Relentless effort was one of George Washington’s outstanding leadership qualities; the other was emotional control or what we now call emotional self-regulation, an element of emotional intelligence. Simply put, it is the ability to not lash out or act out despite strong feelings. “Regulating emotion is exhausting. But doing so almost never makes things worse,” Sam Walker says in a Wall Street Journal article (registration required) about Washington’s leadership.
Emotions Are Information
Let’s not confuse emotional self-regulation with the stoic disregard for human feelings, both one’s own and others’. The ability to not flip out is a proven element of strong leadership. This does not mean emotional experiences should be swept under the rug. Rather, it means effective leadership requires being aware of them and reflecting on the sources, meaning and response options. Emotional reactions are a source of information and wisdom.
Leaders who are afraid to notice their emotions are blocking a valuable source of information. Leaders will not refuse to read a balance sheet to enhance their effectiveness or because they are afraid of the bad news, but they may disregard an emotional reaction. Those reactions do need to be tempered with a pause for reflection and to ensure that one’s old worn paths are not inappropriately being activated in a situation that does not currently call for an extreme reaction. With some vigilance, impulsive reactions and comments of the blurt and hurt variety can be managed, without losing the benefits of awareness.
Recurring Insults
Familiar situations — for example, not being given due credit or being left out of an important decision — can be an uncomfortable reminder of previous situations where credit or inclusion was unfairly withheld. Feelings of exclusion can be painful: We are social beings whose connection to others is essential for survival. But today’s situation needs to be considered on its own merits and context, without the unconscious energy boost of past injustice or hurt.
Instead, leaders need to notice the feeling and even notice the exaggerated feeling. A little reflection may lead to wondering, “What does it mean? Where exactly is that emotion anchored in the body?”
Leaders who lack this awareness can inadvertently foster mistrust if their expression and emotion and are not appropriate to the situation.
Gut Reactions
I remember the first time my own executive coach asked me this, many years before I became a coach. I had no idea where a feeling was. And I didn’t know what use it would be, even if I could find it. In my tense shoulder? In my pressured head? In my beating heart?
But over the years, my own heightened awareness of the physiology of emotion led me to be more familiar with the meaning of those signals. I became better able to translate them and follow the emotional thread back to the cause. Sometimes the source was so minor, such as a traffic scare or an unreturned call, that I could immediately clear my body’s tension and my mind’s distraction. That empirical evidence of my experience, coupled with reading up on neurological research presented in layman’s terms, has changed my mind.
I have learned that feelings actually start as sensations in the body. The expression “gut reaction” has scientific proof. There are neurons in the stomach and heart just as there are in the brain, and the signals transmit in seconds. Knowing your physical reaction to an emotion is a secret code that you can learn to decipher. It’s pretty easy once you tune in, but tuning in requires a new habit of thinking.
It was also beneficial for me, as an executive coach supporting stressed executives, to be clear of lingering reactions or vulnerable triggers. It’s my role to be present with those leaders. Being aware of emotions is a valuable channel of knowledge; being able to clear those emotions when they are not relevant simply makes me more effective.
In my book Zoom Leadership, I recommend being aware of emotion as well as altering your perspective by zooming in, closer to the feeling to be sure you are not discounting or denying it. Zoom out to get some distance and context and evaluate the reaction against the circumstances to determine its value in that moment. This ability to change your focus breaks the spell that a strong feeling might have.
What George Washington Taught Us
We don’t know whether George Washington disregarded his own feelings to achieve the emotional control that characterized his leadership. We don’t know if he was aware of it. We do know about his results and the tribute that towns across the country pay him in street signs, school buildings and statues. We can combine the knowledge of his accomplishments with new information about neurology and emotions. Those leadership qualities are no longer regarded as static character attributes — they are success skills that can be learned through awareness.
Published in Forbes 11/15/18