Running head: HOW EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND MINDFULNESS CAN IMPACT 1

LEADERSHIP

How Emotional Intelligence and Mindfulness Can Impact Leadership

Margae Schmidt

Dominican University
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Our primal emotions are the most important attribute to leading others successfully.

“When a leader drives emotions positively, they bring out everyone’s best.” (Goleman et al.,

2002, p. 5) This is called resonance. We need to work and collaborate with others to understand

their emotional state and consequently we will understand our own. As colleagues, our moods

reflect off each other and either negatively or positively impact our work and an organization’s

success or failure. “In seventy work teams across diverse industries, for instance, members who

sat in meetings together ended up sharing moods-either good or bad-within two hours” (Goleman

et al., 2002, p. 8) Good leaders interpret people’s emotions and react accordingly. Emotional

intelligence and mindfulness can impact leadership in many ways by bringing out the best in

themselves and other people.

I made a site visit to Tinley Park Public Library (TPPL), my local public library. Since

moving to the area a couple of years ago I had only visited the library one time before to apply

for a library card. They had rearranged some areas since the last time I was there. The building is

only ten years old and consists of two spacious floors. The Circulation, Adult Services, and

Computer Lab are located on the first floor. While the Children, Young Adult, and Makerspace

area are on the second floor. This was designed strategically to reduce the noise typically created

by younger patrons. Both floors also have a couple meeting rooms where technology classes are

taught. Study rooms are also located on both floors and they are in high demand. The lighting is

good for reading and for being very busy it was fairly quiet in the library.

For my first interview I spoke with Diana R., who is a Virtual Service Librarian. She is

one of three librarians that fill that roll at a very busy library. Her job consists of curating social

media content, digitizing VHS tapes, teach technology classes such as Photoshop, and teaching
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patrons technology programs during tech drop-in sessions. She also is responsible for training

library staff on the new phone system.

The first question I asked her was about how the overall leadership is at the TPPL and if

she was happy with it. She replied that she was very unhappy with the leadership from the

Director and the Assistant Director. She felt the library as a whole is very compartmentalized and

the various departments do not work together. Administration knows about these feelings from

her and other staff and says that things are changing, but she has yet to see that change. To her a

great leader knows how the library works and how it is managed at all levels, has earned the

respect of staff and is inspiring and motivating. A good leader has the ability to back her/his staff

in upholding policy and provides fair and just leadership across the organization. This is

something she feels is lacking in the current leadership at the library.

Marturano discusses two capacities for leading with excellence. The first is the ability of

a leader to connect. This includes knowing their self and connecting to others as individuals and

expanding to including communities as a whole. (33) In the situations described to me at the

TPPL it seems that upper management is not connecting emotionally with their staff. If the

Administrative Department does not know the emotions and feelings of their staff, they cannot

know and understand the community they are severing either. This is a great disservice because

the primary goal of public libraries is to know and serve their community.

The second capacity is for a leader to guide and embrace change. The key is to guide the

change by collaborating and listening to others. This type of leadership allows a mindful leader

to take an organization “into new arenas, and accept failures as experiments from which to

learn.” (Marturano, 2014, p. 34) The Director could take the failure of the mismanaged

departments of the library and turn it into a positive by paying closer attention to the needs of his
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staff. He could do this by sending out an anonymous survey periodically to ask how library staff

feel about different situations or ideas.

Diana also stated that upper management is very far removed from how support staff feel.

There is outright favoritism that the support staff see on a daily basis, which brings down the

moral of staff. I asked her if she thinks emotional intelligence is important to her as an employee

of the library and she replied that it is very important to see every employee as a unique

individual and to approach leadership with both empathy and understanding of human behavior.

The lack of communication between all departments, including Administration, for a

building of only seventy employees is horrible. Some people know about things happening, such

as meetings or changes, and other people never get these emails. For example, she asked to

attend a workshop for Virtual Service Librarians at Westmount Public Library. The time had

changed for the meeting but she was not informed of this by her direct supervisor. If another

coworker had not told her about the time change she would have missed the meeting.

Marturano also discusses four fundamentals of leadership excellence which include

focus, clarity, creativity, and compassion. “These four fundamentals of leadership excellence are

qualities that originate within our minds and hearts, and we can strengthen and cultivate them

through mindful leadership training.” (Marturano, 2014, p. 34) My suggestion to the

Administrative Department is to develop some type of leadership training so that they and other

support staff can benefit from it. The training should not be a one-time occurrence but should be

repeated multiple times throughout the year.

It is easy to get distracted and lose focus when working on a report or some other task

that does not have our full attention. Focus allows us to connect to other people and when we

lose focus we lose that connection to people. “Cultivating our ability to develop greater clarity
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applies not only to seeing clearly the events and environment around us but also to seeing

ourselves more clearly.” (Marturano, 2014, p. 36) Creativity is also significantly important to

leadership but free time is needed to allow the mind space to be creative. The last fundamental of

leadership is compassion, is similar to empathy but “our compassionate mind recognizes that our

empathy arises from the understanding that we all share a common humanity.” (Marturano,

2014, p. 38) Compassion is the most transformative fundamental for an individual, organization,

and community.

In my second interview, I spoke with Beth F., who is a Reference Librarian in the Adult

Services Department. I asked her similar questions that I asked Diana, but her answers were

slightly different. I asked her to define what a good leader is to her and if she thinks there is good

leadership in her organization. She described a good leader as someone who has a worthy goal or

goals in mind, has the courage of his/her convictions, and inspires others to work together or

separately to achieve these goals. She felt that both her former and current direct supervisors

provide excellent service to the community and to keep their staff happy overall. She also said

that sometimes, in the library as a whole, it seems that decisions are made unilaterally, without

much forethought on how they may effect both staff and patrons. Sometimes, a decision will be

made without consulting those staff members involved – who would have been able to point out

the flaws in the plan. Then after a time, and a number of patron complaints, the plan will be

scuttled and the former way of doing things reinstated. She stated that she is not opposed to

trying new things, but she felt more prior consultation would be advisable.

To Beth, emotional intelligence is very important in maintaining morale and, since

emotions are a huge part of what makes a person that person, taking someone’s emotions into

consideration makes a person feel that he/she is respected.

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Often administrators who no longer work with the public do not take into account the

pressures that working with the public entail – sometime they no longer even know their public

and what matters to them. Except in unusual circumstances, they do not feel the brunt of

patrons’ annoyance and impatience when things change, do not go smoothly, or do not meet their

expectations. I would provide more staff training when policies, procedures, or even telephone

systems change.

New beginnings are scary for many employees but Bridges states “They require, in some

sense, that people become the new kind of person that the new situation demands.” (Bridges,

2009, p. 55) Overall, emotions play the most vital role in successful leadership and can benefit

all different types of organizations if they choose to pay attention to their own feelings and the

feelings of others.
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References

Bridges, W. (2009) Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change. (3rd Ed.). Philadelphia,
PA: William Bridges & Assocaites, Inc.

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, D., McKee, A. (2002) Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of
Emotional Intelligence. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.

Marturano, J. (2014) Finding the Space to Lead: A Practical Guide to Mindful Leadership. New
York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing.