Emotional Intelligence 3.0: The Next Wave Of Leadership Thought Leadership

Helping leaders to heal their nervous system from any past trauma

The concept “emotional intelligence” was popularized by Daniel Goleman in the 1990s. In 2009, Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves published their book, Emotional Intelligence 2.0. 

From this work, we know that emotional intelligence is critical for leadership effectiveness. But, what if I told you that: (1) our understanding of emotional intelligence is not as deep as it could be, and (2) deepening our understanding of emotional intelligence introduces profound insights for the future of leadership development and effectiveness?
 

Deepening our understanding of emotional intelligence will help us understand and capitalize on the next wave of leadership thought leadership. 

What is Emotional Intelligence?

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is having the capacity to do two things:

1. Accurately recognize and effectively manage one’s internal emotions
2. Accurately recognize and effectively navigate the emotions of others

Essentially, EQ is having both self-awareness and other awareness. 

Emotional intelligence is necessary for leadership effectiveness because it helps them to:
 

• Keep disruptive emotions and impulses under control
• Display honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness
• Show a willingness to listen to different opinions
• Be ready to act and seize opportunities
• See the upside in all situations
• Adapt to changing situations and overcoming obstacles

This is all well and good, but what determines whether or not someone possesses EQ and its associated benefits? This is where recent psychological and neurological research is providing profound insights.

What is Psychological and Neurological Research Teaching Us about the Formation of Emotional Intelligence?

Interestingly, psychological and neurological research on trauma is helping us better understand (1) why people have different levels of EQ, and (2) how to help people develop higher levels of EQ.

First, let’s define trauma. Trauma is a circumstance where the stress of that circumstance exceeds one’s body’s capacity to take on that stress. 

What scientists are finding is that when people experience trauma, there are common and predictable cascading consequences to a body’s neurological system. These consequences cascade as follows:
 

• Domino #1 – Disassociation – The mind and the body disconnect. Specifically, the nervous system shuts down and people commonly go numb. While this is immediate, the effects can be permanent.
• Domino #2 – Disintegration – Our brain is made up of three regions: reptilian, mammalian, and human brains. When disintegration occurs, the reptilian and mammalian brains operate on overdrive and the human brain struggles to regulate the other two brain regions. This leads to the toppling of the next two dominos.
• Domino #3 – Misencoding – A healthy nervous system sees safe things as being safe and dangerous things as being dangerous. Disintegration causes people to start to see safe things as being dangerous (e.g., admitting we are wrong) and dangerous things as being safe (e.g., alcohol abuse).
• Domino #4 – Shrinking Window of Tolerance – Disintegration causes one’s nervous system to become more sensitive to stress and it becomes easier for that person to be thrown into fight, flight, or freeze mode.

How Do These Consequences of Trauma Connect to EQ?

First, research is teaching us that when people experience disassociation (Domino #1), it inhibits their ability to get in touch with their own feelings and emotions, which decreases their ability to be self-aware and to self-regulate. Stated differently, disassociation inhibits the first primary aspect of EQ: Being able to accurately recognize and effectively manage one’s internal emotions.

Second, research is also teaching us that when people experience disintegration (Domino #2) and its two consequences (Dominos #3 and #4), it causes them to be overly preoccupied with their own safety, comfort, and belonging such that this preoccupation of oneself obstructs their ability to be aware and responsive to others. Stated differently, disintegration inhibits the second primary aspect of EQ: Being able to accurately recognize and effectively navigate the emotions of others.

Together, what we are learning is that leaders’ EQ level is largely predicated upon the degree to which they have unhealed trauma in their past. This has huge implications for leadership development and effectiveness. 

What Are the Implications of Connecting Trauma to Emotional Intelligence?

When we understand the connection between trauma and EQ, it suggests that if we want leaders to improve their effectiveness by operating at a higher EQ level, we need to help them heal from their past trauma. 

This is an approach to development that is rare, if not missing, from leadership development programs. 

Traditionally, leadership development programs focus on horizontal development, which focuses on helping leaders enhance their knowledge, skills, and competencies. It is not too different than downloading an app on an iPad, such efforts are designed to broaden leaders’ functionality. 

Thus often, EQ development programs focus on enhancing leader’s knowledge about EQ and teaching them EQ-related behaviors. 

But, when we understand the connection between trauma and EQ, it is easy to see that such efforts are not likely to be more than incrementally helpful because they don’t get to the root of EQ-related deficiencies: disassociation and disintegration. 

If we truly want to help leaders develop higher levels of EQ, we need to engage in a form of development that does address trauma-induced disassociation and disintegration. To do this, we need to move away from horizontal development practices and toward vertical development practices. 

Vertical development focuses on elevating leaders’ ability to make meaning of their world in more cognitively and emotionally sophisticated ways. Instead of downloading an app onto an iPad, this is more like upgrading the iPad’s internal operating system. 

At the root of any vertical development efforts is a focus on helping leaders heal their body’s nervous system. 

Next Wave of Leadership Thought Leadership

The moral of the story is that unhealed trauma impacts leaders’ EQ and their ability to do the following:
 

• Keep disruptive emotions and impulses under control
• Display honesty, integrity, and trustworthiness
• Show a willingness to listen to different opinions
• Be ready to act and seize opportunities
• See the upside in all situations
• Adapt to changing situations and overcoming obstacles

If we overlook this connection between trauma and EQ, any efforts to develop leaders’ EQ that don’t involve a focus on addressing disassociation and disintegration are going to be limited. 

Understanding this should allow us to usher in the next wave of leadership thought leadership: helping leaders to heal their nervous system from any past trauma. 

Doing this work requires compassion and dedication to different forms of development that have not been utilized in the past, including a focus on vertical development, well-being, and likely access to non-conventional resources like trauma therapy.

The implications of this are beautiful. Leadership development should not be about “tooling up” leaders, but about helping leaders to heal. 

Ryan Gottfredson, Ph.D. is a cutting-edge leadership development author, researcher, and consultant. He helps organizations vertically develop their leaders primarily through a focus on mindsets. Ryan is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author of “Success Mindsets: The Key to Unlocking Greater Success in Your Life, Work, & Leadership.” He is also a leadership professor at the College of Business and Economics at California State University-Fullerton.  Visit www.ryangottfredson.com  Connect Ryan Gottfredson, Ph.D.