In the middle of summer, the last thing my family is thinking about is finding access to coats for the cold Midwest winter ahead. That’s because we’re a family fortunate enough to be able to afford coats, gloves, hats, and everything else we need for the blister cold days.
This past Saturday was a good reminder that there are a lot of people in our community that have pressures well beyond what my family must imagine. We volunteered to help support our close friends and honor the loss of Grant Christianson at the Back-to-School Free Store by Des Moines Refugee Support. My wife and daughter helped families find shoes while my son and I were fortunate enough to help many refugee families find coats for their children to prepare for the winters Iowa brings.
All these refugee families have their own unique story of saying goodbye to almost everything they own from their home country. Goodbye to everything that was familiar to them. Goodbye to extended families and friends. Goodbye to their jobs.
As my wife and I were reflecting on the volunteer event, we were grateful our kids were able to join the effort to help give families trying to regenerate their lives here in the U.S. an opportunity to give their children what many of us consider bare minimum items for school. The volunteer event opened the door for our kids to see a different version of what some in the world must go through and the challenges refugees have trying to restart their lives. And as with any volunteer event, it provided an environment where our kids could help lead efforts to make a positive impact in the community.
Traditionally many of us focus on the word leadership including certain characteristics and ideals such as charisma, strategic, connected, etc. This volunteer experience was a good reminder of one of the most important parts of leadership we need to be coaching our youth on – emotional intelligence.
Each of our lives is an accumulation of millions of interactions, thoughts, experiences that make us who we are. With that comes such a wide array of emotions and to be able to perceive or empathize with what someone is going through, regardless of if you yourself have gone through a similar situation, is impactful. When we invest time within ourselves or help coach others on the criticalness of emotional intelligence, we’re bringing to light the importance of using emotions to communicate with and relate to others effectively and constructively.
One of the most important pieces of emotional intelligence I’ve found on my journey is acknowledging my truth and my story can be very different than someone else’s version. My kids were able to witness that their easy life of mom and dad buying them all the supplies and clothes they need for school is not everyone’s story. Everyone’s road to today has been different and to take time to realize my story is not their story can be greatly impactful bringing emotions into the equation of leadership.
Developing emotional intelligence is far from a one size fits all approach but perspective is a powerful element in building this. To strengthen emotional self-awareness along with emotional awareness of others, exposing ourselves to other unique journeys and broadening our perspective well beyond only our story opens the door to be tuned in to the emotions in action. It allows us to become better friends, family members, community members, and leaders.
Take your step: use an opportunity at work, in your community, with friends, etc. to make a concerted effort to broaden the journey stories you’ve heard. Expand your perspective by learning more about someone’s journey and how they perceive the world. Learn further into how their truth and the stories they’ve accumulated over time can be very different than our own. The more perspective and understanding we can have of one another, the more our emotional intelligence ability strengthens.