John M. O’Connor Forbes Councils Member
John M. O’Connor Forbes Councils Member Forbes Coaches Council COUNCIL POST | Paid Program Leadership
POST WRITTEN BY John M. O’Connor
John M. O’Connor is a multi-year career coach, outplacement and career services leader based in North Carolina.
When you first became a leader, did you realize that your success, failure and progress would be based on the same fictional substance that plagued Superman? Imagine for a moment that, when close to you, this green substance weakens you to the point that you cannot perform any function very well. It creates lethargy and, with long exposure, can be fatal to your success.
News flash: Kryptonite exists. For leaders, it’s hidden in two different forms.
Failing To Regulate Your Emotions
In coaching conversations with clients, it often seems as though we operate in a kind of postliterate society where emotional sensation seems to be the only thing that moves people. Fake news and emotionally drawn out tirades dominate real facts, whether political or not. It seems like we need more and more emotional imagery to get our attention at work and at home. Emotions dominate conversations today more than ever, and cold hard facts, figures and truths don’t always cut it anymore.
Reason and emotional intelligence in a world of raw emotion are the only antidotes to this form of kryptonite.
As a leader, you must be in control of your emotions in light of the emotional baggage people carry into work every day. Don’t let your emotions rule how you view others, but use reason to regulate your feelings. You need to be a conscientious proprietor of others’ moods, not reacting or overreacting to the way they describe their experiences. Engage in active listening, and be able to process the emotions of co-workers or subordinates.
Much of the working world is all about grades, metrics and facts when making decisions on hiring and promotions. But in fact, when hiring and promoting people, companies like Google and others rely more on emotional intelligence. To push yourself beyond your capabilities and to prevent leadership kryptonite, use self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy and social skills. Intentionally build your emotional intelligence and push yourself to understand where people are emotionally at work. Push yourself and your teams to become stronger at understanding how people react emotionally and how you react and respond emotionally.
Never Prioritizing Your Own Improvement
Another form of kryptonite is neglecting to challenge yourself to grow and expand your mind and your education, even when your company is not asking you to do it.
To really understand where your green mineral lies as a leader, you need to understand you. Failure to work on how to relate emotionally to others or take an internal deep dive is dangerous.
I spoke with one potential client about his relationship with others. “I just don’t have time for coaching or counseling,” he said. “I am who I am.” Then I talked to the people around him. They said essentially: “He is really hard on his people and his emotions are so up and down. But he’s the boss.”
Many clients who come to me by referral, through an outplacement assignment or who pay me and my company out of their own pocket, often can solve their own problems pretty closely without my help. But those who desperately need me think they don’t.
What I determined generally is that absolute top achievers sense their own kryptonite and consciously reduce its impact by constantly improving themselves inch-by-inch, not mile-by-mile. They know they cannot assume anything and are constantly challenging themselves through coaching, counseling and constant feedback.
One of the conversations I normally have on behalf of my career coaching clients is with some of their references. Those references often reveal to me the deficits they see in my typically big-title, six-figure clients. One reference recently said this about a current client: “He is just about everything I would want from a marketer, but he is missing something critical if he wants to get to the next level.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“He needs to develop more patience and build a network of personal trust, not just contacts.”
In today’s highly emotional and combustible workplace, you simply must be an astute student who is good at sensing their leadership kryptonite. Krypton may have been destroyed 80 years ago, but if you are to succeed as a leader in this new world, you must be calmly and compassionately communicating, reasoning your way through events, situations, outbursts, and outcomes — and, you must always be improving.Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career coaches. Do I qualify?
John M. O’Connor is a multi-year career coach, outplacement and career services leader based in North Carolina.
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only, fee-based organization comprised of leading business coaches and career coaches. Find out if you qualify at forbescoachescouncil.com/qualify. Questions about an article? Email [email protected].