Emotions at work: The myth of the 'rational' leader
CEO’s are humans driven by emotions too. Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash
Through my work with leadership teams one of the most common traits of CEOs that I’ve witnessed is the belief that their actions and decisions are born out of entirely logical and rational thinking. Whether purposefully or unconsciously, time and again I’ve seen leaders present their opinions and beliefs as fact, their perspective as objective, and their needs as the utmost importance. This approach to leadership partly stems from the privilege that many holding these positions have experienced in their lives. After all if you lived in a society where your experiences are the default, where you and your needs are constantly represented, where you are listened to and revered it would be hard not to assume that your ideas and beliefs are undeniably right.
But it also partly stems from the way our society trains people (in particular men) to downplay their emotions, particularly in the workplace. The other day I was listening to Ester Perel’s “How’s Work?” podcast and there was a moment between two co-founders that summed the problem up perfectly. In a joint counselling session one of the founders had been trying to reveal some of his deepest feelings about their working relationship, Esther stopped him and asked the other founder to repeat what he was hearing. His response was “Erm so I’m hearing there’s kind of been an emotional response to a lot of the decisions we’ve had to take as a business…”. Not only was this second founder unable to actually name the emotions his partner was feeling, but his language also suggested he saw emotions and business decisions as compartmentalised in his own brain, as well as emotions as a separate entity, external to the human being who was addressing him. This lack of emotional intelligence in the workplace is not unusual. We are constantly being encouraged to hide our emotions at work. But when we fail to dedicate time to understanding the reality of the emotions at play it can make all sorts of situations unnecessarily confusing.
Through challenging the myth of the ‘rational’ CEO and taking time to actually identify and unearth the different emotions that can drive decisions in the workplace we will not only make it possible for different kinds of people with different styles of leadership to succeed, but we will start to be able to work much more effectively together. Here are just some of the ways you can do this practically.
Invest in coaching to build your awareness
When I got my first leadership team position I was lucky enough to work with a therapeutic coach. I remember explaining in our first session how I felt like I was going insane working with the CEO. She asked me to expand on some of our interactions and immediately started laughing. “Wow, this guy is leaking EVERYWHERE”,she said, “He’s literally overflowing with uncontrollable emotion”. Initially I thought “Emotion? He has no emotion!”. But she helped me to see that he was erratic and unpredictable because what I represented and wanted to implement challenged him to his very core. And when I realised this I started to see the emotions behind his seemingly self-assured demeanour. He was angry when I contradicted his beliefs, he was sad when he was being pushed to let go of something important to him and he was jealous when others with less accolades than him gained more support from people. I hadn’t recognised all of this before because he’d never presented these emotions in a way I understood, and he certainly never vocalised them.
Working with an impartial coach to help you examine what emotions might be at play in your interactions with your CEO, manager or colleague will enable you to see what the most effective approach is for you to take. Or at the very least provide clarity and put your mind at ease through recognising that they are only human.
Make the invisible, visible
Have you ever been confused when someone you work for has suddenly asked you to drop everything for a new idea or new client meeting that has seemingly cropped up out of nowhere? It could be that it is a sudden burst of excitement that is fuelling this dramatic shift in priorities. Or perhaps your boss is constantly shifting deadlines and frequently wants everything completed yesterday? It’s likely that they are feeling pressured elsewhere and are fearful about the potential outcomes.
Instead of simply acting upon what someone has asked of us and assuming they know best, or becoming defensive and explaining all your reasoning against following their ideas or decisions, what if we simply started by vocalising the emotions we think could be fuelling someone’s decisions or behaviour? By turning to a boss and opening with “I can see that you are excited about X” or “I can see that you might be feeling worried about X” not only do we cause the individual in question to take a pause and consider whether they are being entirely rational with their choices, but we also start to demonstrate the complex emotions that might be at play in day-to-day scenarios. Developing this language in yourself and your colleagues is an important first step to allow you to start exploring when our emotions are in conflict with one another.
Identify the conflicts
Once you start talking about emotions that are affecting decision making processes or how you work together as a team you will start to see the silent conflicts that we endure every day. They may be internalised conflicts, perhaps a CEO becomes defensive when she is challenged because she feels fear, sadness and anger all at once. Fear that the team isn't going to make the right decisions, sadness that she is going to become obsolete if they do make the right decisions, and anger that her opinions are no longer as important. Or it might external conflicts between two team members. A simple example may be one person feeling anger that a decision isn’t going the way they wanted or expected, and another feeling happy that their idea has been listened to.
Sometimes allowing people space to simply voice and share how they are feeling about something is enough to enable you to move forward together and start co-operating again. Other times it might be important to have a longer discussion around whether what is being felt by the individuals involved is important enough to influence what actions you need to take next. In a later post we’ll talk about the processes you can take to identify conflicting emotions and decide whether to address or act on them as a team.
Recognise when to walk away
Building emotional intelligence in yourself, let alone your boss or others you work with, is exhausting business. When you get it right, and the people you work with are deeply invested in changing too, the results can be extremely rewarding for everyone. But unfortunately we sometimes end up working with, or for, people who seem to entirely lack self-awareness and emotional intelligence, or worse people who purposefully use it as a tool for manipulation and gaslighting. We’re on a very long journey towards creating a more inclusive & collaborative workplace so assure yourself that when your energy is waning it’s okay for you to walk away from a conversation, a project or a workplace entirely. There will be other opportunities for you to impact change, and there will be other people who will pick up the mantle for you in the meantime.
Further reading & support
We’ll be live on twitter today (9 January) from 2pm GMT to discuss this topic further and answer questions. Simply tweet us @collab_future with #emotionsatwork hashtag or DM us if you’d prefer to remain anonymous.
If you want to get a better understanding of emotions, how to identify them and how to work through them I highly recommend reading It’s Not Always Depression by Hilary Jacobs Hendel
And if you think you or your team might benefit from more ongoing support to build self-awareness and emotional intelligence get in touch with me today to find out about our work.