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Which Emotional Intelligence Skills Drive High Performance?

A guide to the 5 emotional intelligence skills that consistently show up in effective leaders.   When we rate effective leaders, five emotional intelligence skills show up consistently. Together, these skills create the ability to respond in the moment to others in a way that will result in better outcomes. Self-regard and emotional self-awareness, seen here at the bottom, are foundational. Studies show that if you have these two skills, you naturally develop most of the other emotional intelligence skills…

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Why High Trust Cultures Create High Performing Companies

If you want to build a high performing company, start by building a high trust culture through emotional intelligence. Some people think employees are inherently untrustworthy, lazy and self-serving. Others believe employees are inherently trustworthy and motivated by a sense of pride in their work. Who is right? Research says: they are both right. As it turns out, the assumptions that managers make about employees determines the outcome. If you start with an emotional intelligence approach and build trust, you…

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Gratitude mural

My Gratitude Project 2024

Welcome to My Gratitude Project 2024 where I am celebrating the small things I’m grateful for every day in November. Nov. 2 Every year in November, I practice 30 days of gratitude.* Taking time to be grateful about what is going right grounds me and helps me focus on what I want more of in my life. Amid epidemic levels of anxiety and uncertainty, practicing gratitude is something we can all do to remind ourselves of what is good. Beauty,…

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5 Tips for Better Leadership with Emotional Intelligence

If you want to increase your emotional intelligence, try these 5 tips for improving team performance. I have yet to meet someone who didn’t want to have better leadership skills. There are a lot of things you can do to improve how you motivate and manage your team. My new blog on LinkedIn explores 5 simple techniques for becoming more effective as a leader using emotional intelligence. We now have over five decades of research showing that people with high…

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psychological safety

What is Psychological Safety and How Does it Improve Performance?

Psychological safety helps you catch and correct mistakes instead of retaliating, blaming, or shaming. It is the key to an office culture where everyone brings their best game every day. Psychological safety is the assurance that you will not be retaliated against or blamed in any way for mistakes on the job. It describes an office culture where people accept that mistakes will be made, and that the best way to deal with them is to work together to catch…

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Evan Gershkovich greets his mother

Five Tips for High-Stakes Deals Demonstrated by Evan Gershkovitz’s Fierce Mother

The historic prisoner swap offers a case study in what it takes to succeed at making complex, high-stakes deals. For most businesses, high-stakes deals involve not lives but livelihoods, affecting dozens or even hundreds of individuals. Negotiations are often fierce. Looking at the prisoner swap completed on Aug. 1, 2024 in hindsight, there are a few key principles that underlie complex deals of all kinds and what it takes to break through when you are dealing with tough people on…

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trust is flying

The Advantage of Trust for High Performance

Trust is the glue that sticks teams together. Without the advantage of trust, the smartest, most experienced team will become distracted by conflict and division. You need it to inspire your team, find consensus, and bring out everyone’s best efforts. Trust helps teams overcome the divisions, egos, and disagreements that splinter teams and distract from performance. Trust is a Virtuous Cycle The advantage of trust is that it allows people to calm down and focus on common goals. That’s the…

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Lisa D. Foster, Ph.D. ACC  is an independent coach. As an Associate Certified Coach by the International Coaching Federation, Lisa honors and abides by the ICF Code of Ethics.  All coaching sessions and consultations are confidential.

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