1. Engage emotional intelligence – It’s time to access and use emotional intelligence, grieve disappointment, ventilate intense feelings, and learn from emotions. My clients use the power of emotions to motivate change and help staff deal with the emotional impact of recent events. That’s the job of a leader.

Most of us have been trained to hide our true feelings and do things in spite of them for fear of appearing unprofessional. There’s certainly a need to manage our emotions so that we can be professional. But there’s also a need to experience and be conscious of our feelings so that we can be skillful, intuitive, effective leaders.

Emotions are extremely important for leaders, and there’s a learning curve to effectively harnessing one’s emotions. That process is very personal, but once a client gets a few major pieces integrated, their effectiveness as a leader can skyrocket. It’s a delight as their coach to watch that happen.

The goal isn’t to improve or change your emotions, but to learn from them from a place of awareness: What’s the emotion that’s occurring? What is this feeling telling me? And once you’ve gleaned the information you’re trying to tell yourself, only then is it time for action.

Emotion is one of the ways our mind communicates with us. It can guide us about whether a decision is sound, whether there’s a need for action and even whether other people are being honest with us. We can notice the behavior of others and ask: “Do those emotional signals match the content of their communication?”

The intensity of emotion tends to correspond with the intensity of the disappointment or challenge being faced, and there’s an obvious need to ground those “big” emotions and learn from them. But it’s equally important to become aware of more nuanced emotions. They often provide guidance that helps a leader fine tune their strategy.

Subtle uneasiness after a decision could be a signal that there’s a need to go revisit it. Uneasiness in a personal relationship may tell you there’s something necessary to communicate that may be challenging for your partner to hear. Uneasiness in your partner’s communication toward you may be a sign to pay attention to where they’re at and what they’re thinking because there’s an incongruity somewhere.

Emotional Intelligence on an Organizational Scale

When working with a board of directors or an executive team or a management team—especially through times of change—you want to be able to harvest the wisdom of the team. Smart leaders expect, even welcome, some degree of disagreement. People will have different emotional responses to the same event, and people will have different convictions about what’s important and what needs to be done. There’s something of value in each point of view.  In order for a team to fully engage, each person on that team must be able to state their own position with passion and conviction … and also listen to others with openness and a willingness to be influenced by their positions. Out of that experience of fully speaking each person’s truth (as well as listening and looking for the wisdom in everyone else), comes the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

It takes great emotional maturity to passionately believe one thing yet be able to set that aside and still listen to someone else’s passion. And from there, we move into Engaging Systems Intelligence, the topic of the next post. So, listen to what your emotions are communicating, and check back soon for details on Step 2.

For an overview, please read The Leading Spirit Success Cycle – Which Step Are You On?