Dealing with situations

As a chief, boss, manager, CEO, father, mother or friend, you are expected to solve situations. That is why you were "hired" or you accepted that position.

For that, you count with some training, even though it was informal. That training probably gave you important tools you use in the day-to-day life: a mother was probably trained by her own mother on how to deal with a teenager who does not want to follow the rules; a CEO will have training on how to save his company, and a boss will sit down with one of her employees to discuss a new project, based on the knowledge she got at university.

But you have probably noticed as situations are getting more and more complex and complicated. Solving a situation is like disentangling a thread... the more you do, it looks even worse.

I am going to explore four basic skills that can help you in dealing different situations that come to you:

• Leadership skills. They will give you the energy and capacity to deal with strong and difficult situations, especially those we normally consider crisis. One focus I will talk about is in relation to give your team what it needs to overcome that crisis.
• Proactive problem solving. Creativity and initiative will help you to deal with situations that are preventing success coming to your organization or team.
• Flexibility. Situations can change at any time, so flexibility, as a skill, can give you an advantage when the change comes.
• Negotiation skills. Many situations come from the human front. Negotiating with others, persuading them from a genuine and win-win point of view can solve problems very easily.

You cannot prevent situations to come, but you can learn how to deal with them, and be successful by doing it.

The ability to relate to others

Many years ago, I had a general manager who was simply perfect. He used to come for work with a perfect suit; he used to have a perfect job, and even a perfect family. Only one thing used to tarnish that perfection: he was the worst when dealing with people. After I left the company, I kept tabs on him for some time as I was curious to know his career. So, even though I have left the country, I learned on how he was unable to keep a position for a long time and the complaint was the same: he didn't know how to deal with people.

All his diplomas, all that capacity and talent were not enough to secure him a good position in a good company. He did not know how to negotiate with his employees, he did not know how to deal with bad performance and, worse, he was unable to deal with his own emotions in those cases, when all the façade used to scramble and show a person with no manners, no elegance, and no perfection.

This is probably the mother of all skills. Daniel Goleman was the one who has shown it, giving a fancy name: Emotional Intelligence. Yes, EI is not only relating to others, but it comes only when you have EI.

If you have it, you probably can skip this post, but I guess most of us want to develop it even further. After all, there are many new challenges related to people around you...

• The basic principle behind EI is to understand your own emotions. In other words, the first thing you have to do to relate to others is to relate to yourself better. If you get frustrated with yourself for not getting up at the time you need or not following that diet, then it will be even harder to not get frustrated when someone from your team makes a mistake. Breath, talk to yourself, have a time for reflection, contemplation or meditation, and enjoy your potentials much more than your mistakes.
• Learn to differentiate your emotions in relation to the situation, and the situation itself. If someone from your team has made a mistake that earned a bad mark to your team, which will make future budget negotiations difficult, remember that you can only solve this by not getting into emotion. Talk to the person, talk to your team, and if you need, vent some of the thoughts you are having in your mind, but keep the focus on the solution. A nice trick is turning the mistake into a lesson for the future.
• Be balanced in relation to others. In human relationships, there are no blacks and whites, all are a series of gray tones... At some situations with someone, you have to be merciful and forgiving; at other situations with the same person, you have to push so things happen. Be tuned to the other's need and the need of the moment, and act based on that.
• The last thing is related to a nice tale I've read many years ago, talking about a prince who needs to listen to the inaudible sounds in order to be a king. Reality is: people expresses probably half of what they feel, sometimes even less. So, you need to see their body language and the vibration they are sending, so that you really know what is going on with that person. And take action, which can be talking to him, or just sitting beside her and give your presence.

When you are a master of that skill, then you will realize how wonderful is to deal with people in a positive and powerful way. But this skill is so deep that you will get into that more for the next posts.


* For the article that has inspired this post, click here.