"Knowing what to do is useless without the emotional strength to do what you know" Keith Raniere.
In my consultant work I have met many small or medium business owners, true entrepreneurs who have developed their organizations from scratch. When I ask them which of their personal conditions were decisive in the construction of their companies, it is very difficult for them to answer that they are their technical knowledge, their market knowledge or their commercial skills, which undoubtedly all of them possess.
Generally, when they take stock of what enabled them to create, maintain and develop the company and face all the avatars and challenges that were presented to them, most of them rescue their entrepreneurial spirit, their enthusiasm to promote new projects, their Temper to face adversity, your ability to build trust and commitment in your work teams. They recognize their emotional competencies as one of the aspects that have made a difference in the daily construction of their organizations. It is their Emotional Strength that has enabled them to endure uncertainty in decision-making, face difficulties, overcome fear of failure, take the risk of innovation, and have the temperament to drive the ship to its destination.
This recognition of the emotional as a determining factor in the effectiveness of our behaviors is a relatively new fact, not only in the business world but in society in general. Despite the importance and centrality that emotions possess in our lives, they were traditionally viewed as something subordinate to the human being, and even as an area of our existence that had to be dominated and subdued for the sake of rationality and intelligence.
Emotions are ubiquitous in all aspects of our daily work. They represent the most personal, intimate and non-transferable experience we have. The way of feeling and expressing our emotions marks our existence, determines our quality of life and constitutes us in the being that we are. However, for centuries the human being has been defined as "rational being", understanding that it is rationality that determines us as persons.
This interpretation proposed by Descartes and widely accepted in the West for more than 350 years, made us conceive of emotion as something opposed to rationality and, therefore, to effectiveness. This paradigm raised an ideal of being rational freed from emotional tension, based on the idea of considering emotions almost as a drag, as a burden that people should free themselves from in order to fully exercise their rationality. It was based on the assumption that the more a person could control, dominate and subdue his own emotions, the smarter, more lucid and brilliant he would be.
Both reason and emotion constitute the human being as such and in daily practice they are manifested in a relationship of interdependence and mutual influence. It is for this reason that more than determining the prevalence of one of them, it is necessary to consider the development of both in a context of harmony and balance.
Emotions are expressed and manifested as bodily dispositions for action and therefore condition our performance. Depending on the state of mind we are in, certain actions are possible for us and others are not. Each emotion predisposes us for a different type of action and this is why emotionality strongly impacts the work effectiveness of individuals and work teams, and affects organizational productivity and business competitiveness.
There are moods that lead us to perform actions that we would never have wanted to do (for example when we have a fit of anger) and there are other moods that make it impossible for us to perform actions that we need to perform (for example when we do not dare to speak in public out of fear or shame). Think, for example, when we are deep in the emotionality of sadness, anger, joy, or fear. Each of these emotions determines what we can do in that emotional state and what we cannot do. In this sense, we can also affirm that emotions generate the energy that drives us towards certain types of actions. They provide us with fuel and mobilize our bodily dispositions so that behaviors are possible.
Emotional Strength is the ability of people to know and manage their emotions. There are three essential components and in turn complementary to each other to achieve the ability to lead emotional states that are functional to the actions we must perform:
1. Emotional Consciousness is the ability to interpret and understand our emotions and moods. It covers four aspects:
- Identifying what we feel: implies being aware of our emotional states at all times.Interpreting our emotions: it is related to being able to determine what thought or what interpretation of circumstances is triggering our emotionality.Assessing the functionality of our moods: it is determining whether A state of mind is functional or dysfunctional for the purposes of the effectiveness of our behaviors. Responsible for our emotionality: it means taking charge of what we feel without trying to find guilty among the people around us.
By becoming aware of our emotionality we open the possibility of intervening in its design and transformation.
2. Emotional Self-Control implies acquiring the necessary tools to get out of dysfunctional mood states, in order to be able to respond in the most effective and appropriate way to each situation that presents itself. The different " intervention strategies " that allow us to transmute the states of mind that we consider dysfunctional are:
- Change of interpretation Conscious breathing Emotional distance
3. Emotional Leadership is the ability to generate emotional states in our work environment that are functional to the quality of our ties and that enable the actions we must carry out with the necessary effectiveness to achieve our objectives. For example, having the ability to create a climate of serenity if we must make a consensual decision, of openness and trust if we are in a process of negotiation, or of enthusiasm and motivation if we must face a challenge as a group.
Sizing the importance and complexity of the emotional phenomenon in human behavior leads us to consider the development of Emotional Strength as a central component of Personal Mastery and leadership.
