Emotional Intelligence for Customer Service

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Emotional Intelligence: The Key to Successful Leadership

Conventional wisdom says business success is a product of hard work, clear vision, strategy, and bold risks. These four things equal SUCCESS!

Recent research suggests that emotional intelligence, sometimes described as “soft skills,” is the key ingredient in a leaders effectiveness and the success of a project and business.

Employees who receive training on emotional intelligence can position themselves, and their company, to succeed and thrive in today’s economy and dominate the competition.

Traditional factors of business success:
Pure intelligence is not the key to success!

  • People with the highest IQ’s outperform those with average IQ’s 20% of the time.
  • People with average IQ’s outperform those with the highest of IQ’s 70% of the time.
  • 90% of top performers are also high in emotional intelligence.
  • Emotional intelligence accounts for 58% of success in jobs.
  • By far, emotional intelligence is the strongest predictor of success when tested alongside 33 other workplace skills.

What is emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence (EI) is the ability to…

  • Recognize, understand, and self-manage your own emotions.
  • Recognize, understand, and influence the emotions of others.

Five attributes associated with emotional intelligence:

  • Self-Awareness: Understanding that moods, attitudes, and emotions are contagious
  • Self-Regulation: Learning how to self-manage emotions and emotional highjacking that can self sabotage success and relationships.
  • Self-Motivation: Self motivated, optimistic, resilient, adaptable, and flexible.
  • Empathy: Reading and responding to other people’s emotions; being compassionate and able to connect with others.
  • People Skills: Conflict resolution, collaboration, and cultivating/maintaining sustainable relationships.

Benefits and results of training teams and leaders around emotional intelligence:

  • Increased job performance: Over 80% of the competencies that differentiate the top performing are related to EI.
  • Increased sales: At fortune-500 companies, sales people with high EI outperform those with low emotional intelligence by 50%.
  • Increased productivity: Recent studies of organizations saw an increase in focus and productivity by 20%. Likewise, a 93% increase in productivity was noted after employees at a Motorola manufacturing facility received stress-management and EI training. 
  • Improved retention: Retention of sales staff increased by 67% after participating in EI training, assessments, and coaching– saving the company 30 million dollars.
  • More positive workplace: Internal polling saw a dramatic 80% increase in the workplace environment. Increased positive environment + cooperation + good feelings = GOOD RESULTS!

*Studies provided by Brandeis University Graduate Professional Studies

Training, Assessments, and Coaching
Companies can implement EI on-sight training and receive EI for personal leadership assessments all in the same day. Quarterly coaching is available to ensure sustainable success.

Invest and Save
The United States Airforce invested $10,000 for EI training and saved 2.76 million in recruiting in just one year.

Schedule your Discovery Call today:
We customize training/presentations around your culture, specific challenges, and desired outcomes.
• 90-minute keynote presentations
• Half and full-day training options

Vision: How to Break Out of Burnout

I recently was privileged to provide an opening day keynote for the 2017 Convenience Retailing University. What a dynamic group of leaders of business professionals committed to excellence and success! I delivered my keynote presentation, Full Potential: How to Perform Best Under Pressure. 

According to a Harvard Medical School study, an astounding 96% of leaders in business today said they experience feelings of burnout.

How clear is your personal and professional vision?

  • Do you have absolute clarity about what you want to accomplish in the next 12-24 months?
  • Is it a black and white vision (vague) or is your vision blu-ray (absolute clarity)?

If you are experiencing career fatigue or burnout, re-ignite your vision. Take time to get clear, specific, and vivid focus. 

I’ve found when I assist my coaching clients and organizations, vision is the critical key that unlocks renewed success and results: 

  • Clarity
  • Focus
  • Energy
  • Discipline
  • Details
  • Resiliency
  • Optimism

My favorite exercise:
Part 1: Take an 8.5″ x 11″ piece of paper and divide it in half. On the top half write “My Personal Vision” and document seven things you will passionately accomplish in the next 12-24 months:
1. Family
2. Career
3. Health/Fitness
4. Personal Development
5. Financial
6. Fun Factor
7. Spiritual Peace

Part 2: On the bottom half, write “My Big Five Professional Must-Haves” for the next 12-24 months. Also note how you plan to accomplish your “big five.”

I go to Barnes and Noble Cafe once a month to review and often revise my personal and professional vision. It’s amazing the focus and energy you gain when your vision is clear.

I encourage you to take time this week to refocus on your blu-ray vision.

Have a vision-filled month ahead!
– Steve

3 Ways to Guard and Build Your Self-Talk

Whether you realize it or not, you have an inner dialogue… a running conversation with yourself all the time. I call it your big voice or small voice. 

Have you ever taken the time to listen? Do you criticize yourself? Do you encourage yourself?

Remember, people are never able to outperform their self-image, or their self-talk. 

I’ve learned, in my Executive Leadership and Performance Coaching, to help clients in their intended self-talk. If your inner dialogue is negative, it will drain your energy and sabotage your performance. If its positive, it will help build a positive self-image and in turn, create positive daily actions.

I read recently that by the time you’re seventeen years old, you’ve heard, “No you can’t!” an average of 150,000 times. On the contrary, you’ve heard “Yes, you can!” about 5,000 times. WOW! That’s 30 no’s for every yes.

Let me say it again, you can never outperform your self-image and your self-talk. 

I’ve learned to be my own encourager and even build personal leadership affirmations to feed my mind and positive inner dialogue.

  • I am the most positive person I know
  • I am resilient and optimistic
  • I attract great people and success
  • I am self-disciplined
  • I am a solution-finder
  • I lead others to greatness every day
  • I model the way for my family
  • I am healthier today than yesterday
  • I live by faith and refuse to embrace fear
  • I push through quitting points

Here are my 3 ways to guard and build your self-talk:
1. Start by documenting your leadership affirmations.
Create your own “I am list.” Remember, your subconscious mind drives your conscious decisions. You’ll be amazed by your own self-determination and positive energy. 

2. Take choice out of it
I heard Oprah Winfrey once say, “When it comes to exercise, you have to take choice out of it.” In other words, it’s pre-determined on your schedule and a highly held value.

When it comes to self-talk, take choice out of it. Pre-determine you ARE positive. No more negative self-talk! And guess what? Your vocabulary will change almost instantly and you will see more positive results.

3. Practice the one-word strategy
Often when I coach a team or a leader, I ask them to pick just one word that best describes them. A person’s attention and intention are focused immediately on that single word, that single gift.

What word would you pick? 
I hope it’s positive! If it is, it will help you attract great people, great results, and great success.

Here’s to your positive self-talk!
Steve