Reflections: Creating Accountability with Emotional Intelligence

by Henry Evans – Managing Partner

Most miscommunications and relationship challenges are caused by a lack of clarity on the front end of your communications. In our book, “Winning With Accountability, The Secret Language of High Performing Organizations”, we address this common challenge.

Once we feel we have communicated an idea well, we often move on without any validation. In this video, we give you two ways to get reflection in an Emotionally Intelligent way and in a way which will increase the accountability of your interaction.

Here’s a transcription of the video above:

Hi, I’m Henry Evans. Founder and Managing Partner at Dynamic Results. And today I’m going to talk to you about one aspect of our accountability method called Reflection.

Our accountability method based on our book “Winning with Accountability: The Secret Language of High Performing Organizations” is being embraced by multi-national organzations and MBA schools worldwide. One aspect of it is this idea of reflection. And Reflection is getting a comment back from someone you’re trying to convey a message to about what they heard. We believe the effect of your communication is measured the result of the people listening to you. It is not measured by your own self assessment. And we think they will act upon what they understood rather than what you said.

There are two primary ways of getting reflection from people:

The first one we feel is a little demeaning, particularly to people who are smart and capable. The second we feel has a much greater basis on emotional intelligence, but let’s look at the first one.

The first one would for me to convey and for me to ask you something like, “What did I just say?”. Do you feel a little insulted by that? I feel a little insulting when I ask that.

The second way which we think would be much more emotionally intelligent would be to be vulnerable and leave it in the realm of possibility that I didn’t even convey my idea very clearly in the first place. And that would sound like this, “You know I know what I meant to say just know, but what did you hear?”

Vulnerability according to the table group, is a conduit to trust and trust is the foundation to all relationships. So we like that way of checking in better for reflection than the first one.

And yet an even better way of getting reflection would be to say, “You know we discussed a lot of things during this meeting, but what are the action items that we’re taking away from this meeting? What are we going to do as a result of what we just said?” That’s another emotionally intelligent way of getting reflection back from people.

As always, we’re trying to give you quick, concise ways to improve your business, communications, and your business results.

Enjoy, and as always see how people like New York Times Best Selling Author, Marshall Goldsmith, have responded to the book by clicking here:

Dynamic Results Book Page

Stay close to us as this year as we will be rolling out new ways for you to access the method that is helping our clients outperform their competition.

For now, know that we have developed a simple method to help any individual build Accountability in to their culture in an emotionally intelligent way.

As always, we welcome your comments. Join us on facebook to share your experiences or email us at [email protected].