Emotional Intelligence as a Leader
Too often leaders feel – and are often told! – they have to be controlled, almost emotionless: Be more ‘Iceman’ (Top Gun)!
Showing vulnerability, emotion and passion – ‘Maverick’ – is, sadly, often seen as a sign of weakness: “you won’t make it to the top doing that” type-of attitude.
However, both the ‘Iceman’ and ‘Maverick’ sides of the Emotional-Intelligence-coin have their strengths and weaknesses – like most things.
Every strength is a weakness when overused, or used in the wrong circumstances, environment, or context. Conversely, a ‘weakness’ can be your greatest strength when applied in a different situation.
It nearly always depends on the circumstances, and to be most effective as leaders, we must be emotionally agile and adapt to each situation and person. That’s Emotional Intelligence in action in the real world.
People with high Emotional Intelligence balance the ability to respectfully assert themselves, establish boundaries and appropriately engage in healthy conflict with respectful, open communication, good manners, empathy, genuine vulnerability and kindness.
The problems come when leaders and people don’t, can’t or won’t adapt when they need to. Staff disengagement and reduced productivity usually swiftly follow.
Add to that there’s often a distinct lack of awareness about how leaders actually come across as a person in the workplace (and outside of it).
Sometimes leaders, especially newly-promoted ones (at all levels) think ‘that’s how I should act as a leader [in this organisation/team]’, and then take what is often a rigid stance on projecting that ‘leadership’ image.
Rarely is that a successful strategy though.
One really good example at the emotionally controlled, ‘Iceman’ end of the spectrum is the CEO of a Not-for-Profit (NFP) we worked with a few years ago.
We did a lot of Executive Coaching with this organisation, and we all loved working with them as what they did was incredibly purpose driven and genuinely made a difference in the world. We were proud to be a part of that, especially when someone we worked with popped up as an expert on the news on the TV!
As part of those Executive Coaching programs, I had to meet the CEO to get clarity on his thoughts on each coachee.*
I always found those meetings challenging.
I’ve had a lot of experience interacting with a wide range of C-suite and other senior leaders, and can usually hold my own space.
However, this leader was SO hard to ‘read’ and SO difficult to form any meaningful connection with. I found it extremely challenging to interact and connect with him, and I always felt wary, ‘off-balance’ and ‘on guard’.
His body language, tone and expressions were exactly the same every time I saw him.
When he greeted me and shook my hand there was always the same seemingly cold, emotionless, calculating, forced smile, which he kept on his face for the entire meeting as he leaned back in his chair. No emotions displayed, just that ‘smile’!
There was very little or no engaging small talk either. He’d lead me into his office and often sat there behind his office desk in silence, like we were in some sort of gunslinger stand-off scene from a cowboy Western, tumbleweed scuttling past in the silence of the deserted street!
It was pretty disconcerting – particularly as I was here to actually help him develop his Executives!
I’m a relationships and connection driven person, and normally pretty good at finding something to connect with people about. But it felt with this person the ‘window to his humanness’ was opalite at best, more often completely greyed-out!
It often felt like I was standing in front of a 2-way mirror that he was staring through from behind – I knew someone was there but had no real idea what he was thinking, where he stood on a topic, who he was as a human, or what was coming next.
As you can imagine, this triggered my brain into quite a strong ‘Away’ or Threat State, and I felt I needed to constantly be on guard. I definitely did not feel psychologically safe.
I would regularly palpably feel my amygdalae (we have 2 amygdala) activating my Fight/ Flight/ Freeze response putting me on heightened alert, quickening my heart-rate and breathing, tightening my throat and becoming hyper-vigilant. Not the ideal state going into a meeting!
The problem with that Away/Threat State is that the amygdalae reduce blood flow to the pre-frontal cortex (PFC), and it literally becomes harder to think clearly – the higher the perceived or actual ‘threat’, the less thinking you’re able to do.
Your brain’s job is to keep you safe first and foremost, so it wants you reacting quickly to the ‘threat’ (fight, run away, hide/freeze) and not standing there philosophising on the meaning of life, the universe and everything when your very existence is threatened!
The problem is our brains often can’t differentiate between an existential threat and a perceived one, so we react similarly to both.
After somehow keeping it together and scraping through the first couple of meetings, I knew I had to do something.
I already used to drive quite a significant distance to meet him face-to-face – it was pre-Covid for one thing, but also gauging him online was even more challenging – so I built my plan around that.
I used to plan my journey to arrive a good 30 minutes before the meeting, then use that time to try to get myself into the right mental state.
Sitting in my car in a distant corner of the car park, facing the fence so no-one could see me, I used to put on my deep breathing app** and focus intently on calming my mind and body.
That calming focus usually got my Away/ Threat State under control – at least enough to keep my PFC functioning coherently enough during the meeting, able to ask the questions I needed to and focus on listening with clarity to his unemotional responses*.
That became my ritual coping mechanism, and I still do something similar these days with a hard-to-read or challenging client, or if I’m speaking to a large group or delivering training, especially for people I think may be difficult for me to engage with.
I generally have reasonable Emotional Intelligence, learned early on from when I was adopted as a kid aged 4 ¾, trying to keep on my adopted Dad’s good side and avoid the omnipresent physical and verbal consequences – and then trying to be liked by others to replace the lack of warmth and affection I had in my home.
As a result, I was very attuned to potential ‘threats’ – the downside of which is being caught off-guard if I’m not prepared. I’ve worked very hard at that over the years, and have hopefully got better at managing that as I’ve got older and wiser. However, I’m human as well and still get triggered at times.
People often think Emotional Intelligence is an innate skill. However, like nearly all leadership competencies, Emotional Intelligence is very much a learned skill. While it seemed like I had an innate intuition for it, I had learned it as a survival instinct as I grew up in the family that I was adopted into.
One I was able to ‘calm the farm’ in my head and get my Away/ Threat state under control, my meetings always went smoothly – still uncomfortable at times as I’m a ‘connection-driven’ person, but smoothly enough to get done what I needed to get done and get the information I needed to ensure the success of each coachee’s Executive Coaching program.
Ironically, many of those Executive Coaching programs also involved using our practical ECR360 – 360-degree Emotional Intelligence assessment – to which the CEO always enthusiastically contributed developmental feedback for each coachee!
The Opposite End of the ‘Iceman’ Spectrum
Obviously being at the opposite end of the spectrum isn’t generally the way to go either!
A good example here is an Executive on a C-level team we worked with. All the team did the ECR, the Emotional Intelligence 360 and each had their strengths and development areas, as is expected.
One leader had some pretty direct feedback in the verbatim comments on her assessment, which we unpacked in the team and individual coaching sessions that followed as part of the program.
The Executive herself coined her own term for it, and in one moment of insight proclaimed: “seems I have a Leaky Face!”
What she meant by that was she was the exact opposite of the CEO I mentioned earlier… There was never any doubt about her mood and reactions as they were literally written all over her face!
In meetings or when she walked into a room, one glance told people exactly what was coming next – the good, the bad and the worst!
Sometimes that served her well, as some people were comfortable knowing at least where they stood and certainty about what was coming next.
However, many times it did not serve her well, and the phrase “doesn’t suffer fools gladly” often came to light (see my previous article on Do You Suffer Fools Gladly?
Fortunately this leader was the one being coached, and her coach helped her work through the 360-degree Emotional Intelligence assessment feedback, and she developed strategies to have a more balanced and emotionally intelligent approach.
Like most of these situations, a balance and knowing when and when not to slide up and down the Emotional Intelligence scale is what makes the most effective leaders.
Especially in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world, Emotional Intelligence and being able to adapt to what’s appropriate to each persona and situation are essential critical skills. For leaders at every level, which also includes self-leadership (you don’t have to manage a team to be a leader).
Emotional Intelligence is becoming exponentially more important as AI inevitably becomes a bigger part of our lives.
AI cannot get close to human Emotional Intelligence (not yet anyway!). It may sometimes feel like AI is being ‘empathetic’, but the reality is it usually takes the role of being a reinforcing sycophant than an agile, truly emotionally intelligent leader.
Can Emotional Intelligence be Learned?
Yes. Absolutely. In nearly 20 years running Southern Cross Coaching, I’ve got thousands of coaching case studies as evidence of that! However, it does take gaining self-awareness first, then deliberate practice to get the balance right.
*The CEO was the key stakeholder driving each executive’s coaching and I needed to distil from him each coachee’s 1-3 Objectives with corresponding practical Measures of Success, as that’s what we needed to define the outcomes for each coaching program.
** I use the free app, Breathe-2-Relax. You can adjust the breathing rate to suit you, which I find very useful – having been a professional underwater-videographer, commercial diver, marine researcher and SCUBA diving instructor, I generally breathe long and deep and most apps don’t cater for that, which I find very frustrating and ends up defeating the object of using the tool!
