The workplace has changed dramatically over the past five-10 years. Change is rapidly increasing in size and complexity, we are working on a more diverse and inclusive culture, focusing on employee wellbeing and encouraging everyone to have a voice. To speak up; be confident and be vulnerable, be flexible and be committed, bring the real you to work and feel safe and happy. These changes are fantastic and exactly what we want for workplaces but with them brings new challenges. Change questions the embedded wirings of our mind and how we currently do things. Every human being is wired uniquely with different values and beliefs and with increased interactions, we have increased situations where people aren’t aligned, opinions aren’t agreed upon, people that don’t see eye-to-eye. This is where emotional intelligence becomes the advantage. 

Emotional intelligence isn’t just five key concepts, it is a process that is embedded in everything we do, every minute of every day. 

Own it

Owning the reality of the situation and being aware of what we can and can't control. Whether we like it or not, this is happening, and we must own it!

Face it

Face all the emotions that are occurring due to the situation. Recognise the emotion, understand where it is coming from, face it and process the emotion.

Feel it

Feel the impact the people around us are experiencing. We are out of our own heads; it's not about us. Now it's about the people around us and how they are feeling.

Ask it

Ask the logical questions to understand what, when and how. Answer all questions that other people ask us with context and meaning.

Drive it

Drive whatever it takes to move the situation and solution through to the next step. This is the action step. The doing step. Drive It is when we make it happen.

Everyone goes through this process at different speeds and when it comes to some of the most challenging and avoided leadership challenges, the key is being able to recognise what step of the process people are currently at and how to support them to move through the process.

There is no doubt that change is one of the most talked about topics in the workplace — and even in life. Statistics from the Walk Me blog highlight that a whopping 96 per cent of organisations are undergoing some form of transformation or change right now but only 34 per cent of change initiatives succeed.

Often it isn’t the change itself that is the problem, it’s the people’s acceptance and buy-in to the change is where the change fails. There is an expectation that we all should love change, but this is not the case, nor should it be. We all have a different relationship with change and understanding where we sit on the change scale from ‘loving consistency through to loving change’ is the first step. We need people in our teams at every point of that change scale so rather than forcing the change, we understand the ‘Change Intelligence’ of the team. 

Own and face the loss

Knowing that with every change, regardless of how good it is, our mind loses something. Sometimes it’s simply the habit and the neural pathway we have embedded, other times it could be relationships, expertise or clarity.

Feel and ask your way through the liminal

This is the connection piece. The connection between the ‘old world’ and the ‘new world’ but also the connection with the people. We provide support and direction, have the difficult conversations and maintain ongoing transparency.

Drive the change like a champion

Implement the change ensuring people before process and involve and engage the team in bringing the change to life!

Of course, difficult conversations will occur during any change but also are a fundamental part of people interacting. Avoiding this is a natural human reaction as we don’t tend to like confrontation and fear tends to kick in as we are unaware of response and outcome. Having a productive and empathetic difficult conversations starts with us. We tend to over-prepare as a way of protection due to fear and enter the conversation in an emotional hijack with defensive armour in the form of examples, reports and statistics ready for battle. This triggers an emotional hijack in the other person resulting in both emotional brains in a defensive battle. Using the emotional intelligence advantage, we ensure that we are prepared appropriately and that the conversation remains just that, a human conversation. We use empathy to follow the emotion knowing the best things to say and things to avoid getting the logical brain driving and the best outcome for everyone involved.   

The emotional intelligence advantage challenges us to understand the role the mind plays in everything we do. It’s not about changing who we are, it’s about working with the mind and its wirings rather than against it. It’s about building the capabilities to build high performing teams with trust, the ability to manage both up and down and balance the role of leadership. It’s time to own it, take control and become unstoppable.