Successful business leadership requires Emotional Intelligence, of the mind and the heart.  We must care about those we lead and understand empathy and compassion with a genuine and well balanced mind and heart.

Personally, my ability to care about others is greatly influenced by my relationship with Jesus Christ, but in corporate environments with tons of employees from various backgrounds, religion cannot always be our first standard to share with others.  My thorough Christian Counseling training and mentorship with theologians, Pastors, as well as relationship and crisis management experts to help serve others in rooms of recovery, with family and friends and even as a Chaplain has thoroughly assisted in my strengths, including being honest enough to share my weaknesses to help others.

Many times I’ve sat bedside in emergency rooms ministering to people severely suffering or recovering and learned to listen better, care more and love others like God loves me.  This works perfectly as a Chaplain, but sometimes our personal religious beliefs cannot always be expressed in the corporate setting.  We must still learn how to communicate and the need for compassion and empathy is necessary for a well balanced team.  As leaders, we must set this example, sometimes without ever mentioning religion or the extensive success in recovery I’ve personally witnessed through faith in Christ alone.

In the quest to help lead my team and respect corporate policies including “no religion or politics”, I came across two amazing books that helped several teams tremendously develop a deep sense of compassion and emotional intelligence that helped the team flourish.  I’ve helped build teams for our own businesses and as consultant for several start-ups and publicly traded companies using just these two books, I wish everyone on earth read them both.  Please share the links with someone you care about, your employees, your pastor, even your spouse, but listen to them yourself first. It starts here with you…

Here’s a wonderful audiobook called “Peaks and Valleys” that all leaders and humans for that matter could benefit from listening and learning from Spencer Johnson.

 

Here’s another masterpiece from the man who coined the term “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman