So in this last post on my coaching process, I wanted to outline the books that we covered in our second year.
The gist of this book is that a good leader is one that leads with emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is the ability to read the “emotional temperature” of a room. You can perceive and identify, and therefore empathize with someone that’s not having a good day. I know that ability probably sounds pretty obvious. And it is. But a leader with high EQ will actually go up to the employee and say, “You seem a little down today. Want to talk about it?” He gives a great example in the beginning of the book of this concept. An experiment was done in which two bosses had to fire a group of employees. The first boss told the group they were losing their job in a gruff and unsympathetic manner. He almost didn’t make it out of the room. The second boss told them the same facts, but in a different way. He commended them, told how he had appreciated their service, and genuinely showed empathy. They applauded.
I’m going to be honest. This was the book that I got the least out of. I made reference to it in this
post. This book is written in the style of many of the mystic church fathers, but without the substance. It’s written by a psychologist and the tone of the book gives that fact away. There’s much too much mystery and grasping into fog and not enough clear biblical exegesis or scholarship. It all seems so subjective.
Have you ever heard the phrase “hurt people hurt people”? Get it? People that are emotionally hurt are the kind of people that don’t know how to deal with others in emotionally balanced ways, and end up hurting people. In this book the pastor shares his own journey of emotional hurt and how it almost ruined his life and church. An emotional healthy church has an emotional healthy pastor. And this kind of church is one in which people are free to share their joys and their pains.
In this book, by the same author as Emotionally Healthy Church, the author makes the connection between being spiritually mature and emotionally mature. If you aren’t emotionally mature, you won’t be able to progress in the spiritual life to maturity. He covers such issues as taking “a Sabbath” as he calls it, learning to deal with grief, and breaking free from past pains.
So there you have it. Those are the books that we covered in our second year through this coaching process. If you missed part one click
here.
One year ago on Thanksgiving day, Modern Ekklesia was born with this post. Since then we’ve been able to grow into the vision that was birthed on that day: to create a space where people can grow, converse, and learn from each other through success, failure, frustration, and everything in between.
