Listen !!

In reading several human capital magazines and online forums in the past few months, there seems to be a growing recognition of the epidemic of poor listening skills, especially at leadership levels. I was recently asked if there was a connection between listening skills and EQ. Yes!

Create Conflict

Change Agent

Being a great leader these days almost implies that you have to concurrently be a great change agent as well.  I agree with the correlation as the rate of change of both how we live and how we work has accelerated. It feels like we have been saying this for the last 20-30 years or so. In this context of constant change, the ability of leaders to orchestrate change and do it quickly is a key competency for sure.

Create A Safe Place to Lose

Last week, I happened to be in Turks and Caicos when Irene hit the island. From midnight last Monday until about noon Wednesday, we were confined to our rooms and brought in food and water. We could see and hear Irene and I must say, it was the loudest I had heard mother nature.

Emotions vs. Logic

As many of you know, I have a 7-year-old daughter, Lexi, and a 5-year-old son, Hunter. Both are the stereotypical children of that age and gender. Lexi loves pink, she plays with dolls, and she is generally quite a compassionate little girl. Hunter wakes up in the morning ready to jump, run, pull, push, and chase his toy cars all over the house.

Egypt

Being from Africa, I was deeply moved by the events in Egypt last week. Don’t worry – this is not a political blog. What moved me was the power of non-violence (which is the political term for what I call Emotional Intelligence).