CUPA-HR eNews

Are You a Resonant Leader?
December 17, 2008

What exactly is a "resonant leader?" Is resonance innate or can it be learned? How does the concept of emotional intelligence relate to resonance? Why do some leaders fail?

These are some of the questions we posed to Annie McKee, a leading scholar on the cutting edge of leadership, organizational culture and change. As founder and managing director of Teleos Leadership Institute, McKee advises some of the largest corporations in the world. She has co-authored three books on leadership — Resonant Leadership, Becoming a Resonant Leader and the best-seller Primal Leadership: Learning to Lead With Emotional Intelligence. We're fortunate to have her as a keynote speaker for our Emerging Issues for the Higher Education Workplace Forum, to be held March 15-17 in Asheville, North Carolina.

Here, McKee offers her take on what it means to be a resonant leader, how to sustain resonance and what it takes to succeed as a great leader in today's pressure-cooker society.

Q: What are some characteristics of a resonant leader?

McKee: In short, a resonant leader is a person who is able to create an environment around him or her that is ripe with enthusiasm, hope, excitement, challenge, direction and vision. These kinds of people are said to possess "emotional intelligence." They are self aware and socially aware, and they are able to successfully self manage and manage relationships.

Q: Discuss the concept of emotional intelligence as it relates to resonance.

McKee: Emotional intelligence (EI) refers to the competencies that are related to the capacity for emotional self awareness, self management, social and organizational awareness, and relationship management. When you are self aware, you really know yourself and know how your emotions impact your thoughts and your behavior. When you successfully self manage, you are able to control your negative emotions — anger, fear, anxiety — to keep them from spreading (because emotions, both positive and negative, are contagious). A resonant person is able to manage his or her own responses to difficulties in the environment.

Social/organizational awareness refers to the ability to both see and understand what's going on in the culture of your organization and to be able to successfully and fairly navigate the politics of your organization. Resonant leaders also build strong, healthy relationships that can withstand conflict, that can support the building of effective teams, and that can enable individuals and groups to be and do their best.

Research shows that these competencies related to emotional intelligence do impact outcomes and business results and do affect one's ability to be effective as a leader.

Q: Can one learn the characteristics that define a resonant leader, or are these characteristics more innate (some people have them, some people don't)?

McKee: These characteristics absolutely can be learned. However, having said that, let me also say this: the skills and competencies related to emotional intelligence and resonance are quite complex. One should not expect to take a three-day course and automatically be an expert on self awareness or self management or relationship management. In fact, most of the programmatic approaches to learning how to become a better leader are woefully inadequate. Why is that? It's because there is an assumption that these things are simple and that you can take a read, test and measure approach and that you will see a change. It takes time, practice, commitment and perseverance.

Q: In your research, what are the reasons you have found that leaders, even some of the great ones, might have trouble sustaining their resonance?

McKee: Research has shown that Americans are now working one month more per year than we were 20 years ago. Where does this extra time come from? It comes from our evenings, our weekends, our vacation, our holidays. There is so much stress in our lives from our myriad responsibilities — work, family, financial. The world we live in is changing so fast and so dramatically. All of this is enough to overwhelm almost anybody. But consider the added pressures and responsibilities that are inherent in a leader's role. Our physical and emotional selves aren't equipped to handle that kind of constant, day in and day out stress.

Most people who end up in leadership roles are pretty resilient and hardy, but even the best of us aren't bionic. If we don't find ways to ensure that we are attending to renewal — physically, emotionally, spiritually — we can fall victim to what I call the "sacrifice syndrome," where you give and you give and you give until you wear yourself out and there's nothing left to give. Even if a great leader possesses all of the emotional intelligence competencies I discussed earlier, when the stress becomes too much, that leader can find himself or herself slipping and losing resonance. This "back peddling" is actually fairly common among leaders, and it doesn't mean we are weak or inadequate. It's simply a natural response to the pressure we face.

Q: So how can leaders ensure they do sustain their effectiveness in these stressful times?

McKee: We need to build into our daily lives practices that spark renewal. In our research, we've looked at three experiences that spark renewal — mindfulness (being attentive and attuned to oneself, other people and the environment that one is in); hope (tomorrow will be better than today); and compassion. Research shows that by experiencing these three things, we can physiologically counter the negative effects of stress, which in turn helps us sustain our effectiveness and our resonance.