Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis in their book "The Resonant Leader Create More" point out the importance of knowing emotions and how to take advantage of them to be more successful within the organization.
Resonant leaders are people capable of awakening enthusiasm in their followers and mobilizing them wherever they want, channeling the emotions of each of the individuals in such a way that everything goes as it should. They explain that when emotions are transmitted in a positive way, the functioning of the group will undoubtedly reach very high levels, on the other hand, those who lean towards resentment and anxiety lead the groups to disintegration.
They define emotions as an open circuit where emotional stability depends in part on the relationships we establish with others, unlike the rest of the human body systems that are a closed circuit (circulatory, respiratory), which explains the importance of the leader, their actions and how they influence the organization. This open circuit facilitates the contagion of emotions, and can thus affect the leader, the emotional climate of an entire company. They affirm that studies carried out determined that both happiness and cordiality are transmitted more quickly than irritability and depression, in addition to that the state of mind determines the work efficiency. Emotional leaders become limbic attractors who exert a great influence on the emotional brain of their followers.On the other hand, negative emotions hijack attention and make work difficult, thus presenting dissonance in the group, where people have the feeling of being disconnected from others. While the resonant leader has the ability to congenial the characteristics of all leadership styles as the case may be, always maintaining a connection with his followers, prolonging the positive emotional tone, originating the resonance in the environment of which the authors speak.has the ability to reconcile the characteristics of all leadership styles as the case may be, always maintaining a connection with his followers, prolonging the positive emotional tone, originating the resonance in the environment of which the authors speakhas the ability to reconcile the characteristics of all leadership styles as the case may be, always maintaining a connection with his followers, prolonging the positive emotional tone, originating the resonance in the environment of which the authors speak
On several occasions many of us have attended leadership and development workshops, seminars and days, strongly enthusiastic about refreshing ideas about the importance of change for the achievement of success, we leave completely convinced that this time we will improve, and when We arrive at our homes, places of work or study, we find ourselves with numerous urgent situations to solve, all kinds of phone calls one after another requiring our attention, dozens of emails to read that arrived while we were away, and that is where it begins to slowly fade away our decision to change, we forget what we have recently learned and little by little we fall back into old habits until one fine day everything goes back to the same way.
Why do some programs last so short? There are various reasons and we can easily cite some that are very obvious, such as that practicing new habits requires time and dedication, or the lack of adequate feedback to help us determine the aspects that deserve improvement. Daniel Goleman, the well-known writer of "Emotional Intelligence", together with Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee raises an answer as novel as it is revolutionary in his most recent book "The resonant leader creates more", when talking about this well-known phenomenon previously described, as the “honeymoon” effect that occurs with most leadership programs, and which they describe as the fading of immediate improvement in the training process after a period ranging from three to six months,pointing out that the problem is that many of the programs aimed at improving emotional intelligence skills are aimed at the neocortesal region of the brain, in charge of higher functions: thinking, perceiving, imagining, analyzing, as well as behaving as civilized beings, more than towards the limbic system that is in charge of emotional responses and memory.
The limbic system is located in the middle part of the brain and includes important centers such as the thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus, and the brain amygdala, the latter stores emotionally charged information. It is in this part of the brain that the inexplicable reactions are generated which, after having happened, leave us reflecting on our behavior, since when receiving a stimulus, part of the information reaches the amygdala before it reaches the neocortical cortex, in charge of reasoning; producing hasty reactions product of the emotion generated in the cerebral amygdala, before the thinking part of the brain reacts and coordinates a response.
Being able to maintain adequate emotional control will allow us to be resounding leaders, because to achieve personal and business success, it is not enough to have a high IQ, but it depends largely on the ability to control our reactions to situations that cause us annoyance, sadness, anxiety, and even joy; as well as the ability we have to tune into our own feelings and with the feelings of others.
A good starting point is to know the exact role that emotions play in the work of leaders and in the effectiveness of all types of organizations, because even when in the neocortical cortex the learning of new ideas is much faster and more precise than it can be. To be achieved with the limbic brain, leadership skills development programs propose changes in habits that we most likely acquire at an early age, and which are therefore deeply ingrained, requiring a different type of learning, with an emotionally intelligent approach that directly influences the emotional centers.
This is a challenge that requires a high degree of motivation because, developing leadership skills that we did not learn at an early age, for adults represents a double task: getting rid of habits that no longer serve us and replacing them with new ones, having to work harder and longer than when we first learned it.
Within this order of ideas, it is necessary to define that the first step of the process of change in the fields of teams and organizations consists of identifying the emotional reality and the norms of the company, that is, what people do together and the way they do it. Only then can the process of transforming an organization's emotional intelligence really be undertaken.
The only way to encourage a complete and lasting transformation of organizations is to promote emotionally intelligent leadership at all levels that allows its leaders to face reality directly.
Although the main task of the leader is to discover the truth and reality of an organization, not many are in a position to do so, given the well-known CEO disease that ends up disconnecting them from reality, in which they seem not to have time for the really important conversations, and they also don't often establish the kind of coaching or affiliative relationships that encourage in-depth dialogue about what works and what doesn't. They lack adequate contact with their collaborators to know what is happening in organizations, keeping them isolated from the emotional reality of daily life.
Authoritarian leadership makes it impossible for their subordinates to be honest, completely disoriented leaders believe that everything is going well, but that in reality they have ended up incubating a culture in which nobody dares to tell them the truth (especially bad news) and they generate a climate of silence, sometimes it can become destructive.
The culture of organizations run by dissonant leaders is inevitably toxic. Leaders who resort to threat and coercion to achieve their goals end up losing the trust of subordinates. Focusing only on short-term benefits, when competition is scarce that you do not care about the loss of a customer and consequently you did not have to strive for quality of service. Likewise the disregard for the welfare of its employees.
Likewise, it encourages the generation of destructive habits where:
- People stopped questioning how and why they did things. They just survived day by day in an environment of extremely pernicious (harmful) attitudes, rules and policies. There was not the slightest chance of change as leaders discouraged any attempt to improve underlying culture Increased labor mobility and low prestige of organizations.
That is why most of the training programs in emotional intelligence, leadership and organizational and social change are structured on the basis of strategies designed for the neocortex brain (analytical and technical strategies), but not for the limbic brain, which is the one that governs the development of new habits such as those of emotional intelligence for the understanding and positive management of situations of high uncertainty, confusion and complexity, and the development of new habits of leadership of change.
That is why, based on the analysis carried out by the Management Consultant Alfredo C. Ángel in the article published in May 2003, in analytica.com regarding the behavior that occurs with the decision they made, the people of the Gente de Petroleum, in these five or six months of new life as former oil workers, which serves as knowledge since the car bases its analysis on the conceptions of emotional intelligence referred to by Daniel Goleman and Richard Boyatzis.
1) Different understanding of the national reality. The understanding of the country that the Petroleum People have today is an understanding from the outside, from the perspective of the thousands of unemployed impoverished Venezuelans that exist in the country, it is a radically different understanding because it is real, forceful and true. Not that they didn't know it before, but it was an office understanding, distant. Today is an understanding based on personal, first-hand experience. And this personal growth is a very important asset for the future of Venezuela, to truly understand the drama of the always excluded.
2) Different vision of themselves. These valuable Venezuelans today have a concept of their most transcendent personal value and associated with qualities of themselves as human beings and not with qualities associated with a position, or an oil job, or an organizational status, or a license. What gives them value is not the license, they are themselves. It is not that they did not know it, but that they understand it better and less and less despair. They are beginning to stop seeing PDVSA as a lost personal object, which emotionally hurts and makes me cry, and they are beginning to understand better that going back to the past is just an illusion. The PDVSA "that leaves" will no longer return. It requires something different that must be built, because the new PDVSA does not exist.
3) Experimentation of politics from the trenches. Reading the newspaper and criticizing politicians from corporate security and comfort was a kind of habit. But getting into politics, seeing politics today not as something harmful, or that it can be better managed as a private corporation at the end of donations, but as a very complex tool that it is essential to study and master, as it is studied and mastered operation of an oil rig, is a true political capital that begins to grow in the country. This capital will bring us many benefits in the future.
4) Differentiation between being an Entrepreneur and being an Employee. The difference between being on an X payroll and having to pay it with your own money is gigantic. The Petroleum People have understood that it is not the same to be an employee, a manager of the resources they give you, that although they might be scarce, you always collect your salary and have your benefits, to be an entrepreneur, to have to provide yourself daily sustenance, having to use your courage and spirit to sustain your own long-term efforts and thus deal with shortages, debt pressures and the cancellation of money commitments with a pyrrhic cash flow. This has made them better understand why they were perceived as arrogant and insensitive. And that is personal growth of the real one.
5) Country vision as a concept vs. as reality. It is not the same to talk about a vision of the country and its importance as a compass that guides society, than to have to build it with your own effort and street work, going up and down stairs, one of consensus, not imposed by a lot of knowledge, validated through meetings with thousands of citizens, in hundreds of cities. This requires long-term political effort and a vocation for service: the only one that is truly worthwhile in good politics. If there are going to be good political leaders in Gente de Petróleo, it is excellent that they have already begun to demonstrate their vocation of real service, that of serving those who have less by helping them build a vision of the country.
6) Recognize more clearly that building is not the same as destroying. With the people that we are, with the Venezuelans present, we must build the new and the best, there are no other people. We all fit and have the right, even if in the past we have done wrong things, or we have supported backward political views, or more primitive, or simply different from our own. Publicly acknowledging that it has been wrong was not exactly a virtue of the oil management. "The oilmen are also wrong." It is an excellent example of leadership and emotional intelligence, in a country where very few leaders recognize their mistakes, that Horacio Medina has publicly recognized what he recognized in a national media outlet. This is a real asset for the future,because it retraces the traditional arrogance that the oil managers did little.
7) Real social alliances. The traditional social investment in oil had enough of said and not so much of facts. The oil tankers' alliances with the communities lacked presence, strength and concrete, tangible, sustained social responsibility. The difference today is remarkable. With the professional unions, with the business chambers, with the NGOs, with the organized communities, with the unemployed and with the always poor, today's social alliances are true, of presence, of going to their meetings, of living with them their anguish and yearnings for a better country. This speaks very well of Gente de Petróleo, of the importance they give today to associativity as the glue of social co-responsibility. I always remember what Nelson Ríos said before the strike, one of the most brilliant oil executives and that I admire the most:"PDVSA cannot be a socially responsible company, if its workers are not." I've never heard any other executive say that.
8) Increase in Emotional Intelligence (EI). Personally, I am very happy with this learning. I never doubted that these were very smart people, although I did doubt and question the decision they made. It took them much less than what global research shows, to realize in a calm and mature way, their own mistakes and their implications for the country. This hard data shows greater emotional intelligence. Certainly, how long it will last remains to be seen. Remember that, as research shows, learning about personal change is controlled by the degree of emotional intelligence (EI) of the subject. And EI only develops with continuous and sustained repetition, because repetition is the mother of skill and dexterity. If what they have learned is not repeated,If the productive management of emotions is not continued in the midst of uncertainty and confusion, new brain networks will not be woven, nor will the neural circuits that is the key to lasting change be rebuilt.
