Category Archives: Emotional Intelligence/High EQ

What Do You Say and Do?

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“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” President John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1962 in Houston, Texas USA

When I was a small boy (believe me, when I tell you that I was a very small boy) I saw President John F. Kennedy’s “Moon Speech” on TV. It was an awe-inspiring moment for me, for most Americans. Few people remember how unpopular and unsupported “space travel” was at that time. Most people didn’t believe it was even possible. It was something you could only imagine, or experience in science-fiction books and movies. Most politicians thought it was too ambitious, and unrealistic. JFK had an ace up his sleeve: A tenacious vision backed with passionate intelligence and conviction. The “Moon Speech” shifted American perception of space travel, and in turn, our sense of other endless possibilities.

As a working-class boy, I wasn’t permitted to be a free-thinker. I was imprisoned by the limitations dictated by class and ethno-centric discrimination: Hell on earth! I was constantly bombarded by messages from those who brandished absolute power, telling me/showing us, that nothing I dreamt would ever come true for me, or for any one of us.

JFK moved me to see, for the first time in my embryonic life, that anything is possible if you believe in the vision, if you are genuinely committed to making the vision come alive. You must commit without hesitation or doubt or excuse to retreat, to fallback. No matter what others say and do to destroy your dreams, JFK showed how vital it is to move forward and execute your vision with confidence. Defiance in the face of overwhelming odds.

We sometimes tend to romanticize great leaders like JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mahatma Gandhi. We focus on their vision and charisma, forgetting that these enlightened leaders are best remembered for getting things done. Getting things done is the real legacy of these enlightened leaders. We’ve all experienced managers, executives, and politicians with vision and charisma (who may even look the part) but do absolutely nothing. Vision and charisma are not enough, enlightened leaders possess a High EQ (emotional quotient) for getting things done with emotional intelligence.

Being an enlightened leader is not about espousing new rhetoric or reciting recycled jargon. Enlightened Leaders execute their strategic vision. Words and actions are consistently in alignment.

Contrary to the same old tune we’ve all heard before: Silence is not golden.

In the multicultural management consulting and learning services firm that I founded and led, De Candia International Corporation (1987-2007) we uncovered the “conspiracy of silence” in Corporate America whereby no one says anything to challenge or confront systemic deception and collusion, to keep the status quo intact. A conspiracy of silence engenders collusion, and collusion is the arch-enemy of change.

The message: Lead sans silence. Speaking-up makes a difference. Execute your vision with conviction. Lead with determination while remaining open to pluralistic perspectives.  

Understand the value of speaking-up, taking a stand, with conviction. While no one else may believe in your dreams, it doesn’t matter what other people think, even when you feel the whole world is against you. If you feel that you can’t speak-up: ask yourself, “What messages am I receiving from within my organizational culture, telling me it’s not safe to speak-up.” The answer always lies within how the organizational culture is set-up. Change the set-up of the culture and you’ll see the behavioral change. Try this in small ways: participating in a meeting, working with a team on a project. You know that you believe in your vision, and you are willing to take the calculated risks to see that it happens, by whatever means necessary (without becoming the new Prince Machiavelli).

What matters most is what happens in the long run. JFK didn’t live to see his moon dream realized. Others, who were inspired by his vision, fulfilled his dream in 1969. No one accomplishes anything alone. Understand this: “Resilient conviction” is part of every enlightened leader’s behavioral profile.

Believe me when I tell you, I was rejected by everyone under the moon and sun, ridiculed as a politically incorrect ranting and raving lunatic (even by many of the people closest to me – my colleagues in other firms and practices). I was excluded, an out-cast by some organizations, who was said that I was conceptually and literally wrong about everything I conceived to be true. Yet my firm thrived for more than 20 years with impressive Fortune, Global, and Inc. 500 clients. Other management consulting firms interpreted my professional life as a contradiction (or just dismissed me for being a crazed, conflicted, Spanish-French Pisces).

Despite what fascist, authoritarian textbooks may have taught you, listen to your inner voice, see with your mind’s eye. Think about it: Are you flying your true colors? Are you saying what you believe? Or, are you just repeating what you been told is the proper company line. Great leaders are revolutionary not evolutionary, executing their visions with precision. Enlightened Leaders use their voice as a catalyst for action and change.

Come what may, when is the wrong decision, the right decision? When no one around you believes in doing the right thing, but you. Learn how to speak-up effectively. Challenge the powers that be. Storm the Bastille!

According to recent research from VitalSmarts: Silence Fails. Leaders can substantially improve their organizations ability to execute on high stakes projects and initiatives. Yes, you can break the code of silence on five astoundingly common yet mostly unspoken, undisclosed, and ignored problems that contribute significantly to almost all project and initiative failures.

Based on the VitalSmarts research, when an enlightened leader skillfully creates even a moderately safe environment, the likelihood of a project or initiative failing is reduced by 50%. When enlightened leaders effectively step-up, hitting schedule is 40% more likely, quality improves 60%, and the potential for project or initiative ending with strong morale and intact stakeholder relationships is 70% greater.

Based on the VitalSmarts study, the five crucial conversations most prevalent and most costly to lasting success are:

  1. Fact-free Planning: A project or initiative is set-up to fail when deadlines or resource limits are set with no consideration for reality.
  2. AWOL Senior Executives: Senior Executives (sponsors) provide no leadership, political clout, time, or energy to see a project through.
  3. Skirting: People work around the priority setting process. (You know, there’s one in every crowd, on every team, and more than one in every organization and family.)
  4. Project Chicken: Team leaders and members don’t admit when there are problems with the project, but instead wait for someone else to speak-up.
  5. Team failures: Team members are unwilling or unable to support the project.

Each brings with it a myriad of misses, cost over-runs which plague projects, initiatives, teams, organizations (and yes, dysfunctional co-dependent family relationships). The VitalSmarts key findings show that these problems are most likely caused by a high degree of interdependence among levels and functions. The organizational culture tends to be closed rather than open. Challenging norms, especially within a hierarchy, is the kiss of death. When these problems are not openly and skillfully discussed, projects and relationships fail miserably, significantly impacting what leaders, teams, and organizations can achieve.

Enlightened Leaders influence lasting success and achievements, the way we see ourselves and each other, causing us to re-think what we thought we knew, shifting our perceptions of things, the way we feel and act. Enlightened leaders shoot for the moon, and beyond.

So, what do you say and do? Let’s continue the conversation.

Marc Ortiz de Candia, Executive Partner, Vitalia Consulting

What Do You See? What Do You Hear?

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“You see what you want to see. You hear what you want to hear.” -Harry Nilsson

Have you ever noticed how some things we learned long ago and far away, things that were once upon a time valued in business/life, and our pluralistic culture, have been pushed to the wayside, and mostly forgotten like yesterday’s news?

It can evoke questions: What was the point of learning these things in the first place? What was the purpose of the lessons taught to us, the life lessons learned? To what end? Were these just mad theories espoused by respectable gurus of the day? A backwards tape with forward thinking, not meaningful in the long run? Some things change for the better, some things remain the same. Were you just living in an eighties daze? Still have classic business suits with classic concepts in your pockets? Are you no longer the youngest one in the room? You know, the one with all the answers. Ah well, and so it goes.

I am most concerned here about the under-valued skills of listening and observing. Is it possible that we’ve lost the importance of listening and observing in business/life? When was the last time you sincerely listened to understand, quietly observed to perceive – without thinking about what you wanted to say next?

When I was a small boy (maybe 9 or maybe 6) I was sitting with my Father on the east riverbank across from our metropolitan city, our cosmopolitan city.

Being among the working-class poor, we could only own parts of the city in our torn and tattered daydreams. In our shared reality, we didn’t own much of anything, except in imagination. In our mind’s eye, we could be anything, anywhere.

It was twilight. Even though we could feel the world changing rapidly all around us, there was no sense of urgency in my Father’s voice, only gentleness. My Father asked me, “What do you see, what do you hear as you look at the city from this distance?” I didn’t understand what he meant in the moment, or what he was really asking me, but I answered anyway (because that’s what children do). I knew so little about the ways of the world. Even as mature human beings, we tend to tout and lean on only the things we do know. We’re taught to make sure the world knows what we know. And, may the Gods help us if we don’t know the answer. After all, you’re suppose to be the expert, aren’t you?

So even then, in the moment, I thought, “What difference will my answers make to these questions, to our lot in life – surrounded on three sides by factories, and a flood plain on the fourth side? After all, wasn’t everything glorious built from greed and gold? With the victors come the spoils. The steeples are dwarfed by financial towers. Architectural brilliance replaced by concrete boxes in neat little rows. Woe to the man who is different. He shall be mocked, he shall be scourged.”

Still, I remember seeing towering blue glass and silvery steel structures which outlined the skyline darkening our city like a scene from a Batman Movie, complete with a massive power plant down river from us. There were the thickest and tallest smokestacks I had ever seen, filling me with trepidation (despite the fact that I grew-up in the waning days of the industrial age, surrounded by hulking, dilapidated factories that would spew filth, scum particles raining down on us, night and day). I remember walking with my younger sister to our Catholic School, pausing on the street corner, and laughing out-loud because we could feel the pollution tickling our faces like a snow scene from the movie “White Christmas.”

In a few brief years, these same factories would be silenced by the death of industrial manufacturing. I could see aged, arched train bridges with coal black engines steaming in the shadows. Surveying our city more closely I saw a few dimly-lit windows, must have been the men my Father had warned me about: the men with white shirts and ties, smiling with bullet teeth, killing with their smiles, burning the midnight oil (these same men who I’d be competing with in a few years) and fragmented lights glimmering off the water from after business hour offices. There were the bright neon nightclubs along the old gaslight district. Streaming taillights on the outer expressway circled and strangled our city like a noose. Hearing the white noise of traffic and exhaust pipes, I could see the silhouettes of men moving, long trucks resting on the riverfront cobblestones. Remembering routine front page photographs of bodies washed onto the waterfront, could these be the same mafioso guys from our neighborhood?”

My Father then told me about what he had seen and heard looking at his village from across his childhood river. “We dreamers are not alone in this world. I saw dreamers, like you and me, dreamers who do, dreamers who built great church steeples rising to the heavens, grand works of timeless architecture, beautiful bridges that would stand the test of Fascist and Nazi attacks, the sounds of simple conversations and endless laughter streaming from the bistros, vitriolic words exchanged amidst uncontrollable political, social, and cultural differences. The marching of what appeared to be toy soldiers from so far away, the heavy movement of tanks on stone roads, a rumbling blur in a smokey haze, flags unfurled identifying friend or foe. The romantic, shimmering splendor of an empire’s last days.”

He went on to tell me, “Someday, everything you now know, you see and hear, will live only in your memories.” It’s becoming true, you know. Sitting on the same riverbank today, I’d see and hear things differently.

When you look at the world around you, what do you see? What do you hear? Listening and Observation require a quiet inner calm. Do you have what it takes? Remember this: What you’ve been told are the “soft skills” are actually the hard skills that you must master to be a truly successful leader in a global society.

We’ve explored what role “feelings” plays in Thought Leadership writings focused more on Emotional Intelligence, and the importance of developing High EQ: “What Do You Feel?”

Give me a team of learners, not know-it-alls, any day. The first step to enlightened leadership is becoming genuinely open-minded and self-aware, to admit our ignorance. Then, fling open the doors of perception to the importance of listening and observing.

The beginning is always today. Let’s continue the conversation.

Marc Ortiz de Candia, Executive Partner, Vitalia Consulting

Tangerine Tango: Let’s Dance!

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Learn the steps of the dance, the art of conversation and build powerful, lasting business relationships that work for you.

Every lasting relationship begins with a conversation, even business relationships, even partnering for mutual benefit. Yet, sometimes we forget the easy way to connect with the new people we meet, on something we have in common, other than business, a simple generous gift of conversation.

The nice thing is that conversation can be about anything, almost anywhere. Natural humor stimulated by life and living in this world, an affinity we share, it may be something complimentary or complementary.

Build powerful, lasting business relationships, especially Advocate Relationships, without breathlessly pontificating about what you do and how you do it, without talking about business, without selling anything at all. No matter what business you are in, the relationship business is key to your business growth.

To illustrate: Did you know that the newest Pantone Color released in 2012 is called “Tangerine Tango.” For our purposes, Tangerine Tango is simply “starting that initial conversation.” The fun part is that you can initiate conversations anywhere, anytime (not exclusively at business events). The potential for human interaction is all around us. You know you’ve got to face the music sometime, somewhere.

Best described as “warm, uplifting, and energizing” Tangerine Tango is the perfect color for increasing business relationships.

Think, act, be Tangerine Tango! Learn the basic steps, the art of engaging in simple conversation is just like a dance. Learn the dance. Practice each step with your newest partner. You will remember where to step with every beat of the music. One caveat, unfortunately if you are not genuinely committed to Tangerine Tango (reflecting the behavioral ways you cultivate relationships) it will be transparent to everyone around you.

You can use Tangerine Tango in networking, in expanding your business relationships, your sphere of influence, again without selling anything. (We can call it, “The No Pitch.”) Learn the dance. Establish rapport, trust, and value creation with people.

Give the gift of value in your conversations to create “Advocate Relationships.” Advocates are people who will make a case to recommend you to others, without you ever asking. Advocate relationships are the most important relationships. These are people who will give you unsolicted referrals because they like and trust you.

Try Tangerine Tango just once. Try it, and decide later. Is it right for you? It’s a simple choice. Work it. You’ll feel Tangerine Tango working for you without you even having to be here, there, and everywhere. Build powerful, lasting relationships that work for you, and you’ll want to do the dance over and over again. There are two other basic steps essential to expanding your business, branding and building your image. We will explore these dance movements another time.

Can you really think outside-the-box? Here it is: Tangerine Tango!

Every lasting relationship begins with a conversation. After all, when’s the last time you really danced in your business life? Remember what they say, “It takes two to Tangerine Tango.” Let’s Dance!

The beginning is always today. Let’s continue the conversation.

Marc Ortiz de Candia, Executive Partner, Vitalia Consulting

Leadership is About Love

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"And in the end, the love you get is equal to the love you give." Lennon-McCartney

Our client focus groups are telling us that the purpose of leadership vital to “building organizational capability” is not just about achieving business aspirations. In fact, talking with diverse groups of professionals, managers, and executives, people are saying in essence, “leadership is about love.”

There is a strong correlation between how leadership is perceived and given definition, and how people experience the state and ways of being in love. Traditional leadership tends to be authoritarian (some might say fascist) based on title and position within the hierarchy. Have ever you met anyone who was coerced into a loving relationship?

When you think about it, leadership and love are mutually inclusive. Creating mutual trust, value, respect, and acceptance, a shared vision and mission with another human being, a sincere commitment that doesn’t fade away when the sky isn’t blue. There is no absence of clarity, no ambivalence.

Think deeper, no time for hesitation, immerse yourself in the love pool. Leaders who have high emotional intelligence (EQ) are accessible, followers are believing with eyes wide open. Leadership is About Love. Here is a list our findings, and related notations:

  • Enlightened (seeing what others can’t see)
  • Emotional Intelligence (High EQ)
  • Caring (giving of themselves)
  • Willingness to partner (and collaborate)
  • Willingness to change behavior
  • Nurturing Relationship(s)
  • Genuinely committed to relationship(s)
  • Resilient
  • Pluralistic (and inclusive)
  • Thought-provoking
  • Inspire Action
  • Coach for optimum performance
  • Mutually Adaptive
  • Open Minded: Receptive to Multiple Pluralistic Perspectives
  • Open Hearted (Actually Give a Damn)
  • Being Generous (without expectations)
  • Admirable
  • Trustworthy
  • Ethically Driven
  • Thoughtful Listener and Observer
  • Creatively and Strategically Balanced
  • Do as they say (follow-through)
  • Authentic
  • Lead by Example
  • High Self-Awareness
  • Appreciative
  • Empathic

Why is this important? Consider this, “Enlightened Leaders” (who possess High EQ) are directly linked to individual, team, organizational, and business success.

Yet, research has shown that emotional intelligence is not valued in mainstream business, and EQ dramatically declines within more senior management and executive groups. Despite EQ being introduced years ago, the problem remains: how to increase Emotional Intelligence (we can call it “the love factor”) within the highest organizational levels.

The vast rejection of Emotional Intelligence by most of Corporate America is even more astounding when considering that organizations are comprised of human beings (with emotions!). It’s as if the soft skills have been purposely devalued to divert attention away from this fact: developing High EQ is hard for most “leaders” because of cultural, societal, and business-orientation.

Remember, Enlightened Leadership with High EQ can create new waves of understanding, and  innovative organizational solutions.

The beginning is always today. Let’s continue the conversation.

  • What do you think the correlation is between love and leadership? Why do you think it matters?
  • What is your definition of love?
  • What is your definition of leadership?
  • Are you an enlightened leader?
  • What do you think the correlation is between emotional intelligence and success? Why do you think it matters?

Marc Ortiz de Candia, Executive Partner, Vitalia Consulting