人际关系管理:并非那么简单
自我意识、自我管理和同理心三个方面结合为最后一个情感能力:人际关系管理。在此,我们可以发现领导能力中最为显眼的方法——说服力、冲突管理以及它们之间的协作。管理人际关系可以巧妙地归结为处理他人的情感。反过来,这也要求领导者首先要意识到自己的个人情感,并通过同理心来协调适应下属的情感。
如果领导者的行为太过虚伪或强势,那么追随者的情感雷达就会捕捉到这种虚伪的信号,追随者会本能地对这个领导者产生不信任感。因此,处理好人际关系的艺术应该从真诚出发,从一个人的真实情感出发。一旦领导者调整了个人的理想和价值观,并保持在积极的情感范围内,同时调整团队的情感,那么关系管理技能就可以使领导者以一种可以产生共鸣的方式进行互动。
然而,处理人际关系并非想象的那么简单。虽然社交能力强的人一般不会心胸狭窄,但这并不仅仅关乎友好。更确切地说,人际关系管理是一种带有目的性的友好:不管是对营销策略的赞同,还是对新项目的热情,其目的都要带领大家走向正确的方向。
这就是为什么社交能力强的领导者可以与广泛的人群产生共鸣,并且可以找到大家的共同点,建立融洽的关系。这并不是说他们需要不断地开展社交活动,而是说他们认为没有哪一项重要的工作是可以完全依赖一个人来完成的。当需要采取行动时,这种领导者就能建立起一个人际关系网。荒谬的是,在一个远程工作日益普遍的时代,比如通过电子邮件或电话来工作,建立人际关系反而变得比以往任何时候都更为重要了。
考虑到领导力的主要任务,可以用有说服力的愿景来激励员工的能力对于领导者而言似乎越来越重要了。鼓舞人心的领导者可以让大家为一个共同的使命而兴奋不已。他们为人们提供的目标感,远远超过了那些吞噬大家梦想的日常工作和季度目标。这样的领导者知道,人们内心深处最重视的东西将会是他们工作中最强大的动力。因为意识到了自己的指导价值,所以他们可以为员工绘制正确的愿景。强烈的集体使命感可以使那些鼓舞人心的领导者更自由、更坚定地带领并引导员工。正如一位产品主管所言:“我一人自成一个公司,我没有团队,也没有领导权力,我与其他项目共用员工。我无法告诉大家他们应该做什么,却可以通过迎合他们的议程安排来说服他们,并为我所用。”[27]
最后,由于领导方面的工作变得越来越复杂,并且越来越注重协作,人际关系管理能力也变得日益重要。例如,每一个大型的组织都必须把领导力下放给部分主管,这样才能创建一个实际意义上的团队。此外,由于组织已经意识到它们需要打破原有的职能分配,比如这个团队负责营销,那个团队负责战略,这个团队负责薪酬,所以越来越多的领导者开始把自己当作多功能团队的一分子,与同事们一起工作。如果哪个团队期望最大限度地发挥效能,那必定会成为顶级的团队。这也意味着组织需要建立密切而顺畅的人际关系,这样每个人都可以轻松地共享信息,并有效地开展协作。
人际关系管理能力可以使领导者将情商运用到实际工作之中,但它们的作用远远不止于此。当谈到结果时,这些使得最佳领导者脱颖而出的能力,可以创建一个协调有序、和谐融洽的团队,并形成独特的领导风格,在下一章中我们将会详细阐述。
- Laughter and leadership: Fabio Sala, “Relationship between Executive’s Spontaneous Use ofHumor and Effective Leadership” (Ph.D. diss., Boston University Graduate School of Arts and Science,2000).
- Competencies independently established as superior: David C. McClelland, “IdentifyingCompetencies with Behavioral-Event Interviews,” Psychological Science 9 (1998): 331–339. Severalof the EI competencies most strongly tied to humor were in the social awareness or relationship skilldomain, as one might expect, since these are the most visible socially. These included empathy,organizational awareness, influence, and team leadership. But humor also had strong associations withcompetencies in the self-management area (initiative, the drive to achieve) and with self-confidence,which reflects self-awareness. This suggests that for these gifted leaders the expression of many ormost EI competencies often came via the artful use of humor—and that this was in itself one basis oftheir success as leaders.
- A radical proposal: David C. McClelland, “Testing for Competence Rather Than Intelligence,”American Psychologist 28 (1973): 14–31. When McClelland wrote this article, Richard Boyatzis andDaniel Goleman were his graduate students in psychology at Harvard.
- Lyle Spencer, “The Economic Value of Emotional Intelligence Competencies and EIC-Based HRPrograms,” in The Emotionally Intelligent Workplace, eds. Cary Cherniss and Daniel Goleman (SanFrancisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001).
- While average branch managers had annual sales of $17 million, these outstanding leaders had sales75 percent higher—on average, $29.8 million—plus a 106 percent higher return on sales.
- James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (NewYork: HarperBusiness, 1994).
- The Johnson & Johnson leadership research was led by Dottie Brienza of the Consumer Companiesdivision and by Kathy Cavallo. Findings were presented at a meeting of the Consortium for Researchon Emotional Intelligence in Organizations (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 3 November 2000).
- The ECI-360 assesses the full spectrum of emotional intelligencebased leadership competencies.For more information, see http://www.eisglobal.com.
- The differences were statistically significant for all twenty of the EI competencies. The ECIcorrelated more highly with high potentials than did the company’s own leadership competence model.
- We streamlined the EI competence model from five domains to four by folding “motivation” into“self-management.” Statistical analyses have also led us to combine several of the EI competencies—for instance, “leveraging diversity” has become part of “empathy”—so that where there used to betwenty-five competencies on the list, there are now just eighteen. New thinking has also led us torename some competencies to emphasize the features most significant for EI leaders: “Trustworthiness”has become “transparency,” and “leadership” has become “inspirational leadership.” Beyond that, wehave dropped “conscientiousness,” which is not as crucial for leaders who can delegate details to anable assistant. And we have combined “communication”—an influence tool—with the “influence”competence.
- EI competencies and the brain: For a more detailed explanation of the links of EI competencies tothe brain, see Daniel Goleman, “Emotional Intelligence: A Theory of Performance,” in TheEmotionally Intelligent Workplace.
- For the basic theory, see Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam,1998). In this book we extend that theory.
- The critical mass of strengths in EI competencies was found both by Richard Boyatzis, TheCompetent Manager: A Model for Organizational Effectiveness (New York: Wiley-Interscience, 1982)and by David C. McClelland, “Identifying Competencies with Behavioral-Event Interviews,”Psychological Science 9 (1998): 331–339.
- Motivation and the left prefrontal cortex: Richard Davidson, D. C. Jackson, and Ned H. Kalin,“Emotion, Plasticity, Context and Regulation: Perspectives from Affective Neuroscience,”Psychological Bulletin 126, no. 6 (2000): 890–909.
- Emotions and decision making: Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error (New York: Putnam, 1994).
- Intuitive decision making in entrepreneurs: Ann Graham Ettinger, Make Up Your Mind (SantaMonica, CA: Merritt Publishing, 1995).
- Predicting the weather: Barbara Knowlton, Jennifer Mangels, and Larry Squire, “A NeostriatalHabit Learning System in Humans,” Science 273 (1996): 1399–1402.
- The basal ganglia and implicit learning: Matthew D. Lieberman, “Intuition: A Social CognitiveNeuroscience Approach,” Psychological Bulletin 126 (2000): 109–137.
- The circuitry involved: Ibid.
- Gut feeling: Damasio, Descartes’ Error.
- The inhibitory function of the prefrontal areas is an active research focus, with some evidencepointing to connections from the prefrontal cortex having inhibitory effects on neurons in theamygdala. Dr. Richard Davidson, University of Wisconsin, personal communication.
- In other publications, we’ve used the term trustworthiness for this competence. Here we usetransparency to emphasize the importance of this aspect of the competence for leadership.
- “Cool”: Lewis MacAdams, Birth of Cool: Beat, Bebop and the American Avant-Garde (NewYork: Free Press, 2001).
- The amygdala and prefrontal zones’ role in empathy: See, for example, Paul J. Eslinger,“Neurological and Neuropsychological Bases of Empathy,” European Neurology 39 (1998): 193–199.
- Limbic resonance: Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, A General Theory of Love(New York: Random House, 2000).
- The importance of vision for leadership: See, for example, Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus,Leaders: Strategies for Taking Charge (New York: Harper and Row, 1985); Jay Conger, TheCharismatic Leader (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1989); and John P. Kotter, Leading Change (Boston:Harvard Business School Press, 1996).
- The product director: Quoted in Matthew Mangino and Christine Dreyfus, “Developing EmotionalIntelligence Competencies” (paper presented to the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligencein Organizations, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 19 April 2001).
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