Author: Daniel A. Feldman
Higher Order Skills
- Taking Responsibility
- Acting independently and with accountability.
- Owning a problem as well as a solution.
- Generating Choices
- Opening ourselves to the varied possibilities in any given thought, act, or situation.
- Being able to discover the available choices in any given situation and to help others recognize those choices.
- Embracing a Vision
- Fully committing ourselves to a particular view of the future.
- To be fully embraced, a vision needs to permeate communications and guide actions.
- Having Courage
- Looking at our choices and ourselves.
- Taking responsibility.
- Bucking trends and standard modes of operation.
- Making tough decisions.
- Demonstrating Resolve
- Regularly making decisions about what to do, with firm determination.
- Demonstrating to others your commitment to a plan of action.
Developing the Higher-Order Skills:
Leadership Action Techniques
- Responsibility Checklist
- Am I making a contribution?
- Am I fully accepting the consequences of the actions I have taken?
- In light of my subordinates reactions, is what I am doing discouraging them or uplifting them?
- Based on my actions thus far, whom am I serving?
- Choice Building
- Let go of needing to be right and needing control.
- Actively solicit choices from others.
- Invite ideas from outside your current experiences and culture.
- Vision Linking
- Select a vision that you can willingly and actively embrace.
- Own it and live it.
- Incorporate the vision into your daily speech.
- Lighting the Fire
- Recognize what you are afraid of.
- Focus on the benefits of taking the risk.
- Tolerate the discomfort.
- Practice by envisioning the steps to success.
- Firming Up
- Choose reachable and worthwhile long-term goals.
- Build in short-term targets.
- Develop a support network for your intention.
- Use metaphors to make your vision more accessible to others.
- Anticipate and prepare for difficulties and obstacles.
- Continually renew your resolutions.
Core Skills
- Knowing Yourself
- Recognizing your emotions.
- Differentiating between emotions.
- Knowing the reason behind the emotion.
- Maintaining Control
- Resisting or delaying an impulse, drive, or temptation to act.
- Controlling aggression, hostility, and irresponsible behavior.
- Managing emotions in a flexible and adaptable way.
- Reading Others
- Being aware of the emotions of others.
- Appreciating the emotions of others.
- Understanding how and why people feel and act as they do.
- Perceiving Accurately
- Accurately assessing a situation.
- Having clear vision.
- Keeping a broadperspectiveand being objective.
- Communicating with Flexibility
- Having a full range of emotional expression.
- Being authentic.
- Addressing your needs as well as the needs of others.
Developing the Core Skills:
Tools for activating our emotional intelligence
- The PaRC Formula
- Pause before reacting.
- Reflect on the what and why of the feelings.
- Choose the appropriate thought or action.
- Core Connecting: Regaining your composure, focus, and energy when distracted.
- Take 3 slow, deep breaths. (cf.: Self Soothing)
- Become aware of the next thought that pops up in your head.
- Say to yourself, I am having a thought about (restate the thought).
- Take 3 more slow, deep breaths.
- Syncing-In: Responding at an intuitive level.
- Have a beginner’s mind.
- Focus fully on your immediate experience.
- Continually re-engage in what you are doing.
- Focused Listening: Letting go of your own agenda and focusing on theirs.
- Re-Framing: Creating a new interpretation of a situation that can lead to solutions
- Identify your current frame.
- Look into the future.
- Explore new frames.
- Process Communication: Shining a light on what’s important but may be unspoken.
- Pay attention to body language.
- Identify what is happening, not what is being discussed.
- Make a clear, non-attacking process comment.
