All the top clients were in the room and all eyes were on the CEO. He walked up with a smile and began “It has been a great year for us. We have grown and continue to grow. We are looking at Asia to grow.” and continued in this vein for ten minutes. I am not sure if he noticed the luke warm applause that followed his self-centered speech that could have been delivered easily by a junior intern ! In this defense he did learn a few words in the foreign language of the audience in an attempt to connect with them but I could not help but think it is emotions and not linguistics which is the international language of leadership.
It is the language of emotions that leaders must develop greater fluency and agility in, if they want to connect people to a vision or inspire them to action. They must develop emotional agility to leverage the privilege of the platform that leadership provides to them. I define emotional agility as the skill a leader has to tap into the right emotion at the right time for the right purpose. One can think of it as a specific subset of emotional intelligence which taps into a larger domain of the management and regulation of emotions. The more I look around the more evidence I gather of lack of emotional agility in leaders around the globe . One has to only look at the recent ill fated MH370 Malaysia flight that disappeared to see the lack of emotional agility of the team. They informed people of having lost their loved ones first via text messages. Leadership is not just about management of information but also management of emotions.
How can we acquire and display emotional agility?
1. Learn more about yourself:
Like most things in leadership the fluency begins with self awareness and discovering what is our own level of comfort with dealing with emotions – that of self or others. Some of us are more expressive and willing to be vulnerable in the moment while others hide behind personas by adopting masks that prevent people from seeing the real you. Needless to say the former have an edge in being emotionally agile but even in the latter situation it is a skill that can be learnt. In the day and age of flat structures the emotional accessibility of the leader help connect them with the people they lead.
If you observe a pattern in the situations where you often encounter an impasse for instance, it may be time to step back and consider if expression/acknowledgement of emotions of the parties involved was in anyway at the root of it all. We all have blind-spots about the way we deal with emotions and those must be overcome for developing emotional agility.
2. Learn more about the culture seek to influence:
Different cultures deal differently with emotions. While smiling even at a stranger or greeting them as you meet them on the street maybe common in some western countries, it may be seen as intrusion and be met with distrust in some Eastern ones. In Japan for instance, customers service reps have had to be taught to smile by holding pencils between their teeth as traditionally smiling has been equated with the attempt to hide something. Casual banter from senior leaders may be acceptable in the US but is not so common in China. So the context of the expression of emotion matters. Incidentally, you don’t have to go East or be in China for this to apply. Given the global world we live in, your colleagues might treat the expression of emotion differently than you.
3. Learn to be a great storyteller:
Given my work on corporate storytelling, I have come to the conclusion that there is a strong correlation between great storytelling and emotional agility. Being a good storyteller requires you to go beyond the knowledge of story structures, formulas and scripts to the wisdom of which story to tell, when to tell it and to whom. Stories harness emotions like no other expression. They cut across cultural and functional boundaries.
The best example I see of this is the relationship between India and Pakistan where both parties have been at war more than once and the relations can become strained on many issues but Pakistani plays are highly popular in India as are Bollywood films in Pakistan. When immersed in stories we experience a safe space for connection and so adding storytelling to your repertoire increases your emotional agility. As Christina Baldwin famously put it – words are how we think but stories are how we link.
Logic may lead us to a conclusion but it is emotions that move us to action. And a leader that can inspire action is a force to reckon with anywhere in the world!
What do you think about emotional agility? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
About Tanvi Gautam
I full agree with your article.
Build emotional connections are not the harder part. For me, let drop our mask and/or armor is the harder part in any emotional connection. I personally found very difficult to create emotional connections when people don’t let drop the armor. Sometimes, the one is not letting drop the armor is myself 🙁
Thanks for sharing this article.
Omar
Thank you for sharing a wonderful post Tanvi. It reminds me of a boss I had once who would consistently remind us of ‘how it is done back home’. Not only was it inappropriate, it was irritating. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to appreciate the culture where one is working in.
Tanvi, thank you for sharing great though: “it is emotions and not linguistics which is the international language of leadership.”
You know why “others hide behind personas by adopting masks that prevent people from seeing the real you”? It is easy to detect a person that is not internally stable (you call it self-awareness) and therefore put mask on.
Expression of emotion matters – yes and is culturally dependent. Today we are facing important and challenging (new) factors in leadership and management: different languages, time zones, channels/modes of communication, physical distance, and consequently a large and variable mixture of cultural factors. All these factors influence work processes, decision-making, management, work habits and even get embodied in national work-related legislation.
My opinion is that we need a different (not western MBA) model of leadership approach – what do you think?
Cheers
Jaro.
Thanks for your comments. I believe the leaders of today need to be ambidextrous -fluent in the Eastern and Western models to create the right blend as the situation demands. Spending time in overseas cultures is a good place to start for most folks. Cultural intelligence coupled with emotional intelligence is the winning combination.
Love the questions you asked. It has amazed me how many leaders of companies that I have meet who have been so un-self-aware.
Namaste Dr. Tanvi! It’s a blessing to me to tap into the richness of your sagacity. Truly “Logic may lead us to a conclusion but it is emotions that move us to action. And a leader that can inspire action is a force to reckon with anywhere in the world!” Leaders must touch the heart before asking for a hand.
In this day and age, everybody communicates but, few connect. We must learn how to emotionally connect with our people. One guy I like his emotional agility is Barack Obama, whenever I watch him speak, I feel his passion. And I wish Nigerian leaders will learn this factor.
Connectivity enhances creativity which enhances productivity. Thank you Great doyenne for sharing your wisdom with us.
Hello Tanvi,
Thank you for providing so much food for thought. I think that the points you have covered are an essential part of Leadership at any level.
Emotional Intelligence, either inwardly or outwardly focused is extremely important and I am very interested in the concept of Emotional Agility and I shall look into it further.
Best,
Lee
Hi Tanvi,
I too am extremely interested in the area of emotional intelligence and the subset of emotional agility. I appreciate your insight brought about by storytelling. “As Christina Baldwin famously put it – words are how we think but stories are how we link.” I agree with you that real communication exists when one taps into another’s emotions.
Thanks so much for this great post.
All the best,
Susan
Thanks Kate, Peter and Lisa. Appreciate your comments. If I had a dollar for every time I noticed lack of emotional agility I would have retired by now 🙂
I as well Tanvi!!
Hi Tanvi,
Absolutely wonderful post filled with truth. It’s all about connection and that means moving beyond just the facts and find the emotion behind them and within people.
Know thyself is the #1 step and you nailed it. It ignites employee engagement, activates investors, magnetizes customers, and the list keeps going.
I wonder when they will make this more of a focus in business schools?!
Great post and spot on.
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™
“It is the language of emotions that leaders must develop greater fluency and agility in, if they want to connect people to a vision or inspire them to action.” Great article Tanvi. Yes – leaders need self awareness in order to become fluent in the language of their own emotions. They need to be prepared to be vulnerable if they are to be authentic. What is a story without emotion?
What a challenging and motivating blog. I completely agree with your insight about understanding ourselves and then the cultures of our audiences in order to maximize our ability to communicate. Thanks for sharing this.