Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

Today I am going to talk about Intelligence. Emotional Intelligence that is. Over the past few weeks I had the opportunity to learn a little bit about Emotionally Intelligent Leadership, a pretty neat theory that postulates that there are a multitude of characteristics or capacities, all housed under three overlapping umbrellas, that when intentionally monitored enhance a person's ability to lead.

The umbrellas, or capacities, are Consciousness of Context, Consciousness of Self, and Consciousness of Others. By honing the different characteristics under these umbrellas we can intentionally devevelop ourselves into better leaders.

With all of this in mind I reflected upon my past experiences and underwent the EIL leadership inventory.

My strongest facet turned out to be Consciousness of Self. This really makes sense to me because I do see my self as a disciplined individual. I am constantly looking at my goals and assuring that I reach them. I strongly believe that we are responsible for ourselves and my strengths in this facet really reflects that. In other words, I'm awesome and I know I'm awesome, and I will continue to be awesome because of my understanding of my awesomeness! Awesome?

This guy gets it!!!

Within Consciousness of Self, my strongest capacities turned out to be Honest-Self Understanding and Emotional-Self Control

Honest Self Understanding means that you are aware of your strengths and your limitations. They have a complete understanding of the both positive and negative aspects of their personalty. I definitely feel this is the case. I have a natural tendency towards self evaluation and focusing on my strengths, which is why I am stronger in this area. I think this tendency comes out of the way I was raised to hone my own personal strengths and work hard to improve my weaknesses.

Emotional Self control means being able to regulate your emotions. I think this comes through because I have always been able to keep a cool head. I believe this comes from me being the youngest in my family. I always had to take everybody's grief and this helped me to develop a thick skin and it keeps me from blowing up when I am upset by something. This doesn't mean that I am not affected by my emotions, but I always keep them in check.

On the other hand my weakest facet is Consciousness of Others. I believe this comes out of my tendency to not hold others up to my own standards. I am very conscious of others but I don't necessarily go out of my way to develop them because I focus so much on ensuring that I do my own job.

Within Consciousness of Others, my weakest capacities turned out to be Coaching and Inspiration. I feel as though I am a very empathetic person, but I suppose I do not always go out of my way to analyze others. I believe this comes out of my own belief that you are responsible for doing your OWN best. This hurts me because it is harder for me to work on helping others enhance their skills and abilities. Additionally, this focus on self doesn't do me any favors in the inspiration category. Again, it is hard to focus on a shared vision when you are only working on improving yourself.

These guys have a shared vision and they are ready to march!

After reflecting on my own personal experience EIL has really brought put some interesting questions. Clearly I am a very driven, dedicated, and focused. However, I have issues transferring my goals and my motivation to others. This is largely due to my focus on ensuring that I live up to my own standards, but at the cost of helping others also measure up. In the future this is one huge area that I will need to work on to become a more Emotionally Intelligent Leader! I hope to immediately begin to work on these capacities by reaching out to others in my student organizations and personally asking them how I can help them succeed. In the end a great organization can never function well if the entire team is moving together towards a shared vision!

Students Consulting for Non Profit Organizations

"Get on a balcony."

These are the words that my SLA advisor urged our class to execute as she wrote to us from her Chicago locale last week. My first thought was that MelRoc spent some time on the Sears Tower balcony and maybe got a little too excited to share her experience.

Then I reread her words and I realized I had a problem. In order to "get on a balcony," or what Melissa really meant, be a silent observer of a student organization, I had to actually have an organization to observe. Therein lies the rub. The student organization that I had envisioned observing was not meeting for two weeks. My thoughts, however, were expected to be fully realized in virtual ink within a week. Dilemma.

So I had to be flexible. I scrambled, asking any and all friends for possible ideas. I even considered "cold" attending random student org meetings in the union. Thankfully a good friend and roommate invited me to observe one of his student orgs, Students Consulting for Non-Profits.

Students Consulting for Non Profit Organizations, or SCNO in word count friendly terms, is a Fisher College of Business student organization whose mission is to develop communities through pro-bono consulting engagements for non profits.

This organization's mission really excited me and so going into their meeting I realized that I was going to have to put in some extra effort into remaining silent and impartial.

I walked into the classroom on the third floor of Schoenbaum Hall, introduced myself to the exec team, and then quietly took a seat at the back of the amphitheater like seating.

One of the first things I noticed about the organization was the attendance. The meeting began at 7:30, and at 7:25 there were already over 25 members in the room. For an organization of a little over 30 members I found this number pretty impressive.

After a little bit of technical difficulty, and a few jokes thrown out by the exec team, the meeting got rolling. The president, Adam Windnagle, a cheerful guy with a carefree air about him, began the meeting by setting up an icebreaker where each member was to talk to two other members, giving their name and describing their least favorite state. Immediately I could tell that there were a number of newcomers to the organization. At least half, if not more, seemed to be unfamiliar with their peers. The number of new members really hints at the real possibility that this organization faces high turnover, that is to say that the general members don't stick around for a long time.

The meeting then continued with the week's announcements. It turns out that SCNO is already in the officer transition stage. Adam let his members know that they would be looking to replace a number of the exec team who were planning to graduate within this school year. As he described the open positions, a number of officers chipped in as to the responsibilities. The interaction among the officers really gives one the impression that this is an organization run through the collaboration of a devoted exec board and not just a single individual.

After the talk about exec positions, Adam closed the announcements portion of the meeting by alerting everyone to a mandatory "SCNOcial" this Friday. The members were told that they would need to email a valid excuse to the VP of Human Resources if they were unable to make the organization's get together. This idea of a mandatory social makes me think that the organization is trying very hard to get the new members quickly familiar with each other and feeling like a part of the organization.

After announcements, all of the members broke down into groups of five, which were managed by a team lead as well as an exec board member. As I listened to each group discuss their clients and their plan of action for the coming weeks, I could really tell that all of the students seemed very passionate about the mission and values of the organization. Values like the ability to give back to their community and the opportunity to develop personally. Listening to them talk and discovering some of the explicit values really made me also dig into possible implicit values of the organization, such as professionalism, teamwork, leadership, and critical thinking.


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When the meeting concluded I was very impressed with the organization. The meeting ran very smoothly with a very organized and focused exec board. All of the members seemed very excited, and the actions of the group seemed to line straight up with the organization's mission. However, I couldn't help but to see a few areas where the organization could improve. My biggest concern is with the organization's apparent high turnover rate. The mission and work of the organization really demands a lot of its members and it is possible that a number of members have the "one and done" attitude. Another issue that could possibly arise within the organization involved the officer transition process. The organization stands to lose over half it's executive team by the end of the year, most of whom were founding members of the organization. While the executive board seems to be functioning very effectively at this point, they may face challenges in maintaining the organization's vision as new blood steps in.



IMHO (In my humble opinion) SCNO is a very promising organization. I personally admire the work they are doing and I am very impressed by their members. I really look forward in helping to further strengthen the organization with outside input as they move forward. I sincerely hope that my view from the balcony can bring valuable input to the organization.

Enlightening

Incoherent academic psycho babble. Tell me how you really feel.

"Prior to the forthcoming termination of the out of frame
mythological creature I shall at the behest of the motion
picture's director conveniently strike a fierce pose
as pictured above." - Gandalf the White Academic 

And that is how I really feel. Anytime I am forced to open up an academic book or dissect an academic article I end up imagining some poor schmuck who was forced to adhere to some template for academic writing in which his observations and research have to match up with an entire other world of written communication. Communication reserved for intellectuals who I imagine have big grey beards and work from  Ivy League library offices in the heart of New England. To them, academic writing must be some archaic form of bejeweled where instead of matching up pretty colored jewels for combo points they string together random words from their doctorate level vocabulary.

My problem with academic writing lies almost solely with the presentation of the content and not with the content itself. You would think that these people would consider all the poor undergrad students forced to suffer through pages and pages of their research. Perfectly good research.

Enlightening even.

Take for instance research on understanding student development. Some may even go as far as to call it "Student Development Theory." If only I were so bold. The thing is that after you sift through all the fancy wording and graduate speak you get a pretty sound understanding of the numerous approaches used to develop youth over the past few hundred years.

Particularly enlightening is Perry's Cognitive Theory of Student Development. Perry talks about three levels of development dealing with the growth of a student's understanding of truth and values and eventually *gasp* "the meaning of life." This theory essentially states that a student starts with a pretty binary concept of what is right and what is wrong.  The student then makes a pit stop at "relativism" where they come to terms with the concept of shades of gray. Finally the student arrives at an understanding of the world as a complex system in which they find their own identity and live on their own terms shaped by their previous experiences.

Don't get this? Consider picking up a book every once in a while you slacker!

And here comes the key question: Now what? As a student leader and an advocate for student leadership, having an understanding of how leaders develop is pretty key.

Over the past year I have developed this toolbox as a facilitator. The Experiential Leadership Cycle has been a pretty great crutch to lean on. It provides a tangible experience from which a lesson can be learned. Something from which a clear lesson or take-away can be derived and help the students/clients to grow. The entire facilitation process has also grown familiar and is very useful when consulting with and helping to improve student organizations. However, it isn't enough to implement these processes from the comforting security blanket that their structure provides. We need a deeper understanding of what it is that we are actually doing: developing student leaders.

This is where leadership theory comes in. Examining leadership theory helps us to take a step back and look at the whole picture. By looking at the process as a whole we can better pinpoint where on the spectrum a student may sit. You may be thinking, "well why is that even important?" Think about it with the following real life scenario. Let's say you and your friends want to go to Baltimore. You know, eat some crab, see the sights, partake in some other extra-curricular activities. So you know what your goal is: Get to Baltimore. So what do you do? Well if you are like me, the first thing you do is hop on The Googles and use the nifty maps feature. And when you go to that feature not only are you prompted with your destination, but also your starting point.

I'm gonna let that sink in for a second.....

So if you are thinking to yourself "Ryan wants me to reflect on how you have to know where you start before you can get to your destination" then DING DING DING. You got it! Understanding leadership theory is pivotal because it gives us a road map that helps us identify where a student or student group may have gotten lost. Using that map is the first of many steps to getting a student or student group back on the road to their destination, speeding on their way to their shared vision.

Man I love metaphors.

So in the end, sifting through all the academic psycho babble that obfuscates the core behind true understanding is just one more obstacle in helping to develop leaders. Academic speak isn't going anywhere. But if you can sift through the riddle wrapped up in the enigma there's more than a few gold nuggets of wisdom.

Enlightened?

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If you're interested in learning more about Leadership Theory there are entire libraries and academic books full of interesting insights. Go get 'em tiger! If you are like me and want to skip the fluff and get straight to the meaning of life, have your credit card ready and head for the following link: http://amzn.to/v4NUd