Leadership Essentials No. 1
Emotional Intelligence
Harvard Business Review published a book called ‘On Leadership’ which simply collated their 10 most
significant articles on leadership. In the book they cover setting direction, encouraging risk taking,
motivating others and much more. However the first article entitled ‘What makes a leader’ is fascinating.
We might say competence, gifting, vision, or all are important, but what they found in their research was
that it was emotional intelligence that made somebody a great leader.
So in ‘Leadership Essentials No 1’ we are going to look at Emotional Intelligence and its importance in
leading people in a church context, in fact the key role it plays in becoming a mature disciple of Jesus.
There are five main aspects to emotional intelligence (EI)…
(Adapted from HBR’s On Leadership page 4-5)
EI Component
Definition
Self – Awareness
Knowing ones emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, values and
goals – and their impact on others.
Self – Regulation
Controlling or redirecting disruptive emotions and impulses.
Motivation
Being driven to achieve for the sake of achievement.
Empathy
Considering others’ feelings especially when making decisions.
Social Skill
Managing relationships to move people in the desired direction.
If I was to define emotional intelligence it would be something like: Knowing and controlling yourself,
understanding others and motivating, training and inspiring others to do their best.
In the language at Tyneside Vineyard we might say leading people into life and starting with ourselves.
Each component of emotional intelligence has hallmarks in all ours behaviours and character.
(Adapted from HBR’s On Leadership page 4-5)
EI Component
Hallmarks
Self – Awareness
Self-confidence, realistic self-assessment, self-deprecating sense of
humour and thirst for constructive criticism.
Self – Regulation
Trustworthiness, integrity, comfort with ambiguity and change.
Motivation
A passion for the work itself and for new challenges, unflagging
energy to improve, and optimism in the face of failure.
Empathy
Expertise in attracting and retaining talent, ability to develop others,
sensitivity to cross-cultural differences.
Social Skill
Effectiveness in leading change, persuasiveness, extensive
networking, expertise in building and leading teams.
They are of course taken from a business setting but I am sure you can see how significant they are to
leadership in a church and actually just maturity in our faith.
Emotional intelligence in practice
Leadership Essentials No. 1
All five of the above components are intrinsically linked, and we will all be stronger in different
components. Only Jesus was perfect in His EI! So the first observation in regards to our personal EI is… can
we identify components we are strong in, weaker in and are we comfortable with the results?
Churches are unique in the depth and significance of relationships and interactions. We often share the
most personal of information, we are served by others and we also serve, it is a key place we pursue our
faith and also a place where we help others to do the same.
Leaders build the culture; they nurture a climate where people can thrive, not just ministries or activities.
John Wimber once said that he wanted a church not just a crowd on a Sunday! It’s a leaders job to
encourage the crowd to be the church. To do this as leaders we needed to develop our EI.
So how can we identify limitations in EI? Let’s look at each one and consider the impact of being limited in
each component.
EI Component
Self –
Awareness
Hallmarks
Self-confidence,
realistic selfassessment, selfdeprecating sense of
humour and thirst for
constructive criticism.
Impacts of limitations in component
A leader who is insecure, who has a poor assessment of
themselves massively impacts their leadership and also
their response to others in their team. It is interesting that
self-deprecating humour is a hallmark because often
leaders that are insecure can’t make fun of themselves or
allow others to poke fun at them through normal banter.
It is also a telling sign with a leader if they don’t look for
constructive criticism or allows their leaders or peers to
speak constructively into their lives and leadership.
What’s the impact on a team? Awkward treading on
eggshells atmosphere, little fun or humour and any team
with a leader who is weak in self-awareness will struggle
to thrive, they will struggle to develop other because of
their own insecurity.
Self –
Regulation
Trustworthiness,
integrity, comfort with
ambiguity and change.
If a leader struggles to control or redirect their disruptive
emotions and impulses then it can be pretty destructive.
Leaders are trusted and need to have strong integrity. If
emotions keep getting the better of them, if they loose
their temper, are super critical when frustrated, or overly
emotional if things are tough, if they shut people out
because they find them a little difficult then their team
won’t trust them and they will loose part of their
integrity.
A leader who lacks this component will find that they hit a
wall with their team or ministry and they will have a large
turnover in team members.
It is not wrong to be emotional, it is not wrong to show
that to the team they lead, it is not wrong to challenge
people in their team, but the old adage ‘it’s not what you
say but how you say it’ defines often a leaders level of EI
in this component.
Motivation
A passion for the work
itself and for new
Motivation for leading and developing the team or
ministry that a leader is responsible for. If they lack this
Leadership Essentials No. 1
challenges, unflagging
energy to improve, and
optimism in the face of
failure.
component and rely on others people’s motivation then
their ministry area or team will simply not grow and will
not achieve its purpose.
‘You can’t serve what you haven’t cooked!’ others
knowing and seeing you can do it is motivating
What will happen is that others will try to lead the team
and will be frustrated with the leaders commitment to the
cause.
Teams and ministries again will struggle to be united and
move towards their goal.
Empathy
Expertise in attracting
and retaining talent,
ability to develop
others, sensitivity to
cross-cultural
differences.
When a leader looks around a team what do they see? Do
they see people to do a task or job, or do they see
individuals with huge potential that they have
responsibility to help develop?
Empathy is not the same telling people what they want to
hear! It is about bringing the best out of each person on a
team.
What happens if a leader lacks empathy? Firstly it might
go well but after a while members of the team will get
disillusioned, they will feel that they are not valued and
are just a commodity to achieve the leaders task or goal.
A fundamental aspect of a leader in a church is the
development of others. This is especially true at Tyneside
Vineyard where we value servant leadership and not
positional leadership, where leading people into life,
releasing them into their gifting is a fundamental value.
Social Skill
Effectiveness in leading
change, persuasiveness,
extensive networking,
expertise in building
and leading teams.
A key characteristic of a leader that lacks developed social
skills is that they will be exclusive. They will not be able to
build large effective teams because they can’t network
with a wide variety of people.
They struggle to get people involved in their ministry or
team because they can’t cast vision in a way that
captivates a wider cross section of the church.
It is easy for a team lead by a leader with limited social
skills to have an effective small team that maintains a
ministry but can’t grow and develop it. They will
increasingly become detached from the wider church.
Why develop EI in our leadership and in our general character?
All the above might sound a bit negative so let’s finish with painting a picture of a leader with a good level of
each component.
Leadership Essentials No. 1
A ministry or team with a leader that has all five components to a good level will thrive; it will grow, achieve
amazing things and have fun along the way. Each member of the team (*who wants to) will grow on the
journey and be released into their gifting and developed as an individual. A ministry with a leader with high
EI will be vibrant and flourish and the team will love and value the leader, not just because of what has been
achieved but also how the leader has developed them as an individual.
John Maxwell often speaks about levels of leadership (Have a look at the video links on the leaders page on
the website). A leader with high EI as well as good ability will soon become a level 4 leader.
We can’t underestimate the importance of EI and as leaders we need to be constantly reflecting on how we
can learn and develop to enable us to grow in each of the 5 components so we can develop the effectiveness
of our leadership.
* Not everyone wants to be developed
Part of EI in a leader is reconciling their passion for developing a ministry and the individuals in their team
in the reality that not everybody will want to be developed and share the same level of passion for the
purpose of the ministry and team.
It is important that we don’t take responsibility for others poor choices, we can win them all as much as we
would like too. Leaders with high EI be able to make the right choices in regards to the time they spend
trying to develop people, they will identify those individuals that want to be developed and work with them
instead of trying to work with those that don’t.
Remember we have adult : adult relationships not parent : child.