Our spiritual center is the place where our emotional balance
and well-being reside. Our lives can be both secular
and sacred all the time. (p. 211)

Susan Packard builds on her prior New Rules of the Game, opening her aperture to the broader topic of Emotional Intelligence, thereby communicating to a larger audience.

Following Packard’s work (disclosure: Susan interviewed the reviewer for small portions of her book) one senses the more she shares of herself, the more authentic she becomes, and the result is more confidence sharing everyday topics which we tend to notice but not talk so much about. Packard’s brave & thoughtful work builds on Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence in three parts: Willingness, Trust & Embracing “We” Principles. Each part ends with a Your Turn chapter or opportunity for a journaling entry.

Packard’s definition: Willingness + Trust + We Principles = EQ Fitness (p. xvi), may be thought of as her recipe for living a Personal Leadership Philosophy (PLP); with willingness part of her definition of leadership, trust a central value, and “We” principles central to her operating principles.

Why get more in tune with emotional intelligence? Packard shares The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reporting that suicide rates rose steadily in most states from 1999 to 2015, up by 25 percent nationally, and that the lack of social “connectedness” was among the factors (p. xii). This review examines each Packard’s three parts and their relevance to our leadership philosophy.

Part I | Willingness | E2L | Our Personal Leadership Profile

Day one of an Academy Leadership Excellence Course (three workshops) focuses on knowing yourself. It’s also how Packard starts: Self-discovery is gaining insight into your own nature so that you can better understand and manage your emotions (p. 3). It reminds us of our Energize2Lead profiles, especially focus on our instinctive needs

Packard compares the relationship between instincts and temperamental examples (p. 12):

Instinct Temperament Examples

Safety Ultra-sensitivity
Love & Approval Unrelenting Standards
Control & Pride Introversion

She’s not asking us to change. Instead, Packard posits self-awareness helps [us] understand these things better, that we need to put names to our most primal characteristics, which helps us stay grounded in the best of what we are, while managing as well as we can with the rest (p. 15).

Consider comparing your PLP with an audit of your daily activities, or a series of recent journal entries. As with frequent low self-evaluation scores in a Setting Leadership Priorities workshop, we may be surprised that daily interruptions and routine activities may occupy a majority of our time. Packard reflects: Having a life of joy and purpose means letting go of what no longer serves you, like resentments or shame or the word “blame.” (p. 33). Packard finds journaling by itself insufficient, better than doing nothing, but not as powerful or effective as saying aloud what’s inside (p. 40). We might call this shared journaling.

Over the years, many written leadership philosophies include the phrase “be present.” Packard’s analogous thought mentions mindfulness. Mindful practices teach us to access the parts of us that can see wide-open, limitless possibilities (p. 54). Think of an abundance mindset rather than scarcity. An abundance-based mindset is one of our best leadership tools, and mindful actions build trust (p. 62).

Part II | Trust | Instinctive Needs

Ed Ruggero and Dennis Haley’s The Leader’s Compass demonstrates the significance of credibility and trust. What Packard loves about trust is that it instills the one emotion that always inspires us to press on: hope. Trust is hope with a track record (p. 105). Ask yourself what kind of environment is usually created at work or at home? Packard offers a similar challenge … we spend a huge part of our waking hours at work, so why not try for an experience that’s a little deeper, a little richer, with a profound promise of fulfillment? (p. 108) For many of us, this is a missing ingredient in realizing our leadership ability.

For the proverbial subject matter expert (SME) or the technically proficient, growing trust may be a formidable challenge. Packard describes crossing this hurdle: It’s a powerful moment when you can kick down the barricade you erected after appointing yourself in charge of the universe (p. 115). The more we lead, the more we let go, and the more we realize it is not about us. Packard cites Susan Cain’s wonderful Quiet: We need “leaders who are called to service rather than status.” (p. 117)

How to get started? Susan’s five fast tips for trust (pp. 125-127):

• Become self-aware
• Be honest with others
• Be steady
• Be dependable
• Be proactive

We may ask ourselves how many of these tips are embodied or otherwise referenced in our leadership philosophy.

Contemplate the opposite: It also turns out jerk bosses impact both the emotional and physical health of their people. A study of over three thousand employees found that there was a strong link between bad leadership behavior and employee heart disease (p. 133).

Part III | Embracing “We” Principles | Energy

Tony Schwartz calls on four sources of energy in The Power of Full Engagement: Mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. As leaders, we should routinely, holistically reenergize.

Packard compares leaders who get high marks on qualities such as compassion and integrity: They run companies with an average return on assets of 9.35 percent over two years – five times those who got low marks, whose companies average 1.93 percent (p. 178). These findings remind us of Fred Kiel’s Return on Character.

Who were you meant to be? What is your place in the world? Packard asks us about this kind of soul energy, which comes from the right brain (yellow & blue E2L), and asks us to explore how [we] are connected to the larger family of workplace and community (p. 185).

We can think of right brain Ego Energy as traditional command and control, exclusively results-oriented management and left brain Soul Energy as people oriented leadership (p. 186):

Ego Energy Soul Energy

Answer                                           Question
Box                                                Horizon
Intellect                                         Imagination
Word                                              Silence
Order                                              Influence
Worry                                             Prayer
Job                                                 Purpose
Plan                                                Unfolding
Judgment                                      Experience
Heaviness                                      Lightness
Protection                                     Vulnerability
Conscious Mind                             Heart, Gut, Sense
Drive toward                                 Drawn to
Attachment                                   Love
Sadness                                         Deep Grief

Summary

Susan Packard offers a compelling argument, and personal testimonial, that a good human leader is a good human being in the first place (p. 190). We can go further by exploring ourselves, and leading from our hearts as well as our minds.

With empathy comes illumination, and a larger understanding
of how to live one’s own life. (p. 207)

Note: Susan Packard generously provided a copy of her book for review.

JE | September 2019