In this one minute youtube clip, Greg Latemore, an organizational consultant and trainer of young leaders at the Business school of the University of Queensland talks about the future of leadership. He says that it used to be that you were just expected to show up and do your job, leaving your brain at home. No longer is that the case. In the world of leadership you are expected to bring both your brain and your heart. He talked about the importance of emotional intelligence, and how it can be used to cultivate motivation in yourself and others.
Pastors and leaders in Christianity cannot afford to just fill the pulpit and do the same job that their pastor growing up did. The world is changing faster than we can track it. If we are going to have any chance of a successful ministry, we need to be innovative, creative, and led by the Spirit on a daily basis. Emotional Intelligence is just the beginning. We need to have community intelligence, where we have our hand on the pulse of our cities, knowing how best we can serve God in the environment he has thrown us into. We need to have a spiritual intelligence, we cannot settle for handing someone a Bible verse when they really need an encounter with the Almighty. We need to align our hearts with the heart of God and move as one with His Spirit. Only then will we be able lead the people of God and follow the call that the Father has given us.
David, this was an interesting post. However, after watching this video I struggled to understand how a leader is to go about developing emotional intelligence. Does this primarily mean as leaders we need to be in touch with our emotions? If so, how does being emotionally cognizant aid us in leading people? Are followers more apt to follow leaders who are more emotionally expressive? Do followers find it easier to catch the leader’s vision and passion perhaps? One of the quotes from the video I struggled with was this:
ReplyDeleteThoughts do not produce action, only emotion produces motion"
While I agree that emotions certainly play a critical role in creating motivation within us, I also believe that we can be motivated through truth that is not accompanied by a great deal of emotion. I think that our personality type may be more of an accurate indicator of how we are motivated. I know plenty of people who are motivated by things that are very much so void of emotion. How then do we as leaders use our emotional intelligence to motivate such individuals? Thanks for sharing this post, as it allowed me to reflect on the role emotions play in leadership.