Emotional Intelligence

Today's devotional is from The Leadership Walk: Devotions for Leaders of Today and Tomorrow

"His name was Nabal and his wife’s name was Abigail. She was an intelligent and beautiful woman, but her husband was surly and mean in his dealings—he was a Calebite" - 1 Samuel 25:3.

Abigail had what is called emotional intelligence which allowed her to know how to work with people. Her husband had terrible people skills and almost brought calamity down on himself and his family if his wife had not intervened. And then Abigail humbled herself before David to prevent him from taking revenge on her husband who had insulted David's men.

No matter what entity you are leading, you're leading people. Therefore, people skills are an essential ability you must develop and hone. Those skills start with understanding yourself and your own heart, which gives you the foundation and empathy from which you can begin to understand others.

LEADERSHIP STEP: There are many personality assessment tools available, like Myers-Briggs, DISC, and Enneagram, among others. It shouldn't be too hard to find someone who can facilitate one of these for you, or perhaps you can even do it online on your own. The goal is to start amassing information about who you are and how you relate to other personalities and life situations. This will help you more ably deal with the people issues that come your way as a leader.