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.
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Emotional Intelligence 3.0: The Next Wave Of Leadership Thought Leadership
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:
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.
●● 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
Leadership Excellence presented by HR.com DECEMBER 2021 34 Submit Your Articles
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