Beyond emotional intelligence

I often write about emotions, emotional intelligence, or how the way in which we deal with our inner world drives our professional and personal behaviors. The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. And rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic. We need greater levels of emotional agility to allow for true resilience and thriving in our lives. Thanks to Daniel Goleman emotions are now part of top leaders’ personal development plans and we are familiar with the four steps: Perceiving, Reasoning, Understanding, and Managing Emotions. Now researchers dig into emotions themselves and try to understand their link with our performance, our level of energy, and our attitudes; neuroscience is helping them improve our understanding of emotions. 

Today I invite you to watch Susan David’s Ted talk about emotional agility and how we respond to our emotions.  She invites us to own our emotions and hold space for uncomfortable ones but also negative ones such as anger, disappointment, or sadness. How can you do that? The first step is to use a well-known coaching tool, “journaling”: "Write what you're feeling. Tell the truth. Write like nobody's reading." It is a support for all levels of emotional intelligence. 

No bad emotions, only emotions

Like other researchers, such as the French philosopher Sophie Galabru who is working on anger, Susan David rehabilitates so-called bad emotions. Having this kind of research today is very important as, at a time of greater complexity, and unprecedented technological, political, and economic change, we are seeing how people's tendency is more and more to lock down into rigid responses to their emotions. 

In a survey Susan David recently conducted with over 70,000 people, she found that a third of us -- a third -- either judge ourselves for having so-called "bad emotions," like sadness, anger or even grief. Or actively try to push aside these feelings. Normal, natural emotions are now seen as good or bad. And being positive has become a new form of moral correctness. Even if I support the work of people like Shawn Achor about positive thinking I agree with the fact that basing our management of emotions on it is not sustainable (Shawn Achor's Ted Talk). Of course, as a coach and an HR I use positive psychology to help my clients shape their reality through different lenses, to improve their performance, to rewire their brains to be more optimistic and to step back and allow them to reflect and view their situation differently.

However, this does not mean we should ignore or simply contain so-called bad emotions. Research on emotional suppression shows that when emotions are pushed aside or ignored, they get stronger. Psychologists call this amplification. Internal pain always comes out. Always. And who pays the price? When we push aside normal emotions to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop skills to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. We have hundreds of people who don't want to try because they don't want to feel disappointed. Tough emotions are part of our contract with life. You don't get to have a meaningful career or raise a family or leave the world a better place without stress and discomfort. Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life. 

We own our emotions

So, how do we begin to dismantle rigidity and embrace emotional agility? Research now shows that the radical acceptance of all of our emotions -- even the messy, difficult ones -- is the cornerstone to resilience, thriving, and true, authentic happiness. When we label our emotions accurately, we are more able to discern the precise cause of our feelings. And what scientists call the readiness potential in our brain is activated, allowing us to take concrete steps. Emotions are data, they are not directives. We own our emotions, they don't own us. A very common question when we are coaching is: “What do you stand for” and often we mistake strong emotions for values we really stand for. Acknowledging , internalizing and aligning our strong emotions and the values-aligned actions we trigger when we feel them generate a pathway to our best selves, our best leadership. 

So what does it means for our leaders? It means that when they feel a strong, tough emotion, they don't race for the emotional exits. They tame them, learning their contours and their meaning in an introspective journey.  Susan David’s research, shows that, when people are allowed to feel their emotional truth at work, engagement, creativity and innovation flourish in the organization. The most agile, resilient individuals, teams, organizations, families, communities are built on an openness to the normal human emotions. It's this that allows us to say, "What is my emotion telling me?" "Which action will bring me towards my values?" "Which will take me away from my values?"  Robert Plutchik’s wheel of emotions is a very supportive tool for this journey through navigating our emotions. 

Why being comfortable with their emotions is so important for our leaders?

To conclude I will say that great leaders are emotionally agile with a great level of self-awareness. Coaching them, training them to be comfortable with their emotions will increase this self-awareness, will keep them connected to their values and will prevent hubris’ development. And you, fellows HR and coaches, how do you use emotions to support your clients and develop your leaders?