/taught when you have a global workforce and many different cultures coming together?
SC: Exceedingly well. The 7 habits deal primarily with personal and interpersonal effectiveness. The 8th habit builds on the personal and interpersonal, but deals primarily with leadership and organizational factors such as aligning, empowering, and creating a culture that communicates to everyone their worth and their potential so clearly that they come to see it in themselves. It deals with the shift from effectiveness to greatness. This is the case, particularly, when we define greatness in terms of sustained, superior performance; winning cultures; unleashed talent; and high net promoter scores.
Both work powerfully with a global workforce —across cultural, national, gender, ethnic, and religious lines—because they are based on timeless, self-evident, universal principles that do not change. They provide an anchor in changing times that allows adaptation and individual empowerment.
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