One of the core messages of the emotional intelligence leadership work I do with New Zealand schools, businesses, teams and individuals, is to help them notice the choice point in their behaviour.
Most often, our behaviour is an automatic reaction to a trigger or a scenario. We are creatures of habit, and that predictability provides us with a level of safety. Understanding the impact of your thinking on your behaviour and those you lead is vital. Deliberate leadership starts with you.
“Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
~ Reframed from Viktor Frankl: Man’s Search for Meaning
The mindset of choice
Viktor Frankl was a man who endured horrific hardships during the second world war in several Nazi camps including Auschwitz. Frankl lost his mother, brother and wife at concentration camps. Viktor and his sister were the only survivors from his family.
The message within this quote has huge implications for our lives and leadership today. It speaks deeply about a mindset of choice. A mindset where we’re able to create space prior to a response. A space to make considered choices before we respond.
Unlike animals, we have a pre-frontal cortex which enables us to move beyond a stimulus-response mode of operating. It allows us to place logic and thought into the stimulus we encounter. This ability can vary between people and stimulus, depending on elements such as:
- our past experiences
- the severity of the stimulus and;
- our current level of emotional intelligence
Emotional Intelligence guru, Daniel Goleman teaches that providing there are no neurological impairments, we can develop our emotional intelligence and so too the power of choice over our responses, resulting in growth and freedom.
Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
Jo had been at her workplace for three years. Over that time, she made huge inroads and achieved positive results within the organisation. Recently, however, she had begun feeling upset with the direction the organisation was taking. She was starting to feel that the more she gave, even more was being asked of her with little, to no acknowledgement.
Another person came to work alongside Jo. This person brought different strengths, but in Jo’s eyes was getting all the kudos and was starting to achieve things Jo had been trying to instigate over the past three years, as well as taking the accolades for it. Jo was feeling sidelined, as though all her hard work stood for nothing.
There are a variety of emotional responses Jo could now take. She could:
- Retreat into her shell, just do her job and no more
- Have it out with the other person or their boss
- Start speaking ill of the new person behind their back
- Start looking for other jobs
- Attempt to have a civil conversation with the person
Jo has choices in this situation.
A choice to hide, undermine, blow up, run or have a conversation. Which of these choices move beyond stimulus-response? Which of these choices requires emotional intelligence? Which of these choices provides an opportunity for growth?
Jo’s leader also has choices to make! What would you have done?
- Would you have even noticed a change in dynamics?
- Could you have identified what was ‘at play’ in the situation?
- How would you have dealt with it?
- Would you have even bothered dealing with it?
- Would you have identified the impact if Jo left; both for the organisation and for Jo?
Emotional agility
Part of the process of emotional agility is being able to show up to the feelings, thoughts, and emotions that are a natural part of all workplace relationships. All teams experience them. And without a bedrock of workplace-wide emotional intelligence tools and capabilities, the ability to create a distance that is healthy and to then make choices that are productive and effective can be extremely limited, resulting in continual team turnover and job dissatisfaction.
Identifying that ‘choice point’
Remember, as a Team Leader, deliberate leadership does start with you. Understanding the impact of your thinking on your behaviour and those you lead is vital to your institutional success.
And as individuals, we must realise that ‘choice point’ holds the key to the level of success we’ll attain throughout our working lives.
