Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Goleman also discusses how particular leadership styles may be appropriate for
specific situations and particularly in developing teams. Allied to emotional intelligence
is what Earley and Mosakowski (2004) call cultural intelligence - a capability that
helps people engage with others from different occupational, national or ethnic
cultures. Goleman has also extended his views on intelligence to encompass the
ecological. This enables us to learn and understand how what we know about human
activity can impact on ecosystems more sensitively and gently. This intelligence,
Goleman (2009: 43) argues is something that existed for centuries in pre-modern
'simpler' societies. It has since been lost but can be regained. Ecological intelligence
today means that in recognizing the hidden web of connections that make up our
world, we are in desperate need for 'a collective eye opening, a shift in our most
basic assumptions and perceptions'. He continues:
Just as social and emotional intelligence build on the abilities to take other
people's perspective, feel with them, and show our concern, ecological intelligence
extends this capacity to all natural systems. We display such empathy whenever
we feel distress at a sign of the 'pain' of the planet or resolve to make things
better. This expanded empathy adds to a rational analysis of cause and effect
the motivation to help.
(2009: 44)
Given the highly connected nature of sustainability, both cultural and emotional
intelligence are clearly significant. As Earley and Mosakowski remark:
A person with high emotional intelligence grasps what makes us human and at
the same time what makes each of us different from one another. A person with
high cultural intelligence can somehow tease out of a person's or group's behavior
those features that would be true of all people and all groups, those peculiar to
this person or this group, and those that are neither universal nor idiosyncratic.
The vast realm that lies between those two poles is culture.
(2004: 140)
Educationalists write of
intercultural learning
, finding common values and common
ground, and cultural intelligence is a tool that may allow this to be realized:
The people who are socially the most successful among their peers often have
the greatest difficulty making sense of, and then being accepted by, cultural
strangers. Those who fully embody the habits and norms of their native culture
may be the most alien when they enter a culture not their own. Sometimes people
who are somewhat detached from their own culture can more easily adopt the
mores and even the body language of an unfamiliar host. They're used to being
observers and making a conscious effort to fit in.
(Earley and Mosakowski, 2004: 140)
Community leadership can also take many forms, but invariably involves dialogue,
group facilitation, empathy, emotional intelligence, conflict negotiation, leading by
example and inspiration, and may be symbolized by the action and energy of a single
individual, group or of a cultural initiative. In the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where
