How To Develop Emotional Intelligence For Leadership
About Case Study Authors
Ibex Tactics LLC, was founded by Alex Bolowich & Ben Foodman. Before starting the company, Alex and Ben were working with athletes on an individual basis, helping them improve their mental performance using sport psychology-based interventions. While both professionals had incredible success working with some of the world’s most elite athletes, a significant portion of the time they were unable to help some of their clients due to the poor cultures these athletes were immersed in. As a result, Alex and Ben created Ibex Tactics LLC, which dedicated towards providing science-driven solutions to helping teams build resilient cultures.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: Why Effective Leaders Have High Emotional Intelligence
PART I. Getting Started With A Tier 2 Client Focused On Emotional Intelligence
PART II. Organizational Psychology Assessment Of The Workplace Culture For A Large Healthcare System
PART IV. Our Client’s Journey Using Ibex Tactics Services And the “Before & After” Effects
Introduction: Why Effective Leaders Have High Emotional Intelligence
There are many traits that leaders need to possess in order to have maximum impact on their teams. For instance, many people believe that leaders need to be able to demonstrate confidence to their team members, be consistent in their strategic decision making, and possess the highest levels of intelligence within their organization. While all of these traits can be helpful, at Ibex Tactics we believe there is one skill above all that separates good leaders from great leaders: emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence has been defined as “the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as understand and influence the emotions of others”. Interestingly, one of the most common requests that we receive from some of our clients is how to enhance emotional intelligence within an organization’s leadership and throughout all levels of the team. For this issue of the Case Studies, we are going to review a Tier 2 client that we helped with a special emphasis on enhancing emotional intelligence.
Part I. Getting Started With A Tier 2 Client Focused On Emotional Intelligence
Jack was a doctor in charge of one of the larger healthcare providers in his state. Prior to working with us, Jack was an incredibly accomplished physician and was widely recognized as a thought leader in his area of expertise. Jack eventually moved away from practicing medicine full time and began working in more of a high-level administrative role within his hospital system. When Jack took over in his new position, he was tasked with improving patient feedback regarding their experiences with the hospital staff. According to the surveys, the hospital had seen a linear progression for negative feedback from patients and the hospital could see that this was not sustainable. To make matters worse, they were also experiencing a high turnover rate within their staff members and wanted to reduce that as well.
While Jack had an excellent reputation for having positive bedside manner with his patients, trying to find ways to scale this type of behavior amongst his staff felt “out of his league”. Jack was smart and recognized that he needed to find a way fast to change the behaviors of the staff but felt that traditional HR meetings would not effectively create change. Jack started doing research on different leadership courses he could put his staff through, but nothing really seemed to address the unique needs of his organization’s “identity”. After some time, Jack eventually came across our content and submitted a contact form on our website requesting to have a consultation call to see if we could help him. As soon as we received his request, we coordinated with Jack to have an initial “meet and greet” via video call.
Part II. Organizational Psychology Assessment Of The Workplace Culture For A Large Healthcare System
The first step we took with Jack was to set up an on-site assessment. During the assessment we spoke with Jack and almost the entire management department trying to identify what the current culture of the healthcare system is, and if there have been any meaningful changes since new management took over. What we found was that prior to new management, the previous workplace environment was frequently referred to as a “toxic work culture”. The upper management staff reported feeling positive about the changes that seemed to be occurring but were cautiously optimistic. What was crystal clear was that there was no established culture and one of the barriers that was preventing effective communication was low emotional intelligence amongst management.
When we presented our findings and recommendations to Jack, he was in agreement with our original prognosis but was skeptical about how effective our interventions would be. Part of his skepticism had less to do with us and more about his concern for whether we would be able to work through the bureaucratic red tape of the healthcare system and how we would overcome with the ingrained “toxic culture” was prior to our arrival. We showed Jack that we would track the efficacy of our services through the administration of 5-point Likert scales examining metrics around workplace culture and whether or not staff members were noticing an increase in emotional intelligence improvements amongst management. Jack felt reassured that we had a system in place to quantify progress and was ready to commit to our plan.
Part III. Implementing Ibex Tactics Tier 2 System To Improve Culture & Leadership Emotional Intelligence
To start off we began with our month 1 rapid intervention phase with Jack and his staff. This included 4 weekly sessions to identify and resolve major obstacles, friction points, and limiting patterns that were going to prevent the establishment of a new culture and implementing practices that enhanced leadership emotional intelligence. After the first phase we then moved into the culture building phase. This work lasted approximately 3 months and included 10 bi-weekly coaching sessions to embed sustainable systems, leadership alignment, and team chemistry. We also provided ongoing support via email and text to maintain momentum and drive day-to-day execution.
The final phase of our work with Jack’s staff was the growth review and Tier 1 Transition. This included 1 -hour Growth Analysis & Review Session to evaluate cultural integration, system adoption, and measurable outcomes. We also reviewed how the Personalized Tier 1 services would work if they wanted to advance to the next level of culture development. At the end of Tier 2, Jack reported a significant improvement in the workplace culture and was also noticing increased positive feedback from the staff regarding their ability to more effectively communicate with upper-level management. But even more importantly, Jack reported that patient satisfaction surveys were becoming increasingly positive which he attributed to the change in workplace culture.
Part IV. Our Client’s Journey Using Ibex Tactics Services And the “Before & After” Effects
Prior to working with us, Jack had just taken a new position as one of the top leaders within one of the largest healthcare systems in the state. While Jack had a positive reputation for having excellent bedside manner with his patients and had always had a positive working relationship with other colleagues, the workplace culture he was starting at had a reputation for being “toxic” and was receiving rapid increases in negative patient satisfaction. He knew that making these necessary macro-level changes to the culture of the healthcare system was outside of his scope of practice.
After starting services with us and going through our Ibex Tactics assessment, we came to the conclusion that in order to improve patient satisfaction, he was going to need to implement a new workplace culture. At the end of our Tier 2 services with Jack, he reported that the workplace culture had significantly improved. He based these improvements off of both his subjective experience as well as the surveys we had him consistently administer in order to quantify the effectiveness of our strategy. Jack stated he wanted to take time to practice managing the Tier 2 tactics but was strongly considering signing up for Tier 1 services and would reach back out to us after a few months.
NOTE TO READER:
Alex and Ben wanted to compile their expertise in the Ibex Tactics Case Studies to help teams in the sports and corporate sector better understand how many of the issues they are dealing with are more often than not related to culture. Most teams recognize that culture is an important component of their success, but do not always have the resources or expertise to analyze the complexity of culture. If you are interested in learning more about the services that Ibex Tactics offers to help with culture development, use the contact form below and sign up with your email to receive updates on new services and case studies!
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