Developing Emotionally Mature Leaders

How Emotional Intelligence Can Help Transform Your Ministry

Aubrey Malphurs

• Publisher: Baker Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781493406159
• Topic: Theology & Religion

There are many things that make up a great leader. The ability to motivate, to see the big picture, to delegate. But perhaps just as important, if not more so, is the leader's emotional intelligence (EQ). How we feel impacts how we lead, and how those we lead feel about themselves when they're around us affects how well they follow our leadership. It follows then that if we want to be the most effective leaders, we must be emotionally mature.In this practical book, church leadership expert Aubrey Malphurs shows church and ministry leaders how to assess, understand, and improve both their own EQ and that of their followers, so that they can inspire the very best in their churches and organizations.

Part 1: Introduction to Emotional Intelligence

1
Six Basic Assumptions of Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Foundation Stones

I bring six basic assumptions to this material on emotional intelligence. They will serve as emotional foundation stones on which the book rests.

1. Emotionally mature Christians are spiritually mature believers. The popular term for this concept of emotional maturity is emotional intelligence (EI), also referred to as emotional quotient (EQ). Perhaps a better term is emotional maturity, which is a reflection of one’s spiritual maturity. To be spiritually mature is to be emotionally mature. And to be emotionally mature is to be spiritually mature. While not the same, like twins they are inseparable. You don’t have one without the other. So those Christians who believe they are spiritually mature persons, but who evidence little emotional maturity, are mistaken.

2. The Godhead is characterized by emotions. An aspect of who God is—his identity—has to do with the fact that he’s an emotional God. What I mean by that is he is a God who experiences emotions such as love, anger, joy, and hope. And most important to this book, he has created us in his image (Gen. 1:26–27). That means we too are emotional beings—that is a part of our identity. I’ll say more about this in the sections on the theology of emotions in part 2.

3. The hope of the world is an emotionally mature church. Bill Hybels once said that Christ’s church is the hope of the world. What he means is that every church exists to bring Christ’s message to a lost and dying world. Churches are vehicles of grace, and that message is their mission. Therefore this book will reflect a love for Christ in general and his church in particular. In its pages a high view of God’s church will be seen. When functioning as Christ designed it, the local church can be a wonderful, God-honoring entity that reaches lost, unchurched people while edifying those who have embraced the Savior. This is an emotionally mature church and what Christ intended. It is his desire to build this kind of church (Matt. 16:18). However, when not functioning as Christ intended—emotionally immature—the local church can be ugly. Currently the latter seems to be more the case, as many churches are in decline (some say as many as nine of ten), and a large number of their young people are walking away from them.

4. Emotional intelligence is critically important to God-honoring leadership. Most important, after professing that Christ’s church is the hope of the world, Hybels added that leadership is the hope of the church. A church can’t function well—it can’t accomplish its mission—without godly, servant leadership. And emotionally mature leadership is key. If a church is not doing well, it is largely a reflection of its leadership. Consequently, this book is about leadership and the critical importance of EI to good, Christ-honoring leadership of his people.

5. Scripture undergirds the importance of emotional maturity. Through the Scriptures God has revealed himself to humankind. Paul says that the Bible is profitable for reproof, correction, and for instruction in godly living (2 Tim. 3:16–17). At a time when most believe that truth is relative, the Bible provides us with absolute truth that addresses who we are and what we do. Thus in this book we will constantly look to Scripture for the truths that undergird and reveal the importance of maturity in general and emotional maturity in particular. This will be most evident when we explore the theology of emotions later in this book.

6. Emotions are central to what it means to be human and live life. Emotions are not fickle, not to be trusted, or a sign of weakness, as some Christian Stoics profess. Instead, they are central to what it means to be human and live life. Robert Solomon says it well: “We live our lives through our emotions, and it is our emotions that give our lives meaning. What interests or fascinates us, who we love, what angers us, what bores us—all of this defines us, gives us character, and constitutes who we are.”1 Again, this addresses our identity. We talk about our emotions every day. We ask or are asked, “How are you?” We tell someone about what has upset us or has made us happy. Everything we do would seem to involve our emotions to some degree.

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

1. Everyone brings his or her assumptions to a discussion of any topic. What assumptions do you bring to the topic of emotional intelligence and leadership?
2. Which of your assumptions agree with the author’s, and which disagree?
3. Is there any assumption that stands out above all the rest?
4. If you were to add to the author’s assumptions, what would you add?

2
A Brief History of Emotional Intelligence

An EI Who’s Who

Chances are good that before you picked up this book, you had never heard of emotional intelligence or EI (also called EQ). IQ maybe, but not EI. So the following will provide a brief history to catch you up on what has taken, and is taking place in the world of EI. It begins as far back as Plato and ends with such names as Salovey, Mayer, Goleman, Bar-On, Ekman, Plutchik, Bradberry, and Greaves, among a growing number of others. What did these people discover, and how can it contribute to and impact our emotional intelligence?

Early Pioneers

As far back as two thousand years ago, Plato seems to have realized that emotions play a role in one’s learning. It’s reported that he once said that all learning has an emotional base. Over time others have observed and commented on the power of people’s emotions to influence their thoughts and actions. For example, in the 1870s Charles Darwin (The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals) and later in the 1950s Abraham Maslow, the father of the human potential movement, address in their writings the topic of one’s emotions. This was in a context where scientists, educators, and others believed that emotions were problematic, a sign of weakness that prevented people from making good, rational decisions. However, as a formal, scientific field of study, it is a relatively new science going back approximately thirty years. That is the reason so few people today seem to be aware of the topic and know little about it. This would include Christians as well as non-Christians.

Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer

In 1990 Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer came up with the term emotional intelligence. They believed that emotional intelligence involved one’s ability to recognize emotions—both theirs and others—monitor them, and use them to effectively guide one’s thinking and actions in their own social context. Salovey and Mayer also initiated a research program intended to develop valid measures of emotional intelligence and to explore its significance. In one study, they discovered that individuals who scored high in emotional intelligence were better able to cope with changes in their environments and build supportive social networks with teammates and others.

Daniel Goleman

In the 1990s Daniel Goleman, a Harvard-trained psychologist and science writer with the New York Times, discovered Salovey and Mayer’s work along with others that led to his bestselling book Emotional Intelligence. While at Harvard he trained with David McClelland, who was exploring the topic of how to lead a successful life. Goleman’s challenge was to explore how to bring the two—emotional intelligence and success in life—together. A major contribution was his conclusion that, contrary to the prevailing view, it was not cognitive intelligence alone that led to success in business and leadership but emotional intelligence. He concluded that emotionally intelligent people have four characteristics:

• They are good at recognizing and understanding their own emotions, both good and bad (self-awareness).
• They are good at managing those emotions (self-management).
• They are empathetic and able to recognize and understand others’ emotions (social awareness).
• They are good at helping others handle their emotions (social/relational skills).

Goleman has also written and done much of his research with a strong emphasis on leadership and the impact emotional resonance has on leaders.

Reuven Bar-On

Since 1972 Reuven Bar-On, who is a clinical psychologist, has been deeply involved in research and the application of emotional intelligence, and he’s considered one of the leading proponents in the field today. He has invented the term emotional quotient (EQ) to describe his particular approach to assessing emotional competence. He has created the Bar-On Emotional Quotient Inventory (the EQ-i), which is the first test of emotional intelligence to be published by a psychological test publisher. This tool has been translated into numerous languages and is considered to be the most popular measure of emotional intelligence in today’s market.

Paul Ekman

Paul Ekman, professor emeritus in psychology at UCSF and a preeminent American psychologist, is the researcher and author best known for furthering our understanding of nonverbal behavior, focusing on facial expressions and gestures. In addition to his own distinguished academic career, Ekman has authored more than one hundred published articles and holds several honorary doctoral degrees. Through a series of studies Ekman discovered that there is a high correlation between people of different Western and Eastern cultures in selecting emotions that fit facial expressions. Thus he believes facial expressions are universal and include such emotions as anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Ekman was named by the American Psychological Association as one of the most influential psychologists of the twentieth century, and Time magazine (2009) hailed him as one of the one hundred most influential people in the world.

Robert Plutchik

Robert Plutchik was both professor emeritus at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and adjunct professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. In his early training, he received a PhD from Columbia University and became a psychologist with interest in suicide, violence, psychotherapy, and emotions. He has proved to be a prolific writer and has authored or coauthored more than 260 articles, forty-five chapters, and eight books and has edited seven books. Plutchik also created a wheel of emotions that he used to illustrate different emotions. Plutchik first proposed his cone-shaped model or wheel model in 1980 to describe how emotions were related to one another. His psycho-evolutionary theory of emotion has proved to be one of the most influential classification approaches for general emotional responses.

Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves

Travis Bradberry holds a bachelor of science degree in clinical psychology from the University of California, San Diego, and dual PhD in clinical and industrial-organizational psychology. Jean Greaves holds a PhD and MA in industrial-organizational psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology and a BA in psychology from Stanford University. Both are award-winning authors and are the cofounders of TalentSmart, a global think tank that is a consulting group serving a number of Fortune 500 companies. They are a leading provider of emotional intelligence tests and training. One of their bestselling books is Emotional Intelligence 2.0, which provides the reader with a step-by-step program for increasing one’s emotional intelligence.

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

1. Have you heard of any of the people in this chapter prior to the reading of this book? If so, who?
2. If not, why not?
3. Do you believe that they are accomplished, professional research people in the field of EI? Why or why not? Do they have good credentials?
4. Does any one of them stand out above the rest? If so, who?

3
The Importance of Emotional Intelligence

What Difference Does It Make?

Why write a book or offer a course on emotional intelligence? Is it really that important to the church and its leaders? In this chapter, fifteen reasons are presented for why every Christian in general and leaders in particular should understand and value the importance of emotional intelligence.

Unemotional Numbness

For too many Christians, their so-called relationship with God is void of any emotion. Instead, it’s all about checking the right boxes—fulfilling a list of dos and don’ts. This leads to a tired, unemotional numbness that is void of feeling on the inside that may explain why some have given up on their faith or on ever having a deep, moving faith. They’ve missed the emotional side of having a relationship with God. They don’t know how to love God and therefore don’t love him. This doesn’t have to be. I’ll say more about this under the theology of emotions in part 2.

Emotional Vulnerability

Many are suspicious of their emotions and tend to fear them. They associate emotions with weakness and vulnerability. Thus they attempt to divorce themselves from them and rely on them as little as possible. For men, this may be cultural as they associate emotions with the female sex whom they believe to be more emotional. Strength is found in being rational and intellectual. To be rational is safe; to be emotional is to be weak, out of control, and thus vulnerable. Finally, a number of scholars and scientists, including Christians and even Christian leaders whom I refer to as Stoics, believe...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Endorsements
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Introduction to Emotional Intelligence
• Part 2: Understanding Emotional Intelligence
• Part 3: Becoming an Emotionally Mature Leader
• Appendixes
• Notes
• Index
• Back Ad
• Back Cover