Want to be a Change Agent?

Ever since I was a child people have come to me to talk about their problems, emotional upsets and concerns. I always thought they wanted me to give them my insiights and advice but maybe I have been wrong. I went to college to be a school teacher and for the years I labored in the classroom I was fulfilled. However, it quickly became apparent that the kids are actually learning on their own and the teacher is a facilitator of learning by how we organized the classes and interacted with them emotionally.

Then I went to graduate school in Counseling in Higher Education. I made that choice because I was so positively influenced by our Counselor, Mrs. Betty Ann Ward, in my Community College. I studied hard and learned a lot. The greatest teachers were not those with the most information but the greatest amount of interest and EQ. I motivated my self to study and to learn. I was involved in self-change and I had discovered some colleagues who were also self-motivated to change.

But the content in my classes seemed to tell another story. The books on psychology and Counseling taught that my IQ was  more important in changing hurting students than my EQ. I was never told that EQ was important to being a change agent. I was never graded on EQ. I received real good grades but all of them were based on how well I remembered stuff from the books not from how well I related to the students I counseled of how much they changed for the better.

It is as though a basketball player was judeged on how well he could talk about shooting and diagram the plays not on how well he actually put the ball through the hoop or how well he influenced the rest of the team to play well. In sports we call that, "Chalk Talk" for how well a coach and player can use the chalk board to explain plays.

In Counseling the only thing that counts is how well the Client does. It matters not if the Counselor can talk about the case if the Client does not change for teh better. In Medicine we say it this way: "Successful treatment but the Patient died".

Want to be a Change Agent as a Friend, Pastor, Teacher, Counselor, Parent, Small Group Leader, etc? It is all about EQ not IQ. See my book Hope and Change for Humpty Dumpty for more on Change and Influence.