By Sharon Faye
What is leadership?
This is a complex question. Leadership has been the topic of research for decades. There have been many theories and too many to list here. Leaders are typically thought of in a context (e.g. families, communities, organisations, countries).
However, the bottom line seems to be that leaders are agents of change who tend to be influential but not easily influenced and are skilled at developing the organisation and its people. Successful leaders have common sense and can communicate clearly to others. It is not a requirement for leaders to lead from the front, effective leaders can lead from within the group as well.
What is a leadership style?
There are many leadership styles including autocratic, democratic, Laisse-faire, path-goal, directive, supportive, achievement-oriented, situational, transactional, and charismatic-transformational styles. It is not the aim of this discussion to comment on them, however some refer to the idea ‘is a leader born or made?’. The findings tend to concur a bit of both. For example, a leader may have certain attributes that just come naturally and have also learned the skills through life experience and/or education.
When we view human extremes in leadership theory, we go from one extreme to another; autocratic (1930’s) to charismatic (2000’s). The problem with both extremes is that we go from criticising to rescuing. For example, early in the 20th century, leaders assumed that workers could not be trusted and if left to their own devices would be lazy and not put in a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. From this assumption, leaders thought they had to micro-manage their employees because they could not be trusted. The other extreme is that leaders assumed that workers are trustworthy, and leaders can rely on the worker to do a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. Put simply, autocratic leadership is controlling, and charismatic leadership can be laisse fair. Neither is effective.
Charismatic-transformational-authentic leadership styles comes under the category of positive leadership. There are many criticisms of this style claiming that is ideological in nature seen through a leader-hero lens turning transformational leadership into self-centred individuals who claim to be committed members of the group.
How does connecting to emotion improve leadership?
A Socratic principle – “An unexamined life is not worth living?” Connecting to our emotion is paramount to examining our life. Successful leaders need to examine their own lives. They need to develop self-awareness and identify their underlying assumptions that remains unconscious for most people. Connecting to emotion challenges the long-held idea that emotion is either positive or negative. Learning how to connect to emotion challenges the judgemental concept of positive and negative emotion. Emotion is neither good nor bad, rather it is an energy that moves around in your body. When we are in our body, we can feel everything.
Connecting to our emotion provides us with a navigation system. It warns us of danger. It is one of our major communication channels. It helps us develop trust in our intuition. It assists us to tap into our gut feel.
The how is not easy to explain. We can start with a simple three step process. An example below:
- Acknowledge – your hands on the steering wheel when you are driving.
- Feel – your hands on the steering wheel. Can you feel the texture? Is the steering wheel rough or smooth? Cool or warm?
- Respond – by realising you are going too fast.
The example above is the start of raising awareness in your daily life. Leaders who are aware of their communication and how it is received by others can look at the facial expression of the receiver and get a sense of how it is landing. For example, the leader may be required to give challenging feedback to a staff member. First the leader will acknowledge his/her own anxiety in the chest. Second the leader will feel the anxiety in his/her chest. Third the leader will respond by giving the feedback and the process starts again by acknowledging the facial expression on the employee.
Emotional Strength® and its’ implications for Leadership
Emotional Strength® was developed and over time as a response type, a response disposition, and an organising principle. Furthermore, Emotional Strength® also developed into a philosophy, a strategy, a framework, and a model. Emotional Strength® is defined as “the ability to respond in an open and vulnerable way in the face of intense emotional experience, feeling one’s way deeper into the emotion which allows access to implicit, functional processes driving action” (Faye & Hooper, 2018, p.10).
What does this mean? Well, as you can gather, Emotional Strength® is a complex concept that requires a paradigm shift in thinking. For example, I was asked to present to a group from a global professional services firm. Before presenting to this group, my client, a senior executive of the firm introduced me to many employees, and I was struck by the overwhelming welcome that I received. When I started my presentation, I shared my experience with the audience and explained that I had never received such an awesome welcome. The faces looking back at me were beaming with pride and joy until I asked them a question: ‘What is the problem with a ‘nice’ culture? There was silence.
Avoidance is the answer. People are so preoccupied with pleasing each other and being as pleasant as possible that they avoid the tough conversations. They avoid speaking up to their colleagues for fear of reprisal. They worry about getting someone offside or being disliked. They avoid becoming ostracised or being the target of hurtful gossip. They don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings and fear the push back. There are many reasons to explain the barriers to people speaking up. The unspoken contract becomes: ‘I won’t tell you if you don’t tell me, and we will live happily ever after’.
The problem with this type of culture is that leaders don’t think there is a problem. The impact of this level of ignorance in a firm is complacency, underperformance, boredom, obesity, absence of learning and development, not getting the best out of people, a subtle decline in market share and profitability.
Intuitively, this leader ‘knew’ his executive team were suffering in this ‘nice’ culture. Although he couldn’t articulate it clearly, he had a sense of people suffering in silence. There were also disillusioned rumblings in small pockets within the firm and everyone recognised that if they didn’t stay under the radar they would get shot (code for being sacked). So very few employees put their heads up otherwise they become an easy target for senior management.
This firm was nice on the outside and bullying on the inside. Imagine the shock of new recruits who are excited to join a nice firm and initially feel so welcome only to learn that underneath the facade is a toxic bullying culture that leaves people feeling insecure about their jobs and they spend time watching their backs.
Once alerted to the impact of a ‘nice’ culture, how does the leader begin to change this complex issue?
Leaders must examine their underlying assumptions instead of pointing the finger and blaming others. There is no point in offering excuses or giving reasons to explain that the toxic culture has occurred on their watch.
From this perspective, leaders learn that whatever is going on within the firm is a reflection of themselves. To begin to learn about themselves, leaders can start by acknowledging that self-awareness is the first step to improvement, secondly, they can feel the anxiety in their bodies and connect to it and thirdly, respond from awareness of how anxious they feel. They do not need to avoid, suppress, or control their anxiety, they just need to acknowledge and feel the emotion.