The car in front of me was not moving fast enough. I kept muttering under my breath, "Move, move..", but only I seemed to be hearing these words. Similarly, in life, we find that we move at different speeds to each other. Every day we see a little child scurrying to keep pace with the parent, the man/woman struggling to keep up with the dog that s/he is taking out for a walk, the elderly man tyring to keep pace with the teenager and so on....some are faster than others and we all know that the pace at which someone moves, either physically or mentally, differs from person to person.
As I listened to the person in the meeting, I knew that he had not got the point I was making. My first thought was, "Gosh, this person has just not got it!" I reacted by cutting him off in the meeting and carrying on the discussion from where I left off as the others had understood what I had to say. How many times have each of us done this in our lives? I am pretty sure all of us do this in our daily lives, not just at work.
When we are slower than others, we always want the others to wait for us. However, when we are faster, we seldom wait for others. I struggle with this and am trying my best to slow down for those who need me to and catch up fervently with those who do not wait for me....I must admit that this has been a struggle for me all through my life. This impacts us significantly in our daily lives.
As I listened to the person in the meeting, I knew that he had not got the point I was making. My first thought was, "Gosh, this person has just not got it!" I reacted by cutting him off in the meeting and carrying on the discussion from where I left off as the others had understood what I had to say. How many times have each of us done this in our lives? I am pretty sure all of us do this in our daily lives, not just at work.
When we are slower than others, we always want the others to wait for us. However, when we are faster, we seldom wait for others. I struggle with this and am trying my best to slow down for those who need me to and catch up fervently with those who do not wait for me....I must admit that this has been a struggle for me all through my life. This impacts us significantly in our daily lives.
At work and at our home, we seem to get upset with each other when speeds differ. This causes tremendous stress in our lives and seldom do we realise that if we are able to adjust speeds, we will do ourselves a lot of good. At work, I have seen some of the best leaders fail because of this. They run at a speed that others are left gasping. Further, they have little tolerance for those who are not able to run at their speed. They show this by rewarding only those who run at their speed or just ignoring few in conversations. While it causes stress to those who are slower, these leaders also suffer from stress at the time when organizations collect feedback from employees on how satisfied they are with their leaders. Typically, we would see the Employee Engagement Scores not being very good where, as individuals, we are not able to strike a balance between speed, agility and the emotional aspects of working.
This is so true at home too where our elders are not as fast as us. More so if they are really old. They want to be involved in conversations, hear only a part of a statement and ask questions. This really irritates us and we end up saying something harsh that can upset them. This not only upsets them but they feel cut off and lonely after that. There is, therefore, a real need to stop, think and act in such situations - easier said, than done.
How do we then get around this? I have, over the years, come to realise that we get better at managing speed differences as the Emotional Quotient (EQ) in each of us increases. While, I believe, that most of us know this, we do not consciously try to train ourselves to see how to get more of EQ. We tend to be happy with the IQ bit. Not that IQ is not important. A good balance really helps. As we grow as leaders, EQ is a must and without that, individuals and, the corporations in which they work, will struggle in the long run. Most companies have realised this and are trying to get this woven in to their leadership skills matrix, training, work practices and rewards and recognition structures.
John Kotter of Harvard Business School: “Because of the furious pace of change in business today, difficult to manage relationships sabotage more business than anything else - it is not a question of strategy that gets us into trouble; it is a question of emotions.” This is so true in our personal lives too.