Strengthening Emotional and Spiritual Intelligence

Emotional intelligence is creating quite a buzz in corporate America. Organizations appreciate the benefits and bottom-line results they receive when their leaders consistently connect emotionally with their employees.

The ability to emotionally connect with employees is inspiring and creates a stronger sense of followership in supporting the organization’s mission and high-leverage goals.

Recognizing our own emotions and the emotions of others for motivating others and ourselves toward higher levels of performance is a great enhancer to the organization’s overall levels of intelligence. However, this is not the highest level of awareness for fostering outstanding sustained performance.

Raising the consciousness and overall energy levels of leaders and employees is the highest level development activity that any organization, regardless of size, can undertake.

Energy levels or consciousness are the sum total of our core thoughts, emotions, and actions that relate to how people see themselves, those around them, and the world itself. They are an indicator of overall organizational health.

Often, our core energy flows automatically from our subconscious — past experiences and suppressed emotions. This energy can be either catabolic (negative) or anabolic (positive). Catabolic energy is draining, resisting, contracting, and overall negative in nature. Anabolic describes the energy that is constructive, expanding, fueling, and growth-oriented. Anabolic energy is the cornerstone of high performance.

While we possess both types of energy, which are valuable and applicable in certain areas of life, our goal is to have a higher mix of anabolic energy. Catabolic energy is necessary for immediate survival needs; however, remaining stuck in this type of energy can be debilitating over time. The constant emphasis on urgency, long days, fast food, and little sleep take a toll on overall energy and performance.

Your overall energetic make-up or levels of consciousness are directly related to how you think, feel, and act toward anything that you experience. The key and the tie to emotional intelligence is to become keenly aware of your thinking and emotions tied to anything you experience, read, observe, or hear. Recognizing that many of your reactions or responses may be automatic in nature for your subconscious and paying attention to the resourcefulness of such responses are key to raising your consciousness and energy levels. Noticing your patterned behaviors and finding effective ways to reframe your experiences and raise your energy is necessary for sustained high performance, long-term.

Intention, not action, is the key to whether you are operating from higher or lower levels of consciousness. Doing the “right thing” or the “politically correct thing” does not resonate at high levels of consciousness. Behavior that is motivated by the concern for others and compassion is aligned with higher levels of consciousness, energy, and consequently performance.

A leader’s ability to see opportunities in every challenging situation, to synthesize information, and to consider multiple options, without any internal conflict or judgment, enables the leader to transcend the limits of the ego and inherent conflicts that are a consequence of the world of duality.

So, measuring your overall energy levels or consciousness and deliberately shifting your energy delivers a level of spiritual intelligence that not only connects the heart, but also connects to the soul. Awareness of our thoughts and emotions, moment-to-moment, strengthens our ability for self-management and our overall emotional-intelligence levels.

Originally appeared in Central New York Business Journal June 29th, 2015