Selfishness is everybody's struggle.
Anybody who's listening to this is a selfish person.
But the spirit-filled life is learning to love others,
to be otherly, rather than just self-focused.
We've been talking about EQ,
the idea of having an emotional quotient
of the ability to have personal relationships with people,
the importance of developing relationships,
the importance of being able to maintain relationships.
And as a leader myself,
I found that this is really the breaking point
for some of the best people.
And what I mean is that a lot of people have a high IQ,
but because they have a low EQ
and they don't wanna work on it,
they can be the most intelligent person on the planet
on a particular area,
but because of their poor relational skills,
they go from job to job, unable to be successful,
unable to make a lasting impact in one area
because they drive everybody crazy
and people can't get along with them.
I know that this was probably the biggest struggle
of Steve Jobs when he was starting Apple.
He just continually was just running through people.
Even the co-founder of Apple with him
talks about how poor his relational skills were.
So a lot of times people,
especially in the technical STEM areas,
haven't been built into strong EQ people
because they are so into things.
And let me just say this,
men typically are more into things than women.
Women are definitely more relational.
So I would say in the EQ factor,
one of the things we're discovering over the last 25 years
as we see the glass ceiling in large companies changing
and some women do really well
in the executive level leadership
because they have a high EQ.
And they have, of course, they have a high IQ too
if they're in that position.
But we're speaking of the EQ factor here.
And so what I wanted to do
is talk about six reasons for a low EQ.
And I wanna challenge you as you listen to this,
that this is, you wanna be working on the opposite,
but I would imagine out of these six possible reasons
for low EQ, one of them or two of them
probably speak to who you are
because nobody's got this all together.
Nobody's perfect.
And I'm looking in the mirror
when I give a message like this
because I've had to really work on my EQ
and developing emotional quotient for other people,
learning to love people, learning how to be a team player.
After all, I was a gymnast in high school and college,
which is very much an individual sport.
It's a team sport in the sense that you're on a team,
but it's an individual sport in what you do.
So you tend to train, you're training by yourself
or you're training on a particular event
with some other guys,
but it's not like I'm dependent on them.
Everything's on the gymnast, the individual gymnast.
So it's not like baseball or football or basketball
where you have to work together as a team.
So I came out of an individualistic sports background,
but I think I figured out pretty early on,
both through student council in high school
to all the other team sports that I did,
that I liked being with people, I enjoyed people.
And so my EQ grew through those different experiences
that I had growing up.
But let me go to today, six reasons for a low EQ.
Here's the first.
And this is kind of a third millennium sort of issue.
I'd say the last 30 years,
this has become an oppressing issue,
at least in American life, which is what I know.
And having lived almost 10 years in Japan,
this would definitely be true there.
And that is number one, busyness.
Just being too busy to build relationships with people.
And in the corporate atmosphere of a company
or even the corporate atmosphere of a church,
we get too busy.
And when we get too busy, we don't have time for people.
We don't have time to listen.
We don't have time to care.
And so many of us that are in leadership positions,
whether it's either as a senior pastor
or a CFO or a CEO or COO,
we're just focused on the goal, the bottom line.
And then we see people as very utilitarian.
And so we're just using people to get to our goal
rather than nurturing and loving people
and having a relationship with people.
It's not possible to know everybody,
especially in a larger organization.
In our church, we have dozens and dozens of staff,
and I can't know everybody.
But what I've tried to do in teaching my team about EQ
is that it starts with me on the executive level,
leadership team for sure.
But then it's important that all the different teams
that make up our organization are taking care of their people
and developing their EQ.
And it just happens that busyness is a big issue.
We get so busy with all our projects.
We get so busy with all of our goals
that we quit focusing on the people
that we need to work together with.
And thus, they're not developing in their emotional quotient.
They're not developing in relationships
because they feel like they're just a tool in the toolkit
rather than a friend.
And having a relationship with you
as you're moving together with teamwork.
So first is busyness.
So I just challenge you, don't get
so busy with your projects that you forget about your people.
People matter.
People matter to God.
People should matter to you.
And I'll say that there's a kingdom principle here
of loving God with all of your heart, soul, mind,
and strength and your neighbor as yourself.
And even in work, even in a work environment,
loving your neighbor, loving your teammate
as you love yourself ends up having better results.
So I think we actually, it sounds counterintuitive.
Sometimes we need to be less busy with the project,
more concerned about our people.
And guess what?
You end up accomplishing your project too.
So busyness would be number one.
Number two would be stress.
We are in a very, very stressful culture,
especially in the business realm and even in the church realm.
Even in issues of running a small business,
we find ourselves stressed out.
And the more uptight you are, the more worried you are,
the more frustrated with work, family, maybe even
your personal health you become, you're
not going to be having fruitful, meaningful
relationships with other people.
So the first one is busyness, but the second one is stressed.
And I just want to challenge you to not get so stressed
that you forget about the strategic nature of loving
others and having a personal relationship with them.
When we get stressed, we actually tend to isolate.
And when we isolate, we cut ourselves off from people
because we don't have anything to do with people.
And let me just say, I understand
that because dealing with people is a whole lot harder
than dealing with a project.
You have an issue in your life that you're battling.
Sometimes it's a matter of developing skills.
Sometimes it's a matter of changing the widget,
as it were, making an adjustment there, and then it's OK.
People are way more complicated than that.
So it's not just turning a screw.
Like last night, we were watching a movie.
We still just plug in to the side of the computer
into the cord that then puts the movie from Amazon
or whatever place we're getting it from up on the screen.
And so we had a few issues with that.
Took me about five minutes to problem solve that.
Now, if in the midst of that, somebody in the room
is getting all upset and frustrated and angry,
it's not going to take five minutes to fix that.
I'm going to have to work with that person.
I'm going to have to say, I'm sorry, I apologize,
or maybe they need to apologize, and they apologize,
and I apologize, and we're all apologizing.
In the process of doing all that,
it's like 20 minutes later, it's like, wow, this is complicated.
So EQ is always harder than IQ.
Working with people is always harder
than working with a project.
And so the tendency, if you're getting stressed out,
is to start letting the relational side of you
get pushed out of the way.
This happens in marriages a lot.
It's what leads to divorce.
If the husband or the wife coming back from work
are just overly stressed, it's going to hurt the marriage.
It's going to hurt the relationship with each other.
Thirdly, selfishness.
Just not really caring about people.
I mean, there are a lot of selfish people.
I'm a selfish person.
I'm as selfish as anyone in this room.
We tend to become selfish naturally,
and then it takes work to become selfless.
But EQ is developed through a certain level of selflessness
in which we care about others.
We love people.
We want to help them grow.
We want to equip them.
We want to empower them in our lives.
We take time to care.
We take time to listen.
We take time to ask good questions.
You can't ask good questions
if you don't know what the question is.
And the only way we know that
is through having a relationship with people.
So, low EQ,
People tend to be selfish.
They're kind of into themselves.
All they think about is themselves.
And honestly, they're lonely.
Most low EQ people are lonely.
And I just challenge you that if that's you,
you need to break out of that
because God made you for connection.
He made you for connection with people.
People give us joy.
Yes, they're a headache sometimes,
but they're also what fill our hearts with love
and kindness and forgiveness.
And we need that.
And they need that.
And so as we build relationships with others
and we grow in having friendships
and relationships that are deep and meaningful,
we become less selfish.
We do.
You get married and you realize
just how selfish you really are.
Your spouse will remind you of that.
But as you start to grow in your selflessness
and love for that other person,
the beauty of that is actually your EQ is growing too
because most of us who learn in a marriage
to pull down our defenses a little bit,
care about that person,
we can bring that to work with us.
And we realize, oh, everybody's like that.
Everybody needs forgiveness sometimes.
Everybody needs for us to be patient
when we don't wanna be.
And marriage is one of the beautiful ways
in which God reminds us of the importance of EQ.
Selfishness is everybody's struggle.
Anybody who's listening to this is a selfish person,
but the spirit-filled life is learning to love others,
to be otherly rather than just self-focused.
Being self-focused is one of the reasons
that many people don't grow in their EQ.
So I challenge you to look at busyness.
Are you too busy to develop relationships?
Are you too stressed out to develop relationships?
Are you so into your own little world
and with the selfish ways that you have
that you don't develop relationships?
I'm gonna challenge you,
those are the first three reasons for a low EQ.
In my next episode,
I'm gonna give three more strategies
or three more challenges to a low EQ
and how we can up our game in that area.