Emotional Intelligence

Leaders who have Emotional Intelligence (EQ) display situational awareness and emotional connectedness—two vital skills for building relationships with followers. Situational awareness is the ability to understand a situation as it is developing, analyze it, and make necessary decisions or predict outcomes. Emotional connectedness refers to the ability to build relational bonds with others, sense their needs, and respond with empathy.

EQ can be defined as the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, thus responding in such a way that everyone is treated with dignity and respect. People with high EQ motivate themselves, managing their emotions and adapting them to the environment around them.

Successful leaders avoid five prideful traps that negatively affect their ability to lead:

1. Not asking for feedback or ignoring it when it is given,
2. Overvaluing technical skills or expertise at the expense of relational skills,
3. Hiring, promoting, or cultivating a team that is made up of people similar to them in background, race, gender, age, strengths, values, or worldview,
4. Meddling and micromanaging one’s followers instead of trusting them, and
5. Constantly changing priorities and direction—making requests for urgent but menial tasks with unreasonable deadlines.

Jesus’ exposure of the Pharisees (see Matthew 23) provides examples of organizational leaders with low EQ caught in these traps. The Pharisees placed undue pressure on others without leading by example (vs. 4). They sought their own honor without respect for others (vs. 5-7). They attempted to excuse themselves from personal responsibility through faulty reasoning (vs. 16-22). The Pharisees ignored crucial matters by focusing on the irrelevant (vs. 23-24). They were hypocrites, appearing as good on the outside while completely vile inside (vs. 25-28).

[Next week I will share a case study from the gospel of Matthew on humility found in a leader in whom it was least expected.]