Episode #248: Leader EQ in Short Supply

Intellectually we get it. We know that what we think influences what we feel about something in our business. We know that how we feel influences our behaviour in the workplace. Knowing this is great but acting within that knowledge is the hard bit. You see it all the time.

I have a friend, a leader, who gets very emotional and the gloves come off. The results go south one month or one quarter and the boss is savagely chewing everyone out. The pressure from above about the poor results is turning that nice boss into a monster. Something which was vital to a project has not been done, because someone else down the line decided they knew more about it than the boss and stopped it happening. An action was specifically requested to be done on a particular day and it wasn’t done. The boss publically explodes with anger and frustration.

This whole construct is selfish. It is all about me, me, me as the boss. The buck stops with the boss, so naturally the boss is self-interested in getting the results required. The problem is the human relations with the team members, the degree of motivation in the team and each individual’s level of engagement goes down every time there is a boss lava flow engulfing one of the crew.

We know we shouldn’t handle things this way but our anger wells up, our frustration peaks and BOOM, we unload. We have awareness after the fact. This is too late. We need to have better self-awareness at the start. If we find out someone decided for us to halt a time sensitive project and we are now going to be way behind schedule and this is costing money, the instant reaction is rage. “Who decided that?”, the boss states, but it is not actually a question so much as an accusation.

If we had better self-management, we would handle it a different way. We would know we are prone to outbursts of frustration when stupid things happen. Knowing this we would refrain from doing anything at that particular moment, knowing we need to leave the vicinity to go off and cool down a bit before we engage on this matter. Now knowing we should take a walk around the block to manage our anger and actually hitting the elevator button and leaving the building are two different things.

We need a breaker. Your lights go down at home because the breaker has cut off the electricity supply. The construction industry has found that overload levels of power consumption leads to electrical fires in homes so they have a breaker system to stop that overload from occurring. We need the same inside our heads.

We know what our hot buttons are – those things that trigger anger, rage, frustration etc. We need to insert a mental breaker in there before we go any further when one of these melt down events is triggered. It might be as simple as a mantra to ourself. “Whenever I feel anger with one of my team members because something I wanted didn’t happen, as it should have, and when I wanted it, I walk away and cool down”. We night shorten this concept down to “I’m angry now I walk away”, to make it more accessible under fire.

We need to approach the culprit in a way that doesn’t break the relationship of trust and mutual dependence that has been built up over time. Remember the team are all members of the Royal Boss Watchers Guild and everyone is looking at how we handle mistakes and problems. They want to see what will happen to them if they screw up.

If we are cooler now we will probably want to speak with the perpetrator of this dastardly deed alone, well out of public gaze. We will no doubt approach them in a non-hostile, calm, inquisitive manner trying to find out what transpired.

To our shock we may find we hadn’t communicated the urgency clearly enough. English comprehension may have been a problem, if they are not a good speaker. They may have assumed something about the cost of the project with a mind to save the company cash flow at this moment. They may have operated with the best of intentions.

We would probably discover all of this anyway, the difference being we didn’t explode, we didn’t break the relationship, we didn’t give the Guild members something to gossip about or whine about, to any and all who will listen.

We need self-awareness and self-management to be an effective leader. Not a leader who does so by pulling rank and using their status power. We want to be the boss people would vote for if they had the chance. The leader with willing followers, who are loyal and dedicated. When we get ourselves in order, we can get the company and the business in order. Anyone can be a sailor in calm conditions. When the storm hits we find out who really is the leader.