Choosing Your Emotions
How important are emotions in leadership? If we were to look at business school curriculum, we would say not that important. If you were to ask those in positional leadership positions or those who aspire to be, emotional intelligence would probably be low on the list of skills they would think one needs to have in order to be successful. But not all leaders are successful.
If a high IQ was all that was required to be successful in life, the world would look a lot different. The fact is we all know people with high IQ’s who are far from successful and, conversely, we scratch our heads at how some people who barely made it out of high school are wildly successful in their lives. It’s the same in leadership. The best leaders aren’t always the people with the highest IQ in the room.
So what makes the difference? Well, one big difference is how intelligent someone is emotionally. High emotional intelligence (EQ) is a far better predictor of how successful someone will be in leadership than high IQ. EQ is all about how well we recognize and act on our own emotions and the emotions of others.
Watch this clip from NBC’s The Today Show to see Josh Freedman from Six Seconds explain how we can choose (or ignore) our emotions.
Hmmmm. Were there any scenarios in this clip that happen in our organizations? Unless you don’t interact with anyone else, ever, you’ve experienced these situations. So how will knowing and choosing your emotions help you as a leader?
As Josh said, just the act of being able to name the emotion you’re feeling helps that emotion dissipate. As you grow in your ability to name your emotions you are able to break patterns of emotions controlling you. When you break patterns (habits) you are able to choose how you act. It does not mean that you will not get angry about something. It means that you will be more effective with what you do with that anger.
Leaders who are able to do this with a variety of emotions are the successful leaders.