Watch: Resonant Leaders Create Experiences of Hope, Compassion, and Mindfulness

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Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence

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Case Western Reserve University

Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence

427 ratings

Course 1 of 5 in the Specialization Inspired Leadership

Emotional intelligence, hope, mindfulness, and compassion help a person reverse the damage of chronic stress and build great leadership relationships. The Positive and Negative Emotional Attractors inspire sustained, desired change and learning at many levels.

From the lesson

Week 1: Resonant Leadership and the Neuroscience Behind It

Great leaders moves people through resonant relationships. Resonant relationships occur when the leader and the people around them are in sync or in tune. These relationships are characterized by the shared experience of vision and hope, compassion and caring, and mindfulness. and how people can be inspired to change and inspire change in others. We demonstrate. We explore the neuroscience behind resonant and dissonant leadership, in terms of the default mode and task positive networks.

Watch: Resonant Leaders Create Experiences of Hope, Compassion, and Mindfulness6:37

Meet the Instructors

Richard Boyatzis
Distinguished University Professor, and a Professor in the Departments of Organizational Behavior, Psychology, and Cognitive Science

[MUSIC].

Welcome back. Now, when we stop and think about how the

exercise you did in Module One feels, and, and you could just think about

moments you had with the person on the left, how did you feel about what you

were doing or why you were doing it? And I would expect, from a lot of other

people's response to that recently, that you would say, well I felt a part of

something important. That's because one of the things that

effective leaders do, these resonant leaders, is they help us understand the

context of what we're doing. They know that as adults we don't learn

unless we attach new experiences on to a framework, a context.

What the effective leaders do, is they use the purpose of the organization as

the context. It's one of the reason why people who

start management meetings with financials are really very uninspiring, and usually

not very effective, because they're telling everybody around them, that

there's a confusion between why we're doing what we're doing, the purpose, and

the measures, of how well we're doing. But one of the things, for example, I had

the opportunity not too long ago, to witness the CEO of a ultimate low tech

steam valve company, kick off his annual meeting of his top 350 managers in

Philadelphia. And, it was really an amazing moment

because he said, thank you. Good morning.

The next thing out of his mouth was a name of a small town in upstate New York,

and he said, in that town, last year they gave birth to 350 lives.

Last year they saved 1800 lives, as a result of surgery in tertiary care.

And not, none of it would've been possible if they didn't have 40 of our

steam valves moving oxygen and gases through the hospital.

And, then he mentioned a small town in Western Pennsylvania where people,

parents got up this morning, they got their kids breakfast, and dressed, and

off to school and they got dressed and went to work.

And, none of it would've been possible if the local gas and electric utilities

didn't have 400 of their steam valves. As he was talking about this, you could

feel something in the room go click. And that, that click was very important,

because people were sitting there saying, hey, you know, I don't make steam valves.

I make steam valves. It was a click of meaning.

So with the context, being the purpose in the organization, it's what we often call

vision, or vision mission. And, it always embodies some aspiration,

for something bigger than us, something more noble, something that we're looking

forward to in the future, and it stimulates hope.

The second characteristic that becomes very key to these relationships, as you

were talking about, is the issue of trust and caring.

We use the term compassion. We're not using it in the Western sense

or even the Buddhist sense of feeling for one in pain, but we mean it as more open

and almost out of Confucian philosophy of benevolence.

Opening yourself up to and caring for someone, whether they're in pain or

they're enjoyed, or they're trying to grow and develop.

But, the idea is that you aren't just understanding them, empathy, you're

caring about them, and you're doing something about it.

With that combination, what happens is you feel a part of a group, a team, a

unit, and when you feel that somebody cares about you, you respond and you

don't want to let them down, and you care back.

The third characteristic that is always a part of these relationships, or seems to

be, is what we call mindfulness, which is kind of a psychological jargon we're

using these days, and something that comes out of Buddhist philosophy.

But, what it really refers to is, are things that you would normally say in

normal language as, well the person's very genuine.

They're authentic. they, you know, they seem like they're,

like they have high integrity. All of those things conspire to make a

person who’s a resonant leader more inspired.

They are more inspirational, on the whole.

And, here’s the question to ask yourself. When people leave your office or leave

the conversation, do they feel inspired, lifted, excited, because if they don’t,

then you’re not being an effective leader.

You might be a good person. You might be solving problems.

You might be producing performance to a budget, so you're predictable, but you

aren't an effective leader. Maya Angelou said in a commencement

address at Case Western Reserve University a few years ago, "It is my

observation that in the future, they will not remember what you said, they will not

remember what you did, but they will remember how you made them feel.

And that's the effect that these resonant leaders have on us.

One of the things I'd like you to consider, as a personal learning

assignment, to do after this module, there are other resources on the website,

readings and electronic discussions, that you can and should participate in.

But, for a personal learning assignment, I would ask you that over the next two

weeks in every meeting or every group that you're in, take a few notes, not

just about the contents, or you're paying attention, but, also about the behavior

and the relationship that the person who's up in front of the room, the

quote-unquote leader; what are they doing?

Are they inspiring people or not? Take notes about the observations, and at

the end of the two weeks, compare the notes for those where you felt excited

and lifted, as go, you know, in contrast to those meetings you were in, in which

you felt either okay, or so-so, or deflated.

In the process of all of that, one of the things that I should also caution, is

that this is a dynamic quality. In our relationships, we can have great

resonant relationships, but they, it's very difficult to have them stay that way

unless you're investing a lot of energy because over time, you can get out of

sync. So one of the things that happens very

often is, a, a person has difficulty staying, as a resonant leader, because it

is, in part, stressful. Well, you might be sitting there an

saying, you know, I knew this. I know most of it.

Didn't have maybe the same words. It's really common sense, but it's not

common practice, as I pointed out the data over the past 40-some years has been

showing us. [MUSIC]

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