I was recently invited to speak on “Leading with Emotional Intelligence and why Self-Audit is essential” before the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) as part of its 2022 BSP Miles Kumustahan Series.
Also speaking at the same event was Peter Favila, a Monetary Board member who also served that position earlier from 2008 to 2014.
Favila was once Trade and Industry secretary from 2005 to 2010 during the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. He was also president of Allied Banking Corp. and president-CEO of the Philippine National Bank. Favila also served as chairman-president of the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) from 2001 to 2005.
In my talk, I touched on mining and emotional intelligence, as well as on mining and self-audit. At first glance, both would seem to be totally unrelated to each other, but not so, as I will point out later.
According to Statista, there were about 79 million smartphone users in the Philippines in 2020. It was forecast that there would be around 91.5 million smartphone users in the country by 2025.
Even with the sheer number of smartphones and cellphones out there, few people are aware that an average smartphone or cellphone contains about 24 mgs of gold, 250 mgs of silver, 3,800 mgs of cobalt, and 9 mgs of palladium.
As with cellphones, mining touches most aspects of our daily life: when you build your home, use your laptops, take your car to work, or even protest mining.
Clearly, we cannot live without mining. No question there.
The term “Emotional Intelligence” was first coined by psychologists Mayer and Salovey (1990) and refers to “one’s capacity to perceive, process and regulate emotional information accurately and effectively, both within oneself and in others and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions and to influence those of others.”
In other words, Emotional Intelligence or EI is (defined as) “the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle your own emotions, and those of the people around you.” People with a high degree of emotional intelligence know what they’re feeling, what their emotions mean, and how these emotions can affect other people.
Emotional Intelligence in leadership plays a key role in the success of every mining project. Conducting EI training and educating mining project managers will help improve their self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills, and would most likely lead to the success of the mining project itself.
Emotional intelligence is part and parcel of right and principled mining.
On the other hand, self-audit or self-awareness is the first element of Emotional Intelligence. In Ancient Greece, the philosopher Socrates famously declared that the unexamined life was not worth living. Asked to sum up what all philosophical commandments could be reduced to, he replied: “Know yourself.”
According to Socrates, true wisdom is knowing what you do not know. So, an essential part of knowing yourself must be recognizing the limits of your own wisdom and understanding — knowing what you do genuinely know and knowing what you have yet to learn.
Aside from the audit that is being undertaken by the respective regulatory agencies, as well as the Mining Industry Coordinating Council (MICC), the industry itself, under the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines (COMP), is under an annual process of self-audit.
This is being undertaken under the protocols of the Towards Sustainable Mining (TSM) Initiative that was started by the Mining Association of Canada (MAC) and which was adopted by the COMP for application in the Philippines.
The TSM initiative here, which is also recognized and supported by the MAC as well as the DENR and MGB, is how the industry, through the member companies of COMP, is able to check itself if its mining methods and processes are still in tune with the tenets of responsible mining.
The Open Forum was moderated by one of the most respected business speakers in the country, Francis Kong. He is acknowledged as a leadership guru. This Outstanding Filipino Awardee (TOFIL) in 2014 is also president of Success Options, Inc. and director of Inspire Leadership Consultancy.
Trust Francis to always draw out valuable lessons from the speakers and even from people in the audience, and to fire up people to pursue leadership roles and skills.
On a sad note, we mourn the passing of a true friend of the Philippines, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
In my message to His Excellency Koshikawa Kazuhiko, Japanese Ambassador to the Philippines, I expressed my deepest condolences for the passing of the former prime minister.
Shinzo Abe was a good man, a respected and admired leader. He will be missed but will never be forgotten.
In response, Ambassador Koshikawa told me that the passing of former Prime Minister Abe has brought them profound sadness. He was a great statesman and had a strong sense of intimacy with the Philippines.
Ambassador Koshikawa said that they deeply appreciated the outpouring of sympathies and condolences from the Filipino people, as they mourn Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s untimely demise.