MORE ON LEADERSHIP AND EMOTIONS

Leadership is rational, strategic, action oriented – and it is emotional too. I received quite a few positive messages from folks about my recent article called “Leadership is Emotional” which was printed in the Business Spectator and is available from this site.

In that article I argued that effective leadership inevitably involves emotions. It is also true that there are various complexities around the display of emotion in the workplace, and that senior managers need to be appropriate. Unfortunately, some senior managers and especially males believe that the only appropriate display of emotion by leaders in the workplace is no display of emotion.  But this is so limiting and not a very balanced way of operating.

On a recent senior leadership program two general managers from different organisations shared very different experiences around the public display of emotion by their CEOs. In both cases the organisations had been through some very challenging times and had been attracting quite a lot of adverse publicity. In one case at a meeting of all staff one of the CEOs became visibly emotional and had cried when discussing the strain of the past months and the pain of seeing the committed work of so many staff being trashed in the public arena. The GM said that this had been a very moving experience for the staff and it validated all their own strong emotions and it helped to clear some space for them all to move on and do some decent strategising and planning together.

In the second case, their CEO had become very emotional too at a strategy day with his executive group. He had shared about how frustrated he was and how at times he found it very lonely and dispiriting at the top. This GM claimed that he and many of his colleagues had found this display of emotion very demotivating and they considered it quite egocentric on the part of the CEO. Obviously it is too hard for us to judge the validity of this view, but it is clear that if the display of emotion is to enhance our leadership and not undermine its effectiveness, then it needs to be "appropriate" to the situation, the time and the people involved.