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Why leaders fail and how not to be one of them

Written by: Sue Lindgren Hawkes

Article Overview: Things move fast in business – and not always in a positive direction. A corporation fails every three minutes. A directorship changes every 32 seconds. In today’s business environment, trust may be your best competitive advantage. Companies where trust is high are more likely to succeed because they generally have a faster rate of production and lower operations cost.

Why leaders fail and how not to be one of them

Things move fast in business – and not always in a positive direction. A corporation fails every three minutes. A directorship changes every 32 seconds. In today’s business environment, trust may be your best competitive advantage. Companies where trust is high are more likely to succeed because they generally have a faster rate of production and lower operations cost.

How Can Trust (Or Lack Of It) Impact Your Job Security?
You may be the most honest person around. But if your employees don’t trust what you are telling them it can drive morale into the dumps, and lead to destructive behavior, skyrocketing healthcare costs and high turnover. The problem is pervasive! On average, almost half of employees do not believe their companies are being truthful in their communications with shareholders, customers and employees. The situation is often created by poor communication skills. Poor communication is often indicative of a need for improvement in emotional intelligence.

And that can seriously affect the bottom line:
• Destructive Behavior: Disgruntled employees can cause a lot of damage including stealing, lying and giving away company secrets.
• Increased Healthcare Costs: Stressed-out workers have nearly 50 percent higher healthcare costs than those who do not feel stress.
• High Turnover: The cost to replace a typical ‘high knowledge’ worker is two to three times their annual salary. The average cost for small- to mid-sized businesses to recruit, hire and train a new employee is $4,000. How many businesses can afford to keep doing that in today’s environment?

People generally quit their boss, not their company. At any given time, you can figure that about half of your employees are either actively or passively looking for a new job. All it takes is one especially bad day or unwarranted poor treatment from a boss for someone to quickly decide to move on.

Build Trust Using Emotional Intelligence
One of the strongest ways to build trust between you and your team is to improve your ability to communicate by strengthening your emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence involves your ability to inspire and influence, even while managing conflict. You learn to be self-aware of your emotions and how they impact others. I have seen many people’s careers derailed due to emotional intelligence issues, particularly the inability to change, adapt or elicit trust.

Leaders turn to coaching to improve their emotional intelligence, because they get personalized help with learning how to communicate in a clear, precise, healthy and positive way. Often after just a few coaching sessions, trust starts to build and the work environment becomes more constructive and productive. A welcome side benefit of a ‘high trust’ work environment is reduced stress levels for everyone in the company.

Emotional intelligence coaching provides leaders with a road map for attracting and keeping talented employees, and for motivating them to achieve a higher level of performance.

It is amazing to see what happens when leaders become better communicators. The most common result that I see is more sales. As employees start to trust their leaders, communication flows, morale improves, productivity increases and absenteeism decreases. The positive energy is contagious! It can spread like wildfire throughout the workplace.

The confidence you will gain by increasing your emotional intelligence can carry over into your personal life, helping you communicate better with your spouse, children, friends and neighbors. Learning to use emotional intelligence may not be just good for your career. It can also be the start of a wonderful approach to living your entire life.

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Article Tags: annual salary, bad day, business environment, company secrets, competitive advantage, destructive behavior, directorship, disgruntled employees, dumps, emotional intelligence, environment trust, healthcare costs, honest person, job security, knowledge worker, looking for a new job, poor communication skills, positive direction, sized businesses, three minutes



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