Emotional Intelligence

Good Leaders Use Emotional Intelligence

From one article published in the May-June 2002 issue of Health Progress: Special Section on Leadership Development - The official journal of The Catholic Health Association of the United States.

The following set of characteristics focus on leadership. However, the emotional skills that are outlined aptly apply to all the parts of our lives that bring us into relationship with others and ourselves.

By Jeanne Segal, Ph.D.

Tune-in to Your Core Instincts

Take reflective time every day to tune in to your core instincts. We learn to do this by slowing down enough to comprehend messages that our bodies are constantly sending us via our physical and emotional feelings. The sensual physical language of the body is nonverbal. Deciphering it takes time and effort. The slowing down needed to attune to our feelings and sensations can be accomplished through prayer or meditation, when the focus of such practice is internal discovery. This is particularly important if you lead a pressured life. Pressured lifestyles can activate endorphins in the brain that induce in a person a drugged-like state of false well-being while actually reducing that person's awareness of feelings and needs and even blunting his or her instincts for survival.

The instinctual knowing that constantly keeps us informed of our most pressing problems and deeper values also informs the critical ability to know when we don't know--when we don't have enough information, or the right information, to make a good decision. Because emotionally intelligent leaders draw, in their decision making, from both thought-based intellectual resources and intuitive sensory-based resources, they have a greater amount of data from which to draw. This makes their communication more effective and their decisions sounder.

Connect Thought and Feeling

Make an effort to inform your thoughts with your feelings and your feelings with your thoughts. Unfortunately, the nonverbal language of the body can be, and often is, shouted down by the mind. Then you can't hear yourself at an instinctual level. At other times, such as when some kind of unresolved trauma remains an issue in your life, the body and emotions can have more sway over one's life than conscious thoughts do, a condition that can result in panic attacks; outbursts of anger; and physical symptoms such as migraines, stomach disorders, or backaches. People who make an effort to maintain a connection between what they are thinking, saying, and doing, on one hand, and what they are feeling, on the other, bring the wisdom of their core instincts to their decisions and actions.

Listen to Feelings

Listen to feelings as well as to words, so that the people you serve and work with will feel understood. The capacity to listen in a way that makes others feel understood is also tied to this ability to integrate information and instinct. Recently, at a hospital, I experienced firsthand the difference between being listened to and feeling that I was really being heard. My 90-year-old father lay dying following brain surgery. The medication he was taking had caused blood vessels in his brain to rupture. It could no longer be used, for obvious reasons, and yet it was needed to keep his heart pumping regularly.

I had his power of attorney, clearly stating that he did not want heroic means used to merely keep him alive, but that is what was being done. All the half-dozen attending physicians were excellent practitioners and, I sincerely believe, deeply caring people. Every one of them listened to me as I repeated my father's wishes but only one heard that my father and his family wanted the tubes that were keeping him alive removed. It took an agonizing two days to finally be heard--not that I don't understand the pain felt by people who have dedicated themselves to life on those occasions when they are forced to submit to death.

When leaders add to their training an awareness of their own instinctual feelings and a sensitivity to the experience of others, they come more quickly to wiser, more fully informed decisions.

Practice Nonverbal Communication

Good communication, especially that done with sick or frightened people, is almost entirely nonverbal. Notice how a really good physician or nurse will make eye contact, smile, comfort the patient, listen to his or her concerns, and physically touch him or her in a gentle way. Then look at the opposite, the health care professional who is cold, businesslike, or unaware of what the patient or staff member he happens to be dealing with is feeling.

Experts recognize that emotional contact, most of which is nonverbal, has the power to mitigate both physical and emotional trauma, whereas a lack of emotional contact can make it worse. Emotionally intelligent leaders who are in tune with their own and others' nonverbal communications can both communicate and receive information that goes well beyond words into the realm of healing.

Develop Your Capacity for Empathy

Work on developing your capacity for empathy. Empathy is the ability to gauge a situation through another person's eyes, and heart, whether you agree with that person or not. Empathy is the ability to be so secure in your awareness of your own thoughts, feelings, and values that you can also perceive opposing points of view without losing sight of your needs. If you lack empathy, you cut yourself off at the knees in many kinds of negotiations, particularly those that involve conflict. It's a matter of connection versus isolation: Connection to others through genuine openness to their perspective gives you insight and understanding that is impossible to attain without empathy. In addition, when you can successfully empathize with how other people perceive and feel, you are also much better at understanding what they need and meeting those needs. People generally feel more loyalty to, and are willing to work harder for, those who make an effort to "tune in to them." When interest is shown in what people feel, need, and care about, as well as what they do, a deeper level of satisfaction results.

Contain Your Emotions

Learn to contain your emotions. Emotional containment is another skill that can be learned once you become willing to rationally explore your internal landscape. Emotionally intelligent individuals have the ability to contain their emotions. Containing emotions is not suppressing or ignoring them, but being in charge of when and how you express them. Leaders, no less than others, experience the most difficult of feelings, including anger or grief. At one time or another, all leaders feel like shouting or crying, but emotional awareness helps them maintain appropriate behavior. By keeping their emotions current and keeping old feelings separate from new ones, they can often avoid overreaction--the pitfall of taking problems or conflicts too "personally." Indeed, it is precisely because such leaders are not afraid to experience their emotions that they avoid losing control of themselves, on one hand, or stressing their bodies by avoiding their feelings, on the other.

Treat Challenges as Unique

Respond uniquely to every challenge that confronts you. EI is the polar opposite of a knee-jerk approach to life. Circumstances change and can bring about significant changes in individuals. Emotionally intelligent decisions are based for the most part not on rules, but on judgment that is a mix of head/intellect (What is the task? How important is it? What is needed now?) and heart/instinct (What does my intuition tell me about the effect of this decision? What do I feel about the long-term consequences for all concerned? What do I sense may be missing in the way I am thinking about the problem?).

Embrace Interdependence

Emotionally intelligent individuals are fully aware of how important other people are to their personal and professional well-being and are not afraid to acknowledge this debt. Emotionally intelligent leadership is not lone leadership. Interdependence should not be confused with enmeshment or emotional dependency. It is, rather, a genuine appreciation of what other people have to offer and do. A strong motivator for loyalty and consciousness is the feeling of being seen and appreciated.

Trust Your Body's Wisdom

Empower your spiritual work with your body's wisdom and intuitive understanding. Faith and spirit are accessed through the body of an emotionally intelligent leader. EI is the result when you find the spiritual connection between your body, your beliefs, and the work you are devoted to doing. Spirituality is not a dogma; it's an experience. Our "talk,"(our intentions, beliefs, and creeds) and the "walk," (our actions and behaviors) should be consistent. When they are not, when the leader's mission is inconsistent with what is practiced, those who look to leaders become confused. This lower level of consciousness results in a low level of spirituality.

EI Results in Happier and Healthier Lives

All skills discussed above can be learned. Once learned, they will lead to a healthy state of focused, unflappable competency that allows leaders to sustain leadership positions for long periods of time.

Emotions and Emotional Intelligence:

Emotions Shape Our Lives and Link Us to Emotional Intelligence Describes how emotion and its expression influence every aspect of our lives.

Good Leaders Use Emotional Intelligence is from an article written for a professional health journal that applies to all workplaces.

Emotional Intelligence Quiz This quiz gives you an indication of your comfort level with emotionally charged situations where emotional intelligence is called for.

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