Being Intentional – The most Critical Behavior for today’s Leaders

Should a leader behave naturally or emotionally?

What is the right answer?

I guess both the answers are inappropriate!

A leader is supposed to behave intentionally!!

A leader has to be aware of The TASK, The PERSONs involved and the SITUATION. Good leaders try to tackle all the dimensions before deciding to act in a particular manner.

But before a leader tackles the Task, the Person or the Situation a Leader has to tackle a basic albeit very critical element of the whole equation?

What is that element? It is Dealing with Self.

A leader is a human being. Any pressure tends to raise emotions and feelings.

How do a leader deal with emotions(especially difficult are the negative emotions?

What are negative emotions, how do they arise in us?

How do we tend to deal with emotions?

What is the impact of dealing with emotions?

Let us tackle these questions and find answers for ourselves.

What is an emotion – It is basically a reaction to every situation we experience. We process every experience in a 3-step process

• We have an experience
• Our mind responds to that event as good or bad
• Based on the physiological response, we behave in a particular manner

In a day we go through thousands of emotions.

Example - I’ve worked hard and I can ace this presentation, The new boss seems approachable, He’s purposely ignoring me; I’m going to make a fool of myself; I’m a fake.

?All healthy human beings have an inner stream of thoughts and feelings that include criticism, doubt, and fear. That’s just our minds doing the job they were designed to do trying to anticipate and solve problems and avoid potential pitfalls.

Paul Ekman is an American psychologist is a pioneer in the study of emotions. Paul Ekman theorized that some basic human emotions are innate and shared by everyone, and that they are accompanied across cultures by universal facial expressions.

Ekman identified the six basic emotions as?Anger, Surprise, Disgust, Enjoyment, Fear, and Sadness.

These basic emotions are associated with three core affects: reward (happiness), punishment (sadness), and stress (fear and anger). This helps us in understanding what triggers an emotional reaction in us.

How do we deal with negative emotions?

Susan A. David is a South African psychologist, speaker and author. She has provided a model which can help us deal with negative emotions. She has worked with leaders in various industries to build a critical skill they call Emotional agility, which enables people to approach their inner experiences in a mindful, values-driven, and productive way rather than buying into or trying to suppress them.

Recognize our patterns - The first step in developing emotional agility is to notice when you’ve been hooked by our thoughts and feelings. We all have emotional triggers and patterns, once we start to pay attention, we can know what are those.

Label our Thoughts and Emotions - When we are hooked, the attention we give your thoughts and feelings crowds our mind; there’s no room to examine them. One strategy that helps is to consider our situation more objectively is the simple act of labelling.

Example - My co-worker is wrong - he makes me so angry?becomes?I’m having the thought that my co-worker is wrong, and I’m feeling anger.?

Labelling allows us to see your thoughts and feelings for what they are: transient sources of data that may or may not prove helpful

Accept them - The opposite of control is acceptance - not acting on every thought or resigning yourself to negativity but responding to your ideas and emotions with an open attitude, paying attention to them and letting yourself experience them.?

Act on our Values - When we unhook ourselves from our difficult thoughts and emotions, we expand your choices. We can decide to act in a way that aligns with our values. Leaders can work on the concept of?workability: Is our response going to serve us and our organization in the long term as well as the short term?

We all have emotional reactions, to certain Situations, Tasks and People. We can get to now triggers or patterns, we just need to start observing. Once we understand?what?we are feeling, we can better address and learn from those more accurately described emotions. We can gain deeper awareness which can help us get detached from any task, person, and situation. Once we have achieved detachment, we can take more objective decisions and respond intentionally in any situation.

You can reach me at [email protected] for any leadership development initiative.

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