“When dealing with people, remember that you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotions' - Dale Carnegie, American Writer.
A good leader is judged based on their ability to deal with a situation of crisis. An emotionally competent leader is aware of the way they behave while going through an array of emotions. They react accordingly. Be it anger, loss, frustration, fear, etc. they behave in a way that aligns with their core values.
However, you should always remember that your ability to behave, think, and talk is badly affected when you are in an emotionally stressful situation. Nonetheless, being a leader, despite the emotional turmoil in you, you have to effectively navigate all the stress and streamline work to give proper results. Remember, this is how to effectively tackle employee burnout?
Things become easy for you if you are an emotionally competent leader. I believe that the best leaders demonstrate a high degree of emotional awareness and react accordingly.
These practices of an emotionally competent leader will guide you on how to make be not just be good, but a great leader.
You can also get leadership coaching to help you develop emotional intelligence so you can make better decisions and achieve your objectives more efficiently.
How to be an Emotionally Competent Leader?
Notice Emotional Triggers
Emotions are both positive and negative. We are well aware of what triggers them in us. You know what makes you upset, or what frustrates you. Having a proper understanding of the situations that trigger your emotions, especially negative emotions can save you from a lot of embarrassment.
Once you are aware that this situation might make you anxious, angry, or frustrated, you are also aware of how to deal with it. This makes the situation less complicated for you. Keep in mind how can communication make or break a leader?
According to research by Leadership Development Institute, the most common behavioral reasons to trigger negative emotions are unreliability, non-appreciation of work, being underrated, abrasive, and hostile behavior, and overly analytical reviews.
Understanding What Triggers Negative Emotions
Another way of knowing when your negative emotions take over is understanding how your body reacts to encountering any stress or threat at your workplace. Though your emotions are a turmoil of feelings within you, your behavior is tangible. It can be noticed rather too easily. Controlling the behavior that obviously also includes your body language and expressions, makes you a better leader.
Think Before you Act
If you have noticed, great leaders are often seen not reacting to a situation immediately. This behavior is more prominent while handling difficult situations. Great leaders often let their actions take over their emotions. While in a stressful or difficult situation, you should always take a pause and think before you react. Though your intentions might be right, your actions may spoil it all. In highly stressful situations, you need to bring advanced thinking into processes like strategic thinking, trust-building, and compassion towards others.
Taking a pause, thinking, and then reacting is no doubt very difficult to bring into practice when you are at your emotional high. However, keeping your calm and timely meditation practice is the best way to have control over your emotions.
High-level emotional awareness
Those who can identify emotions are less stressed that allows them to behave rationally. Research shows that naming an emotion can help you tame it. This helps because when you know what are negative emotions which eventually helps you in dealing with them.
To tackle them you can:
- Talk to a trusted friend about how you feel
- Write your feelings
- Find a space alone and talk your feelings out loud
No Blame Games
An emotionally competent leader does not play blame games. They do not blame the people and even on the circumstances. During challenging situations, a leader’s rational behavior can help them develop a long-term orientation with their team and the audience.
Experiential Learning
If you have behaved awkwardly in a situation while undergoing an emotionally stressful situation, you have an experience of dealing with such situations. A good leader will always demonstrate a balance between behavior and emotions. Such experiences have a positive impact on the audience and they can relate to the leader very easily.
Conclusion
An emotional leader can make errors in judgment that can lead to disastrous consequences. It is important that a good leader knows how to tackle failures with crisis management? If you wish to become a good leader, the first thing you need to know is how to control your emotions even in a stressful situation. There are things that determine the outcome of leadership.
We at OpenGrowth, are committed to keeping you updated with the best content on the latest trendy topics from any major field. Also, both your feedback and suggestions are valuable to us. So, do share them in the comment section below.
