It’s ALL emotional

There’s so much more happening under the surface - look there if you want to be an effective leader.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, it’s ALL emotional.

I’ve stayed only loosely aware of what’s been happening in my former industry, but some things of late have caught my eye. An article about the departure of Carlos Tavares from Stellantis. I was surprised at his departure. Not because of business performance (again, I don’t follow too closely) but because I hadn’t figured he would have fallen into the trap he seems to have fallen into. But alas, he said it himself - he was too arrogant. And those left picking up the pieces are saying things like “restoring trust” is paramount.

Folks - these aren’t “leadership skills” these are emotional “skills”. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, it’s ALL emotional. And yet we spend way more time talking about and trying to teach leadership skills, and not enough time on the “inside” work of emotional well-being and mental fitness.

I did a quick exercise - you can duplicate it, I’d be curious to hear what you find. Ask any LLM (I used chat GPT) to list the top 10 most important leadership skills and attributes. First, notice how many of these have a strong emotional component to them. Then, ask it what is required (skills and attributes) to exhibit those top 10 skills. You could call this level 2 attributes. Now ask it again what’s required to exhibit the level 2 attributes - these would be level 3. And so on. We’re building a picture of the underlying attributes required to be a good leader. News flash, most, if not all of them stem from our emotions. Ask yourself, do you have that side taken care of? Have you done the work to overcome and heal from the emotional challenges that impact your leadership abilities?

If you want to create effective leadership (like I thought Carlos was) you have to look inside, at the heart. It is a must! If you want to build a strong culture, a powerful organization, you have to look inside. If you do the emotional work and build strong emotional foundations, then you can effectively express leadership skills.

Consider this as you train leaders, as you hire leaders, and especially as leaders interact with this rising generation.

Photo by Mikhail Nilov: https://www.pexels.com/photo/iceberg-on-sea-8318247/