Sunday 5^th May 2013, the weatherman had warned us of a cloudy day with tops of 19 degrees, to much of our delight, was completely incorrect.  A glorious sunny day beheld us as we met up at the IMAX prior to the event start, many of us showing the signs of a serious night prior.  With spirits high and coffee flowing, we joined the rest of the gleeful crowd at Tumbalong Park, excitement buzzing about the event to come.

As the event commenced, teams varied in costumes, from pink vests to Harry Potter rushed through the starting point towards their designated first challenge somewhere in the City. 

Museums, statues, the Big Guns at Dawes Point, the Wildlife Park and Pyrmont Bridge, the King George Leisure Centre, passenger terminal, St James Church and Hyde Park.
Paper planes flown, basketball hoops scored, quizzes answered and potato filled sacks run.  4 hours later and challenges completed, a long day of entertainment, exercise and fun capped off with thin crusted pizza and refreshments with a lot of stories swapped between.

The day comes to a close, with sore legs but spirits high, we eagerly await the tabulated results due to come out on the 14^th with bragging rights on the line.

On Sunday 5^th May Good Beginnings, an organisation that provides support for children and families with a focus on early intervention, held an event called “The Great Tribal Chase”.  This event, styled from The Amazing Race, saw over 800 participants in teams of 2 – 6 people, run around the Sydney CBD and Foreshore completing tasks and quizzes along with raising much needed funds for the charity.

ATO warning: start super planning now

Medium and large businesses should start preparing for changes to their super obligations now to ensure they are ready for the changes on time, according to the Australian Taxation Office.

Employers with 20 or more employees must use the data and e-commerce standard (the Standard) by 1 July, 2014 as part of the Government’s SuperStream measures to ensure all data and money are transferred electronically.

Alison Lendon, deputy commissioner, superannuation, said businesses shouldn’t wait until next year to make any required changes.

“If you think your business will need to update software or systems, you should start planning now to ensure you’re ready on time,” Lendon said.

“If you prefer to process your super contributions for staff yourself, you can work with your default super fund or payroll supplier to meet the new data and e-commerce standard. Other partners, including accountants and clearing houses, will be able to help as well.”

Once implemented, the Standard will provide a consistent and reliable method for processing superannuation payments electronically and result in:

• fewer data quality issues
• a simpler, more consistent contribution process
• fewer lost accounts and unclaimed monies
• faster processing of employees’ money into their super accounts
• lower overall processing costs.

“The Standard is about moving super into the 21^st century and removing much of the administrative burden and the inefficiencies faced by employers,” Lendon said.

“The goal is to improve the efficiency of the superannuation system, to improve the timeliness of processing of contributions and reduce the number of lost accounts and unclaimed monies.”

The ATO is encouraging employers and funds to work together  to become data standard ready.

2013 obligations 

The following reforms will impact businesses from 1 July 2013:

• Employers must increase the compulsory super payments they make on behalf of their eligible employees from 9% to 9.25%. The rate will be gradually increased to 12% by July 2019.
• The existing age limit for employee super guarantee eligibility will be removed. This means employers must start making super guarantee (SG) payments for eligible employees aged 70 years and over.

Lendon said changes to the SG coming into effect on 1 July this year will be relatively seamless for businesses.

“The administrative changes you need to make are relatively straightforward,” Lendon said. “Employers will need to ensure their payroll and accounting systems are able to cater for the gradual increase in the super guarantee rate and removal of the upper age limit.”

Lendon added that software and payroll providers already have scheduled system changes to ensure employers will be ready for the 1 July 2013 SG changes.

This article is found from http://www.hcamag.com/article/are-you-up-to-speed-with-new-gender-reporting-rules-173835.aspx

Are you up to speed with new gender reporting rules?

From April 1 the requirements of the new Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 Act will be fully operational, and there are a number of changes employers must be aware of and ready to implement.

Employers with 100 or more employees will be required to report on more than 50 topics under six critical areas of workplace gender equality, called gender equality indicators (GEIs):

• The gender composition of the workforce
• The gender composition of governing bodies of relevant employers – the term ‘governing body’ is broad, and means a board of directors, trustees, committee of management, council or other governing authority of the employer.
• Equal remuneration between women and men
• The availability and utility of employment terms, conditions and practices relating to flexible working arrangements for employees and to working arrangements supporting employees with family or caring responsibilities
• Consultation with employees on issues concerning gender equality in the workplace
• Any other matters specified by the Minister in a legislative instrumen

Under this indicator, the Minister has the flexibility through a legislative instrument to specify other gender equality matters. These may relate to the updated employment matters, which reflect areas of historical disadvantage experienced by women in the workplace and are defined as:

• the recruitment procedure and selection criteria, for appointment or engagement of persons as employees
• the promotion, transfer and termination of employment of employees
  training and development for employees
• work organisation including flexible working arrangements
• conditions of service of employees including equal remuneration between women and men
• arrangements for dealing with sex-based harassment of employees in the workplace
• arrangements for dealing with pregnant, or potentially pregnant employees and employees who are breastfeeding their children
• arrangements relating to employees with family or caring responsibilities.

According to the parliamentary announcement by federal status of women minister Julie Collins late last month, the new reporting obligations aim to provide employers with the information to better understand the gender equality characteristics of their workplaces and at an aggregate level “inform policy development and provide an improved understanding of the experiences of women and men in Australian workplaces”, Collins said. She added that for the first time, the reports will contain actual data including the number of women and men in a workplace, what roles they fill and how much they are paid. “These are the things that really count in terms of measuring the experiences of women and men in Australian workplaces,” Collins said.

Key HR Takeaway

The consequences of failing to meet the new obligations are serious for some employers – in addition to being “named and shamed” by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, those who fail to report are barred from tendering for federal government work and some state government projects, and will not be eligible for some Commonwealth government grants.

Five Things Mature Women Want

It’s International Women’s Day on Friday. And we particularly want to raise a toast to mature women. In our experience, Diversity Council Australia bears this out, mature women are a group who are most likely to be undervalued, underemployed, discouraged and departed when it comes to workplaces.

Some years ago, I was working on a major mature workers retention project within the public sector. The project manager – let’s call her Yvonne – was an energetic and insightful senior woman in her early 60s. She had never quite cracked the ‘executive’ level of the public service despite numerous attempts, but she was obviously admired and respected. With surprisingly good humour, Yvonne shared a story of her early working days, when women weren’t invited to the superannuation information sessions. She remembers asking if she should be attending, but was told that given she would be getting married and having a family, she didn’t need to worry about it! Despite the discouragement, she pursued superannuation advice; she missed out on being part of a defined benefits scheme by a matter of weeks. Over the last ten years, she’s watched her male colleagues retire with comparatively lucrative superannuation, indexed for life.

Yvonne loved working, and despite what might look like a really successful career, she found that in her early 60s, she wasn’t considered for new opportunities being “over-qualified”. She’s now departed the workplace and hopes to consult to continue participating in the workforce.

There are tens of thousands of stories like this one.

What do mature women really want? What can employers give them?

Identity: Mature women want to be valued and recognised for their work and non-work roles. The much held assumption of retirement or full-time elder / child care for this co-hort is limiting. Providing support for making decisions about their own future – which could equally include starting a new career or returning to work or developing their role, is something all employers should consider.

Money: Mature women want financial security. Many women have been disadvantaged with retirement savings. Tailored, focussed financial advice for mature women is imperative.

Career: Women aged 55+ form the fastest growing labour pool. Designing roles that particularly attract mature women will stand any employer in good stead in a market where skills shortage is a major challenge. Providing career coaching and development opportunities for mature women will empower them to challenge the assumption of retirement or underemployment.

Health: Mature women spend a lot of time caring for others – often to the detriment of their own health. What programs can employers put in place to particularly support healthy ageing for women?

Relationships: Mature women spend a lot of time caring for others – but who is caring for them? Mature women want happy, healthy relationships. Employers who recognise and acknowledge the relationship demands that mature women juggle and structure work demands accordingly will benefit.

One might argue that these five things are relevant to men and women; and you’re right, they are. But there are points of emphasis in each area that are particular to mature women. Providing a structured framework for women to have conversations and take action will reap benefits. Some organisations we work with have used Envisage as a means of providing this framework to mature women. Some are holding International Women’s Day seminars specifically for mature women; they were oversubscribed in a matter of days!

You can road test the Envisage half day seminar on Thursday 21 March in Sydney. You may like to invite some mature women in your organisation as an International Women’s Day gesture?

We have the opportunity to transform undervalued to valued, underemployed to richly employed, discouraged to empowered and departed to recruited and retained.

More information and links:

Envisage Open seminar. Thursday 21 March 9 am – 1 pm, Sydney. Click Here to Register now.
Free Envisage resources to support identity, money, career, health and relationships.
Diversity Council Australia news.

mature women, retirement, SageCo Talk, Susan Ryan

Top 5 Reasons for New Hire Failure

An older but still very illuminating study by Leadership IQ has revealed the worrying statistic that apparently 46 percent of newly hired employees fail within 18 months and only 19 percent achieve what they describe as unequivocal success.

What was most interesting in this study were the reasons for this new hire failure. What they actually found was that, most commonly, employees did not fail as a result of not having the right technical skills; failure was mainly attributed to a lack of interpersonal skills, with many of these shortcomings having been overlooked in the hiring process.

This is an especially interesting study for recruiting and resourcing professionals as it extends the performance impact period of the initial recruiting decision far beyond the probationary period and well in to the second year of service. It suggests that the quality/suitability of the initial hiring decision can have an impact on the overall success of the candidate in the medium-to-long term. This is both a potential cross to bear and a drum to bang for the hiring profession.

But, back to the study, what were the top 5 reasons for new hire failure? They were:

1. Coachability (26%): The ability to accept and implement feedback from bosses, colleagues, customers and others.
2. Emotional Intelligence (23%): The ability to understand and manage one’s own emotions, and accurately assess others emotions.
3. Motivation (17%): Sufficient drive to achieve one’s full potential and excel in the job.
4. Temperament (15%): Attitude and personality suited to the particular job and work environment.
5. Technical Competence (11%): Functional or technical skills required to do the job.

Before I go further, it’s worth pointing out that while the study is a few years old, it is very substantial as it looked at 5,257 hiring managers from 312 businesses who had collectively hired more than 20,000 employees during the period. This suggests to me that the study is really worth listening to and, fortunately, it dovetails with current thinking in strategic resourcing circles, which is bringing a greater emphasis on cultural fit relative to technical competency during the hiring process.

But, what this study helps to define is what is meant by cultural fit, which I feel is necessary as cultural fit is often used in a vague and unquantified way that leaves its open to misuse. This study helps to bring a deeper emphasis on cultural fit, beyond more superficial measures of “do they drink at the same bars?” “do they like the same TV shows?” or “share the same sense of humor?” with the interviewer, to more tangible areas such as coach-ability, and whether the hire will be able to thrive and grow within the team management culture and broader company management culture. And/or do they have the emotional togetherness to work through conflict, or even avoid conflict; the right temperament to function well in our environment?

This study should be a great steer-and-call to action for recruiters and employers. I think it urges them to have a much more surgical focus on cultural fit hiring, which could involve cultural profiling of positions with respect to the qualities needed to work within the team, department and company at large. And then these cultural success profiles can be used in the hiring process to more effectively benchmark candidates for cultural fit – and to help to eliminate the new hires failures arising from cultural fit.

Article End

Now Mayer’s decision had raised criticism from Virgin main man, Richard Branson but was applauded by Mr Donald “You’re Fired” Trump for her efforts to turn around the performance of Yahoo.

The question that comes to mind is whether the removal of work from home options will be fitting of your business model. 

In the IT development environment, it would seem that collaboration and the energy generated from tech gurus bouncing ideas off each other would make it seem logical to keep everyone together.  

“But the unwritten rule at major Silicon Valley companies is: just because you can work from anywhere doesn’t mean you should. Most Silicon Valley companies such as Google and Facebook have informal policies allowing telecommuting, but they champion the concept of closeness. They design their campuses to encourage it with gourmet cafes dishing out free food and inviting, comfortable meeting rooms where employees can lounge and talk.”

Would a non-developing office environment benefit from the same type of synergy experienced by the likes of Google and Facebook with their staff onsite?

Measured Manner a Winning Way
Jill Margo

At the best of times, public speaking can be daunting.  In theses turbulent times it can be even more challenging, particularly for business leaders who have to talk about the impact if the financial crises on their enterprise.

Michael Kelly, a Sydney speech communication expert, says they can learn much from watching the US presidential race.

Almost every night on television, Barack Obama demonstrates techniques that underpin successful public speaking.  He doesn’t rush.  He takes his time to move, to pause and to search for the right words.  He trusts himself to find the words and others trust he will find them too.  His audience is not anxious that he will stumble.  What they see is a self-possessed man, whose measured deliver signals authority.

Kelly says composure creates the impression of a person not easily ruffled, of someone who can be trusted.  Obama’s body language shows a man who is comfortable with himself and who, in front of a crowd can occupy his space with ease.

“Early on, Barack wrote that he understood a key perception about himself.  That is, that white people were relieved and pleasantly surprised to interact with a black man who was not aggressive and angry,” Kelly says

“He put that into practice in the way he moves and uses his body.  He never moves quickly or ‘aggressively’ in order not to surprise or startle people.”
His smooth carriage reinforces the notion that he is under no time pressure and his gestures appear so natural they make him appear genuine.

Kelly describes him as graceful and says he meets the criteria for goo oratory set out centuries ago by Cicero, who wrote that and orator “ must practice an economy of movement, with not extraneous effort – the carriage of his body straight and lofty: his pacing measured and kept within bounds…. Governing himself in the expression of his whole body, with a manly torsion from the waist; using powerful gestures when moved, and none at all when calm”.

Obama is also bless with a smooth, deep and balanced voice that can become loud with little effort.  Kelly believes his voice is rooted in the “preacher style” of the church he attended.  But it also has a lyrical swinging cadence which is pleasing to the ear. : Barack expertly uses pauses and strings words together like a jazz musician.”

During the debates with republican John McCain, Obama listened with his eye.  Regardless of what McCain Said, Obama kept looking at him.

“This ‘eye listening’ convey confidence and assuredness.  It can be difficult to watch someone verbally assault but doing so, and not flinching, is akin to “taking it like a man”, Kelly says.

McCain averted his gaze when Obama spoke, almost creating the perception that he was not listening.  Holding contact with calm eyes, particularly during disagreement, suggests you are not easily riled.  When the stakes are high, the audience observers the speaker carefully, alert for subtleties of tone, expression and anything that can give a clue to what the speaker really thinks.

Obama’s facial expression appears to reflect what he is feeling, which helps to portray him as authentic.  While McCain’s war injuries have affected his body language and restricted his ability to move and make gestures, both his face and voice lack passion.

14 tips to mitigate end-of-year function risks

Speech time at the work Christmas party is a good opportunity for employers to pause the flow of alcohol and help prevent incidents arising from excessive consumption, says the Australian Drug Foundation’s head of workplace services, Phillip Collins.

He suggests not serving alcohol while formal proceedings are conducted to allow people to eat more food and drink water, which will reduce their alcohol intake.

The Australian Drug Foundation has developed a checklist, as part of its Good Hosts program, which helps HR professionals and employers plan work events that avoid alcohol-related harm and corporate embarrassment.

Employers should follow all of the steps in the checklist to ensure a fun event that isn’t too focused on alcohol, Collins says.

The first step is to implement an early intervention strategy to prevent incidents occurring at an event, he says.

If someone at an event is consuming more alcohol than everyone else, employers should have a procedure in place to identify the risk and how to handle it, and consider ways to “mitigate any risks in the future”.

For example, increasing the amount of water provided to the person, table or group could be beneficial. Employees should also know who the person responsible for the event is.

This is “absolutely critical”, he says, so that if something happens at the event, there is someone to turn to who will have an action plan.

Employers should also control the flow of alcohol, bearing in mind how they have served alcohol at previous events and whether it was successful, Collins says.

“So historically it could have been you [had] alcohol in a big ice bin and people [could] simply go and grab what they want, or there could be an arrangement on the table.”

Requiring employees to go to the bar to get a drink can help reduce the amount of alcohol consumed, he says.

Alcohol should not be the focus of the night, and instead the event should focus on entertainment, such as speeches or having arcade games at the venue.

Employers should consider whether some of the people attending the social event are non-drinkers, and “engage them in activities where they can actually enjoy themselves without having to… think they need to have alcohol to have fun”, Collins says.

To avoid rapid consumption of alcohol, an event should not have any kind of drinking games, he adds.

Further, employers should avoid placing an emphasis on alcohol consumption, for example by not promoting “drink until dawn” on a communication flyer or having alcoholic-based lucky door prizes.

Employees must know when to leave the venue and how they are getting home, and employers should make them aware of this before the event, “as opposed to on the night”.

Employees should be advised of the event’s start and end time, and whether public transport is available, or if taxis will be provided, Collins says.

Further, if someone at the event consumes a lot of alcohol and is evicted from the premises, “companies must have a policy in place to ensure that that person does get home safely”, he says.

This safe transport policy should require the employer to place the evicted person in a taxi, give clear directions to the taxi driver to take the person directly home, and pay for that trip.

Depending on the length of the event, substantial food should be served regularly to help prevent intoxication. Collins says food should be available within an hour of the bar opening.

It is also important for employers to cater for the diversity of their workforce, so that all employees who might be drinking alcohol can “have that food intake to balance everything out”.

Employers should ensure they have an adequate number of security guards for the event, and that those security guards know the employer’s requirements.

They should be briefed on: the number of people attending the event; the employer’s alcohol policies; how and what people are being served; who’s in charge; and how to take an evicted person out of the venue, Collins says.

“Having security guards there is not only to stop people coming in that shouldn’t be there, but also to ensure that the [employer's expectations] are actually met,” he says.

Lastly, after an event has taken place, employers should debrief about the event, and discuss what they did right, what they did wrong, what they can do in the future, and document it for next time.

Managers should set the standard

According to Mills Oakley partner Luke Connolly, the biggest mistake employers make when planning end-of-year and other functions is failing to communicate to managers the importance of modelling desired behaviours on the night.

“Management themselves don’t lead by example. They tend to forget who they are and who they’re representing, thereby creating a culture of partying that breaches a number of standards that ought apply at these type of events,” he told HR Daily.

“Ultimately managers need to lead by example. It’s management that the junior staff will look at on the night, to see how they’re behaving. And how they behave will dictate how juniors think they can behave – it becomes a cultural lead by example thing.”

In general, he says, employers tend not to take a highly disciplined approach to Christmas parties, in communicating to employees “what they’re really for, and that is to celebrate the year as opposed to getting as drunk and wild as you can”.

Employers should communicate to employees before the event what the expected behaviours are, and what won’t be tolerated, he says.

“It’s about setting those boundaries and culture prior to the event, and making sure that management live and breathe those cultural boundaries. By not doing that, and by everyone throwing their hats in the air and kicking off their shoes and going berserk, they put themselves at huge risk.”

From http://www.dtssydney.com/blog/emotional_quotient_%28eq%29_in_leadership_development

Emotional Quotient (EQ) in Leadership Development

25thOct

Becoming more emotionally intelligent is the implied goal of virtually all leadership training.

Once introduced to emotional intelligence and the impact that emotions have on team performance, productivity, innovation, customer loyalty, employee engagement and retention, leaders will never look at their jobs in quite the same way.

Although emotions and feelings may seem trivial from a business point of view, they have real consequences for getting work done and improving the company’s bottom line. Leaders’ moods have an enormous impact on the performance of those they lead, and since people pay close attention to leaders, even subtle expressions of emotions can have a great impact.

Leaders who exude upbeat moods boost cooperation, fairness, business performance and attract better talent. Negative moods foster conflict, disengagement and higher staff turnover — after all, who wants to work for a negative boss?

Creating organisations that are emotionally intelligent is ultimately the leaders’ responsibility. More than anyone else, it is the leadership team who has the power to establish cultural norms, and the ability to maximise collaboration to ensure that their teams benefit from the best talents of each of its members.

If you want to make an organisation more emotionally intelligent, you must start with the leaders.

How to Introduce EQ to Leaders There is no single best way to coach, train or facilitate a program on emotional intelligence, so what follows is simply a scripted example to help illustrate one way that EQ might be introduced.

Facilitator: “Welcome to [Leadership 101]. Today’s training is about leadership and what separates the average leader from the great one.

What are some of the core qualities that great leaders share? You might like to think about famous political leaders, sports leaders, or business people you’ve worked with in the past whom you think exemplified the qualities of great leadership.

What are those qualities? Charisma? Passion? Integrity? Vision? Intelligence? [Have them come up with a list of qualities]

If we were to make a list of all the qualities of leadership, you might already know that we can separate them into 2 categories: Hard Skills and Soft Skills. The hard stuff is pretty easy to measure: it’s things like your intelligence, knowledge, education and expertise — it’s easy to list on a resume. Then, on the other side, there’s the ‘soft’ stuff, which is harder to quantify. That’s because it’s to do with your personality and character, and includes things like integrity, enthusiasm, the ability the communicate, the ability to build trust, and the ability to influence how other people feel.

How does everyone in this room feel about these two categories? Is there a sense about which is more important: The Hard stuff? … or the Soft stuff? [Group discussion]

So we’ve got some differences in what each person believes is important, which is good. I’ll share with you some of the major research findings on leadership over the past 15 years. What it shows is that the hard stuff, IQ for example, is only sufficient to some extent. That is, it can make you a leader, but not an excellent one. A good IQ is necessary in most leadership positions as the price of entry to the game — it can get you hired, but it doesn’t separate the average from the excellent. In fact, the higher you get up an organisation, the more important the soft stuff becomes.

I think just about everyone in this room knows a story about a highly intelligent, highly skilled executive who was promoted into a leadership position only to fail at the job because they lacked the ability to work well with others.

It was in the mid-1990s that Daniel Goleman released the book ‘Emotional Intelligence’, which provided a completely new language for describing soft skills, and completely flipped our understanding of performance in the workplace.

Goleman and dozens of other researchers have since gone on to investigate hundreds of corporations with both successful and unsuccessful executives, and have found that the single greatest variable in leadership performance comes down to emotional intelligence. In fact, here are a few of the major findings as they relate to leadership:

In competency research of over 200 companies, over four-fifths (80%) of the difference in top leadership positions is due to emotional competence, and only one-fifth (20%) is due to technical skill and cognitive ability. – Goleman

The ability to understand emotions was found as the most consistent predictor of leadership emergence. – Cote, in The Leadership Quarterly

Research by the Center for Creative Leadership has found that the primary causes of derailment in executives involve deficits in emotional competence.

The research has really shown conclusively that emotional intelligence is at the center of leadership. This training will include the role that emotions play in decision-making, the benefits of building emotionally intelligent teams, your own emotional intelligence as measured by the TTI EQ Profile, and how simple adjustments that you can make in your interactions with people on a daily basis can lead to significant increases in productivity and performance; and also a host of other benefits for the organisation as well as you personally.”

—————————————————————————————

Following this introduction, some of the areas you may wish to cover include: the chemistry of emotions and the structure of the brain, the major contributors to the field of emotional intelligence, the difference between EQ and IQ, and major research findings on EQ as they relate to leadership and business performance.

The choice of topics will ultimately depend on the learning objectives and the amount of time available.

In our experience, business leaders are usually less interested in a university-style course that covers the full history and background of EI, and more interested in how to use the tool from a practical workplace perspective.

With this in mind, participants should begin the next phase of the training with an overview of the 5 key emotional intelligence competencies and relevant sub factors. These core competencies help to provide a framework for understanding and assessing the different factors that lead to superior performance not only in leadership, but in every role within the company.

It’s worthwhile to have all the leaders participate in activities and discussions that highlight each of the core competencies by illustrating what a high score could potentially look like, versus a low score. For fun, you might wish you use these famous characters.

At this point, it is a good idea to present the leaders with their EQ profiles (or some specific parts of them) so that they can relate the principles to their own situation.

For those with low scores in any domain, it’s important to communicate that it’s not uncommon and that very few people score high in all 5 domains. What’s more, emotional intelligence is a skill — not an innate talent. Like any other skill, people can get better at it with training and practice.

Once the leaders have a grounded understanding of the emotional intelligence research, core competencies, and a peak at their profiles, you can then move on to what each leader can do to improve and foster emotional intelligence individually and in their teams.

Key Benefits Summary of EQ Profiling and Training for Leaders/Managers and Their Teams:

Identify Links to Business Performance: Understand how the key domains of emotional intelligence have direct links to productivity, retention, team performance, innovation, customer satisfaction and profitability.

Improve Individual Performance: With an emotional intelligence development plan, leaders will learn how to improve their own performance (as well as that of their team members) by identifying and targeting the skills that have the most significant impact on performance within their role.

Shared Language: The leader and team members have a comprehensive framework for discussing the key competencies/skills that are vital to success in their organisation, which were previously difficult to articulate.

Heightened Awareness: Training in EQ helps leaders and teams become more aware of the best ways to communicate and interact with each other, and what steps the leader should to take in order to find the right ‘equilibrium’ with each team member.

Blind Spots: An accurate EQ profile helps reveal potential weaknesses that the individual was not aware of, and further training can help reveal the common blindspots that have been studied throughout the careers of highly successful executives.

Faster Learning Cycle: When a work environment fosters emotional intelligence, leaders are able to be more open to receiving candid feedback and new perspectives so that they can become better managers/leaders.

Better at Critiquing Others: Leaders with well developed EQ are able to give negative feedback (about a person or their work) in a way that the individual does not take offense and actually seeks to improve their performance. Leaders are therefore better positioned to offer useful feedback and identify people’s needs for further growth.

Better at Building Trust: Understand the sort of behaviours that build trust, and the ones that will most quickly erode it, which includes the impact that seemingly subtle moods and emotions can have on others.

Reduce Conflict/Misunderstandings: Emotionally intelligent teams are more aware and sensitive to each others needs and wants, and can prevent problems before they arise within the group.

Better Resilience: Leaders and teams that are emotionally in-tune are better able to deal with disappointments, challenges and obstacles by being supportive and encouraging of each other during tense or stressful situations that might otherwise diminish their performance.

More Energised and Engaged Team: Since a person’s direct manager has the most direct impact on their productivity, health and well being, team members that work for emotionally intelligent leaders are far more willing to pursue goals beyond what’s required or expected of them.

Team is Better with Customers/Selling: Emotionally intelligent teams are alert and responsive to emotional clues given by customers, which will help them show sensitivity and understand others’ perspectives. They will therefore be better equipped to build rapport and trust, which is integral to any service-based organisation.

Coach with Impartial Feedback: Team members will more readily accept negative feedback from a computerised assessment than they would if they were to hear the same feedback from their manager or another individual, making the EQ profile an invaluable coaching tool.