Emotional Intelligence
How to be an Effective Team Leader & Team Member
Deborah Baker
Head of Worldwide Leasing & Financing
HP Inc.
Talk Overview
An effective team is made up of people who feel understood and heard in the workplace. Great leaders must take steps to improve their emotional intelligence in order to understand why people do what they do, without allowing biases to stand in their way.
Why Select this Talk?
Building a great team is essential for the improvement and stability of your company. Maintaining this team is just as important. This Talk will help you to understand how to empathize with others’ thoughts, actions, etc. on a personal and professional level.
How You Learn
I will discuss a bit of my background and personal approach to leadership. We will utilize personality tests, including Meyers Briggs and Positive Intelligence, as the foundation of our discussion on improving our ‘mental fitness’ as a team leader and team member.
Takeaways
Emotional intelligence is key to being an effective leader and team member.
Understanding ones’ own emotions equips a leader to better understand their team.
Emotions belong in the workplace; it takes a great leader to effectively understand and balance these emotions.
Deborah Baker
As Head of Worldwide Leasing and Financing, Deborah Baker is responsible for driving contractual business growth through an optimized, profitable multi-vendor leasing and financing Go to Market (GTM) solution.
Deborah is a finance veteran with almost 30 years’ experience supporting captive and vendor financing. She joined HP from Cisco Systems Capital Corporation where she served as Senior Director, Global Portfolio Services, supporting a $12B Global Portfolio of ~5000 lease and loan customers in over 100 countries, maximizing sales enablement and ensuring fiduciary responsibility.
Prior to joining Cisco Capital in 2011, Deborah spent 10 years with Hewlett-Packard Financial Services at their headquarters in New Jersey supporting end user financing products in the US, Canada and US Public Sector as well as internal (embedded lease) financing products. Prior to Hewlett-Packard Financial Services, she held a variety of roles with CIT (formerly AT&T Capital), including roles in Business Development, Sales and Operations. As a Six Sigma Champion and Talent Ambassador, Deborah is passionate about Process Improvements, Learning and Development and Talent Management
Deborah is a member of the Board of Directors for the Equipment Leasing and Financing Association (ELFA), the Chair of the ELFA Women’s Council, and a member of ELFA Equality. In addition, Deborah is a former member of the Editorial Board of The Monitor publication, The Independent Voice of Equipment Finance. In 2019, she was named one of the Top Women in Equipment Finance by The Monitor.
Deborah holds a BS in Business Administration and an MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University in Madison, NJ. She currently resides in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with her husband Chris. Their son Griffin is studying Cybersecurity at the Southern New Hampshire University. Outside of work, Deb enjoys hiking, bicycling and cooking.