Mike Gosling Ph.D. Executive Leadership Coaching

Executive Leadership Coaching

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What is Emotional Intelligence?

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what is emotional intelligence

Understanding Its Power for Leadership Success

Traditional leadership styles often focus on authority, decision-making, and task management, while Emotional Intelligence (EI) offers a more holistic approach to leadership. As an executive leadership coach, I believe that integrating EI into leadership practices enhances not only decision-making but also interpersonal relationships within teams.

Traditional leadership styles tend to emphasize control and command, which can work in certain environments. However, these approaches often overlook the emotional and psychological factors that drive team engagement and motivation.

On the other hand, EI-driven leadership focuses on self-awareness, empathy, and social skills. Leaders with high EI recognize their own emotions and those of others, allowing them to make more informed, compassionate decisions that foster trust and collaboration.

Incorporating EI into leadership brings a more balanced and inclusive approach. Leaders who leverage EI build stronger teams, increase employee satisfaction, and improve long-term success through emotional awareness and adaptive decision-making.

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Emotional intelligence can matter more than IQ

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Dr Dorrian AikenAccording to Dr Dorrian Aiken, part-time lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, EQ is considered to be more important than IQ in leadership, management , parenting and teaching “because emotions are contagious”.

She says one person can influence the well-being of others by behaving in a way that causes them to become demotivated.

How we influence one another through our emotional intelligence and through our positivity is really important

— Dr Dorrian Aiken, part-time lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch Business School

Dr Aiken says some evidence suggest that human beings are born with empathy, and we are compassionate beings, but we are also influenced by our environment.

Listen to the full conversation here…

How to screen leadership candidates for emotional intelligence

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How important is it to interview executive leadership candidates for emotional intelligence when recruiting?

Any executive search firm provides detailed information on each candidate’s career history, their reasons for leaving prior employers, and their most applicable career accomplishments, as well as the recruiter’s insights into each candidate.

After reading through the extensive candidate profile that Laura Fries, managing director and executive vice president of Baker Tilly’s Executive Search practice, provides her clients, she’s often asked for interview questions to help them really understand the candidates and dig further into their match for four emotional intelligence competencies:

1. Self-awareness

2. Self-management

3. Social awareness

4. Relationship management

Read Laura’s article here  >>

How Do I Become A Facial Expression Expert?

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Paul EkmanOne of the purposes of my blog is to bring you information on current research that is going on in the field of emotions.

Paul Ekman Ph.D. is a pre-eminent psychologist and a co-discoverer of micro expressions with Friesen, Haggard and Isaacs. In 2009, Ekman was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME Magazine. He became interested in facial expression in 1965. After studying nonverbal behavior in Papua New Guinea in 1967 and 1968, his research provided the strongest evidence to date that Darwin, not Margaret Mead, was correct in claiming facial expressions are universal. 

Dr. Ekman then developed, with W. Friesen, the first and only comprehensive tool for objectively measuring facial movement – the Facial Action Coding System (FACS), published in 1978, and revised in 2003 with J. Hager as third author. FACS remains the gold standard for identifying any movement the face can make, free of interpretive inferences

Emotions RevealedWhen he retired from the University of California in 2004, after more than thirty years as a full professor, Ekman decided to translate his research findings into resources that could be of help to the general public. He formed the Paul Ekman Group, PEG LLC, and authored his book: Emotions Revealed: Understanding Faces and Feelings to Improve Emotional Life.

In his book Ekman asks: Can we choose whether to become emotionally engaged, and how we act when we are? He explains why these choices are difficult and  how to identify and respond to the emotions shown by others. Buy Ekman’s book here. Look for the Emotional Health tag.

Ekman has written a blog post to find out which courses and universities are best equipped to promote a career in becoming an expert in facial expressions and emotion. The answer to this question depends on what level of education you are seeking, and what topic interests you. To help you on your journey, he has put together a series of short answers. You can review them here.

Let me know what you think about Ekman’s work with micro-expressions in the “Speak Your Mind” section below.

The Genos EI Model

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genos emotional intelligenceWhat it Is

The Genos EI Model is an internationally recognized Emotional Intelligence, or EQ, model and assessment combined with award winning development programs that enhance leadership, sales, teamwork and customer service.

How it is Used

  1. To identify talent. Our Emotional Intelligence assessment is used to identify people with naturally great soft skills, people who will make great leaders, sales or customer service personnel. In this context it is used in recruitment (external or internal hires) and internal talent benchmarking.
  2. To develop talent. Our Emotional Intelligence assessment and development programs are used to develop soft skills crucial to success in leadership, sales, teamwork and customer service. These skills include self-awareness; understanding others, personal resiliency and influencing others.

What Difference it Makes

Backed by follow-on coaching and learning programs that increase the frequency with which individuals demonstrate emotionally intelligent workplace behavior, the Genos Emotional Intelligence solution delivers tangible returns in variables such as employee engagement, leadership effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and sales revenue.