Emotional chaos in bad leaders

When you're out of emotional order, your incoherence creates discord around you. It negatively impacts your tasks, your projects, and your relationships.

But when you're back in emotional order, your coherence brings harmony. It creates flow, fun, and creativity in your relationships, especially when working with a team toward a common goal.

The more I reflect on the good and bad leaders I’ve had, and the good and bad projects I’ve experienced, emotional coherence stands out as a major factor. This is why the first element of any decent leadership course is self-awareness. What are my strengths? What are my blind spots? How do I cope with stress or pressure? What is my communication style? From the standpoint of awareness and a willingness to be honest, your can learn, grow and achieve transformational change.

As a leader, it’s your responsibility to work on yourself first, to gain emotional coherence.

The psychologist Carl Jung tells great story that illustrates the point. I actually love this story & hope it is useful to you too.

The Rain Maker?

In a small, parched village in the ancient Chinese province of Kiaochou on the edge of a desert, a drought had dragged on for months. Crops were failing, livestock were dying, and the people were desperate.?

The village elders tried everything they knew—dances, prayers, even strange rituals borrowed from far-off lands—but the sky remained empty.

Just when hope was fading, a rumor spread of a man known as the Rainmaker. He wasn’t a religious figure or a powerful shaman—just an old wanderer who seemed to have an odd knack for bringing rain wherever he went. With nothing to lose, the villagers sent for him.

When he arrived, the Rainmaker didn’t look like much. He was a hunched, wrinkled man with dusty clothes and a slow shuffle. The villagers, expecting something more impressive, were skeptical. Still, they gave him a small hut on the edge of the village, as he requested.

For three days, the Rainmaker stayed inside, not speaking to anyone, not doing anything that looked remotely like magic. The villagers grew impatient. What kind of Rainmaker doesn’t even bother looking at the sky? But on the fourth day, clouds gathered. By evening, a steady rain began to fall. It soaked the fields, filled the dry riverbeds, and revived the village.

One of the elders, still curious, asked him, "What did you do in there for three days? How did you make it rain?"

The Rainmaker chuckled. "I didn’t make the rain," he said. "When I came here, I could feel that everything was out of balance—the people, the land, even the air. I was out of balance too. So, I spent those days getting myself right, bringing myself back into harmony. Once I did, well, the rain just came on its own."