An emotionally competent leader not only hears but also listens. This is an indicator of a high level of development of interpersonal emotional competence. An effective leader has time to deeply understand the interlocutor before demonstrating a reaction (advice, suggesting a solution) or ignoring it. Ways to increase emotional competence provide this opportunity. So do active listening techniques. It is important to remember that the ultimate piloting of emotional competence is the constructive management of interactions based on emotional literacy. Not manipulation. Humans are capable of sensing and recognising manipulation. He will question the sincerity of his motives and no longer feel safe opening up to a manipulative leader. Active listening in this case is the tool of an emotionally competent leader.

Empathic listening requires a fundamental paradigm shift. Normally one seeks to be understood first. Most people listen with the intention of responding rather than understanding. At any given moment, they are either speaking or preparing to speak. Only 10 % of human communication is represented by words, 30 % by sounds, 60 % by body language.

When a leader listens autobiographically, using their own perspective as a frame of reference, they tend to respond in one of four ways: 1) evaluate: agree or disagree; 2) probe: ask questions based on their own frame of reference; 3) advise based on their own experience; 4) interpret: find out motives and explain a person’s behaviour based on their own motives and behaviour.

An emotionally competent leader uses empathic listening instead of these types of responses. This has impressive results in improving comer capacity to manage interpersonal processes.

4.3. Self-esteem in the context of self-development

The technology of the leader’s self-development, based on emotional competence, is applied by means of improving intrapersonal and interpersonal competences in four stages: development of emotional awareness, development of emotional self-organisation, development of social skills, development of the ability to manage constructive interaction on the basis of emotions.

The development of emotional self-awareness includes adequate emotional self-esteem. However, the concept of self-esteem is much broader; it goes beyond the emotional sphere of a personality, but is firmly connected with it. It is an emotional formation. Positive or negative self-esteem is accompanied by emotions and feelings, such as pride, despair, etc.

Self-esteem is understood in a complex way. Due to the multi-faceted nature of the term, it has no universal definition in the world science. In general, it is a person’s assessment of himself or herself, his or her capabilities, features and position among other people.

Self-esteem provides a person with a certain idea of his or her self-worth and significance. The fundamentals of self-esteem include: 1) power (influence / control of others); 2) significance (value to others / acceptance by others); 3) virtue (adherence to moral norms); 4) competence, or success in achieving goals.

Self-esteem is gradually formed from the self-assessments of an individual and those of others. The vector is set in the childhood by the immediate environment. Assessments, descriptive characteristics of others are appropriated by a child, and they become the basis for self-esteem.

The totality of all perceptions of self, together with their evaluation, constitute a person’s “selfconcept”. The descriptive side of the generalised self-concept is represented by the “self-image”. Self-esteem, “self-concept”, “self-image” trigger certain behavioural reactions, specific actions, acts, which are also evaluated.

33

Self-attitude is regarded as a synonym to the concept of “self-esteem”. Close to this concept are self-respect, dignity, personal satisfaction with life. The self-esteem formula is presented as a fraction, where the numerator is success (positive outcomes of activities, achievements and attainments) and the denominator is personal ambitions (something that a person would like to achieve). This is how self-satisfaction / dissatisfaction arises.

Self-esteem can be optimal and sub-optimal.

Optimal self-esteem includes “medium self-esteem” (a person respects himself or herself, but knows his or her weaknesses and seeks self-improvement, self-development), “above average self-esteem”, “high self-esteem” (a person deservedly appreciates, respects himself, is satisfied with himself or herself).

In case of optimal, adequate self-assessment, a person correctly correlates his abilities and capabilities, is sufficiently critical of him or herself, strives to be realistic about his failures and successes and tries to set achievable goals which can be implemented in reality. He approaches the assessment of whatever he has achieved using not only his own standards, but he also tries to foresee how other people, such as his colleagues and relatives, will view it. In other words, adequate selfassessment is the result of a permanent search for a realistic measure, i.e. without excessive overestimation, and also without excessive criticism of one’s communication, behaviour, activities, experiences. This kind of self-assessment is the best for specific conditions and situations.

Self-esteem may be sub-optimal, too high or too low.

Inadequately high self-esteem gives rise to a misconception of self, an idealised image of one’s personality and capabilities, one’s value for others and the common work. In such cases, a person ignores failures for the sake of maintaining his usual high estimate of himself, his actions and deeds. There occurs a strong emotional “rejection” of anything that violates the self-image. The perception of reality is distorted, and attitudes to it become inadequate, or purely emotional. The rationality of the assessment is completely unavailable. Therefore, a fair comment begins to be perceived as a nag, and an objective assessment of performance as unfairly undervalued. Failure is seen as a consequence of someone else’s intrigues or unfavourable circumstances, which do not depend on the actions of the individual.

A person with an inadequately high self-esteem does not want to admit that it is all a consequence of his or her own mistakes, laziness, lack of knowledge, abilities or wrong behaviour. This results in a severe emotional state, the effect of inadequacy, whose main cause is the persistence of stereotypically high self-esteem. If high self-esteem is malleable, changes in accordance with reality, increases with successes and decreases with failures, it can accelerate personal development, as it has to make every effort to achieve goals, develop abilities and willpower.

Self-esteem may also be low, or below the individual’s real capabilities. This usually leads to insecurity, timidity and lack of ambition, and inability to implement one’s capabilities. Such people do not set goals that are difficult to achieve; they are limited to mundane tasks, and too critical of themselves.

Self-esteem that is too high or too low disturbs self-management, distorts self-control. This is evident in the course of communication when persons with too high or too low self-esteem trigger conflicts. In case of an excessively high self-esteem, conflicts arise from the disrespectful attitude to and treatment of others, overly harsh and ungrounded statements about them, intolerance of other opinions, and arrogance. Low self-criticism prevents them from noticing how they offend others by their arrogance and indisputable judgement.

When self-esteem is low, conflicts may arise because these people are too critical. They are very demanding of themselves and even more demanding of others; they cannot forgive a single blunder or mistake, and tend to permanently highlight the shortcomings of others. Although this is done for splendid motives, it becomes a cause of conflict due to the fact that few can tolerate systematic criticism. When you are only seen as a bad person and your drawbacks are constantly pointed out, there arises a dislike for the source of such assessments, thoughts and actions.

34

Self-esteem can be raised either by becoming more successful (raising the value of the numerator), or by lowering the ambitions (reducing the value of the denominator). The second method is more rational, because any expansion of one’s self means additional ambitions. Today self-development is frequently focused on business success and higher attainments.

Self-esteem can be partial, situationally changing (current self-esteem). For example, “I consider myself a good leader and, therefore, I feel happy”. It is flexible and changeable in line with the subjective evaluations activated by different circumstances or motives. Self-esteem can be global, general: “I think I am a bad person and, therefore, I feel bad on the whole”. These two types of self-esteem correlate with one another.

Adequate self-esteem triggers the person’s potential. It is the inherent worth, the desire for selfdevelopment. Low self-esteem entails rejection, refusal to test one’s strengths; lack of faith in them. Fear prevents one from making life plans and dreaming. Subjectively, one considers oneself unworthy and undeserving. Intuitively, the social environment is also chosen to match self-esteem. If self-esteem is high, it becomes a source of motivation for growth and advancement. If self-esteem is low, it becomes a source of moving backwards.

Self-respect and positive self-esteem, which serve as the bases of one’s harmony with oneself, are the main tasks of self-cultivation. Self-esteem is who you are and self-confidence is what you can do.

Successes, defeats and related emotions accumulate and influence the rethinking of one’s self and the reassessment of one’s capabilities.

The general global self-esteem is quite stable, but it correlates with situational self-esteem. Numerous factors affect a person every day. They can hit self-confidence, put a person in an inadequate state, and lower his or her self-esteem.

To keep self-esteem at an adequately high level one needs to refuse to compare oneself with others, even those who are successful. One can learn from them, adopt their suitable experience, but without any comparison.

It is important to learn to compare oneself with oneself over the time, to trace the pattern of self-development by focusing on achievements while maintaining contact with the world. This is done using the goal-setting technology with a clearly articulated criterion for achieving the goal. The final incident must be very clear. This is a prerequisite for determining whether the goal has been achieved.

Such achievements become a vehicle for maintaining self-esteem.

Summary

1.The technology of leader self-development based on emotional competence is implemented in four stages: development of emotional awareness, development of emotional self-organisation (self-orderliness), development of social skills, development of abilities to manage interactions constructively based on emotions.

2.The use of active listening techniques increases a leader’s emotional competence through the development of empathy.

3.Self-esteem makes a prerequisite for self-development.

4.Adequately high self-esteem is the basis of self-confidence.

Think about and answer these questions

1.What sequence of self-development does define the emotional competence model?

2.What are the signs of an empathic leader?

3.Correlate the emotions with high and low self-esteem: importance, despair, pride, fear.

35

5. ORGANISING A CROSS-CULTURAL SPACE

As a result of studying this material, you will learn:

–the socio-psychological characteristics of multicultural professional groups;

–how subcultural tensions manifest themselves in multicultural professional groups;

–what are the characteristics of leadership in a multicultural environment;

–what the socio-psychological characteristics of multicultural groups;

–what are the characteristics of leadership in a multicultural environment.

Keywords: multicultural organisations, subculture, cross-cultural barriers, cross-cultural conflicts.

5.1. Multicultural organisations in the present-day context

Construction managers establish and develop numerous external social contacts. Their interactions require productive and constructive communications with superiors, colleagues and subordinates. The multiplicity of construction organisations is one of specific characteristics of a professional construction environment that represents a set of industry-specific and social working conditions. The working environment is influenced by current global trends. Which trends do managers need to take into account? For example, we can list informatisation and digitalisation, interdisciplinarity of professions, integration and consolidation, as well as multiculturalism. In addition, global crises of various etiologies affect working conditions. Crises can reduce industry funding and slow down construction projects. At the same time, practice shows that builders remain in demand in the labour markets even in adverse economic circumstances and that the construction industry as a whole quickly recovers from crises; sometimes it is a driver of economic recovery of entire states. Even consequences of disasters and upheavals are favourable for construction, because cities, settlements and infrastructure need restoration and affected territories need new construction.

BIM technology introduction is a spectacular case of informatisation and digitalisation of the construction industry. Its transition to digital technologies brings benefits and arouses concerns. The main concerns deal with the release of the labour force no longer involved in the production process, as well as a rise in unemployment. In addition, unified information models of buildings, structures, complexes (BIM) serve as a forum for simultaneous interaction between representatives of different professional groups.

Cross-disciplinary professions prevail over classic ones. A variety of competences merges and mixes within the construction industry. To develop smart concrete, design and build green buildings, you need to study building materials, chemistry, biology and botany. Representatives of cross-disciplinary professions are no longer engineers or art scholars.

Integration and enlargement are connected with large-scale construction projects. They deal with development of integral spaces, such as modern multifunctional construction facilities. Enlargement is manifested in vertical cities, for example, Dubai City Tower by Meraas Holding (Dubai), which is 2,400 meters high; it has 400 residential sections and such energy sources as wind, thermal water, solar panels, as well as a floating city — a structure or a set of structures on a floating platform (for example, Venus and Freedom Ship projects). Such an ambitious construction project needs the workforce that meets the quantitative and competence requirements.

Multiculturalism originally emerged as a consequence of migration policies and demographics that changed the structure of societies over the centuries. Multiculturalism is broadly understood in the context of the ethnic diversity of society. However, the diversity of cultures is represented not only by ethnicities or nationalities.

36