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Anyone trying to come up to speed on emotional intelligence would have a pretty easy time of it since the concept is remarkably recent, and its application to business newer still. The term was coined in 1990 in a research paper by two psychology professors, John D. Mayer of UNH and Peter Salovey of Yale. Some years later, Mayer defined it in HBR this way:

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How Emotional Intelligence Became a Key Leadership Skill

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A reading list to bring you up to speed.

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The more that you, as a leader, manage each of these areas, the higher your emotional intelligence. So, let's look at each element in more detail and examine how you can grow as a leader.

Emotional Intelligence in Leadership

1. Self-awareness

If you're self-aware, you always know how you feel, and you know how your emotions and your actions can affect the people around you. Being self-aware when you're in a leadership position also means having a clear picture of your strengths and weaknesses, and it means behaving with humility.

So, what can you do to improve your self-awareness?

Keep a journal. Journals help you improve your self-awareness. If you spend just a few minutes each day writing down your thoughts, this can move you to a higher degree of self-awareness.

2. Self-regulation

Leaders who regulate themselves effectively rarely verbally attack others, make rushed or emotional decisions, stereotype people, or compromise their values. Self-regulation is all about staying in control.

This element of emotional intelligence, according to Goleman, also covers a leader's flexibility and commitment to personal accountability.

So, how can you improve your ability to self-regulate?

Hold yourself accountable. If you tend to blame others when something goes wrong, stop. Make a commitment to admit to your mistakes and to face the consequences, whatever they are. You'll probably sleep better at night, and you'll quickly earn the respect of those around you.

Practice being calm. The next time you're in a challenging situation, be very aware of how you act. Do you relieve your stress by shouting at someone else? Practice deep-breathing exercises to calm yourself. Also, try to write down all of the negative things you want to say, and then rip it up and throw it away. Expressing these emotions on paper (and not showing them to anyone!) is better than speaking them aloud to your team. What's more, this helps you challenge your reactions to ensure that they're fair!

3. Motivation

Self-motivated leaders work consistently toward their goals, and they have extremely high standards for the quality of their work.

How can you improve your motivation?

Re-examine why you're doing your job. It's easy to forget what you really love about your career. So, take some time to remember why you wanted this job. If you're unhappy in your role and you're struggling to remember why you wanted it, try the Five Whys technique to find the root of the problem. Starting at the root often helps you look at your situation in a new way. And make sure that your goal statements are fresh and energizing. For more on this, see our article on Goal Setting.

4. Empathy

For leaders, having empathy is critical to managing a successful team or organization. Leaders with empathy have the ability to put themselves in someone else's situation. They help develop the people on their team, challenge others who are acting unfairly, give constructive feedback, and listen to those who need it.

If you want to earn the respect and loyalty of your team, then show them you care by being empathic.

How can you improve your empathy?

Respond to feelings. You ask your assistant to work late - again. And although he agrees, you can hear the disappointment in his voice. So, respond by addressing his feelings. Tell him you appreciate how willing he is to work extra hours, and that you're just as frustrated about working late. If possible, figure out a way for future late nights to be less of an issue (for example, give him Monday mornings off).

5. Social Skills

Leaders who do well in the social skills element of emotional intelligence are great communicators. They're just as open to hearing bad news as good news, and they're experts at getting their team to support them and be excited about a new mission or project.

Leaders who have good social skills are also good at managing change and resolving conflicts diplomatically. They're rarely satisfied with leaving things as they are, but they don't sit back and make everyone else do the work: they set an example with their own behavior.

So, how can you build social skills?

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Emotional Intelligence in Leadership - Learning How to Be More Aware

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Relating to others is vital in today's workplace. Learn how to build your emotional intelligence (EI) with this article.

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Deep work as defined by author and professor Cal Newport in his best selling book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World is a concept born out of the difficulty many people have today in handling distractions caused by the boom in digital communications.

These distractions prevent us from focusing on work that matters and contributes towards us feeling overwhelmed and over-worked every day yet at the same time, leaving us feeling we are not doing work that really matters. We are reacting rather than being proactive.

Deep work prevents us from reacting by scheduling time for focused work where we turn off all our notifications and devices for an hour or two and sit down in a quiet place undisturbed to focus on work that matters. It allows us to focus without distraction.

It does work and it is something I have been using for years when I need to get a book finished or I have an important project to complete. Two hours set aside for planned focused work puts me in a position to get my projects completed on time and to a high level of quality.

How Deep Work Helps You Refocus

There are many benefits to deep work. Here are my 17 favourite ways deep work can help you to become much more productive and effective with your time and your work.

1. Unimportant distractions are gone

How often have you received a text message saying "did you get my email?" Checking emails is one of the biggest time wastes there is. Just looking at a message like that takes your focus away from what is important.

The refocusing time is estimated to be anywhere between three and twenty-one minutes. Turning off your notifications stops these unnecessary interruptions and allows you to focus on what is important-your work.

2. Quiet, deep work time allows you to think

When we allow all these distractions to enter our life, we find there is little to no time for thinking. And yet, thinking is an important ingredient if we want to produce quality work.

Giving yourself time each day for deep work will allow you to think clearly and begin producing better quality work

3. Begin to feel more fulfilled

When you start spending more uninterrupted time on the important work, you will find you feel more fulfilled. This is a result of you getting important, fulfilling work done and reducing the amount of time you spend on unimportant, unfulfilling work.

4. Make fewer mistakes

When you are constantly distracted from the work at hand, you will make more mistakes. When you allow yourself to stay focused on one task you will make fewer mistakes because you are not having to stop and start a piece of work. You will be more focused.

5. Need less time to do the work

And of course, when you are making fewer mistakes you spend less time doing the work and revising. This allows you more time to do more quality work.

6. Deadlines are easily met

When you schedule deep work on your calendar each day or week, you can confidently plan out when you will do the work that has deadlines.

Knowing you will have periods of uninterrupted time to work on a piece of work will give you the confidence you need to meet the deadline.

7. Experience less stress

When you know you have the time to do the work without any interruptions, you begin feeling less stressed about what you have to do.

A great example is writing this article. I have a deadline and I have scheduled two sessions of deep work to get it written and edited. I feel no stress. I know I will complete it on time.

8. The quality of your work will improve

The problem with allowing distractions into your work time is that you are not fully focused on the work. By giving yourself total focused time on a piece of work, you will naturally improve the quality of your work.

9. The amount of work you get done increases

When you are completely focused on the important work, you will find you get a lot more done in each session. Just two hours per day focused on work that really matters will dramatically improve your output.

10. Have time to deal with the distractions.

One of the fears people have about scheduling deep work is they will miss out on something important. The reality is that is unlikely and even if there was something important, you will still see it after your deep work session.

11. Receive more respect

When your boss, colleagues and customers/clients see you schedule time for deep work, they begin to respect you more because they admire your discipline.

Very few people have the necessary discipline to sit down and focus for two hours without looking at their phone, email or notifications. Those of us that can do that are treated with a lot more respect.

12. People will respect your time more

Ever noticed the people in your office who do all the chatting are the ones always complaining about how little time they have to do their work? While it may seem those chatterers are popular, the reality is people are not respecting their time.

When you start doing undisturbed deep work, people will begin respecting your time much more.

13. Your self-discipline will improve

One of the peripheral benefits of practicing regular sessions of deep work is you will find your self-discipline becomes stronger. Self-discipline is the foundation of achieving so many things in life, from your goals to improvements in your health and relationships.

14. Your efficiency will improve

In today's world of detractions, it is very hard to be efficient with the work we do. We get dragged down avenues of procrastination because we are always trying to attend to too many things.

Practicing deep work every day allows us to focus on one thing which leads to much greater efficiency.

15. Projects you thought would never get completed begin to get completed

This one is one of the biggest benefits I have found with deep work. There have been many projects I felt were either too big or too complicated to get completed. After a few sessions of deep work, these projects start getting done and after only a short period of time, they were well on their way to being completed.

16. Your work-life balance improves

Many of the reasons we find it difficult to maintain a good work-life balance is because much of the work we have to do is done in fits and starts. When this happens, there is often the need to do catch-up work in the evenings or at weekends.

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Deep work prevents this from happening because you work on the important work in a focused state leading to more of your work being completed well within the deadlines.

17. Know how to distinguish between important and unimportant work

Deep work forces you to decide what work is important and what work would have the biggest positive impact on your projects. When you begin practicing deep work regularly, you start to focus more on the high value work and less on the low value work.

6 Steps to Use Deep Work to Ignite Productivity

1. Use time blocks on your calendar

The first step to taking advantage of deep work is to block time out on your calendar. To do this, review your calendar for the next day and identify where you will have one or two hours free for focused work.

Ideally, one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon is what you are looking for but, be flexible. If you have a relatively free morning and back to back meetings in the afternoon, then block time only in the morning.

2. Start small

If you have never blocked time out for focused work before, then start small.

Begin with thirty minutes and gradually increase your time. It should not be difficult to find 30 minutes a day to sit down in a quiet place and get on with your work.

Once you are comfortable with 30 minutes, increase the time to 1 hour. It is surprising how much you can get done in 1 hour and so, make it a goal to get to a daily deep work session of 1 hour as quickly as you can. Just this 1 hour every day will massively increase your productivity.

3. Decide what you will work on the day before

This step is crucial. If you do not plan what you will work on before you sit down to do deep work, you will waste valuable time looking for something to do. Plan ahead.

I recommend you take 10 minutes before you finish for the day and make a decision on what you will work on during your focused work time.

An additional benefit in doing this is you give your subconscious brain time to develop some creative ideas for the project you are going to work on.

4. Find a quiet place to do your work

If you stay in your normal work station and try and do your focused work, you are going to be interrupted by someone or something.

Try to find a quiet place to do your work. In an office, find a meeting room where you can work undisturbed. Alternatively, if you are permitted to do so, do your deep work sessions in a local coffee shop or at home.

What you are looking for is a regular place you can do your deep work that will allow you to go into focused work mode quickly. Using the same place will put you in the right frame of mind as soon as you sit down and start.

5. Find your best time

Some people are naturally morning people, others are naturally night people. To really get the benefit of deep work, schedule your deep work sessions when you are at your best.

For me, that is early in the morning. I do all my focussed work between 6 am and 8 am where possible. I've found that between 6 am and 8 am, I am also less likely to be disturbed and they are not likely to be any meetings at that time.

6. Be consistent

To get the full benefit of deep work sessions, you need to be consistent.

Consistency develops habits. Once you are in the habit of reviewing your calendar the day before and blocking out a couple of sessions each day where you go into deep work mode and doing it, it becomes something you just do.

Consistently spending time in deep work mode will very quickly give you a return of increased productivity and less stress.

6. No excuses!

Never allow yourself to make an excuse for not doing your scheduled deep work session.

Of course, there will be times when a crisis occurs and you have to re-schedule. But, never allow yourself to make excuses like: "I'm too tired" or "I'm not in the mood."

Once you allow yourself to make an excuse for not doing your deep work session, you will eventually stop doing it.

Be strict with yourself and be strategic with scheduling your deep work sessions. If you know you are going to have a night out with your friends that could finish late, then do not schedule a deep work session for early the next day. If there is a risk an afternoon meeting will overrun, then do not schedule a deep work session after the meeting.

The Bottom Line

The ability to focus is a valuable skill if you want to achieve your goals and become successful. Practising deep work will make you free from distraction and benefit your work, your career and your life. All you need to do is decide when you will do your deep work.

More Articles to Help You Improve Focus

Featured photo credit: Pexels via pexels.com

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15 Best Leadership Books Every Leader Must Read To Achieve Success

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Deep work as defined by author and professor Cal Newport in his best selling book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World is a concept born out of the difficulty many people have today in handling distractions caused by the boom in digital communications.

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We are committed to researching, testing, and recommending the best products. We may receive commissions from purchases made after visiting links within our content. Learn more about our review process.
Alexander the Great once said that he wasn't afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep. He was afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion. So how do you achieve lion status?

Even those born with great, innate leadership skills might gain something from refining them. Some people who have mastered the art of good leadership have shared their thoughts in these books. Whether you want to hone your skills or you're facing your first leadership role, there's something here for everyone, from novice to CEO.

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We are committed to researching, testing, and recommending the best products. We may receive commissions from purchases made after visiting links within our content . Learn more about our review process . Alexander the Great once said that he wasn't afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep.

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6 Leadership Theories to define Effectiveness of Leaders
By Bhudeb Chakrabarti
Leadership is the projection of personality; It is a combination of persuasion, compulsion and example that makes other people do what the leader wants them to do. ~ Field-Marshal Sir William Slim, outstanding British and Allied commanders of World War II.

Leading is the art of influencing and motivating people to perform in a manner to achieve a common goal. The sum total of a leader's roles, tasks and responsibilities and interpersonal influences constitutes leadership.

A leader should not only be intelligent (with general problem-solving capacity) but should also possess high integrity and character, equally concerned with ends (doing the right thing) and means (doing rightly).

Effective leaders have to work ceaselessly and communicate with the people to motivate them in an efficient manner.

What makes a Leader Effective?

Numerous studies have been conducted and a considerable amount of research has been done to find out how a leader becomes effective. Various theories have been postulated from time to time to zero in on the factors that influence the effectiveness of leaders.

Trait Theories emphasize the traits or qualities of leaders, which lead to their lead to their effectiveness. The Trait Theories, however, could not establish the traits that should be common to all leaders. Mahatma Gandhi, Subhas Chandra Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru were all great leaders but their personalities had distinctly different characteristics. It also fails to explain the instances of leadership failures, where leaders failed despite possessing the required traits.

So while certain traits such as confidence, charisma, knowledge etc may help leaders to become more effective, relying entirely on those traits may not always help them to motivate their people to achieve the stated goal.

The Behavioural Theories sought to identify the specific behaviours of leaders that lead to their leadership success.

Leaders may demonstrate task-oriented or people-oriented behaviours and may make decisions using authoritarian, democratic, or laissez-faire styles. However, it was seen that the preferred behavioural styles of leaders produced varied result under different circumstances. It appeared the Behavioural Theories overlooked the situational factors and the environment in which behaviours are demonstrated.

The limitations of the Trait Theories and the Behavioural Theories led to the transition to the Contingency Theories and development of contingency models.

Read: 8 Skills That Will Make You An Effective Leader

3. Contingency Theories

Contingency theories state that effectiveness of leadership is related to the interplay of a leader's traits, behaviours and other situational factors.

Fred Fiedler Contingency Model

Fred Fiedler Model assumes that performance of a group depends upon leadership style and favourableness of the situation. Some leadership styles work better in certain situations.

For example, task-oriented leaders appeared to perform better in very favourable and very unfavourable situations. In contrast, the relationship-oriented leaders tended to perform better in moderately favourable situations.

When confronted by the Axis Forces during the Second World War, The British faced a tough situation. Field Marshal Montgomery, a task-oriented leader instituted a regime of continuous training, insisted on high levels of physical fitness and was ruthless in sacking officers he considered would be unfit for command in action. He proved to be the best British Field Commander in such an unfavourable situation.

In very favourable situations too, such as during the times of peace, the Armed Forces always need a Task-oriented leader to keep the rank and file battle - ready.

Fiedler believed that since a person's natural leadership style is fixed, and certain leadership styles work better in certain situations, the most effective way to handle a changing situation is to change the leader. So, Fed Fiedler's Model did not allow for flexibility in leaders.

⇒ As we proceed, you may want to check out these Leadership Training Resources.

Hersey-Blanchard Situational Model

Hersey-Blanchard Situational Model suggests that leadership style should be matched to the maturity of the subordinates. Depending on the subordinates' level of maturity (from highly immature to highly mature), a leader may adopt any of these styles:

Telling (High Task-Low Relationship)

Selling (High Task-High Relationship)

Participating (Low Task-High Relationship)

Delegating (Low Task-Low Relationship)

While dealing with new entrants to an organisation, a leader would need to adopt a Telling style and Tell them exactly what to do and how to do. At the same time, the leader would need to adopt a delegating style while interfacing with persons at the higher echelons.

Read: 8 Theories of Motivation

Path-Goal Model (by Robert House) suggest that a leader can affect the motivation and performance of a group by:

Offering rewards for the achievement of performance goals

Clarifying paths towards these goals

Removing performance obstacles

The model identified four leadership behaviours (directive, supportive, participative and achievement-oriented) and assumed that the leaders could be flexible to adopt any style according to situations.

Vroom- Yetton Model suggests that leadership style (autocratic, consultative, group) may be chosen by consideration of a number of situation variables in the form of questions forming a decision tree.

4.Charismatic Leadership Theory

A Charismatic leader commands authority not by the virtue of a formal position but by the virtue of charismatic personality. Envisioning, empathy and empowerment are the three core components of charismatic leadership. The Theory states that people would attribute heroic or extraordinary qualities to the Charismatic Leaders who had an idealized goal and a strong commitment.

Read: Leadership lessons from the life of Nelson Mandela

5. Transactional Leadership Theory

This theory bases leadership on a system of rewards and punishments that are contingent upon the performance of the followers. Transactional leadership is often used in business and Transactional leaders are task and outcome-oriented.

6. Transformational Leadership

Transformational leaders are able to inspire followers with their vision and personality to change expectations, perceptions, and motivations for working towards common goals. Four components of Transformational Leadership are:

Intellectual Stimulation

Consideration for individuals

Inspirational Motivation

Idealized Influence

An excerpt from Transformational Leadership by Bass and Riggio

Transformational leaders...are those who stimulate and inspire followers to both achieve extraordinary outcomes and, in the process, develop their own leadership capacity. Transformational leaders help followers grow and develop into leaders by responding to individual followers' needs by empowering them and by aligning the objectives and goals of the individual followers, the leader, the group, and the larger organization.

Transformational leadership is best suited for knowledge workers, where leaders and followers can take each other to a higher level of moral and motivation.

Finally, it won't be out of context to mention here that leaders with character and integrity, who work towards a greater goal with conviction, inspire their followers.

Read: 7 Steps to developing Creative Leadership Skills.

Enlightened leadership is service, not selfishness. ~ Lao Tzu.

Men of stainless character and self-purification will easily inspire confidence and automatically purify the atmosphere around them. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Related Resources:
This article is contributed by Bhudeb Chakrabarti, Dy IG (Retd) CRPF. He has commanded several Operational and Administrative functions in the force and has imparted training to gazetted officers of CRPF and other central & state police forces.
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Please like, share and/or leave feedback in comments below!
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References:
Bass, B. M. & Riggio, R. E. (2008). Transformational Leadership. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

By: Bhudeb Chakrabarti

No biography available at this time

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6 Leadership Theories to define Effectiveness of Leaders

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By Bhudeb Chakrabarti Leadership is the projection of personality; It is a combination of persuasion, compulsion and example that makes other people do what the leader wants them to do. ~ Field-Marshal Sir William Slim, outstanding British and Allied commanders of World War II. What is Leadership?

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Every now and again, you run across something that just gets to you... it really sticks. Whether it be a poem, motivational quote, a book, or maybe a story of business success, often times, these bits of inspiration stay with us and help keep us entrepreneurs moving forward.

Today, while scrolling through Facebook (as us Millennials like to do), I ran across an image of a traveling wolf pack. At first, I thought the image and post was a bit odd. But then, when I clicked to read more and read the story and meaning behind the image, it resonated with me. And although I've heard of similar analogies, the photo really brings the point of "leadership" home, so I wanted to share.

A group of wolves: The three in front (red circle) are old and sick. They walk in front to set the pace of the running group to ensure they get don't left behind because more than likely, if an ambush happened, they would be sacrificed. The next five (yellow box) are the strongest and best of the pack. They are tasked with the job of protecting the front of the pack if there is an attack. Naturally, the pack in the middle are always protected from any attack. The last (almost) five behind them (green square) are also among the strongest and best; they are tasked with the job of protecting the back of the pack if there is an attack. The last one wolf pictured (blue arrow) is the LEADER. He ensures that no one is left behind. He keeps the pack unified and on the same path. He is always ready to run in any direction to protect and serve as the 'bodyguard' to the entire group.

It's a great story, right? But, how does it relate to business?

If you think about the qualities and characteristics of the Alpha wolf, you would think of confidence, loyalty, trusted, strong, and knowledgeable of the pack. Right?

Those characteristics remind some of a CEO of a business. But is that entirely true?

Unlike the wolf who has so much confidence in his ability to fight off a "disruptor" during an attack and who would sacrifice everything to protect his pack, not every CEO has wolf like traits.

In larger corporations, many questions whether or not their CEO (or C-Suite) have what it takes to fend off unexpected disruptive attacks. And as we've seen from many top C-Suite members, often times when the going gets tough, they cash out before they're "eaten alive." However, owning a small business is a bit different. Your employees tend to be like family. Often times, many business owners become great friends with many of their customers.

So, to tie this all together... are you considered to be a trusted Alpha? Are you a strong leader? Would you protect your pack at all costs?

Leadership isn't about being the most visible, the loudest, or even the highest earner. Leadership is truly about leading from behind. Real leaders are the types who want to share their success rather than bask in the glory, and those who when things go wrong, take ownership and take the fall to ensure their team is taken care of. As I always like to say, "Teamwork makes the dream work."

Just some food for thought. Maybe this story will resonate with you as much as it does me and help you keep your pack unified and on the same path.

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Every now and again, you run across something that just gets to you... it really sticks. Whether it be a poem, motivational quote, a book, or maybe a story of business success, often times, these bits of inspiration stay with us and help keep us entrepreneurs moving forward.