Getting Your Head Around Shari Jordan's Approach to Leadership
I came across Shari Jordan A Visionary Shaping Modern Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence And Purpose a couple years ago when a colleague in a mid-level management role was struggling with team retention. People kept leaving her group, and she couldn't figure out why. She showed me a PDF outline from the Jordan program, and honestly it looked like most corporate leadership fluff until I actually sat down and read through it. The core framework isn't rocket science. It ties emotional intelligence directly to leadership decisions rather than treating EQ as a soft add-on you mention in team-building seminars. The program breaks down into a few practical modules: self-awareness calibration, empathy mapping for stakeholder management, purpose-driven decision making, and application through real workplace scenarios. Most of the content is structured around 90-minute group sessions with downloadable worksheets and a companion audio series.
Shari Jordan A Visionary Shaping Modern Leadership Through Emotional Intelligence And Purpose
If you want to actually use this instead of filing it away unread, here is how it works in practice. Start with the self-awareness audit in module one. There is a scoring sheet where you rate yourself on twelve emotional triggers—things like when your authority is questioned, when deadlines shift without notice, when a direct report contradicts you publicly. You write down what each situation makes you feel and then what you usually do about it. This part takes about twenty minutes. Most people rush through it because the questions feel too basic. That is exactly why it matters. I spent a week going back through my own audit results after I completed the first module. One of my triggers that I had never recognized before was being put on the spot in meetings. When someone asked me an unplanned question in front of senior leadership, I noticed I would either shut down or get sarcastic. That wasn't helpful. The program asks you to map these patterns and then practice a three-second pause before responding. It sounds almost insulting in its simplicity. It works because you are not trying to eliminate a reaction. You are inserting a tiny gap between stimulus and response, which changes everything in a high-stakes conversation. The empathy mapping section covers stakeholder analysis through an emotional lens. You take each person on your team or in your network and fill out a grid: what they see, hear, think, and feel. This is different from a standard org chart exercise. You are tracking the information environment around each person rather than just their title. I ran into a specific edge case with this that I still remember clearly.
I was managing a cross-functional project where two senior engineers on opposite sides of a technical dispute both scored as highly resistant to compromise on the empathy grid. Normal negotiation tactics were not working. The Jordan method has you dig into the "feels" column more thoroughly. I discovered that one engineer was actually afraid of looking weak to his team, and the other was protecting a personal reputation tied to a past failure. Once I reframed the conversation around those fears rather than the technical arguments, the deadlock broke in about forty minutes. Using standard mediation approaches, that project would have stalled for weeks. The purpose-driven decision-making module is where this program differs from generic emotional intelligence training. Most EQ courses teach you how to manage your own emotions and read others. The Jordan framework pushes further by asking leaders to define a personal operating purpose statement that guides actual decisions, not just team culture. You write a one-paragraph statement about what you stand for professionally. Then when a real choice comes up, you check it against that statement before acting. I found this useful when I had to decide whether to approve a project that was profitable but misaligned with our stated direction. The purpose statement helped me say no faster than I normally would have, which saved the team about three weeks of wasted effort. The program includes a downloadable workbook that you can fill out digitally or print. You can find it on the official website linked from the main landing page. There is also a companion podcast with short episode breakdowns of each module, which is helpful if you are trying to absorb the material during a commute. The workbook runs roughly eighty pages across all modules. I would budget about six to eight weeks of study if you are doing it alongside a full-time job, assuming you spend two to three hours per week on the exercises.
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There are legitimate drawbacks to be aware of. The program assumes a baseline of managerial responsibility. If you are not in a position where you make decisions for other people, most of the exercises will feel abstract. I know someone who completed the course while still working as an individual contributor and said they got maybe forty percent of the practical value out of it. Another issue is the pacing. Some modules move very quickly through content that deserves more time, particularly the section on conflict resolution, which could easily be double its current length. You may need to supplement with other resources if you want deeper coverage there. The program also relies heavily on group session dynamics. The solo workbook is solid, but a lot of the learning comes from sharing your responses with other participants. If you are doing this independently without a cohort, you will miss out on the peer feedback component, which accounts for a meaningful portion of the curriculum. In that case, consider pairing it with a book like Daniel Goleman's work on emotional intelligence or a more structured leadership course that includes live coaching sessions. The pricing structure includes a one-time fee for the full program with lifetime access to updates. There is no subscription model, which is unusual and actually a positive if you compare it to the monthly fees that most modern leadership platforms charge. I paid around two hundred dollars when I enrolled, and the materials have been updated at least once since then without any extra cost.
One counter-intuitive thing about this program that most people miss: the hardest module is not the one about empathy or purpose. It is the accountability tracking system in the later weeks. The program asks you to set up a weekly review habit where you log your emotional responses to workplace events and measure whether your behavior aligned with your stated purpose. This sounds tedious. It is tedious. But it is also the part that produces the measurable change. Without it, you complete the course, feel temporarily inspired, and then fall back into old patterns within a month. The accountability log is what separates people who finish the program from people who actually shift their leadership behavior. For anyone deciding whether to invest time in this, my recommendation is straightforward. If you are in a leadership role with a team, have some autonomy over decisions, and are willing to do the weekly tracking exercises consistently, this program will give you useful tools within the first month. If you are early in your career without direct reports or if you need extensive live coaching support, you might get better returns from a different format. The content is good, but it is not a complete leadership solution on its own. I still reference the self-awareness audit and the purpose statement framework occasionally, probably a year and a half after completing the program. Not everything from the course stuck, but those two tools are things I use regularly. That is a decent track record for a corporate development program.
