Example Reflection – Storytelling

Challenges & Selection:

Human knowledge is based on stories and the human brain consists of cognitive machinery  necessary to understand, remember and tell stories. Humans are storytelling organisms that both  individually and socially, lead storied lives. Stories mirror human thought as humans think in  narrative structures and most often remember facts in story form. Facts can be understood as  smaller versions of a larger story, thus storytelling can supplement analytical thinking. Storytelling  is a great art to make people understand the reality of life.  I often work with bright leaders to  understand their way of working across industry segments. I have seen lot of similarities among  the leaders on the way of working style (i.e. Planning, Organizing, Staffing, Co-ordinating,  Controlling etc.) but recently I found that Emotional Intelligence (EI) is a non-negotiable  competence in today’s leaders. Some research shows that IQ can help you to be successful to  the extent of 20% whereas rest 80% success depends on EQ. Happiness, fear, anger,  frustration, shame, love, enjoyment, sadness, surprise, anxiety, failure, achievement etc. are  various emotions in human life and EI has two dimensions – (1) Physiological Side & (2)  Psychological Side. EI has been recognized by the World Economic Forum as one of the 10 key  skills for leaders in 2020. This wasn’t appearing as top 10 key skills for managers in 2015.I have  done a survey across various organizations and found that some executive has fail to work well  in a team environment, not handle change efficiently in the organization and gradually develops  poor interpersonal communication and relation due to low EI. Basically, Emotional Intelligence  (EI), also known as Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ), is a term that describes the ability,  capacity or skill to identify access and manage the emotions of one’s self of others, and of  groups. There are four components of EI – (I) Self Awareness (II) Self-Management, (III) Social  Awareness & (IV) Relationship Management. I am going to narrate a story about a newly hired  Sales Manager for a top ranking sales company and how proper emotional intelligence mapping  helped him grow in his new assignment. Here the challenges were to extract performance from a  large team.

Application:

Mr. Sarkar was hired by a top ranking MNC company to be as Sales Manager. He was bright,  hardworking and intelligent, physiologically fit, had an MBA degree from a reputed college with  92% marks and excelled at the training program too.

Yet, just after 7 months on the job, he was failing and company management was ready to fire  him. What happened..? Why did he fail despite having a brilliant academic career and decent  track record…?

The answer was his emotional Intelligence did not fit for the job.

He was non-assertive, indecisive, too tolerant, very poor communicator, non-reactive, poor  manager of his boss and subordinate and couldn’t face problems as they appeared. As a result  his subordinate did a poor job in Sales, not able to manage customers and fail to get the required  support from other internal stakeholders.

Then HR team has taken the challenge to make Mr. Sarkar and his team as one of the  performing team within 2 quarters time frame as the deficiencies was found in the area of EI.

Insight & Approach:

Phase – 1:

One-on-One interview were conducted with Mr. Sarkar, Mr. Sarkar’s immediate reporting &  departmental HR Head of that company to know the current scenario of Mr. Sarkar and his  team’s current Goals & Objectives, Dependencies on other teams, major challenges in the  current scenario.

Then HR Head independently did a brainstorming session along with the team members of Mr.  Sarkar on below parameters:

1. What does Mr. Sarkar start doing immediately?  2. What does Mr.  Sarkar stop doing immediately?   3. What does Mr. Sarkar continue doing?  4. What are the top 4 priorities of this team to be successful immediately?

Then HR was conducting a personal EQ Meter Assessment test for Mr. Sarkar, an online  assessment tool to access 15 emotional intelligence competencies; followed by individual  feedback session based on test score and various feedback received.  Based on the feedback  Mr. Sarkar has jotted down the plans to start, stop and continue activities that is in line with the EI  strength of Mr. Sarkar. Through these activities now Mr. Sarkar is aware about his positive traits  and as well as the points which are detrimental for his success. Major negative feedback about  Mr. Sarkar was lack of awareness and lack of control over team & information flow from various  stakeholders.

Phase -2:

One month after the above mentioned workshop, Mr. Sarkar and his team underwent a coaching  session where Mr. Sarkar has to present the progress of his team’s development plan based on  the feedback received in the earlier workshop. Every team member has to share their PEQM  (Personal EQ Meter) and received feedback accordingly in this workshop. One Mentor has  assigned from a different team to judge the progress of Mr. Sarkar and his team based on PEQM  result and outcome. Mr. Sarkar and his team became the best performing team within 6 months  after adopting the practices that were prescribed in the workshops.

Finally HR team has reported to the management that through the various workshops on EI and  their constant intervention, HR team were able to help the managers become more accepting of  cultural diversities through regular and effective communication, higher tolerance and forming  more open and trusting work relationships and improves the efficiency of managers and thereby  productivity of the whole team. Emotional intelligence is non-negotiable competence at the senior  levels of the organization because of the impact that the leaders have on their teams and the  culture of the organization.

