Emotional Intelligence in Ministry

00:00
Michelle Thompson
Or we walk into an office and go, I want to work here. Like, I don’t know why, but it just, the air feels light and great. That’s because of the social awareness that the leader is bringing. If we do not have the abilities to interact well, then the work can’t get done. 

00:24
Rich Rudowske
Welcome to the Essentially Translatable Podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible Translators. I’m Rich Rudowske. 

00:30
Emily Wilson
And I’m Emily Wilson. And today we had the pleasure of talking with Michelle Thompson, who works at the Townsend Institute with Concordia University, Irvine. And she is talking about emotional intelligence and the impact it has within ministry, the growth of emotional intelligence, but also lack of and how to be able to indicate when there’s maybe room for improvement and how to engage in those conversations appropriately. And this is so important as we’re working in ministry international contexts. And I know that this has been a personal impact for you, too, Rich. 

01:14
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, I think we zeroed in on that. There’s something to be learned by all people, but in our current society and in ministry, there’s such a people component, such a relational component to things that it’s just really not enough to have some kind of technical competence and have that carry you all the way. You’ve got to be able to relate with people, and nobody gets anything done alone. That’s that old African proverb: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And ultimately, if you’re going to go together with people, your relationships, the way that you show up and are present, the way that people experience you, is so important. And Michelle just does a really great job of unpacking that. 

01:54
Emily Wilson
So whether you’re a ministry leader yourself, or you support ministry leaders, or you are just doing life as a loved child of God and following His calling in your life, we know that this is going to be an impactful episode for you, and we hope that you are encouraged by it. 

02:17
Rich Rudowske
We are here today with Michelle Thompson, who is going to talk to us about emotional intelligence. So glad to have you on the podcast. 

02:24
Emily Wilson
Welcome. 

02:25
Michelle Thompson
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to spend some time with you. 

02:29
Emily Wilson
So when we interview a guest, we ask them to share a little bit about their background with our listeners just so that they can kind of imagine what it’s like in your field, in your profession and where you came from. So can you share a little bit about your background? 

02:45
Michelle Thompson
Sure. It is really crazy and could take a long time. So I’ll give you the abbreviated version of my background. Right now I am the director for the Executive Coaching and Consulting program at Concordia University in Irvine and the Townsend Institute. I love what I get to do because my career before this has been in full time ministry where I’ve been able to lead work and work with volunteers and coach leaders. And then I took this quick dip into the oil and gas industry to learn more about my love of leadership skills and development. Went to the YMCA of Greater Houston and was their VP for Leadership Transformation and grew in coaching. And all of these things have just continued to unfold in my life. 

03:35
Michelle Thompson
And my love for leadership, and my love for people growing and developing and becoming fully what they are supposed to be and how God has designed them to live a purpose, that’s what my heart’s desire really is to help people live out that deeper purpose. And my career and the journey that God’s had me on continues to allow me to do that. 

03:57
Emily Wilson
I love it. 

03:58
Rich Rudowske
That’s great. So we’re going to dive into the concept of emotional intelligence, and so we’ll start with what is emotional intelligence? What are we going to be talking about here? 

04:09
Michelle Thompson
Yeah, emotional intelligence is a word that people just kind of flip around and I’m not sure if they completely understand what they’re talking about. And what’s interesting is the way the research is happening is that there are many ways to define emotional intelligence and there’s many ways to look at it and describe it. So I’m going to use it really in the terminology that Daniel Goldman, who’s considered the father of emotional intelligence, talks about. There’s four quadrants, four components of emotional intelligence. One is self awareness, another is self control, social awareness and relationship management. Those are all of the components of how we show up and  that need development for strong emotional intelligence. 

04:54
Emily Wilson
Wow. Yeah. So that’s really helpful to be able to break it down in that, because when you’re just lumping it all in emotional intelligence, and if you were just to say, oh, yeah, I’m an emotionally intelligent person, but to be able to define that subcategory of, okay, maybe you are very aware of yourself, but it doesn’t mean that you have a control of yourself or, okay, I can kind of determine my relationships and have that awareness, but then in that relationship management, it might be lacking. So being able to have a little bit of that subcategory and factoring to be able to see what does that overall look like. So how do you actually gauge what your emotional intelligence is? Initially, yes, you have these components. You have these subcategories but what is it like when you’re factoring in an IQ setting? 

05:59
Emily Wilson
It’s a test and you have a score. But what does that look like for emotional intelligence? 

06:05
Michelle Thompson
That’s a great question. One really simple, easy way to do this is to go to different people in your sphere of influence, like family members, work members, and say, “Hi, I think I’m a really emotionally intelligent person.” And when their eyebrows go up and their mouth goes, “Oh”, then you’re like, “Oh, so maybe I have some work to do.” So the people around you actually can give you great insight. And one question that I always encourage people to ask, especially when they’re leaders, is to ask people, “What’s it like to be on the other side of me when I’m at my best, “What’s it like to be on the other side of me when I’m not at my best?”, “ What’s it like to be on the other side of me?” 

06:46
Michelle Thompson
It takes a lot of courage for the leader to do that, but the information is so helpful when they’ve created a safe space, because when we experience what the other person experiences of us, then we can decide, okay, which quadrant do I need to be working in now? There are assessments that can be taken. You can do three hundred and sixties. You can read lots of great material and kind of assess it that way also. But quite honestly, I love the rough and hard test of just asking people, “What’s it like?”

07:22
Emily Wilson
I was going to say, you use the right word, like courage, and to be brave and vulnerable, to say, like, okay, you know me. And to be able to expect an honest response, that’s really cultivating in some ways. It’s like, oh, wow, you’ve already done the hard work. 

07:42
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Like, you actually have to have a fairly high degree of one of those quadrants of emotional intelligence to ask that question. It’s a lot easier to say, well, let me just take this test and see what it says, or something like that. Of course, there’s probably some value in that, but, wow, that’s like next level to just be asking people what they think and be ready to. I’m. My heart’s beating a little fast thinking about that right now. 

08:09
Michelle Thompson
So, Rich, your next assignment is everyone. But what you’re identifying is such a truth and it’s such a marker, because when someone says, if I’m coaching someone and I say, I would really love for you to go ask three people, what’s it like to be on the other side of me? And they go, I don’t think I could do that. Then the next question is, okay, what’s the barrier to causing that? Because that barrier is part of the glitch and the emotional intelligence. It says a lot. Or if they say, well, I’ll ask, but I don’t know if they’ll be truthful with me. Well, what’s the barrier for people being truthful with you? That then says, there’s something in the relational management that we need to be looking at. 

08:52
Michelle Thompson
So the question is a great barometer, not just if you can ask it, but if you can’t ask it. It gives us information on where we can look at development and more. 

09:03
Emily Wilson
That’s so insightful. 

09:05
Rich Rudowske
Yeah. So the folks that write about emotional intelligence have also then talked quite a bit about how it is a predictor of success and perhaps the best predictor of success in many facets of life, like relationally and occupationally and so forth. Why is that? How is that the case? 

09:22
Michelle Thompson
Yeah. Because especially in our culture, people are becoming more people-centric and oriented towards each other. So if we do not have the abilities to interact well, then the work can’t get done. People talk about Steve Jobs and early years of Steve Jobs being so kind of argumentative and pushing, and people really didn’t like that experience of him. But when he came back to Apple, he became this person who really understood himself more, and he understood his love for the innovation and leaving some of the management pieces to his team. In that development, people started loving that atmosphere, even though they knew it was an intense atmosphere and things could still be pushing towards them. His ability to be open and authentic more with people was an ability to increase that success. 

10:22
Michelle Thompson
So I would say authenticity is absolutely, positively one of the pillars and trademarks of a successful leader that is using their emotional intelligence well. An authentic person becomes a role model. They feel like that they lead out of fair and moral behavior as well as they really kind of command, esteem, and confidence. People want to know that who’s ever in charge of the ship, so to speak, or in charge of the team for the moment, is going to be able to lead them through the hard times. And so people need to have that confidence, and they also need to have the confidence in that leader that if they’re going to fail at something, that leader does not dismiss them as a human being or as a person. So those are the things that we find as being successful in leadership with emotional intelligence. 

11:18
Emily Wilson
So as people are listening to this and are probably walking through, okay, so they’ve mentioned these quadrants, and, okay, this is what success could look like and how to go about starting to ask those questions. If they were to lay it out those four quadrants, would you be able to give a little bit of a breakdown so that people can get a better idea? Because saying self control, this is even a biblical principle of being able to say self control. But what does that actually look like? What does a healthy versus an unhealthy look like in each of those quadrants? What are maybe some symptoms or, like, things that you can tell or phrases somebody might use in health or unhealth in these quadrants? 

12:06
Michelle Thompson
Yeah, that’s a great question, and I think we can do this in a fairly succinct way. The self awareness piece is internally knowing yourself in a way that you know what emotions you’re having and that you also know what your positives and negatives are. We call that integration, that I can hold on to the fact that I, as a person, deal with anxiety at times. And so I know that sometimes if I walk into a new situation, my anxiety might rise up. If I know that my anxiety is going to rise up, then I can think about that and how I’m going to control it so it doesn’t impact my behavior. 

12:52
Michelle Thompson
If I don’t acknowledge that I’m anxious person and that I need to have that, if I don’t have that awareness, then I might walk into a setting and become very aloof or argumentative. And if I don’t have that self awareness, then I don’t realize that I might be pushing people away from me. So self awareness is really understanding who we are and accepting the great parts of, hey, I’m an innovative person. I’m a creative person. I am discerning, and I can show up and bring those great things. I also have anxiety, and if I don’t pay attention to that in the midst of everything, I might cause an issue or have people disconnect from me. So that’s the part of the self awareness. Self control, then, is, how do we manage these things? 

13:42
Michelle Thompson
And I like to think of self control in this piece of really how we manage our emotions. There’s a part of our brain called the amygdala, and the amygdala is the part that gets triggered emotionally. Everything filters through the amygdala, through our emotions first. It’s our fight or flight, our flock or fall, whatever response that we have. And so our self control piece is the piece that helps us go, okay, this is the amygdala. Now I need to give it some time to get to the cortex so that I can think logically about what I’m going to do. So if you’ve experienced someone who all of a sudden blows up. So yesterday I got a text from my house cleaner. They broke something, my amygdala. My very first reaction was like, oh, I loved that piece that got broken. 

14:37
Michelle Thompson
If I had reacted immediately out of that, I would have been like, what were you doing? Weren’t you being careful? What was that? And so you probably have seen leaders or people just kind of explode, or the reaction feels so different than what the level of experience is. But when we go, okay, pause, breathe, because I can regulate myself, you go, okay, accidents happen. It happened. It’s okay. You’re okay. I’m okay. It’s all fine. And so that’s what we need leaders to be able to do, is to be able to take that breath and regulate and make sure that they deal with the situation appropriately. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t upset or don’t get mad. You can do that, but you reflect that in an appropriate way, not in an inappropriate way. 

15:22
Michelle Thompson
The social awareness comes really then, from this self control piece, because how am I going to impact other people? How does how I show up impact the team? How does it impact the organization? The highest leader in an organization is the greatest impact on the work environment. The leader at home, people at home have impact of how the rest of the home feels. And I don’t know if you’ve ever had an experience of walking into a building or walking into a home and nothing’s really happened yet, but you go, ooh, I feel like I suddenly get, yes, like you suddenly feel that tension. We need to have a social awareness that there’s something about us that’s causing that feeling. Or we walk into an office and go, I want to work here. I don’t know why, but the air feels light and great. 

16:16
Michelle Thompson
That’s because of the self social awareness that the leader is bringing into the group. And then there’s relationship management. How do I inspire others? How do I work with others? This one really goes back to part of that question of the bravery, of what it takes to ask that question, what’s it like to be on the other side of me? Because this is how I manage conflict. This is how teams work. This is how I interact and help build people up within an organization or build my family up at home. That relationship management entails all those pieces. 

16:53
Emily Wilson
Being able to see where it starts off of that self awareness, I think, is just so powerful because sometimes we are just reactive and that the thing that is bothering us, the root issue or maybe even the root joy, we don’t even acknowledge where it’s coming from, or to be able to pause and to name the emotion. So it’s harder to control when you’re not pausing. Being able to say, I’m angry and it’s okay to be angry about a situation or thing, but what am I going to do with it? And from there to be able to say, what is this going to look like for my relationships? And to just to pause. But it’s so hard in a world where everything is so immediate. What does it look like to pause? What does it look like to reflect and to manage? 

17:53
Emily Wilson
Well, I don’t think that’s maybe a value in society all of the time. It’s growing. But being able to say, no, it’s not always about the immediate. What does it look like to pause? 

18:08
Rich Rudowske
Yeah, we were reading in Philippians recently where one of the things Paul says is, let your gentleness or your thoughtfulness be evident to all, for the Lord is near. And so that really feels like a biblical reference to the sort of dynamic we’re talking about at a certain point, that immediate, that reactivity, and certainly in the culture that we live in, rage is the thing and reactivity is the thing. And there’s even recent studies that indicate that christians are no different than anybody else in that regard. And in fact, maybe the leaders in that at times. And so there’s a lot to be unpacked here. So what are some implications for ministry, particularly in a lack of emotional intelligence? Where does this become problematic or lead for positive or negative? 

18:57
Michelle Thompson
Yeah, it’s such a great question because I have such a heart for ministry leaders. They work so hard and they have attention of serving people, serving God. And many ministry leaders come in with this sense of, I need to get it perfect, I need to get it right. And their ability to accept imperfection or knowing that they’re going to have to let people down sometimes is a really big challenge. So this piece of self awareness is where I feel like ministry leaders can get tangled up a good bit. 

19:34
Michelle Thompson
And when they aren’t aware of their own limitations, when they struggle in being able to say, I might disappoint you at some point, or I cannot keep up with all of these things, what happens is they start burning out, and in the burnout they become less able to relate to other people and then they pull away. Well, this all becomes a domino effect. These things don’t hit in isolation. They’re enmeshed with one another. And so if I don’t have the self awareness to say, I’m burning out and I might need some help in this moment, then the ministry itself will begin to hurt and be in pain because the ministry leader doesn’t have the ability, just doesn’t have the capacity, they’ve run out of fuel to be able to connect and communicate with either their team leaders or people in the congregation. 

20:30
Michelle Thompson
And so things begin to fall apart. So the burnout piece is definitely a significant area. Another part of this, too, and I see it in ministry, is the need for us to be innovative and innovation and comes out of the place of us being able to create a social awareness that people have an ability to be free with their thoughts, to have relationships that are trusting, that can say, let’s try some new things, and if it doesn’t work and it’s okay. So creating the safety for innovation is also something I think is really important for ministry leaders to be looking at. 

21:12
Rich Rudowske
And we’ve talked quite a bit about the success factors for emotional intelligence, and we’re talking quite a bit about ministry leaders. But what if we’re talking about somebody who’s in ministry who doesn’t necessarily believe of themselves that they are a leader, right? I’m in ministry. I do a certain thing. I do a certain role. Is there something for that person as well in this? 

21:31
Michelle Thompson
Absolutely. I’m chuckling, as you said that question, because I had joined the staff of a new ministry, and I sent out an email and said, “Hey, ministry leaders, I want to have this vision meeting with you.” And only like five people of the 30 invitations showed up. And when I went in and did some work, I’m like, why didn’t people come? They’re like, “Well, I’m not a leader.” I’m like, “You got the invitation, you’re supposed to come, right? I see you as a leader.” So part of it is those of us who are in positions that we recognize in leadership is to invite the others to consider themselves as leaders. And part of the self awareness in that very first kind of stage of emotional intelligence is for those people to begin to realize they do have influence. Leadership is about influence. 

22:29
Michelle Thompson
And all of us have an influence in our sphere, whether the title gives us that or doesn’t give us that. Whoever we are influencing somebody and something, and in our own self awareness, we need to recognize that is happening and that puts us in a role or in a place of leadership, and we can accept that. And some people who go, not me, I shouldn’t be influencing anything. I’m like, just by the fact that you say no and step back, is influencing people and possibly disengaging you from this opportunity. 

23:04
Emily Wilson
So there is a component to emotional intelligence that it is not fixed, right. That there is room for growth and for individuals to improve, right. When we ask about, am I an emotionally intelligent person? That it doesn’t have to stay a no, it can grow into a yes. So for the individuals who are like, this isn’t necessary, I don’t need to change, or this is just how I am, this is a fixed thing, thinking of it almost similar to an iq, that it’s fixed. What are the implications for ministry in that kind of outlook? 

23:52
Michelle Thompson
So when someone is unwilling to look at themselves and consider growth, because you were right, this is not a fixed thing. And never do we reach full emotional intelligence as we should, on the side of eternity, that will not happen. We all have room for growth and change and examination of who we are. So if someone is doing that within a ministry in particular, and they’re saying, not me, they’re starting to hold back the ministry again, because the leadership level is, the leader’s level is what will help inspire and drive the organization, the ministry’s level. So for someone to say that is saying, I’m okay being stuck, and therefore I’m okay with the ministry or the people that I’m leading being stuck, and some people would go, no, I’m okay with who I am and I’m still growing this. 

24:50
Michelle Thompson
And I’m like, then that’s when you start doing reality checks with people and saying, let’s write this down. What was it like a year ago? What’s it like now? And getting people to see that there really isn’t growth or change, or if there is growth or change, it’s typically declining, which isn’t really growing. It’s things that are not as great as before. When I’m coaching, people are working with an organization, and I feel that person is resisting the desire to grow or resisting acknowledging the need or just resisting the process. I will typically say, if things could be different, what would they look like in your ideal? What would they look like if they were different from now? And then I take them back and say, so what’s the gap? 

25:39
Michelle Thompson
What needs to change from where you are today to what you want for tomorrow? And it’s a longer process, but that’s the process that they take to eventually realize, oh, I do need to make some changes because I want that person to be able to desire the change, to see the need for change, to make things happen. I can’t just say, you need to change. That’s not motivating for anyone. So for them to finally see, to look at the gap and discover the gap is what will help them be able to move forward. 

26:15
Emily Wilson
So when we’re looking at just people who are hearing this awesome information of like, okay, well, what does this look like? Emotional intelligence. In my life, I really think that this is something that I need to be investing in for myself to be able to grow in this area. How is it that they would go about that? Like, what are ways for investing in their own emotional intelligence? And how is it that they can gauge, am I on the road to growing in my emotional intelligence? What are the indicators of that growth and success of progress? 

26:56
Michelle Thompson
Yeah, that’s great questions. And we can do that from a huge investment to some personal investment. So one way is coaching. You can get a coach to work with you for some sessions to look at this. And what a coach does is help understand where you are right now, where you would like to be and what your goals are. And they help you travel that and journey it and explore it, and maybe ask you some questions that other people around you wouldn’t ask you to explore. So coaching is a really helpful environment if you are in a position that you start realizing. My lack of self awareness is hitting me in a really deep spot. People who feel deep depression or deep anxiety, then I encourage them to get a counselor. 

27:46
Michelle Thompson
These things are real and true, and you want to be able to find the root. And in counseling and therapy, that is where you find the root of those things. So those are some big ways to invest significantly in this. The other way is there are many resources, many books out there right now, just even reading some of Daniel Goleman’s early works on emotional intelligence teaches you more and gives different ways for you to look at different indicators of how you can look at emotional intelligence. I do think that there’s things like having really good friends that you say, I want us to start having a conversation about emotional intelligence, and let’s really talk about that. What are some things about me that you don’t think I’m aware of? And those safe relationships where you can really process that out loud? 

28:37
Michelle Thompson
Another processing tool that I love to use is journaling. And I like to journal when things happen, when I’m deep in my emotion, because then I can process what am I feeling? And that encourages my self awareness. It also helps prepare me for being able to have discussions and interact with people later on because sometimes we don’t realize, like in the middle of a really hard conversation, let’s say you and rich have a really hard conversation at the office, and there’s a little bit of tension because you both have different views and you’re both trying to decide how you’re going to manage that. Well, if both of you went and just journaled like this, tension feels uncomfortable. Why does this tension feel uncomfortable? We have a difference of opinion. What’s our difference of opinion? And you journal and process that out. 

29:25
Michelle Thompson
Typically you come to this place of, okay, now I’m ready to have the discussion, to find the commonality and can move forward. So those are just some really basic things. It takes time to do these things and to be intentional. The best thing is whether you’re talking to somebody, journaling, speaking to a coach or a counselor, it takes time invested into this. But I will say that the time invested comes back exponentially in results to you. And when that comes back exponentially, then everything starts to change. So that’s the other know, Emily, that you asked that was so great is like, how will I know that it’s changing? 

30:08
Michelle Thompson
Well, again, if you have this awareness of what’s happening inside of you’re also going to have awareness of how people are relating to you or how things like you might walk out of a meeting, and that was the best meeting ever. Well, think about that. Why was it the best meeting ever? Maybe you showed up differently. Maybe this is an awareness that you have, or ask some of the team why I felt really good about that meeting. What was your feeling about that meeting and what do you think might have been different? Just to get that insight back. And once you start doing that, the time also it becomes shorter because it becomes so normalized for you to be thinking these ways, to constantly be thinking about who am I? 

30:48
Michelle Thompson
How am I showing up and what are the best ways for me to interact. 

30:52
Rich Rudowske
So I was thinking too, just listening to you talk about the hard work or the investment and how conscious of a lot of things you have to be and ultimately that possibly becoming more second nature as you just grow and growth there. But boy, yeah, sounds weary-ing and yet satisfying process to undertake. 

31:13
Emily Wilson
So there is a component of weariness. I think about this, the people in our lives, maybe we are really invested in our own emotional intelligence and growth and saying, like, this is a high priority and you’re talking about it actively. You’re an advocate for people seeking this out, and yet there’s this loved one that you have or this coworker that you have who is just not emotionally intelligent. How do you shepherd someone? How do you guide them in being able to seek out emotional intelligence for their own lives? And what would you do to encourage them for that commitment to growth? 

32:00
Michelle Thompson
It’s a very good question because we don’t get to change people. No. And so part of this goes back to our own emotional intelligence and saying, I can have enough grace to contain who this person is without having to expect them to change. That’s part of our growth, is realizing that not everyone is going to be willing to do this or is ready to do it at the moment. But we also have a responsibility to our brothers and sisters to say to them, hey, I would love to share some feedback with you. Would you be open to that? Or, I’ve been experiencing something in you. I think it might be holding you back. Would you be willing for me to have this discussion with you? 

32:51
Michelle Thompson
It typically doesn’t work well with like, hey, can I just tell you that you’ve got no emotional intelligence whatsoever and your self awareness just stinks. I mean, that typically is not the best approach, but being able to go up to somebody and say, hey, would you be willing to have some feedback on how you showed up in that meeting? And they might be like, no, I don’t care what you say. And then you walk away going, okay, that’s their decision, and I have to accept that. Or they might say, sure, I would love some feedback. You can say, I noticed that when the discussion got hard, you pushed away from the table, crossed your arms, and weren’t interacting. 

33:27
Michelle Thompson
I’m just wondering what happened then, because the perception that I got was that you were mad at us and that you were disconnecting and you weren’t willing to be in part of the team. I’m wondering if that’s true. And that person can say, no, I was cold, and so I was just kind of trying to move to a warmer spot. And then you say, well, just so you know, when you do something like that, this is the impression it gives. That’s the way that we can help encourage people, is stepping in slowly and graciously, hoping that they are willing to receive the feedback and helping them grow and then opening that door for them to hopefully say, I would love to learn more or know more about it, but some people just are not willing to go into that space yet. 

34:15
Michelle Thompson
And part of what we have to do is find the great, still have the grace to be present with them. That does not mean that we give them a pass on bad behavior, but we do need to be gracious with them in those moments. 

34:34
Rich Rudowske
So that is fantastic advice. And I really love the question again, and really the answer of we don’t get to change other people. Yeah. Our own emotional intelligence is at play in these conversations. And whether we’re brought in or not allowed in, those have impact multiple ways. Yeah. Intertwined human relationships are complicated. You mentioned some resources, but what are some resources, maybe specifically that we could recommend to someone who’s exploring the subject of emotional intelligence and seeking to grow, just like for our listeners? Maybe just like, what’s a go to? 

35:13
Michelle Thompson
Well, if some of your listeners are readers and they love leading, there’s a book by Stephen J. Stein. It’s called “The EQ Leader”, and it really is a great book on instilling passions and goals, and it talks about the leader as self and within the organization. If you’re also a little bit of a research geek, there’s lots of studies listed in it that’s really helpful. I would also say that the other resources are things that are going to help you grow as a person. And I would always say, start with that self awareness. So books like, “Changes That Heal” by Dr. Cloud or, “How People Grow” by Dr. Cloud and Dr. Townsend, as well as boundaries, those are some of the key essentials that really help you start saying, who am I? How am I showing up? 

36:01
Michelle Thompson
What are the things that I need to work on first? So those are some of the places that I would go. And then there are plenty of things like even just looking up some YouTube TED talks, I’m trying to remember some of them specifically. But if you look up emotional intelligence, you’re going to find a number of people who are going to be able to speak to that and possibly might be speaking directly to. Where in life are you like? Emotional intelligence as a ministry leader, emotional intelligence as an organizational leader, emotional intelligence as a father, emotional intelligence as a mother. What are the different things areas that they could be growing in? 

36:41
Rich Rudowske
That’s just been great. 

36:44
Emily Wilson
I was going to say that there’s so much for us to be able to delve in. I’ve been really encouraged by everything that you shared, and I know that I had embarked on a journey a couple of years ago, but it makes me want to just start all over again and just to really be able to hone in on what it is that God has been doing in my life and to encourage others in their growth and really leaning into who he has called us to be. So I wanted to reach out and be able to ask you as well in your ministry as a coach and at the Townsend Institute how it is that we can be praying for you as you are coaching and leading others in this important topic. 

37:29
Michelle Thompson
Yeah. Thank you so much. The Townsend Institute is built all around this concept of developing people. One of the things that I love the most is when my graduates do their final project and talk about that they learned what they were supposed to learn in a master’s, but what they didn’t expect was the personal growth that they each feel like that they have. And so I would just ask you to continue to pray for us to be a place that is focused on developing people, being present for people and their personal growth, as well as promoting and producing coaches and leaders and counselors that go out into the field loving people, being present with people, and being able to sit in what I call sacred space with them. And for me personally, I would ask for the same thing. 

38:23
Michelle Thompson
I would love prayers just for my heart. It’s a busy season for me to be able to continue my own personal growth as well as continue to create sacred spaces and for people. 

38:35
Emily Wilson
Wonderful. 

38:36
Rich Rudowske
That’s awesome. Thanks for being with us today. It’s been a great conversation. We’ve been talking with Michelle Thompson from the Townsend Institute at Concordia University, Irvine about emotional intelligence. 

38:44
Emily Wilson
Thank you so much, Michelle. 

38:46
Michelle Thompson
Thank you. I appreciate your time and I am praying for the work that all of you do. I have memories of being a child and my father, who is a pastor, having friends in Lutheran Bible Translators. And so this has been a 40 year love that I have for the work that you do. And I will continue to pray for all of you, too. 

39:06
Rich Rudowske
Thank you so much. As a ministry leader and I think maybe even more importantly, just as a follower of Jesus Christ, I can’t think of a better space to be investing time and thought into than in growing in emotional intelligence because of how important our relationships to people are, our Christian witness to them is. And just in the context in which we live and move, to be a person of high emotional intelligence, a peaceful presence in a space and positive is rare and stands out. And we want to stand out for Jesus, right? 

39:48
Emily Wilson
And he’s called us to bear fruit and the fruit of the spirit and what does that look like? And I was just so encouraged by what she said of this side of eternity. We’re never done growing and being able to continually seek that out. And what does it look like to practice emotional intelligence and to be a reflection of who God has called us to be and reflect his light. And it was just not only an encouragement to me, but also a light of fire like, okay, time for me to start reading. She was talking about a research geek and enjoying reading, so I’m going to definitely look up those resources. 

40:29
Rich Rudowske
Absolutely. Thank you for listening to the Essentially Translatable podcast brought to you by Lutheran Bible Translators. You can find past episodes of the podcast at lbt.org/podcast or subscribe on Audible, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow Lutheran Bible Translators’ social media channels on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter or go to lbt.org to find out how you can get involved in the Bible translation movement and put God’s Word in their hands. 

The Essentially Translatable Podcast is produced and edited by Andrew Olson. Our executive producer is Emily Wilson. Podcast artwork was designed by Caleb Rodewald and Sarah Rudowske. Music written and performed by Rob Veith. I’m Rich Rudowkse. So long for now.