Case Study: Emotion-Driven Leadership Development with UPPO
Introduction:
We engaged UPPO for one piece of a larger portion of professional development work that our leadership team were participating in. We wanted to incorporate the Riders & Elephants Emotional Culture Deck (ECD) and were keen to have an external facilitator namely to negotiate the vulnerable conversations and emotional dialogue that would be introduced when talking about emotions in our workplace.
Prologue:
UPPO had run a pilot of the programme with us previously. We had completed a workshop around how we wanted our teams to feel and how to create that emotional culture to enable success. Timing wise, when it came time to run the course with the greater team, had resulted in a restructure, so the programme was modified to look at how we wanted people to feel during the change process.
Primary Focus and Goals:
Our goal was to create an atmosphere that encourages our leaders to reflect on the emotional status of their teams and to connect their leadership skills to support creating the emotions needed for a success. To bring in conversations about emotions at work; understanding how it builds with emotional intelligence and to communicate a different perspective to the different conversations they were having as leaders.
The Programme:
As we had had successful engagement in the pilot, we implemented the modified programme with Kirsty at UPPO and found the following:
Our leaders were able to talk about their feelings as well as normalise how they were feeling. They gained the ability to successfully discuss desirable and undesirable feelings within their teams.
The shift in the programme to work alongside the restructure was beneficial, focusing on `what did we want our teams to feel and not feel’ in that period of change and what we practically could do to be able to influence those feelings led to a much more positive experience.
The alignment of the leadership team became clear – they had a shared tool and a shared language that was able to be used throughout their teams and in the SMT.
Increasing the emotional vocabulary used to describe our emotions and then being aware of what that looks like in others allowed the leadership team to communicate more effectively and have more empathy and understanding.
The handbook and team reflections were a valuable part of the programme.
The ECD really influenced the importance of empathy and emotional awareness in business success within the leadership team.
The Outcome:
Though qualitative in nature, the feedback we received spoke to the session's effectiveness. Participants described the experience as "interesting" and "thought-provoking". Our leaders gained an alternative perspective and practical ways of improving their support to their teams.
The Impact:
The initial impact of this initiative was substantial, and a big part of that was to do with the timing. The restructure brought about various emotions and feelings so using the ECD game was definitely helpful. Our leaders were now thinking about their emotions and the emotions of others first, bridging the gap between understanding emotions and actively fostering a supportive work culture. The game enables integration of the conversations into everyday meetings, to encourage conversations and convey emotions, marking a transformative step in our organisational evolution toward emotionally intelligent leadership.
Parting words from UPPO
While this is was part of our client’s extensive professional development programme, it imbedded the importance of continued professional and personal growth through self-awareness and understanding. Professional development isn’t always skill based or technical development. Human development is just as important in the workplace, and helps solidify and strengthen relationships leading to increased outputs and results. Often, we need to develop the way we interact and think of being in the workplace and that on its own can help us identify where further professional development might be useful.