Emotional Intelligence: The Hidden Ingredient in Effective Pastoral Leadership
by Rev. Mark E. Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader
When I worked as a therapist, my caseload eventually became crowded with clergy and church staff. After we worked through their clinical issues, many continued in counseling, wanting to address concerns related to their ministry. There were common themes running through their collective stories, but conceptualizing these themes remained elusive. Later, as a Leadership Coach with clergy and church staff, I found my clients’ focus was on their desire to provide effective, authentic, and healthy leadership with and for their congregations.
While trying to identify the common theme they were dealing with, I discovered a copy of Primal Leadership, Daniel Goleman’s book which applies Emotional Intelligence to the challenges of leadership. The conceptual light bulbs lit up. I discovered an Emotional Intelligence Inventory and started using it with clergy and church staff. After taking the inventory, one could observe where a pastor’s strengths and weaknesses regarding fifteen Emotional Intelligence competencies were. Emotional Intelligence does not describe all of what’s needed for effective pastoral leadership, but it does make a huge contribution to answering a basic question: “Why is it that spiritually committed, caring, and even experienced pastors or church staff persons function poorly as congregational leaders?”
Emotional Intelligence competencies help us understand why some clergy inadvertently derail their leadership effectiveness. Perhaps the best study I’ve seen on why clergy leave local church ministry is Dean Hoge and Jacqueline Wenger’s book Pastors In Transition. Their research concluded that most pastors don’t leave local church ministry due to scandal or immorality. They leave due to conflict in the congregation or with the denomination, lack of support, and feelings of burnout and frustration. So what Emotional Intelligence competencies would equip and empower these pastors to manage themselves differently in the white hot crucible of congregational life? For those pastors who stay in ministry, their ability to lead effectively may be hindered by poor emotional self-management, poor relational skills, inability to read relationship patterns and group dynamics, and simply uninspiring leadership. Emotional Intelligence concepts address those issues.
Shouldn’t seminary-trained clergy know these things already? According to Goleman, there are two fallacies which mislead us here. First, we recruit leaders based on their IQ, believing that one must be smart to lead well. Second, we promote people to leadership based on their technical expertise. Emotional Intelligence tells us that IQ is simply a threshold competency for leadership — it gets pastors in the door, but is not an accurate predictor of leadership effectiveness. And, a pastor could have outstanding technical skill, such as being a Greek and Hebrew scholar, but not have a clue how to lead a church body to accomplish their mission. Technical expertise rarely leads to leadership effectiveness.
So what do Emotionally Intelligent pastoral leaders do? In a paraphrase of Daniel Goleman’s description, for ministers it means “Managing one’s emotions and relationships so that the congregation more effectively accomplishes its mission.” Emotionally intelligent pastors influence the mood and morale of their congregations toward positive, hopeful, and empowered perspectives.
An example: We worked recently with a congregation comprised primarily of older persons. A new young couple with a baby joined this church. During moments of silence in the worship service, the baby often erupted with a loud cry in the nursery, reminding the congregation their church walls were not sound-proof. Only those who were the hardest of hearing missed this, and it became a hot issue at the next Board meeting. The Board chair spoke up quickly and said, “While I was praying I could hear the baby screaming in the nursery, and I said to myself, ‘That is music to my ears. Thank you Lord that we have a baby to make noise in our nursery at this church!’” This emotionally intelligent Board chair just managed the meaning of a congregational event. I watched others around the table. Their expressions progressed from puzzlement to affirmation. “Yes, thank God we have a baby now to make noise in our nursery.” Emotionally intelligent leaders seize opportunities to lead the congregation in framing events for mission advancement.
Organizational awareness, reading and influencing group dynamics, managing meaning in relation to the mission… these are the activities of emotionally intelligent pastoral leaders. May their kind increase!