Leadership essentials: Veering away from mental constructs

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Mental constructs, social norms, and conventions have made people slaves to a certain system, creating a barrier that may be preventing them from exploring new and potentially better things. Such constructs predispose them to certain assumptions or belief systems that influence their relationship to reality. Because they serve as “protection” to risks associated with life, these belief systems often restrict people from becoming productive citizens of the world.

Seattle, Washington-based business expert Emile Haddad writes that “when we are externally focused, we become unable to be present to what is alive in front of us in the moment; instead we are more likely to be responding to projections of our assumptions and mental constructs.” He compares such a set-up to impaired senses, where people only sort and filter for the familiar things that they want to hear or see. “In a way we are not quite connected to our center, nor are we connected to the environment around us; we are sitting at the edge of ourselves.”


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When projection is placed too far from reality, the thrill of life is diminished to its minimum. In business, for example, leaders and professionals in general are forced to comply with pre-determined tools, analytic criteria, forms, and processes. While these make thing organized, they also leave employees ungrounded and act in a less organic way. They may experience being directed to do the work, but not genuinely guided to display their best self.

“[Mental constructs] obscure us from the core experiences of reality, a reality in which each other’s humanity can be touched and attended to; an authentic experience in which our human frailties and vulnerabilities are accepted and attended to rather than avoided,” adds Mr. Haddad. Vulnerabilities serve as the epicenter of the human condition; acknowledging their existence can open doors to a myriad of possibilities.


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A perfect example: Innovation in the IT sector

Business coaches agree that if there is one industry that continues to generate fresh ideas and foster new thinking, it is information technology (IT). In fact, IT companies are among the most innovative in the world, and not surprising, a good number of them are also included in the list of best companies to work for.

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Innovation is a key factor why IT companies are among the most successful businesses today. Even in its infancy, the IT sector showed potential in delivering trailblazing products and ideas. And it continues to do so today, that even the United Nations acknowledged how significant the developments from the IT sector were. Its current impact on manufacturing and industry of all types, and on individual lifestyles is indisputable. Indeed, the significance and impact of information technology is believed to be no less substantial as the invention of electricity.

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The IT sector is the perfect example of how valuable innovation is in an organization. The relentless drive to innovate has made the field highly successful. And this constant dose of innovation can be attributed to leaders who take a proactive role in being curious and being inquisitive so that they can mine the imagination of those they work with. These are the leaders who are comfortable in pushing the edge, asking tough why questions, and exploring unfamiliar territories. These are what experts call transactional leaders.

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Business mentor Emile Haddad of Seattle, Washington, believes that a transactional leader drives a culture of innovation in the workplace. Follow this Facebook page to read how an ordinary leader can be a transactional leader.

Are you an emotionally intelligent leader?

What makes a good leader? A recent survey notes that most managers of high-performing businesses do not only have operational smarts, but also have emotional smarts.

Indeed, an emotionally intelligent leader has the ability to influence others and build a highly functioning culture. Technical skills aside, the primary job of leaders is to influence and impact the people around them in a positive way, driving them to meet business goals. What differentiate an effective leader from a mediocre one are the skills inherent in their emotional intelligence, and as business coaches note, emotional intelligence is explicitly connected to how well a leader’s inner observer is developed.

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Emotionally skillful leaders can increase their success in influencing people in positive and productive ways. Leaders who understand the value of the people they work with and work intelligently to create a positive impact will build a contagiously positive culture where success results are the norm, not the exception.

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Leadership is definitely beyond IQ. As executives of successful corporations can attest, emotional intelligence and putting people first are keys to a well-run, values-centered company.

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Leadership matters. An emotionally intelligent leadership matters more.



Emile Haddad, a Seattle, Washington-based business coach, believes that emotional intelligence is a key to good leadership. Subscribe to this Facebook page for more leadership advice.

The transactional leader and his healthy sense of curiosity

One of the most challenging aspects in training business leaders centers on the work of emotional intelligence, which calls for developing a leader’s inner observer. And this requires two fundamental attitudes: curiosity and inquiry. Although not necessarily foreign concepts to most leaders, the challenge lies in practicing them consciously and consistently.

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A pressure-filled, fast-paced environment may result to some leaders quickly leaping to assumptions and conclusions that they have not carefully examined. However, this pitfall can be circumvented if leaders adopt an attitude of curiosity about their own assumptions and conclusions, and choose to do the same with others. This requires leaders to take a mental and emotional stance that will keep their own position flexible and open to be influenced by others’ input. Such a stance is achieved through a practice of inquiry, wherein a leader is curious about his inner and outer circumstances, driving him to inquire about his and others’ ideas, assumptions, and conclusions.

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And over time, an attitude of inquiry tends to build a larger capacity for curiosity, which allows for a stronger inner observer and a deeper propensity for emotional intelligence. Leaders become more “tuned-in” to their environment, team, employees, and the culture of the organization—the skills that will become the foundation of a transactional leader.

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Read more about transactional leaders here. For additional tips on how to be an effective leader, subscribe to this Facebook page for business coach Emile Haddad of Seattle, Washington.

Business memo: Tackling the harder task first

Business coach Emile Haddad believes that the way corporate tasks are organized can influence workers' attitude toward their work.

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When it comes to organizing tasks, Forbes suggests that workers can be more effective when they tackle the harder tasks first before moving on to the easier ones.

When harder tasks are on the bottom of the to-do list, workers perceive them as problems and they tend to procrastinate in order not to face them.

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The following is a scenario featuring an employee who chooses to face the harder tasks first: An employee of a credit card company has scheduled to call the CEO of a top coffee chain in Seattle. The CEO is intimidating and demanding, so the credit card employee is a bit uncomfortable with the forthcoming phone conversation. Despite this apprehension, he calls the CEO first thing in the morning before doing his other tasks. Relieved after talking to the CEO, he moves on to do his next tasks normally and energetically.

Tackling the harder task first is more productive because workers do not need to save a lot of courage and energy to face it at the end of the day. They have the luxury of time to do other tasks instead of wasting the day conditioning one’s mind for the hardest part. Being able to handle the harder part early also gives workers a sense of accomplishment that provides them with momentum until the end of the day.

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For more tips on how to increase productivity in the workplace, visit this blog.

Keeping good company: What needs to change to retain talent

It is very difficult to find good talent and even more difficult to retain it. Forbes asserts that almost 30% of employees would see themselves working for a different company in the next 12 months, with a whopping 70% seeing themselves as unappreciated by their respective companies. This indicates that some companies lack what their more talented employees need to encourage them to stay.

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Many CEOs harp about their initiatives to keep talent within their companies, though some of these initiatives fail to realize this goal. Many of these are based on theory rather than practice, and do not take into account the reasons why employees leave.

While some employees leave companies because of issues with their superiors, many leave simply because they do not feel engaged, valued, and rewarded. The company, then, should try making its employees feel appreciated while making sure that its own leadership does not falter in its goals.

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Companies often find themselves in a rut whenever much-needed talented individuals suddenly depart. Taking action to retain good company within the company means making talented individuals feel more appreciated and rewarded for their contributions.

More details on the shortcomings that lead employees away from the companies they work for are outlined in this article from Forbes.com.

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For more related topics, visit this Emile Haddad site.

Leadership and the Inner Observer by Emile Haddad

Why Is Effective Leadership So Difficult To Pin Down? So many books have been written about the subject addressing many of the important facets that the act of leadership demands; clarity of vision, strategic thinking, high level management skills, cultural acuity,  influence and emotional intelligence, to name a few.

I find that the most challenging aspect of training up the leadership ranks in an organization lies in the work around emotional intelligence.  A leader’s emotional intelligence is tied directly to their ability to create influence within the ranks and to build a high functioning culture.  Though these “soft skills” may be considered secondary to basic skills of good management by some, emotional intelligence tends to be much harder to teach on an individual level and imbed within teams.

Why is it so difficult to teach?  Three words:” honest self-observation.”  It requires developing within oneself the “Observer;” this is the honest broker within each of us that tends to steer us in the right direction by witnessing our behaviors and thoughts and their impact on our surroundings.   The Observer exists in all of us; one may consider it the voice of our conscious, the whisper of our intuition.

The challenge we all face is that more often than not we don’t pay attention to this voice; we choose to either consciously ignore it, or by course of habit, we turn its volume so far down that we can’t hear it.  The loss of clear access to this voice over time begins to blind us to our impact on our environment and those around us; as leaders we begin to risk creating the positive influence we seek in our organization and over time we risk becoming less and less effective in how we lead.

When we talk about “leadership”, we are addressing the issue of how someone can lead people, be it individuals or teams.  Technical skills aside, a leader’s primary job is to influence and impact the people around them in positive directions towards the business goals that need to be met.  What differentiates an effective leader from a mediocre one are the skills inherent in their emotional intelligence, and one’s emotional intelligence is explicitly connected to how well their inner observer is developed.

How then does one develop their inner observer? 

1.     Start by committing to do a professional assessment, something like a 360 assessment, once a year.

2.     Collate the feedback and solicit someone’s help to create a plan to address the issues found in the assessment.

3.     Follow the plan with the support of a mentor or a coach.

4.     Begin to notice how the issues raised in the assessment may correlate to some things that you already were aware of within yourself, or that you may have had indications about.

5.     Focus on these issues and begin to pay more attention to what the voice of your inner observer is telling you about these issues as you interact with your colleagues.

6.     This focus will strengthen your awareness of the observer within you; over time it will expand your ability to hear its voice more frequently.

7.     Develop your trust in it as you develop your willingness to listen to it and heed its feedback.

The inner observer is a necessary vehicle to grow our emotional intelligence, and being emotionally skillful increases our success in influencing people in positive and productive ways.  A leader who understands the value of their people, and in their endeavors, works intelligently to create a positive impact will build a contagiously positive culture where success results are the norm, not the exception.