Are Leaders Getting Too Emotional?

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Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Adi Ignatius, editor in chief, and I'm in New York today with Sarah Green Carmichael. It seems like we're seeing a lot more leaders crying these days, whether in politics or at the office. So the question is, are we getting too emotional? To answer that question, we're joined by Gotham Mukunda of Harvard Business School and Gianpiero Petroglieri of insead. Both men are faculty in their school's organizational behavior units and are frequent contributors to hbr. So with that, I'll turn it over to Sarah.

So let's just dive in. Get going. First question. Gautam, let's start with you. You have studied some pivotal leaders throughout history. Is this kind of emotionalism that we're seeing from leaders really new, or have we actually seen this kind of thing before?

So we've certainly seen it before in some cases, right? You think in the Prussian case before the First World War, Bismarck was famous in dealing with the Kaiser by throwing temper tantrums and promising that he would throw himself from a window if he didn't sort of get his way with some policy or another. I think what you're starting to see a little bit differently here is the extent to which that sort of emotionalism is free in public in a way that it might not have been customarily, but it's worth remembering that public views of their leaders were a lot less frequent up until the sort of most recent time. And so that probably has a lot to do with it as well. People, for everybody, from the president on down, just spend a lot more time in public view than they would have even a generation ago.

Well, and it does seem today like with leaders being in public more, there is this emphasis on our leaders always being authentic. That's the buzzword. And tears and shouting do seem to exude authenticity. Gianpiro, what do you make of that? Are leaders crying and shouting to prove to us that they're real in some way?

I don't think people care about leaders being authentic. I think people care about leaders being consistent. Emotions are a great way to convey that. You mean what you're saying? I think we also need to make a distinction between people in positions of power where emotional expression is always problematic because you expect a certain contained demeanor. Although norms are changing, as Gautam was Saying and leaders where emotions is the whole thing. Emotions constitute the connection between people whom we follow and ourselves. So just because you happen to be in a position of visible power doesn't mean that people regard you as a leader. And in fact, demonstrating emotion is a way of claiming, hey, I'm here, I think you should pay attention to this. And I am credibly voicing a concern that we should all care about. So emotions are a way in which people in power try to lead.

Jim Pera, let me follow up on that, because you've said that people don't care about their leaders being authentic, which you're basically challenging an entire industry, a sub industry in the management business, that leaders do need to be authentic. So talk about that a little bit and particularly in the context of, of emotions. I mean, you almost sounded Machiavellian in what you were saying that a leader can be whatever can be emotional, but the point is to be consistent and therefore effective. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

When you talk about authenticity, you're talking about two different things. One is spontaneity, which is I voice my feelings of the moment. Now that might, or much more likely might not be appropriate for you as a leader. Then another part of authenticity is I voice credibly, consistently, authentically feelings that also other people are feeling. And so I'm showing that we are in a way sharing the same concern that I am in many way concerned and I care about the same things that you care about. This is what you see leaders doing all the time, sometimes, sometimes in a Machiavellian way, but sometimes in a very genuine way. In fact, one of the very reasons why we end up following someone is because they seem to be genuinely concerned about things we care about. In politics, you see it a lot. You see in political campaigns, one candidate saying, hey, I'm really one of you guys. I'm like you, I have your same background, I care about the same things. But this other guy, he or she is really out for themselves and the other person is saying the same thing. No, no, no, I'm actually really talking about what we all care about. And this other person, he or she is out of themselves. And whoever manages to define themselves as one of us and define an opponent as personally interested wins. So what I'm saying is you don't really particularly care that your leader is expressing something that's authentic to them. What we really care about is our leaders are expressing emotions that are meaningful to us. This is why emotional expression is a double edged sword. Because Sometimes people interpret that emotion as essentially an act of selfishness. This is an emotion that is really an expression of you being more preoccupied with yourself than with me. And sometimes they interpret their emotion as an act of generosity. This really shows that you are feeling what I'm also feeling. Remember Bill Clinton in 92? There was a moment during his first campaign where he said in a rally, I feel your pain. And that remained a legendary moment in his first election because he was doing what leaders always try to do, not always manipulatively or Machiavellian, but very often very genuinely, to convey that they share not just the same understanding of a situation, but the same experience of a situation. This is what most of us have always wanted in the people that we then trust to lead. Not just that they intellectually understand our circumstances, but that they feel what it feels like to be in our circumstances, that they. That they feel our pain, that they feel our concerns, that they aspire to our same aspiration, that they desire our same desires. That's ultimately what we care about when we say we want leaders to be authentic. We want them to have a lived understanding of our predicament. We don't just want them to express what happens to be true to them at that particular moment.

Gautam, do you agree with that? Because that seems to be a statement that empathy and EQ is really the key to leadership. I mean, I'm simplifying, but does that all make sense to you?

So I think empathy and EQ are extraordinarily powerful keys to leadership. You do hear often people saying, if you look at the Trump phenomenon here in the United States, for example, people do seem to at least express themselves as saying they want to hear leaders who tell them what they really think. But one could eat right as opposed to sort of just tell them what the leader thinks they want to hear in order to gain power. But of course, it's worth noting that the same people who say this then reward people by, you know, by supporting people who tell them what they want to hear, not in fact, what they really think. So there is some level of extraordinary false right, sort of. It's not false consciousness. Isn't the right word some sort of doublethink, right, where, well, Donald Trump says what he really thinks, and that matches exactly what I think. And it's that ability to sort of say to the people that strikes me as being a pretty powerful tool in getting power. And certainly when we're thinking about what I got from GP's comment was the extent to which what we want are leaders who are not self interested, but interested in the, in the welfare of the group of the people they lead as much as themselves. And that essentially much of these contests for power are contests for people struggling to define their opponents as people who are only self interested. I think that's true across in almost any organization, a leader who is self interested is one whose followers would be much less likely to lead. But to me then you get this question that so what are emotions? So even a very, very skilled actor, for example, finds it very, very difficult to fake tears on cue. That's something that even professional actors can struggle with. So when President Obama cries over children who are murdered in a school, one that is a sense that he's revealing some sense of deeply held emotion. And it is also striking of course, that so much of the, of the sort of conservative response to that statement was to suggest that he had, you know, onions or something under the podium that was causing him, that were allowing him to fake it both because I think the people saying this realized how powerful it was to see a president break down in tears. And I think revealing something about themselves that they felt that, you know, the murder of many, many innocent children was somehow something that would not move someone to tears.

You see, I don't think people just want to hear leaders tell them what they think. I think people want to see leaders show them what they themselves feel. They want to see their leaders express the feeling that they also sense to be true. And of course, not everyone shares the same feeling. See, when you know the example Gautam brings up President Obama crying, I think it's an extremely powerful message and it humanizes a leader. Of course, for people who share the same dismay, the same disconcert that humanization actually enhances his leadership. And for people who oppose his understanding of the situation, for people who don't share his sentiments, that humanization diminishes his leadership. This is where emotional expression is always a double edged sword. Because the people who share the sentiments you're expressing the will actually feel closer to you and therefore feel that you're more of a leader. And the people who don't share those sentiments will suddenly feel more distant from you and they will suspect that you're manipulative, Machiavellian and whatnot. But in that moment, what I think is happening is you have a man who occupies arguably one of the most powerful positions of leadership in the world facing on his watch a tragedy, a tragedy that despite all his power, he cannot reverse and therefore expressing frustration at the limitation of that power, a frustration that's not his own. But it's also expressed on behalf of a large group of people who probably feel that this is a tragedy that could be easily prevented with political will, with political action, and isn't prevented simply because there is not enough political will to implement the changes that you would need for gun control.

So my question is, in that moment, President Obama crying, would that moment have been different if he were a female president? Is there something different about when you see a man break down that way and a female leader of that stature break down that way?

I mean, surely, without a doubt, right. The criticism that someone is too emotional is one of the classic sort of gendered tropes that are used to go after female leaders. It's worth noting that when Hillary sort of cried a little bit in 2008 in New Hampshire, it was highlighted as one of the high points of her campaign. Right. That this was one of the moments that sort of turned around and put her back into the race against Obama in 2008. But it's illustrating that the criticisms of Hillary are classically ones that what the people who attack her say that she's sort of robotic. Right. So that was a breakthrough of that facade. I think for most women leaders, it's a much, much more risky proposition than for a male leader to do so. That, that just, it just plays into gendered stereotypes that opponents of that leader can use to weaken them very, very quickly and very rapidly.

Well, and what about also we should probably mention here, there may be racial stereotypes, there may be other emotions like maybe anger that Obama might get in trouble for expressing. That Hillary would not, without a doubt.

Right. On those few occasions, occasions when Barack Obama has revealed how he thinks about the way he presents himself. And it's clear that this is someone who thinks deeply about that kind of thing. He's very self reflective on these issues. He has said that the thing that above all else, the thing that he most strives to avoid is being perceived as the angry black man. That's the phrase that he used. And that this is incredibly, that this is a profound force that is shaping how he wants to be seen. That he essentially feels that visible expressions of anger are, because of racial dynamics in the United States, almost entirely off limits to him as a leader. And in fact, if you note, before he was reelected, were in fact entirely off limits to him as a leader. I can't think of any that he expressed in those four years. And what we've started to see in the last, you know, once he was reelected, and particularly in the last year, is that he essentially has more freedom to express these emotions and is taking advantage of it quite powerfully on some occasions.

So, given what you said, would you advise female executives to hold their emotions in check, that it may not be fair, but that society will still hold it against them if they cry in public in front of their teams?

So first, I would advise any leader to work pretty hard to do that, male or female, that the power of these moments is, at least in part precisely because they are rare. And John Boehner's sort of tendency to break down tears became a punchline in Washington. I don't think it was an asset to his leadership. When Barack Obama did it. It was striking because we had never seen a president do something like that that I can recall. So, male or female, I would say if you are overly. If you are sort of extraordinarily emotional at all times, I think that likely to, at least to some extent be. Be a handicap for you as a leader. I would tell female execs that it is deeply unfair, but that they are being judged more harshly and that they surely know that better than I ever could. And I mean, I've never spoken to a woman leader who wasn't well aware of that fact and who didn't have it, hadn't sort of thought through the fact that they were being judged by standards that their male counterparts were not. But it is too easy to use gendered attacks, arguing that someone is essentially sort of overly emotional and not thinking things through against a female leader. For any female leader in a contentious situation where she might, where there are people trying to undercut her, to not be extremely cautious of that concern.

Giampiro, I'm just curious, do you have anything to add there, either about the sort of anger issue or the weeping issue?

I generally think outrage is a lot easier to fake than sadness and perhaps a lot easier to mistrust, frankly. See, I think we risk devolving or spending too much attention on the stereotypes about what you should or what you shouldn't do. And I would tend to agree that especially for a senior visible leader in politics or business to have a relatively contained demeanor is probably a good rule of thumb. I also think anyone who wants to not just call themselves, but really be a leader has to have some kind of relationship with their emotional life and they ought to be able to, not just to ask themselves, do I express emotions or not, but be a little bit more sophisticated with themselves and others and ask themselves, how do I express Emotions, because you actually, very often, if you're attentive to the undercurrent of organizational lives, emotions are constantly being expressed. When I work with senior management teams, my first question is never. Do you openly express emotions or not? My first question how do you tend to express emotions? So, for example, one classic way to scream your divergence with a group's opinion is simply not show up or to show up late to a meeting and say nothing when everyone is very animated. Very often that's a very overt, very visible expression of disappointment or sometimes expression of aggression. Now, whether that's discussed, whether that's decoded, whether that's verbalized, is a different thing. So I don't think we should just think that because we are not verbalizing our emotions or we're not melting into tears, we're not necessarily expressing strong emotions, or we are expressing emotions appropriately because very often too detached an emotional response is in fact, extremely inappropriate and extremely ineffective. So I think as a leader, the more important thing is, do you know what you're feeling, and do you know whose feelings those are? Do you know why you're feeling that way? Are you interpreting those feelings just as a. As an expression of your emotional state of the moment, or are you able to think more deeply about what are those feelings telling you about what's happening around you, what's happening to the people that you're responsible for? And can you make sense and then articulate them in a way that is actually useful? And when I say useful, what I mean in a way that actually advances the task.

Okay, so at this moment, I would love to play a clip for you guys of Sheryl Sandberg talking at. Actually at a Harvard Business School event. And we just have a little clip of her talking a little bit about what we've been touching about here, about sort of emotions and how she brings them to bear in her work. So let's take a listen to that, if we can bring that up.

I've cried at work. I've told people I've cried at work. And this got reported in the press as Sheryl Sandberg cried on Mark Zuckerberg's.

Shoulder, which is not exactly what happened.

I talk about my hopes and fears, and I ask people about theirs. I try to be myself honest about.

My strengths and weaknesses, and I encourage others to do the same.

So my question based off of that comment is, are there sort of risks or costs to bringing so much of your inner life to work? I mean, it sounds, in some ways it's good. It's better than sort of the artificial walls that we may have had earlier in the cent, at least in America. But in some ways it just sounds exhausting.

Of course it is exhausting. If you think of the these days it's become very popular to say we want to be passionate about our work, right? We describe this intensely romantic relationship to work like it's this sort of, you know, torrid affair that we are involved in. And I mean, I don't know, I challenge anyone to find intense romance that isn't consuming. And by definition passion is consuming. And not always in a positive way, but sometimes in a negative way. I mean, if you think of in the Latin sense of the word, when we say that the root word of passion, of course is passio, which means to suffer. And you know, for example, in the Bible when we refer to the passion of Christ, we don't actually mean that Jesus was happy, we mean that he was suffering in a meaningful way. These days when we talk about work that makes us passionate, we sometimes tend to conflate work that is meaningful, that is, that makes us struggle, but towards something that is worthwhile, that elevates us, that transcends our simple self interest and work that makes us happy. So let me give you a trivial example. If Gautam decided to give me six months of his salary, of course that money would make me happy and I would be very grateful, and I would be very passionately grateful. But that wouldn't be a meaningful way to make my living. I wouldn't have earned it. I wouldn't have had to do anything that is of value to anyone for it. I'd be very happy to be able to afford a wonderful holiday, but it wouldn't be a meaningful way of earning my keep. And so when we talk about passion at work, we should accept that we're opening the door to a whole range of experiences, some of which are positive and delightful and enthusiastic and some of which are difficulties and challenge us to our core and leadership is nothing but the acceptance of both sides of this passionate coin. So of course it is exhausting. I mean, one of the things that I'm fond of saying is you should be very careful about loving your job. First of all, because a job cannot love you back, only people can love you back. And second, because once you have that sort of intimate relationship with work, then you have to accept that what happens at work might also have very significant implications for the way you feel about yourself. I mean, for example, in our most intimate romantic relationships, no one ever feels, oh, well, if it didn't work out, never mind. I'll just find someone else. We, of course, realize that we'll be heartbroken. We'll be devastated today with work. Instead, we seem to want to have this intense attachment, and yet the ability to move on very quickly. That's really incompatible for human nature. So once we say yes to passion, we also need to accept that work can and will likely be a source of suffering. Now, if you're not prepared to deal with that at times, I actually don't think you should try to lead. I don't think you're prepared to lead.

So, Gautam, I'm interested now to hear from you on some of this passion stuff, because it does seem to me this is something that is very trendy right now, now, and you hear a lot of people talking about it now. Follow your dream, follow your passion. But other than a brief mention of the Prussians, we haven't talked too much about history or other cultures. And I'm just wondering what you sort of make of this. And I mean, for instance, one thing I noticed when I was doing research for this conversation was there's, like, Internet mashup videos of Japanese executives openly weeping and, you know, apologizing and stuff. I mean, so. And that's not something that you would see typically in America, even with all of our exuberance for passion. So can you just sort of give us your broader perspective on some of this?

So the first thing to remember is who, when we have these discussions about you should be passionate about your work. It's sort of. It's crucial to remember who we're directing this at. No one says to the janitors, you should really be passionate about your work. So this is a fairly privileged discussion amongst people who are, in some settle, you know, doing relatively well in society most of the time. And I think that in and of itself explains a lot of it, because the flip side of these jobs that usually pay very well is they are incredibly time consuming. They are all consuming. I remember my second or third day at McKinsey, my engagement manager said to me, remember, you are going to spend much, much, much more time here than you ever will with your family. So in terms of your time commitment, this is a much more important relationship.

Wow.

And I was thinking, well, okay then. And of course, he's right. I can't deny that right. There's absolutely no doubt that in the time that I spent there, I spent vastly more time there than I ever did with my family. And so if you are in one of These, this sort of a job that is this or that level of demands on your time. If you are not passionate about what you're doing, if you don't care deeply about it, you're going to be suffering and you're probably not going to be very good at it. Very, very few people in the world are so motivated by money that they can work purely for compensation for 80 hours a week. I mean, there are people like that, but there are not that many.

So gotha. Let me follow up a little bit. We've been talking at a high level, as you say, about CEOs, about top executives, and we're really talking about to what extent they can and should regulate their emotions or let them out. But, you know, on the question of crying, let's get back to that. You know, to what extent do leaders need to create a culture in a workplace that permits this kind of expression of, you know, tears if need be, great passion if need be? I mean, to what extent is that? Not up to the individual to regulate his or herself, but. But up to a company to kind of create a culture that is a safe place for these kinds of swings of emotion?

Depends on what kind of a culture you want to have. Do you remember Liars Poker, Michael Lewis story all the way back in the 80s, right. He talked about traders. In those days, they didn't have cordless phones, they had phones with cords. He talked about traders who would get extra long cords for their phones so they could throw them and hit people from further away. So that's a pretty dramatic expression of emotion. And clearly they had created an office culture in which that type of emotional expression was entirely valued and welcomed. Now, we might from the outside say that's pretty pathological, but that's how they thought about the world. And so what's striking is when we were taught, when you're saying this addition of emotion to the workplace, anger is also an emotion. And there were certainly plenty of environments where that kind of emotion was something people expected, not necessarily that welcomed, but it was just part of the deal. What we're essentially saying, I think, often is do managers want to create, and leaders want to create environments where softer emotions can also be expressed, where essentially you can make expressions of things that we would often think of as vulnerability without it weakening your credibility or destroying you in the workplace.

There's a great distinction by an organizational psychologist in the UK called David Armstrong, where he says emotions can be a disturbance or a source of intelligence, and leaders are more often than not able to use them as intelligence rather than make them end up being disturbances. So what I do is I'm always trying to figure out why this, why now. I also want to add something to. You know, I completely agree with what Gautam was saying earlier around privilege and frivolity in the sense that emotion and power can never be separated. In fact, anytime I go to an organization and I'm trying to figure out who are the people who hold real power, what I do is I go and look at the people who feel free to say to other people, you should be more open, you should be more authentic. Show me those people and I'll show you who's in charge. Because people in power always feel for themselves under pressure to maintain a certain demeanor, but at the same time, they feel very free to tell others that they should be more expressive.

Well, I think that is a great note to end on. So thank you both for making the time to chat with us. This was really interesting. Mind expanding conversation.

Thanks guys. That was Gotha Makunda and Gimpiero Petriglieri. For more on crying at work and other topics like these, visit hvr. Org.