Keep an open mind to avoid corporate cold war

Serengeti Breweries Limited

What you need to know:

When one has a high degree of emotional intelligence, they can quickly and early identify situations that could potentially develop into conflict and act to divert them before they become a problem.

At 7pm on October 22, 1962, then US President, John F. Kennedy appeared on national television screens across the USA with an important announcement for the American people; The US navy was to be deployed to erect a military blockade around the island of Cuba which lies 90 miles off the south coast of America. Why? Their archrival, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), led by Nikita Khrushchev, had in the past weeks delivered a pile of missiles to the island at the behest of its leader Fidel Castro. This, said the US President, created an existential threat to peace in his country. Nuclear headed Soviet supplied Cuban missiles this close to the US was something he could not stomach because neither Cuba nor America had a soft side for each other. He issued an ultimatum to the ‘aggressors’; They were to respect the blockade, which was in place to prevent them from delivering more missiles, and withdraw the arms already installed and battle ready on the island or face the full wrath of the USA in war! The two Superpower leaders, distrustful of each other, traded barbs. Nikita’s Generals threatened to push through the blockade, sailing their warships quite close to it, while Kennedy’s readied for battle should they dare cross the ‘red line’. The world watched. Global tension rose.

When one has a high degree of emotional intelligence, they can quickly and early identify situations that could potentially develop into conflict and act to divert them before they become a problem. The sixth sense that helps them master this art of foresight comes from the clear mindedness that a constantly calm persona helps them develop. They also understand the need to actively listen to arguments before they offer guidance. Active listening is a skill that enables the listener to apply all senses in ensuring they pay full attention to the speaker. This drives mutual understanding which in turn allows the listener to make proposals that allow for compromise. Because active listening creates mutual understanding, it makes it easier for these kinds of leaders to forge the environment for conflicting parties to work together at finding solutions, in so doing minimizing conflict.

Finally, a key attribute that only mastery of emotional intelligence delivers for parties on conflicting sides of an argument, point of view or whatever other situation that the conflict has created is the ability to ‘agree to disagree’. This is only possible when the parties are able to understand that the conflict, they find themselves in has only arisen as a result of hard and fast opinions on both sides and have nothing to do with the messenger of those opinions. In these instances, highly emotionally intelligent players are able to walk away from the conflict without ill feelings towards each other. This is a tricky one though if the conflict is similar in nature to the one between Presidents Kennedy and Khrushchev. Global citizens today should be glad that the diplomatic interventions did not lead to an ‘agree to disagree’ conclusion because we probably would not be here today to tell the story.