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The Office of the Army Surgeon General (OTSG) and U.S. Army Medical Command hold regular leadership seminars to support their Leader Development Program. The goal is to build agile, adaptive leaders for today's environment by sharing the learning, teaching, and personal development experiences of senior leaders.
On March 19, 2021, Cheri Najor, MSW, CSW, a licensed family therapist and founder of the Center for Peak Performance, addressed the leadership audience. She discussed “emotional intelligence” and how knowledge and awareness of it can make you a better leader. Najor has 30 years of experience as a licensed family therapist. She partners with leaders who want to learn how to strengthen their relationships with others through the use of emotional intelligence. The lecture was delivered virtually.
“I have the distinct honor to introduce to you someone I hold in very high esteem,” said Lt. Gen. R. Scott Dingle, The Army Surgeon General and Commander, U.S. Army Medical Command. He first met Najor at a conference where she was speaking and thought “I have to bring her to OTSG.”
“She has supported Army Medicine commands across the country,” Dingle said, “So when we started this leadership lecture series, I thought, there is no one better I have to bring in.”
Najor used a definition of emotional intelligence provided by Daniel Goleman, who wrote an often-cited book called “Emotional Intelligence.” Emotional intelligence consists of the ability to read and respond appropriately to the moods and emotions of others, the ability to master one’s feelings, and the skill to respond to these emotions. People with emotional intelligence perceive, use, and understand how to manage emotions.
Najor greeted the audience by saying, “I have thought long and hard about what I can say to the best of the best, the most elite people on the planet. It is my greatest honor to be with you.” I want to do nothing short of “change your life,” she said.
Najor asked, “What percent does IQ contribute to the factors that determine life success?” She noted that “For most, it’s 6 to 10 percent.”
She made some points about emotion for the basis of her discussion. Emotion is the “energy that fuels our life.” It is “feelings that have a cognitive or physiological quality that impact our behavior.” And “emotion drives every single solitary thing we do.”
There are dozens of emotions from adoration and anger to sympathy and triumph. Emotions are feelings that have a cognitive and physiological quality the impact our behavior.
Emotional intelligence has been described as the “golden ticket” to everything you want in your life, which is great connections and amazing teams. It’s the ability to help other people by first helping yourself.
“You can summarize emotional intelligence with one word — relationships,” she said. “It’s all about relationships, and there are two relationships we have to be concerned with. The relationship we have with ourselves and how we view ourselves, and the relationship we have with others. This drives everything that we do.”
Najor created a heart-shaped model to show how emotional intelligence breaks down into four quadrants (see figure). Two of the quadrants each on the heart are broken down as intra-personal or inter-personal. Under intra-personal, one is self-awareness, the ability to know how you are feeling, to understand your emotions, and to use the power of intuition. Emotional attunement is the ability to pick up on how you are feeling and matching it to others.
The second quadrant under the intra-personal part of the model is emotional management. This is the ability to manage what you are feeling, she said, to link what you are thinking to what you are feeling. It’s the ability to manage stress and to bounce back from failure or perceived failure. “It’s about resilience,” she said.
On the bottom of the heart model (lower left) are emotional intelligence skills between people. Included here are social skills such as how well you listen, how well you communicate, and how well you empathize.
The fourth quadrant is the ability to read body language and pick up cues from other people.
“How does this dovetail with being an Army leader?” she asked.
Army leaders lead by example, set a high bar; they foster resilience and trust. They also know their team and equip them with the skills to achieve the mission, overcome challenges, and grow. Finally, they are teachers, coaches and mentors through positive thinking and effective problem-solving.
Emotional intelligence is the number 1 driver of leadership and personal excellence. It helps leaders to:
- Communicate better;
- Reduce anxiety and stress;
- Defuse conflicts;
- Improve relationships;
- Empathize with others;
- Overcome life’s challenges.
Does the military need emotional intelligence? Najor pointed out that the Army and the DOD spend a great deal of money on emotional resiliency programs. The Army is very focused on the impact of repeated deployments, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicide, depression, and anxiety; and that there is wide belief that emotion is a weakness.
Part of awareness of emotional intelligence is knowing how to be aware if you are “stuck” in a limiting emotional frame of mind.
Najor used Stephen Karpman’s Drama Triangle to explain how we get stuck (see second figure). It is a model of behavior that Karpman created to demonstrate how we get stuck in drama or conflict. This is what happens when people, events or circumstances overwhelm us. Being stuck on the drama triangle limits communication and, as a result, leadership skills.
There are three places we can get stuck, Najor says, as the persecutor, the rescuer, or the victim.
The persecutor may feel they are surrounded by idiots and often act as though their job is to punish the “stupid” people around them.
The rescuer often acts if he or she needs to ride in on a “white horse” to save the day, intervene, and rescue people from all sorts of problems.
A victim thinks he or she lives in an unfair world where nothing ever goes their way. Life happens to them, rather than they take charge of their lives.
Three steps are needed to move out of the drama triangle: notice you are trapped; create space; and choose your response based on values.
Secrets to strengthening your emotional intelligence include the following:
- note where you hang out on the triangle, Karpman says we tend to hang in one location, according to Najor;
- when you recognize yourself trapped in the triangle, stop and regroup;
- practice, practice, and then practice emotional intelligence skills more.
Why is emotional intelligence important?
Emotional intelligence accounts for 90 percent of what sets high performers apart from their peers with similar knowledge and skills, according to Najor.
Emotional intelligence “is the number 1 driver,” she said, of both leadership and personal skills.
You can summarize emotional intelligence with one word, Najor said, “relationships.”
| Date Taken: | 03.30.2021 |
| Date Posted: | 04.02.2021 14:57 |
| Story ID: | 392688 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 182 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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