EQ. Pt. 5

Welcome to Leadership Sovereignty. I'm your host Terry Baylor along with Ralph Owens. And today we'll discuss how leadership is shaped by personal life stories and experiences. How a leader's capacity must align with their integrity and character and lastly how self awareness enhances both personal and professional relationships. Enjoy the show.

One of the things that also goes on to say here is that, you know, in this book I'm reading, they've interviewed over, you know, 125 CEOs, leaders, men, women. What I loved about that is, you know, all social backgrounds, different, you know, religions and all that from the age of 23 to 63. So they have a really wide range. And what they came up with is that there was no particular list, characteristic skills or styles that led to success, rather. Their leadership emerged from their life stories.

By constantly testing themselves through real world experiences and by reframing their life stories to understand who they are. These leaders unleashed their passions and discovered the person or the purpose of their leadership.

That's really good.

You see what I'm saying? So look, our interactions, that stuff is that's how you find it. You got to get out there in the game of life, man.

Yeah. So true.

You know, and hone in because we're not gonna get it all the time. Hey, there have been some times, you know, Ralph and I have been to some meetings and you Ralph's like, Tee, man, you know you let that guy have it right. I'll work on it tomorrow, I'll get better tomorrow. Remember, remember, I'm a go back to a conversation. A real conversation, I told the guy, you cried to the wrong person.

Yeah. You remember that?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's the

I was I was on the journey guys. I was on the journey.

You know, but that's that's the beautiful thing about EQ is that it's a constant to your point. You constantly get opportunities every day to develop it, right, both personally and develop and, and, professionally. But just recapping those- those benefits to the personal life of EQ is, improve relationships, enhance well-being, increase resilience and greater self awareness. In a professional life, Some of the the the benefits that you and the importance of EQ is, number one is effective leadership because emotional intelligence is essential for inspiring and motivating teams. I heard it say it this way.

A lot of people focus on IQ, you know, versus EQ. But I believe in reading that book, they talked about how almost every single president of The United States has been very, very high on EQ versus IQ. And typically CEOs of companies are very high on EQ versus IQ. And I think you went as far as to say that in nine times out of 10, you're going to find that the people who are the smartest, the IQ people, always work for people with the highest level of emotional intelligence because they lead effectively. Right?

I mean, any thoughts that come to mind for you, Terry, on that?

Ralph, man, you put together this outline. So it's funny you mentioned the presidents because he starts to identify those presidents who are high in IQ and what happened with their tenures with those who had high EQ. And so, I'm gonna just bring up a president that we all, most of us lived through his presidency, which is Bill Clinton. He said in this book, Bill Clinton was one of the most, from an IQ standpoint, basically he framed it that Bill had what he called the three sixty leadership. He had the capacity to deal with multiple, so I'll just read it.

He had what I call the three sixty degree leadership, an increasingly important quality for every leader in today's complex world. And it enormously enhanced his judgment. In the end, he made some excellent choices, you know, on on on American, you know, how we rolled out certain certain agendas. Right. But what he said, is Bill's IQ.

He was working on it, but he never quite got there. In this book, he said he believed that if Bill would have become president a few years later, his legacy would have been astounding. But he hadn't dealt with his He hadn't grown on the EQ side enough. And so basically how this guy terms it is this, capacity. Capacity is aligned with your IQ, right?

And then he termed the other side, your integrity, your empathy, right? Those things that make you who you are. He says, if your capacity is high, but the integrity and your personal character is low, he said that's danger. But in the book he says, if your capacity is low but your integrity and character is high, that's going to lead to a weak leader, meaning that you don't have a handle on the domain that you're leading. So you got high character, but your information about what you're leading is low.

So you really can't really effectively impact it. Now your people and your team are gonna be great. But the industry or the vertical that you're leading, know, from a business standpoint, you're not gonna be an achiever. So we need both. And so he identified a few leaders in here and I'm sure we can all look back and say, okay, yeah, this leader had great capacity, low integrity.

This person had great integrity,

they

couldn't lead the team, they couldn't lead the domain that they were over. So what do you think about Raf when you hear that?

I think that's an excellent way of, phrasing that. I never heard it, you know, spoken that way before. But the the capacity versus, the integrity. And and I've seen it. I've seen it.

We've both seen it in our in our journeys. Those who understand their discipline very well but don't have any character. We know of someone right now who's in that position and it just leads to chaos because you can't lead a team that way. You you you you consider yourself to be a leader, but if you ask their people, if they're a leader, I think they would say something completely different. So yeah.

Yeah. No. I I I think that, that's a that's an excellent excellent way of putting it. Never heard it that way. But, you know, going back to, the point of your professional life and what EQ provides.

So effective leadership is one point. Another point is improved decision making. Right? Understanding your emotions can help you make more informed decisions. I I I am a testament of that.

As I started to work on focusing more on how my emotions are being moved as it pertains to something that I'm presented with, it's helped me to take a step back and say, okay, this may not be the best direction to go because I could be doing this based on how I feel and not what's based on, the best outcome for the situation in front of me. Right. You know, so being able to make better decisions is a byproduct of, EQ. Any thoughts on that there?

Yeah, Ralph, I'm gonna go back to the emotional, intelligence book. Right. And I'm gonna read these definitions. Right? And I'm going back to the rational mind and the emotional mind.

And it basically says these two fundamental different ways of knowing interact to construct our mental life. Right, I think that's huge, right? We have a rational mind and we have an emotional mind and those two minds construct our mental life. So that's huge. One, the rational mind is made comprehension.

We are typically conscious of more prominent in awareness, thoughtful, able to ponder and reflect. But alongside there is another system of knowing, impulsive and powerful, impulsive and powerful. If sometimes illogical, the emotional mind. It says sometime, man, that emotional mind is gonna be illogical. Yeah.

Yeah. So when you said just being aware, stepping back, having a better range, I love this, I love this and thank you God for just dropping this, a better range of judgment. We have to have range in our judgment. Certain things that occur, yeah, it causes for an immediate response. Certain things, you know what, let me step back and I'm, again, I'm always telling an anecdote story.

It took my wife, man, years to stop me from doing this. Right? You know, my kids would do something, my thing was, you go act up right here? Okay, we're gonna deal with it right here. But here's what I didn't realize, that mode of operating was with me wherever I went.

When I was in the meeting, oh, you're gonna do this right here? Okay. I'm gonna deal with you right here. We don't operate differently. You don't operate too much different, man, than how you operate at home.

That's true. That's a good Right.

I'm gonna say what my son's first basketball coach, I'm gonna give coach DJ Anderson a shout out. Great man. Loves the kids. What I love most about him is he's an empathetic coach, but he's got capacity. He knows the game, but the way I just said, my son was a newbie getting at that elite level.

What I wanna say about that though, the point that I wanna bring up that DJ brought out is the kid that you are at home, that's the kid that you are on a basketball court. So if you're not taking care of your room and your responsibility at home, don't think you could get her out on the court and you're gonna take care your responsibilities here. Right. Your attention to detail in the classroom, if you're not paying attention there, that person that you are, because again, you're not holistically handling your life. There are gonna be other areas of your life that you drop because you're not seeing the big picture.

Who you are these intimate environments ultimately comes out in who you are, you know, when you're on the global stage, right? We see, we, you know, in your companies, we see it all the time. It takes a little time, right? Who you are in your personal life ultimately catches up with you.

Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

So being your true authentic self find that person and be that person wherever you go.

Thank you for being with us today on Leadership Sovereignty. Stay connected with us on X, formerly known as Twitter, and on Instagram by searching for Leadership Sovereignty. And just like this podcast, let's all collectively grow as we go. God bless.