This blog was written by Andreas Marta, Kandidata Asia’s partner in Jakarta, Indonesia. Andreas describes how Emotional Intelligence can be the key to being an authentic leader.
I was recently conducting a Leadership Development workshop with a focus on “Authentic Leadership”. At the beginning of the workshop, participants were asked about purpose: What is their purpose in life? Few people can answer it easily and some have difficulty determining what their true purpose is. Like many others, most leaders merely perform by doing their task or even copying somebody else’s leadership style.
Purpose is a crucial point in Authentic Leadership; it is about understanding our ‘True North’ and calibrating our Leadership Compass to lead with Authenticity. It’s a capacity of understanding self in-depth, exploring it and knowing how it can be played out in action.
Purpose is based on Emotional Self Awareness, which is a fundamental skill in EQ. We have seen leaders with Emotional Self Awareness who can perform Empathy with ease, have Assertiveness needed to articulate their goals and vision, or simply express what they need or want. They have more Optimism towards their goals. All these are part of the Emotional Intelligence framework.
In one of his talks, Adam Leipzig describes a simple recipe on how to develop Emotional Self Awareness and finding our life’s purpose. He suggests doing this by asking ourselves these five simple questions:
- Who am I?
- What do I do best?
- Whom do I do it for?
- What do they want or need out of what you did?
- How would they change/transform as a result of getting what they want/need?
Reflecting and finding the answers to those questions will show us the right pathway in finding our purpose and enable us to calibrate our Leadership ‘True North’.
Nowadays, with business getting more competitive and fast-paced, with the need to lead multi-generation teams, leaders are required to be Authentic and use their EQ skills in order to successfully lead the team and business.
As a result of being Authentic, leaders are more connected to their values and purposes. By aligning their personal values and purpose with the company’s, leaders can build with ease mutually satisfaction relationships with their team, colleagues, clients or stake holders and enabling their potential to reach their goals and infuse meaning in every action they take.
If you like to assess your current level of Emotional Intelligence or work with one of our coaches to identify your purpose, develop authentic leadership and find your ‘True North’, contact us at admin@kandidataasia.com.