Two Critical Tools Every Successful Organization Implements

Everyone wants the secret to maintaining an über-successful organization — one that's resilient during crisis, drives towards solutions, and thrives under pressure. Catherine Mattiske, the globally-recognized training expert best known for inventing ID9 Intelligent Design and the Genius Quotient (GQ), shares two critical tools successful organizations use, and why both are so important. "It's no secret that employees are the most crucial part of any organization. Therefore, it is in the organization's best interest to ensure its employees feel valued and appreciated, providing them with available formal and informal learning opportunities to excel at their jobs," Catherine says. " I find that every successful organization implements:"

Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive, control, and manage emotions both in yourself and in others. "When employees master the following five attributes of Emotional Intelligence, better professional relationships between employees are created, which leads to a positive work environment," says Catherine:

1. Self-Awareness: Helps employees identify their emotions and emotional triggers. When employees are aware of their feelings, they can understand how others perceive their emotions. For example, self-awareness can be used to recognize how employees and managers in an organization view each other.
2. Self-Regulation: Helps individuals control and adjust their emotions, leading to a positive effect. Employees need to be in control of their feelings as emotions can substantially impact others. For example, employees need to know how to control their emotions by adjusting their feelings to give a professional appearance in front of colleagues, leaders, and clients.
3. Motivation: Refers to expressing the feeling and desire to do a particular task. It is related to emotional intelligence, as desires can prompt various feelings towards something. For example, in a workplace, employees can display the willingness to successfully complete all the daily tasks to the managers.
4. Empathy: Refers to the ability to identify and understand the feelings of others. Employees who understand others' feelings handle workplace situations more effectively.
5. Social Skills: Allow individuals to communicate and interact with others properly. Strong social skills help you listen, speak, and resolve conflicts and issues more effectively. In addition, social skills can help employees develop their careers and lead to leadership qualities and opportunities.

After observing many high-level performers, Catherine found each had unique behavioral traits she calls The Growth Mindset. "The seven traits of The Growth Mindset are vital for organizations to train their leaders and employees in if they wish to maintain and grow upon organizational success," she says. These traits are:

1. Being Decisive: Those with The Growth Mindset avoid wasting time, never allowing themselves to be sidetracked. Instead, they take actions that keep them moving in a forward direction.
2. Being Consistent: People with The Growth Mindset are fully in, fully committed, ready every day, and always looking for the information needed to achieve the goal they've set out to achieve.
3. Smashing Negativity: Those with The Growth Mindset let negative thoughts go quickly. "They may have a negative thought, but they simply don't allow it to consume them, and move on from it quickly," says Catherine.
4. Taking Risks: Taking risks opens you up to failure, "but someone with The Growth Mindset is okay with that," says Catherine, "because by failing they know they're also learning, changing, and getting one step closer to their end goal."
5. Being Positive: Those with The Growth Mindset are very positive people to be around! "When someone with The Growth Mindset embraces a new challenge — even if it's incredibly difficult — they're the ones who constantly see the glass as half-full. Even when there's only a drop left in the glass, they still find the positive about that drop," says Catherine.
6. Going Slow: People with The Growth Mindset have a philosophy of "Go slow in the beginning so you can go fast at the end." They take things slowly at the beginning of any new process, making sure to lay down a good foundation so that when they get to the end, everything is absolutely correct.
7. Getting Support: The Growth Mindset is fueled by support, whether that be from HR, Growth & Development, or co-workers. "That support mechanism is absolutely the game-changer," says Catherine.