Leadership and Emotions

Many leaders either attempt to hide their emotions or lack managing their emotions, the best leaders tune into their emotions and know how to effectively lead with them. Emotions identify where one’s passion is and what one deeply cares about. Emotions also impact your work and can highly influence those around you, direct and indirect reports. How leaders conduct themselves through environments that heighten one’s emotions influences the organization, teams and individuals and how they transcend. As a leader, it’s ok to show concern and worry and sadness, leaders are human too, and acknowledgement of this will help everyone through the period of challenges. To avoid becoming disoriented and caught up in the minutia of challenges both personally and professionally leaders can make use of practical behaviors, and have the opportunity to influence others to do the same.

Before leaders go to their peers and teams, they must start with themselves. When leaders manage their own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, they are better able to communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges, and defuse conflict. Self-management of emotions demonstrates healthy habits to those around them as well.

Practical behaviors to manage emotions and alleviate stress to avoid becoming disoriented include:

• Keep routine behaviors and know when to step back. Routine bedtimes and day to day activities all support consistency in your life and influence levels of stress, providing a sense of control in areas where other areas one may feel there is not a lot of control in the midst of the emotional situation.

• Do things that support physical and mental health. Exercise, eating healthy and good rest support the energy needed to sustain through emotional times and have proven to help sustain a positive outlook.

• Keep things in perspective. This is where resilience plays a huge role. Keeping things in perspective and being realistically optimistic, acknowledging that the situation(s) are temporary.

• Have a learner’s mindset. Leaders should not have to have all the answers, this is why we hire great people! This is a great time to lean into leveraging teams and being open to new ideas to solve problems and navigate through them. Stay connected. Different social groups help in many different ways, peers, colleagues, and family and friends provide an escape and support from emotional situations.

If practical behaviors are in place to manage emotions, preparing to communicate to others is the second step. I always tell leaders before going into crucial conversations, that they have one thing they are in control of, their behaviors. With situations that bring out emotions, it’s important for leaders to prepare to communicate effectively before approaching others in a mindful reflection.

• Empathize with others. Prepare to find empathy with others. Understand that their emotions may be similar or different than yours. Look to understand how they perceive the situation and meet them where they are at.

• Prepare to overcome challenges and defuse conflict. The leader is responsible for understanding barriers and helping the team navigate through those barriers. Providing an optimistic and resilient environment to support others through their thoughts and conflict.

Once leaders have found ways to manager their own emotions, they are able to lead others. How a leader communicates through emotional times can determine how they come out on the other side. Three areas to lead through this are:

1. Confront reality and express reasonable emotions. Others will see right through someone who doesn’t acknowledge the turbulent environment. Acknowledging the situation and emotions brings a sense of trust and openness to move into the second step.

 2. Focus on what we can control, both short and long term. Focus on what can be done to overcome and control the emotional situation now and for the long run. This gives a sense of grounding to the environment.

3. Provide reassurance. Those around you are looking for stability and support. Help them see why it is going to be ok and that they aren’t going through this alone.

People do not need perfect during turbulent times, they need someone relatable. Emotions make us relatable, show us where our passion is, and when leveraged, generate significant outcomes by providing perspective and guidance.