Effective Management

Emotional Intelligence

An effective manager is one who is self-aware and self regulates, motivates, empathises, and has the social skills to manage people. According to author Daniel Goleman, these people have Emotional Intelligence or EI. Although a relatively new term, the concepts of EI have been around for a long time.

In the Uncertain Art of Management, author Harry Onsman questions Goleman’s belief that EI can be learned, that it takes time and commitment. Onsman states: “To find something a bit more practical than EI, you might care to re-examine what sits behind managerial behaviour in the workplace: attitude.”

Any leader (or manager), he believes, can increase their effectiveness by addressing areas that involve changes in attitude rather than by developing new skills. Onsman favours the straightforward approach devised by Dennis Stratton in Leadership with Attitude: Eight Winning Strategies. Quite simply, effective managers and leaders should:

1.         Decide what they want—ask what it is that I want, how will I know when I have it, and what will I do now to get there?

2.         Be honest with everyone in your organisation—tell the truth and don’t cover up mistakes.

3.         Express yourself—be real and tell it like it is.

4.         Take risks—push the envelope and move out of your comfort zone.

5.         Participate fully—take a positive thinking approach even in what are sometimes considered boring meetings!

6.         Take personal responsibility—if a problem occurs, find a way of avoiding it happening again. If it is one of your team’s mistakes, find ways to help them correct the situation.

7.         Create partnerships—making alliances, building relationships, developing mutual obligations are all ways to influence, as opposed to commanding and controlling people.

8.         Commit fully—once you decide what you want to achieve, work towards it. 

C.K. Prahalad, professor of corporate strategy and international business at the University of Michigan, believes that globalisation, emerging markets and the deregulation of industries, along with the convergence of technologies and the blurring of industry boundaries, will “challenge our notion about the ‘meaning’ of management”.Writing in management book Management 21C, Prahalad states: “I believe the language, concepts, and tools of managing are undergoing a major change.” He believes senior managers, in particular, will need to concentrate on six key elements:

1.         The importance of a shared competitive agenda—encouraging a sense of direction and shaping the future.

2.         Values and behaviours—values bind the organisation, promote teamwork, and facilitate the transfer of knowledge.

3.         Focusing on influence without ownership—in other words, having a shared agenda, building trust, managing relationships rather than transactions.

4.         Competing for talent—to build the skills mix of the organisation through training, empowerment, teamwork, transparency, performance-related activitiy and accountability.

5.         Speed of reaction in the organisation—involving decision-making at the lowest levels so everyone is aware of the direction and their role in the overall picture.

6.         Leveraging corporate resources—combining resources to address opportunities.