Читать книгу Leadership in Veterinary Medicine - Clive Elwood - Страница 65

Can you walk into a room and it feels like you could cut the atmosphere with a knife? Do you know that things are tense and that saying the wrong thing at the wrong time might be met with cold stares, tears, or worse? Can you lighten that mood with your presence, body language, careful choice of words and, maybe, an interjection of humour? Do you know intuitively what needs to be done to make things happen and move people in the direction they need to move? That is social perceptiveness and situational awareness. It means you can read the body language and verbal tone and understand what might be going on. It represents empathy and emotional intelligence on a group scale and requires an understanding of the potential interpersonal dynamics that might be in play. For leadership, this ability to read a room, to understand the alliances, antagonisms, friendships and tensions, as they ebb and flow in an organisation (be it in a staff meeting, boardroom, over time during normal operations or even over a colt castrate in a field) is a valuable skill, which means you can head trouble off at the pass and capitalise on the energy and enthusiasm that is present.

This does not mean you have to be the life and soul of the party to be an effective leader. Nor should you overanalyse, or fret over, all the social currents in a situation. They will be present and inevitable but should not override the need to ‘get the job done’. Excessive sociability and a desire to be liked are not beneficial leadership attributes.

Not ‘getting it’ is also a problem. Leadership is a relational activity and a failure or inability to understand the social situation means you will be missing important information upon which sound judgements are made.