Counterproductive behaviors related to Self - Regulation have the potential to derail us, despite our qualifications, skills and experience.
Illustration
Alison is a 38 year old middle manager. She has a degree in industrial engineering, and also has an MBA. She has extensive experience in manufacturing and currently leads a team of first line managers and operators who are responsible for the total output of a production unit. Let's look at how problems with self regulation may impact on her effectiveness.
If Allison lacks resilience, she will struggle to keep her internal emotional environment stable, while her external working environment is unstable. This could result in a general lack of coping with job demands due to too much internal stress, irrespective of her qualifications and experience.
If she lacks self - confidence, then a similar scenario is likely. If she is over - confident or overly composed she may be complacent and underestimate challenges and opportunities for improvement and may under-utilize her excellent qualifications. If she is too driven, she may pursue results at the expense of people and alienate others from her. If she is overly conscientious she may be rigid and perfectionistic. Projects may take too long to get off the ground and people may become demotivated by her excessive focus on standards. If she is opportunistic she may leave tasks incomplete and ruin her credibility with colleagues. Similar outcomes are likely if her self - concept control is too high or too low. If her locus of control is too internal she will struggle to conform and accept organisational constraints and could drive her department into the ground. If it is too external she will be passive and lack initiative which will impact on her performance.
Poor Self Regulation can result in a host of derailments:
- losing your temper with colleagues
- perfectionism
- insecurity
- poor initiative
- unreliability
- driving people too hard
- defiance
- passive - aggressive behavior
- inability to conform
- rejection of rules
- unrealistic standards
All of the above behaviors will limit Allison's effectiveness as a leader. Her excellent qualifications and experience will not make up for these limitations. Instead they will place restrictions on how much value and utility she can extract from her qualifications. Relying on qualifications and experience to make up for issues around how well she is able to regulate herself, is tantamount to giving a hearing aid to someone who is blind! Alison's only option is to address her derailers or counterproductive behaviors. By learning to optimise her EQ, Allison has the best chance of optimising her excellent qualifications and experience.
As can be seen from this illustration if the cog (our Self - Regulation) is not sound, everything else is affected - how you deal with people, manage tasks and utilise your knowledge and competencies.
