I increasingly find it interesting the number of leaders who feel it very important to tell me that they are NOT emotional – that I just don’t get it – I am not an emotional person, Mandy. It is said like there is something really wrong with being emotional – especially as a leader in business.
My response is that you don’t have to be emotional to feel emotion – and part of the human condition is to feel emotion. Many people fight hard to prevent these emotions into their consciousness so instead the emotions bubble along in their subterranean moods until they boil over and the emotion explodes out in a somewhat volatile outburst. However the point is that they do pour out eventually!
So I think when people tell me they are not emotional – it means they are not in “touch”with their emotions on a regular basis and that is how they define emotional. Someone who is able to label and acknowledge their emotions and talk about them openly is “emotional”.
Yet I think the people who lack this awareness and erupt in an outburst of pent up emotion are far more “emotional”. Interesting isn’t it?
Too many leaders fear the word “emotional” – emotional resilience, emotional intelligence, emotional awareness………..and yet it is at the very heart of building transparent, honest and highly productive relationships where high performance is enCOURAGEd.
