Emotional Capitalists – The New Leaders
Written by: on February 23, 2011
The number one characteristic today’s employees value in a manager is trustworthiness, a recent leadership has found. A survey reported this month through hrdaily.com.au, and involving more than 3000 leaders, managers and employees, has found that employee expectations have changed dramatically over the last year presenting managers with new challenges in meeting them.
Being trustworthy and open in approach, followed by giving workers both space and support they need to do their work are the most prized characteristics.
Martyn Newman’s book ‘Emotional Capitalists – The New Leaders’ is an excellent book to help leaders to adapt to these current needs.
He starts by stating that your primary role as a leader is to create emotional wealth for competitive advantage.
Everyone in the organisation must be living the dream for the organisation to be great, and greatness is only attained when leadership creates emotional capital by inspiring everyone to explore and express his or her own creative contribution to the vision of the business. They treat employees as intellectual and emotional investors in the company.
Emotional Capital is made up of 3 core elements:
1. External Emotional Capital – the value of the feelings and perceptions held by the customer and external stakeholder, appealing to their feelings and imagination. Customers want to buy from organisations and people that they like. This creates brand value and an emotional contract with each customer.
2. Internal Emotional Capital – the value of emotional commitments held in the hearts of the people within the business. It’s the feelings, beliefs and values held by everyone working in the business.. Treating your people as investors and consumers.
3. Intra-Personal Emotional Capital – is the level of positive, focused energy you invest at work and in your personal life. You inspire or demoralise others first by how effectively you manage your own emotional energy and second, by how well you mobilize and focus the collective energy of the people you lead.
Mature models of Emotional Intelligence identify 4 or 5 broad components broken down in to a variety of competencies. The Emotional Capital model of Emotional Intelligence is a well researched model that was developed with a specific focus on identifying those characteristics that characterise effective leaders.
It consists of 5 broad components including self-awareness, self-management, social-awareness, social skills and adaptability and analyses 10 competencies within these.
I found it a very practical book that contained all you need to know to become and enviable leader.