Emotions are Good Consultants but Bad Executives

A stressful event happens – say, a fight with your significant other or a negative performance review at work – and you feel angry and hurt.  What do you do?  Do you stuff those feelings and carry on as if nothing happened?  Do you give yourself over to your emotions, venting them at your partner or boss in a blinding rush, and let the consequences happen?

A couple of weeks ago, we learned about thinking accurately and exorcising unreasonable or irrational thoughts that hold us back.  But what about emotions?  Emotions play an integral part to our humanity and to our success as leaders. They are the basis for most of the good things in life:  They allow us to form relationships, to experience art, to empathize and be kind.   But unfettered emotions can also damage our credibility and relationships as much as they help. 

Much has been written about this ability to manage emotions as a critical function, from Wayne Payne and Daniel Goleman’s ideas about emotional intelligence to Art Chickering and Linda Reisser’s Seven Vectors of Identity Development, of which “managing emotions” is a key piece.  Noam Shpancer, Ph. D., builds on those ideas, providing us some key tips to managing the emotions that we all have. 

The first tip is to avoid denying emotions you are feeling.  We’ve all known – or been -- this person, the stoic who never seems to be affected by anything that happens.  Individuals have different levels of natural emotionality, but denying or suppressing your emotions excessively has serious emotional and physical side effects, including depression, fatigue, high blood pressure, and over-eating.  “Stuffing” emotions usually makes them worse and they eventually come out anyway. 

The second tip is to avoid what Shpancer calls “blind obedience” to your emotions, or believing that your emotions are always telling you the truth about a situation and you must do anything they tell you to do.  Putting your emotions in charge leads to all kind of havoc, including lost relationships and jobs and makes you the kind of leader others avoid.

The best approach is to think of your emotions, as Shpancer says, as valued consultants, providing you with critical input, but do not make them executives, issuing orders that must be followed.  Yes, I know this differs from all the "follow your heart" advice given so often -- sorry, romantics -- but it's true.  Good leadership means paying attention to your emotions, and balancing them with your rational thoughts and other factors that have to be weighed, or following your heart and your head. 

What tips or tricks do you use to manage your emotions?  How do emotions in a leader affect their team?  How do you balance managing your emotions with maintaining your authenticity?

Everyone is Fighting a Battle

Today is the Friday of Spring Break and the weather has turned gorgeous (finally!) so I’ll keep it short today.  Plato said, "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle" and he's right. Empathy is one of the most important leadership skills and this video demonstrates that beautifully.  I hope you’ll take a couple of minutes to watch. 

Do you agree that empathy is an important servant leadership skill?  How do you cultivate and improve it in your leadership practice?  How do you balance your empathy for an individual with doing what’s right for the larger group or organization, in situations where those two don't necessarily overlap?

Thinking About Thinking

Rene Descartes gave us the famous aphorism, “I think; therefore I am,” but your thoughts do more than prove that you exist.  They also help determine how you exist, including whether you succeed or fail as a leader.  Many people believe that their thoughts are like wild animals, beyond their ability to control. But thoughts can, in fact, be managed and must be managed in order to succeed as a leader.

Noam Shpancer, Ph.D., gives some helpful recommendations about how to get rid of ineffective habits of mind, or what  Albert Ellis called “irrational beliefs.”  To enact thought management, Shpancer recommends you begin by becoming aware of how you talk to yourself and what stories you tell.  Bad habits of mind to look out for include:

·         All or nothing thinking:  “If I don’t succeed 100%, I’m a total failure.”  The reality is, no there are many degrees within any dichotomy, whether it’s success or failure, good or bad, happy or sad, and so on.  Focusing only on the poles is misleading.

·         Mind reading:  “I know exactly what you’re thinking.”  The reality is you are not psychic and never know exactly what others are thinking.  They’re probably thinking about lunch.

·         Catastrophyzing, also known as “awfulizing”:  “If X doesn’t happen – or Y does happen – my life as I know it is over.”  Things happen or don’t happen every day of your life and you’ve survived, and even thrived, so far.  You can handle it.

·         Overgeneralization:  “I’ve been let down by three co-workers, so all my co-workers care undependable.”  Everyone is unique and making overgeneralized assumptions can lead to the dreaded self-fulfilling prophecy.

·         “Should” and “must”: “I must have a child to be happy.  I should want to move up in my career.”  (Cheeky Albert Ellis called this “shoulding all over yourself” and “musterbating.”)  The reality?  It’s normal to want things, but telling yourself that those things determine your entire future happiness is a fool-proof (or is fool-ful?) recipe for failure.   

After becoming aware of these bad thinking habits, the next step is to, as Shpancer recommends, “understand that thoughts are not facts but hypotheses.”  Read that part again.  Thoughts are deceptive because they often seem so true, but your first thought about anything may or may not be accurate or even what you want.  To get to that best thought, the final step is to consider possible alternatives and choose the one that is best supported by evidence.  Shpancer helpfully compares this to buying shoes:  You don’t walk into a store and immediately purchase the first thing you see.  You look around, consider options, think about your preferences and the cost, then you make a decision.  

You already do this kind of thought choosing now.  If a loved one makes you really angry, do you go with your first thought, which may involve doing something you regret (frying pan, cranium, etc.)?  No.  You don’t.  You probably take a moment and think out the best way to proceed, or at least the way that won’t land you in court.  Managing your thoughts is really just about taking that same “stop and think” habit and expanding it into all parts of your thinking, not just those with potentially life-changing consequences.

The process described above may feel uncomfortable at first if you are not used to doing it, but cultivating this thought awareness – fancy term: metacognition -- and replacing bad mental habits becomes…well, a habit once you begin doing it, and it’s a habit will pay you many dividends.