Ceos, Boards, Managers, Decision-makers and Professionals and Why Emotions, Emotional Intelligence and Organisational Performance and Results Matters

The Impact of Emotions in Organisational Performance and Results

The role of emotions in human, personal, organisational and team performance in companies, economies and societies is still grossly underestimated. Compared to academic qualifications, emotions have an overbearing impact because emotions themselves also have a big impact on our academic performance and results. Whereas most of our education and training provide us with knowledge and skills and understanding, the degree to which we acquire the knowledge and the skills and understand is under the direction of our emotions during the periods we learn and train. The same emotions also have a big impact on how well, it at all, we use the knowledge and skills in our real world performance situations. Our thinking, which is another major but hugely ignored part of performance and results in organsations, economies and society, is also intricately linked to emotions. Even a genius under a certain compromised emotional state (for example sad, anxious or depressed state) can fail dismally to perform very simple and even stupid mental tasks. Emotions also have a huge impact on our energy; in general, and this is my own thinking, negative emotions suck up energy and make it unavailable for other productive mental and physical activities while positive emotions, and this to a certain range, release energy and make it available for productive work. ?I say to a certain range because positive emotional states such as overexcitement while they release energy, also scatter and waste the energy in expressing the excitement and distract the excite individual or team from productive thinking, effective decision-making and productive mental and physical work. This means, among other things about emotions I will discuss in this article, emotional control is a very important part of emotional skills especially for chief executives, leaders and managers.

Generally I would argue that there is nothing else that has a greater impact on the performance of chief executives, leaders, managers, professionals and organisations that their emotions. This I can prove beyond any doubt but not in this article because such topic needs more hours and more space to fully address.

How Serious are Emotions and Emotional Intelligence Treated in Organisations?

Emotions and emotional intelligence are like many other critical topics and themes in organisations, a lot of talk and interest by knowledge workers but much get much attention and seriousness by decision makers who are affected most by them in terms of their personal work, health, performance and results and that of organisations, companies and economies they preside over. Even with the overwhelming evidence that it is the people and their cognition and emotions that contribute around 85 percent to their success, performance, achievement and wellbeing, the corporate world is still largely stuck with the knowledge-model which puts a disproportionate emphasis on subject matter knowledge as the overall and overriding strategy to drive high performance and achievement. It is no wonder why that in many corporate jurisdictions recruitment in most top positions is overwhelming based on academic qualifications and experience, leading to many people being misplaced in positions that do not coincide with their best abilities when we consider other factors that contribute to real world performance such as a person’s unique gifts, preferred thinking styles, personality and other cognitive and emotional patterns, characteristics, traits, capabilities and capacities.

The Impact and Power of Emotions.

Emotions are an integral part of our brainware and they play a huge in our thinking and our behaviour including in our decision-making, on the job and task performance, our health, our relationships, our communication, our impact and influence as leaders and managers and how we respond to various situations we face in our companies and organisations including threats and opportunities.

There are now many books and publications on emotions, most focused on the subject of emotional intelligence and more and more leaders and managers are becoming aware of this, which is a good starting point. The sad news is most organisations are still light years away from seriously adopting training, education and development in thinking and emotions as a critical part of their training education and development curricula. Worse, many leaders and chief executive officers are not yet deep enough into the subject of thinking, emotions and their training, education and development; a very big but understated reason for underperformance, meagre results and even the eventual collapse of many companies and business and the sad failure of many leaders whose track record and legacy is wiped away in seconds due to emotional mishaps that drive them on the wrong decision-making and action path.?One emotional outburst from a leader or chief executive officer can be thousand times more fatal to an organisation that a wrong or bad strategy. Many bad and poor decisions by leaders and managers can be linked to emotions and the emotional states the leader or the manager was in when she made the decision or just prior to making the decisions.

Emotions are also taking a serious tall on the health and wellbeing of many people in organisations. For most leaders, the emotion-related health issues are either triggered and perpetuated by a poor and unbalanced response to the demands of their job or by acrimonious and tension-filled relationships with the board and/or the subordinates or by self-driven hard-driving work culture of working unreasonably long working hours without a balanced life and effective strategies for recharging, resting and mental and physical health management.

For most employs emotion-related life and health problems are triggered by a toxic working environment, by toxic relationships with managers and subordinates and the imbalances between task demands and the abilities to deliver on the tasks. Many employees can little if any serious support in training, education, development and equipment so that they can do their jobs and work effectively, efficiently and with little if any stress, anxiety, anger and frustration. Apart from training to do the work, few chief executive officers and leaders realise that people must also be taught and trained in general performance and also in thinking and emotions so that they understand emotions and are able to deal with them effectively including how to use all emotions effectively.

Dealing with Emotions

Many leaders and chief executive officers still actually think that emotions are negative and that they must be avoiding at work. This is a scientifically flawed and discredited view because biologically normal beings cannot avoid emotions and function properly. Instead, all emotions must be acknowledged and managed effectively.

Emotional Intelligence

Made popular by Daniel Goleman, the subject of emotional intelligence has gained popularity over the years. There is an increased activity in organisations to take emotional intelligence in their training and education curriculum. There are now an increasing number of corporate “trainers” in emotional intelligence. Most of these are doing a great job in teaching and introducing the basic concepts and knowledge of emotional intelligence to the corporate world. However, few of these are trained and educated to provide training and development in emotions, the two higher levels that are so critical for translating the knowledge into practical changes in emotional intelligence. Knowing alone about emotional intelligence can make significant changes in people especially those that are motivated to develop or increase their emotional intelligence. More and greater impact comes from training in emotional intelligence and the greatest from developing emotional intelligence.

The First Critical Step in Making Increase and Improvement Emotional Intelligence a Reality

The first and most important critical step is to provide detail and convincing reason why emotional intelligence is important. Many people who are teaching emotional intelligence may lack the detailed, science-based explanations and justifications of taking emotions and emotional intelligence seriously because they may not have had any training and education in emotions and the brain. Giving leaders and people a convincing why on emotional intelligence will trigger desire and interest in the subject.

The second step is providing a simple introduction course or program on emotions. This course can include a

• ·??????A background to emotional intelligence especially on IQ versus EQ debate on success, health, happiness, achievement results, performance and wellbeing.
• ·??????A introduction to emotions starting with general and specific definitions of emotions as well as the occurrence of emotions.
• ·??????Different types of emotions and the general characteristics and properties on emotions
• A general outline of the various aspects of our lives and existences that are affected and impacted by emotions such as health, mental and physical performance, relationships, communication, leadership, marketing, sales, longevity, happiness.
• A general model of how the brain works when it comes to emotions, thinking, decisions and behaviours.
• The different types of emotions and their specific definitions-many people cannot define emotions well and they mix or confuse the two.
• How we experience difference emotions and what causes us to feel the emotions
• Basic practical skills in dealing with personal emotions including changing our emotional states

Take Emotions and Emotional Intelligence Seriously

Taking emotions and emotional intelligence more seriously is one of the most important strategic shifts that any chief executive officer, board chairperson, manager or professional can take. The change in performance and results will be unbelievable and phenomenal.

[email protected] ???+263-77-444-74-38

?Simon Bere +263-77-444-74-38