At the recent webinar featuring Cindy Wigglesworth, she shared how emotional and spiritual intelligences are keys to developing an enlightened leadership style. Over 100 ministries, participants in the Transformation Experience, attended via the web.

Emotional intelligence is about managing ourselves well. As Cindy says, “we have to lead ourselves before we can lead others.” The good news is that we can learn emotional intelligence. We start by becoming aware of ourselves—living in the present moment, cultivating mindfulness, caring for our own well-being and having compassion for others.

What does this have to do with leadership? In this first year of the Transformation Experience, the focus is on developing our own leadership consciousness. Leadership, as voiced by previous webinar presenter Doug Krug, is more about a state of being than a state of doing. We have to start with ourselves to cultivate this consciousness, before we can lead others. As we do this, we nourish others as well.

Can you think of how it is when you're with others who are emotionally centered, in the present moment, and in a compassionate state of mind? These are people we often look to for guidance, for mentoring and as having traits we want to emulate—in other words, they are leaders.

The webinar included exercises, pre-work and post-work for all participants. As the program continues, we will develop more materials that can be shared across our movement to build and improve our leadership consciousness.

If, as many of us have been feeling, now is the time, and we are the ones, then we must prepare ourselves to step into the role of leaders, whether we are credentialed or lay persons, in leadership roles, or in team roles.
 

Cindy will lead a workshop, and Doug Krug is a keynote at the 2010 convention

More about the Transformation Experience Enlightened Leaders program