Emotional Engagement for Leaders – “You’re Going to Hate This”
It is the one statement my clients do not want to hear.
“You’re going to hate this.” Newer clients look surprised when I say it. Ongoing clients roll their eyes and sigh in resignation. They know where the conversation is going.
Many leaders with high achieving personalities have been trained, either personally or professionally, to wrap emotions tight and to intellectualize everything.
“You’re going to hate this” is always followed by a suggestion that they use emotion strategically. It may be to give someone a compliment, to express true feelings or to ask for the h word (help). These actions are fundamental to effective leadership, but they are foreign to those of us trained in anti-emotion.
Integration of Emotion in Business
Why is emotional integration fundamental to business? In organizations, it is toxic to completely separate one’s own emotions from team distress. If there is one way to make your team distrust you, give them a surface-level explanation for a real problem.
In sales and marketing, tapping into human emotion is the foundation of eliciting behavioral change. Have you ever listened to a persuasive person who did not use emotion?
Influential leaders combine intellect and emotion. Can you think of the leaders you want to emulate? Are they emotionally engaged or are they completely dispassionate? It’s irrational to believe that we can truly influence people without incorporating emotion.
The Fantasy – Separate Emotion from Business
While it may be irrational to believe that we can influence people without emotion, we have been told that we can. In the high achiever world, we’ve all been taught the same thing: separate out the emotion.
“Don’t bring your emotions to work.”
“You need to be logical; you can’t be emotional.”
“It’s not personal; it’s business.”
“Don’t get too emotional.”
“You have to show strength (and we all know that emotions are weak.)”
The problem? The strategy sucks. People are motivated by emotion and logic. They respond to emotion and logic. If you keep the logic and leave out the emotion, you will get half of the change and half of the relationship you are seeking.
Let me be clear, for the sake of all of us. I am not suggesting that you should be an emotional train wreck to be successful. Rather, I am suggesting that you integrate emotion with logic in order to be an excellent leader. I absolutely believe that it is necessary to direct, master, and adjust the emotional intensity to match situational demands.
Personally, I understand the reticence to use emotion. I spent a lot of years in an educational framework that focused on minimizing emotion. “Emotion is the enemy of objectivity. Dispassionate discourse is more credible. You can’t do your job well if you care about your clients.” Somehow, the statements sounded like facts. Yet, no one ever pointed to research or real-world results to support them.
You’re Going to Hate This
If you are feeling vaguely uncomfortable right now, you are one of the people to whom I would say ‘you’re going to hate this.” You see, using emotion makes us feel vulnerable. It is like rolling over and exposing our under-belly, then waiting to see if we will be stabbed or protected. Yay. If we speak only from an intellectual perspective, we sound intelligent, and we feel safe. Win-win….or so it seems.
You’re going to hate this. Doing the job is not enough. Being excellent is not enough. Your actions are not enough. Bringing your A-game requires a degree of emotional discomfort.
Strategies for Those Who Dare
If you are one of the people who may need to re-integrate emotion back into your professional life, here is how you can start.
♦ If you want people to feel valued, you need to compliment them. Catch someone doing something right and give him/her a compliment. Compliments DO NOT have to be mushy, gushy awkward affairs.
“By the way, I noticed you did ______. I really appreciate it.”
(If you, the reader, are still arguing with me, call it positive feedback instead of a compliment.)
♦ If you want people to be truthful, you need to be vulnerable. People trust us at a human level when they know us at a human level. They will be the most truthful when they trust us.
(Note: Please DO NOT do this with toxic people. They are in a separate zip code and require a separate strategy)
♦ If you want to show strength, you need to apologize. Everyone can see that you messed up. You can either own it and do better or let people see that you lack the self-awareness and strength for an apology. If you are hoping that they just didn’t notice (that you were incompetent, an asshole, impatient, distracted), good luck with that. If you are hoping they forget, they may. The problem is that when we hurt people, it leaves a dent in the trust. The action may be forgotten, but the hurt remains. Apologies are the fastest way to prevent long-term problems. Then, change your actions to match the apology so that people believe you.
♦ If you are stressed out, say, “If I’m coming across edgy, I’m just concerned about ____project. It’s not you.” Some leaders are afraid of coming across as weak if they admit stress. I understand wanting to be strong for your team, but leaving them in the dark means that they will come to their own (inevitably worse) conclusions.
♦ If the whole idea of integrating emotion makes you want to die slowly inside, find someone you trust to help you. It can be a professional such as myself or a colleague who is great at combining reasoning and emotion. Be patient with yourself. It is extremely rare for people to be equally comfortable with both analytical and emotional reasoning. People who are great with emotion often need to strengthen their analytical approaches. People who are great analytically need to sharpen their emotional tools.
For the skeptics, those of you who somehow managed to read to the end, but really, really hate what I am saying. Set up an experiment. Control the confounding variables as much as possible. Then test some of these tips on your current relationships and see what happens.
For more information on navigating emotions and people, check out Relational Genius: The High Achiever’s Guide to Soft-skill Confidence in Leadership and Life.