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O P I N I O N
Start small, end big
The industry is in desperate need of future leaders who know how to talk with, and understand, their people.
I recently conducted a survey of 30 owners in the AEC industry to learn about their biggest leadership challenges. The number one issue is finding leaders who have the inclination or potential to be more in tune with their colleagues. “I’ve got people who are good engineers, but they don’t have the emotional intelligence to inspire and influence people to follow them,” says one executive.
Leo MacLeod
The industry is in desperate need of future leaders not to engineer a solution to a technical problem, but to be aware of what’s going on with their own emotions, to manage their emotions, to read people, and to have the sense of how to talk to someone. The industry could use leaders who know when to listen and be empathetic like a therapist, and when to be as direct and as clear as a drill sergeant. And to know how to do it well so they don’t lose people but gain their admiration and trust. But can people really change? I’ve coached executives who were technically brilliant but emotionally clueless. I’ve had tremendous success at transformation. The key is to start ridiculously small.
The foundation of emotional intelligence is empathy, or the ability to put yourself in the place of someone else to better understand their thoughts and feelings. If we expand our view to include how others may perceive a situation, we can improve the outcome of an interaction. We move from a self-centered approach to an other- centered approach. When we consider how others feel and think about a situation and adapt our approach to include them, they feel acknowledged and respected, have a sense of ownership, work harder and longer, and produce better work. There’s no need to micro-manage for results, when people are engaged and working to their full
See LEO MACLEOD, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER October 7, 2019, ISSUE 1315
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