Personal power is a core leadership competency that everyone needs to develop before they can lead others. It has to do with being able to
lead yourself.

“Personal power is the ability to achieve what you want,” according to Frederick Mann, a successful entrepreneur and author of The Economic Rape of America.

“More than anything else, it is personal power that brings you success and happiness. The biggest barrier to success in almost
any endeavor is powerlessness, negativity, helplessness, and inertia. They belong together. The problem is not only our own powerlessness, but also the powerlessness of those around us.”

We can help harness and learn to use our personal power by understanding and working on our Emotional Intelligence (EI) skills.

Not long ago, when I worked in a corporate environment, there was a strong push to incorporate EI into the organization’s leadership
training curriculum as an array of skills and characteristics that drive leadership performance.

EI is “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide
one’s thinking and actions,” according to psychologists John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey, who co-developed the concept and were two of the three authors of the Emotional Intelligence Test.

a. Pay attention to the feedback of friends and co-workers, good and bad. Train yourself to repeat the behaviors that get positive feedback and work on eliminating those that make people react negatively.
b. View constructive criticism as just that. When we become defensive, we don’t hear what can be very helpful feedback.
c. Learn to handle conflict and confrontation from a perspective of compassion and caring.

Personal coaching can be very helpful in learning to be more diplomatic in your interactions with others.

Dr. Salovey (left) and Dr. Mayer (right)

My EI training and its practical applications to my work team environment still resonate in my personal life. They became skills that I now methodically apply to current situations in both personal and entrepreneurial pursuits.

There are several EI models, but the one to which I ascribe is the mixed model introduced by Daniel Goldman, a combination of ability and traits. Here are Goldman’s five main EI constructs, and my views on how each of us can develop them:

1. Self-awareness: the ability to know one’s emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and goals and recognize their impact on others while using gut feelings to guide decisions.

In order to become self-aware, you need to conduct an honest self-assessment to determine your strengths and weaknesses, such as powerlessness and inertia, and determine the root causes. You then need to create a plan that will help you overcome your fears, which are barriers to courage and stand between you and your successes.

While I am a big proponent of using my intuition to guide my decisions, whenever it is appropriate, I need to caution that unless your gut
feelings are often more right than wrong, you cannot make decisions solely based upon intuition. You need to use a balanced combination of intuition and logic.

2. Self-regulation: involves controlling or redirecting one’s disruptive emotions and impulses and adapting to changing circumstances.

Simply put, you need to exercise self-discipline and know how to control your emotions and be flexible in order to adapt to changing
situations. You cannot continue on the same trajectory or keep the same plans when the circumstances or facts have changed. Your plans need to be modified accordingly.

3. Social skills: managing relationships to move people in the desired direction.

Your social skills refer to your interpersonal skills or your ability to relate and connect with people, which can motivate them to deploy discretionary efforts to help you achieve goals that are best accomplished via partnership and collaboration.

Here are some tips for improving your social skills:

Personal coaching can be very helpful in learning to be more diplomatic in your interactions with others.

4. Empathy – considering other people’s feelings, especially when making decisions.

Some people believe empathy cannot be learned, but I believe just the opposite. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and try to see
situations from their perspective. Might they be feeling fear? Shame? Guilt? How do those emotions make you feel? Understanding and addressing the concerns of others is essential to EI.

Always consider intent versus impact, and how your actions or decisions may affect the individuals or groups involved.

5. Motivation – being driven to achieve for the sake of achievement.

Simply put, what motivates you? What are your benchmarks for success? Once you achieve certain levels of success, you need to consistently
set new benchmarks to keep chasing personal excellence!

Practice your EI skills on yourself first, and you’ll develop greater personal power. That can lead to achievements you may never have dreamed possible. For the Silo, Lynda Chervil.

Lynda Chervil is the author of “Fool’s Return,” http://lyndachervil.com/, a new novel that incorporates valuable life lessons in a page-turning tale that touches on technology, the green movement, and other aspects of contemporary society.

Everyone has a relationship with money, but for women, it’s much more fraught with emotion, says Meriflor Toneatto.

When we avoid and ignore those emotions, we allow them to quietly guide our decision-making – which inevitably holds us back.

“Understanding our emotions, fears and doubts about money and how they affect our behavior can help us heal them so we can experience financial and personal freedom,” says Toneatto, an entrepreneur, certified business and life coach, and author of “Money, Manifestation & Miracles: 8 Principles for Transforming Women’s Relationship with Money.” For women, money is an emotional currency. It’s tied to our sense of self-worth and self-confidence, and our feelings of safety and security. These feelings often translate into self-limiting decisions.

The effect can be profound. Consider female entrepreneurs:

“The number of women-owned U.S and Canada. businesses is growing 1.5 times faster than the national U.S. average, but a report from 2013 found that they’re still contributing less than 4 percent of overall business revenues, about the same as they were in 2007,” Toneatto says.

“Our businesses are smaller because we’re less likely than men to borrow in order to expand. We’re afraid to take financial risks,” she says citing a U.S. Department of Commerce report..

And in the corporate world:

Women comprise half the workforce, yet hold the majority of lower-wage jobs in the United States, according to the 2014 State of the Union address.

What are the emotions shaping so many of our decisions? Toneatto cites five:

Fear: The most common emotion among women is fear. With money, we fear not having enough of it; that we’ll lose it all and never get it back. Nearly including those according to the 2013 Women, Money and Power Study.

And we fear an abundance of money. We may fail to negotiate a higher salary because we fear we can’t live up to it. Successful women may be reluctant to reach higher because we fear failure — and losing it all.

These fears often have roots in situations we were exposed worth. They send a strong signal that we need to root out their source and heal it.

Guilt: People who say things like, “I feel guilty when I spend instead of save” or “I never buy anything unless it’s on sale” have guilt feelings associated with money. These, too, are often rooted in the fears and messages we saw and heard in childhood about not having enough money. Many of us are natural nurturers who’ve gotten the message that “good” women are selfless, and so we may freely, even recklessly, spend on others while withholding from ourselves.

Shame: This painful emotion cuts whether worthy and deserving. We avoid talking about shame, and so it exerts control over us. With money, shame is commonly connected to amassing a lot of debt and hiding it because we fear being judged, humiliated, and disliked.

Anger: This emotion repels money, opportunities and people because it can leave us closed off emotionally and physically from others. It’s based in a belief in the unfairness of life and/or the unfairness of money. A person who becomes angry about money may be angry at herself for missing an opportunity or for mishandling money in the past. Anger can lead to trust issues and to over-protecting every cent – even hoarding money.

Blame: Anger and blame often go hand in hand. hand in hand. It stems from feeling disappointed or wronged because you believe your life would have been easier and/or better if someone – maybe parents or a spouse — had been able to provide you with more money. Blame can sabotage relationships with both people and money for years.

“At some point in our lives, we all have felt one or more of these emotions,” Toneatto says. “The good thing is, once you begin to recognize them, they’re like a flashing yellow ‘caution!’ light.”

About Meriflor Toneatto

Meriflor Toneatto is the founder and CEO of Power With Soul, a company dedicated to empowering female entrepreneurs and professionals by helping them transform their relationship with money. The author of “Money, Manifestation & Miracles: 8 Principles for Transforming Women’s Relationship with Money.” Toneatto holds a bachelor’s degree in public administration and management and graduate certifications in personal, professional and financial coaching. A former corporate executive, she is a recipient of the Amethyst Award for Excellence and Outstanding Achievement from the government of Ontario, Canada.

Supplemental- http://www.canadiangovernmentexecutive.ca/category/item/1283-and-the-amethyst-goes-to.html

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