More about my day of inspiration...

I will warn you now this will end up long. So I forgive you in advance if you don't read through it all. You have a free pass. This recap is really more for me than anything else. If you choose to read through it I hope you gain from it.

I attended a conference called Leaders Summit-Igniting Passion and Capabilities in Leaders. Basically, a method of learning skills which make a great leader and how to become a great leader. I went to this conference for work but as I said in my prior post it will benefit me in all areas of life. Today's conference was just the first of 2 conferences. I expect the other to be in the spring. We were taught by 2 different men. Don McMinn and Christopher Cass, both were awesome, inspirational, and great speakers. I truly was in tune the entire day!

Leadership skills are grouped into 2 categories: Hard Skills (what a leader does) and Soft Skills (who a leader is). There are 6 skills in each category and today we talked about 3 of the Soft Skills. Emotional Intelligence, Life-long-learning (or L3) and People Skills.

Emotional Intelligence (EI)
Luckily for me, Emotional Intelligence can be learned. We took a quick self eval and I scored a 6.75 out of 10 so as you can see there is room for improvement.

Here are some principles about EI:

1. We can't ignore emotions. They are a part of everyone one in the human race and we therefore must learn to deal with them. Both the emotions of ourselves and of others.
2. All emotions can be categorized one of 2 ways. Positive or Painful.
3. Our life (days, weeks, months, years) consist of peaks and valleys of positive and painful emotions.
4. Emotions affect our thinking and behavior. There is always something behind the emotions being displayed.
5. Emotions are to be expressed to God and to others and never withheld.
6. Emotional attunement is the key to properly processing emotions.

Attunement

When someone expresses emotions, the ONLY proper initial response is to respond emotionally. We are never to respond with logic, reasoning, criticism or neglect the emotion. Furthermore, we are to match the emotional expression with the same emotion. In other words, if the emotion is positive, respond with a positive emotion, if it is painful then respond with a painful emotion. On the flip side of the coin, if someone makes a logical comment, respond with logic, not emotion.

This response method is actually Biblical (gotta love that!). In Romans 12:15 Paul says, "rejoice with those who rejoice, mourn with those who mourn."

My Emotions

I need to learn to:

1. Sense where I am emotionally, particularly when I am speaking,
2. Properly express my emotions (don't stuff or spew),
3. Express my emotions at the proper time, place and to the right person,
4. Don't allow a minor incident to tap into a large unrelated issue,
5. Realize how I feel physically will affect my emotions,
6. Not allow my emotions to control a group of people around me,
7. Live an emotionally balanced life (not be overly emotional or non emotional but somewhere in between),
8. Pursue emotional health (deal with past painful emotions), and
9. Don't allow past painful emotions to influence me more than past positive emotions.

Others Emotions

I need to:

1. Have a desire to empathize with the emotions of others,
2. Learn to access the emotional state of others (read body language, ask questions),
3. When an issue is being presented as a logical one (but really isn't) I need to be able to perceive that,
4. Encourage others to express their emotions and not be afraid to address an emotionally charged situation (elephant in the room situation),
5. Properly respond to other's emotions through emotional attunement, and
6. Don't allow others to emotionally abuse me.

Life-Long-Learning (L3)

This one really stepped on my toes. I realized I am in so much of a rut and I need to change A LOT of things to get out of it. How this will all fit into my days I don't know but after today I don't see it as an option. If you are still reading (and bless you if you are) I ask for you to pray for me on this one.

Why must a leader be a life long learner? People want to drink from a fresh stream, not a stale pond. The speaker said within 10 minutes of talking with someone he knows if they are fresh or stale. Needless to say I avoided any conversation other than introductions with this man. How embarrassing! Second, life-long-learning is necessary in order to be a person of vision. And third, leadership doesn't take place in a vacuum so leaders need to understand the world in which they live. To be well informed and well rounded.

Prereq's for L3:

1. Adopt a holistic approach to learning. Luke 2:52 says, "And Jesus grew in wisdom (intellectually) and stature (physically), and in favor with God (spiritually) and men (socially and relationally)." Jesus grew. If Jesus needed to grow how much more do I?!?!
2. Develop an inquiring mind and be curious.
3. Be willing to pay a price for growing.
4. Take responsibility for personal growth.
5. Learn to anticipate and reflect. Use the 10/60/30 rule. Before experiencing an event, spend 10% of your time anticipating the event, 60% experiencing the event, and 30% of your time reflecting on the event. This approach is engaging and allows you to experience an event so much more deeply.
6. Learn to record your thoughts. (The speaker keeps a "significant thoughts journal". He carries it everywhere he goes and even if a thought occurs at 2am he will get up and write it down. If not recorded it is lost and therefore cannot become part of your growth process.)
7. View yourself as incomplete.
8. Learn from the experiences in life. "I applied my heart to what I observed and learned a lesson from what I saw." Proverbs 23:32.

Now for the even tougher part. These are ways to actually follow through.

1. Pursue a broad education. Avoid staying within your "area of expertise" and branch out to discover other things. Learn to play an instrument, study physics, study a foreign country, etc. Something that you wouldn't ordinarily do in the daily grind of life.
2. Read. Reading an hour a day on one subject for five years will make you an expert. Who knew? Knowing how to read and not doing it is far more detrimental than not knowing how to read at all.
3. Travel extensively. Now I really don't see this happening. Even though we were told today not to let finances keep us from traveling...finances will keep me from traveling.
4. Pursue invigorating relationships with others we can learn from. This isn't from today's conference but rather from Pastor Mark but he says we should always be in a relationship with someone more spiritually mature than ourself and someone less spiritually mature than ourself. I love this.
5. Learn from successes and failures. We should spend more time learning what made our successes successful and less time dwelling on failures. Learning why you failed doesn't necessarily mean you will succeed the next time. However, failure will happen. "If you haven't failed, you haven't tried very hard." -Shirley Hufstedler

So what do I need to do? Read! Journal! --hold me accountable please!

People Skills

The Carnegie Foundation states, "About 15% of one's success is due to one's technical knowledge and about 85% is due to skill in human engineering-to personality and the ability to get along with and lead people." Wow! Kind of makes me wonder why I spent 4 years in college.

People skills are aptitudes, attitudes, and abilities that allow an individual to relate to others in a productive and wholesome manner. The Bible places great importance on people skills. When Jesus was asked to name the most important commandment, he answered "love God and love others" (Matthew 22). Good people skills allow us to obey the second part of that command. People skills can be identified in the Bible and are referred to as "one anothers." Thirty-five times in the New Testament we see an action verb followed by the words "one another." The conference listed 7 of the 35 one anothers as being the most important.

1. Engage-be a friendly person (Romans 15:15)
2. Empathize-be a sensitive person (2 Corinthians 1:4)
3. Prefer others-be a selfless person (Romans 12:10)
4. Listen-be an attentive person (James 1:19)
5. Accept others-receive people for who they are (Romans 15:7)
6. Respect others-honor all people (Romans 12:10)
7. Admonish others-help people through diplomatic confrontation (Colossians 3:16)

We took another test to see which of these 7 we were strong in and which needed work. Here are my results:

Two Highest scores: Respect, Accept

Two Lowest scores: Engage, Admonish

And one last thing before I sign off. We were asked to list who our mentors are. One to be a person we don't know and don't interact with and one to be someone we interact with regularly. I don't typically think about who my mentors are and so I had to think and the name that came to mind rather quickly was Jennifer Raack. She has been through SO MUCH with the car accident last year, doctor's appointments, surgeries, children's ministry, 4 kids, a husband, etc, etc, etc yet she is still strong in the Lord and continues to spend time with God daily and relates life back to scripture all the time. I have less drama and more free time so why can't I do that? Jennifer, what's your secret?

If you've hung in there through this entire post may God bless you and redeem your time.