So what can executives do if they want to truly harness the potential power of emotions to drive exceptional performance in their workplace? The answer, is to take one step at a time, and do the following 4 things.
- Boost your knowledge of emotions, how they work and their impact on workplace behaviour.
- Increase your emotional awareness.
- Use your knowledge of emotions, and your accurate awareness to make more intelligent and productive choices about what to do in any given situation.
- Learn to master disruptive emotions, and shift how you feel on demand.
You cannot make intelligent use of emotions if you do not understand how they work, and the impact this has in the workplace. As Francis Bacon once said, 'knowledge is power', and trying to boost your emotional intelligence without understanding emotions is like trying to diagnose a patient without ever having attended medical school. If emotional intelligence were like a tree, your knowledge of emotions would be the root system upon which everything else depends. A good way to start is by reading Emotion in Organizations by Stephen Fineman, The Psychology & Biology of Emotion by Robert Plutchik and The Handbook of Emotions by Michael Lewis, Jeanette Haviland-Jones and Lisa Barrett, or by attending a reputable course on emotional intelligence.
The second step is to become more aware you are about how you and others feel. This doesn't mean that emotionally savvy leaders obsess over how they feel, or that they encourage others to just let their feelings hang out with no intelligent regard for the consequences. What matters is the ability to accurately and unobtrusively detect feelings within day-to-day contexts, so you can use this information to make intelligent choices about what to do next. In fact, research suggests the ability to accurately read emotions in others has more impact on a leader's effectiveness than any other emotional ability. Despite their popularity, techniques such as checking-in to meetings, are not an effective way to raise your awareness of how others feel, and such techniques can have a host of undesirable effects. True emotionally intelligent leadership requires a little more nous and sophistication. The most accurate way to detect how other people feel is through reading their facial expressions, particularly the fleeting, involuntary micro-expressions that momentarily occur before a person has time to consciously mask their reaction. Facial expressions are universal and are far more reliable than the trite 'body language' cues advocated in pop-psychology, self-help circles.
It is only once you have taken steps one and two, that you can move up step three, where you strategically put this knowledge and awareness to intelligent use. The potential uses are endless but typically result in either enhanced personal effectiveness (using emotion to improve your own actions) or improved interpersonal effectiveness (using emotion to productively shape the actions of others and their relationship with you). Some specific examples of these 'strategic emotional abilities' include intuitive decisiveness, emotionally enhanced thinking, emphatic perspective taking, assertive confrontation, detecting deceit, what-if forecasting, congruent communication, building morale, dealing in hope, leading others to feel and winning hearts as well as minds.
While step three is focused on using emotions productively, step four is focused on minimizing the harm done by unhelpful emotions when they occur. This requires more nous and finesse than simply slapping on a happy face and 'faking it'. In fact, simply suppressing emotions has adverse effects on both you and your work performance. Yet emotionally savvy executives are skilled in keeping their emotional reactions in perspective, and shifting their mood when needed.
If you would like to truly enhance your ability to lead with emotional intelligence, then attend one of our Emotionally Intelligent Leadership courses on Sydney, Melbourne & Brisbane this November. In-house programs are also available upon request.