{"id":15164,"date":"2017-11-09T20:10:40","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T04:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=15164"},"modified":"2017-11-09T20:10:40","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T04:10:40","slug":"how-emotionally-intelligent-are-we","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/how-emotionally-intelligent-are-we\/","title":{"rendered":"How (emotionally) Intelligent Are We?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each week when my cohort meets to discuss our reading for the week, our lead mentor, Dr. Jason Clark, asks us to give a brief \u201celevator speech\u201d account of the book. I love this exercise and sometimes write down a particularly good summary given by one of my colleagues. This week I decided to write out my elevator speech before trying to discuss the book, The Leadership Mystique<\/em>, by Manfred Kets de Vries.<\/p>\n

First of all, can we just acknowledge the utter coolness of the author\u2019s name? I mean, I definitely feel for the 11-year-old kid who had to haul that name through junior high, but what a boss name. And the fact that the title of the book seems to be a subtle nod to the Betty Friedan classic, The Feminine Mystique<\/em>, deepens my respect for him right away.<\/p>\n

Kets de Vries\u2019 book is a densely packed, but easy to read primer about the inner world of a healthy leader. Instead of just teaching us about that inner world, Kets de Vries invites us on the journey by including check-lists, quizzes, and questionnaires that help us as readers determine our own emotional intelligence and where we fit on the spectrum of healthy leadership.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s my summary. It was easy to write because these are the things that make me want to slow down and savor every part of the book. Because our reading schedule doesn\u2019t really allow for that right now, I decided to take one section and \u201cchew\u201d on it. Chapter Seven is titled \u201cAchieving personal and organizational change.\u201d The best part of the chapter, in my opinion, is the way Kets de Vries\u2019 uses the exercises to peel back the layers of our individual attitudes toward change, and then translate that into the way organizations respond. I could not help but think of the way Chris Lowney described the Jesuits as having the \u201cconfidence to embrace new approaches and explore new ideas or perspectives born of a \u2018whole world becomes our house\u2019 attitude.\u201d[1]<\/a> How does is this kind of confidence developed and what does an organization with a leader like that look like? I was particularly intrigued by Kets de Vries\u2019 discussion of organizational mourning in the process of change. When I worked in state government, depending on who was in power at the time, we lived in a state of constant flux. There was a period of about five years where, when I think back, I realize that most of us were never able to complete the mourning process because the changes were so constant. While I am someone who really does like change (just ask my children how often I changed the paint color of our walls when they were growing up), even with that tendency I do not have the capacity to live in that place for an extended period of time. I don\u2019t think any of us really do.<\/p>\n

The discussion regarding reaction to change cannot be held outside of Kets de Vries\u2019 earlier exploration of Emotional Intelligence.[2]<\/a> I am not ashamed to admit that, prior to a good amount of spiritual formation and direction, and evaluation of my own emotional intelligence quotient (EQi), there were some deep pits in my own emotional intelligence. I have had to work really hard to learn to engage with empathy, for example. This was not always the case. As a child I was incredibly empathetic but it was one of the things that, as I became an adult, \u201catrophied\u201d as Kets de Vries\u2019 puts it.[3]<\/a> The beauty of emotional intelligence (as opposed to IQ based intelligence) is that we can change and improve our EQi. We simply need to know our baseline, and practice the skills necessary to change.<\/p>\n

There is too much in Kets de Vries\u2019 book regarding emotional intelligence to really dig into here. I was delighted to learn, however, that he thinks my tendency toward right-brain thinking is a positive when I have been told so often it is a negative. His take on right-brain functioning got me to thinking of the ways we stifle some of the natural emotional intelligence children are born with rather than teaching them to develop it safely in our communities. Some of those inborn characteristics, if trained into mature emotional intelligence, could lead them to the self-differentiation that Friedman tells us in A Failure of Nerve<\/em> is crucial to healthy leadership.[4]<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [1]. Chris Lowney, Heroic Leadership<\/em>, (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2003), 166.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [2]. Manfred Kets de Vries, The Leadership <\/em>Mystique: Leading Behavior in the Human Enterprise,<\/em> 2nd<\/sup> ed., Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited, 2006), 19-35.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [3]. Kets de Vries, 19.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 [4]. Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve<\/em>, (New York: Church Publishing, 1999, 2007, 2017).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Each week when my cohort meets to discuss our reading for the week, our lead mentor, Dr. Jason Clark, asks us to give a brief \u201celevator speech\u201d account of the book. I love this exercise and sometimes write down a particularly good summary given by one of my colleagues. This week I decided to write […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[694,1077,1076,35,1069],"class_list":["post-15164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-emotional-intelligence","tag-eqi","tag-kats-de-vries","tag-leadership","tag-leadership-mystique","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15166,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15164\/revisions\/15166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}