Managing Your Emotions For Maximum Impact

Hi there, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to another episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. It's the weekly micro edition of my podcast. Each episode is just six minutes long and is designed to provide you with tips, tools and tactics around specific aspects of leadership and management. It addresses some of the most common challenges you will face as a leader or manager. They are all recorded unscripted whilst I'm out walking in the countryside. So you'll probably hear birds tweeting in the background or just ambient noise as the people around me are going about their day to day life. That's all I'm going to say by way of an introduction, so let's dive straight in to this week's episode.

If you're a leader who'd like to be able to stay calm, cool, clear headed, in control, even in the toughest of moments, then today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag is for you. In this episode we're looking at how learning to regulate or control our emotions can elevate our impact as leaders. How it instills trust in those around us and how it can help us to make more effective decisions even in the most difficult of circumstances. Research suggests that those leaders who can effectively regulate their emotions create more stable working environments for their team that lead to better performance. Daniel Goleman says that the ability to regulate our emotions is one of the most crucial skills to be an effective leader. But we all know this. We know it through intuition and we know it from experience. I'm sure you've worked for some great leaders and some not so great leaders and who are the ones that you felt the most inspired and compelled to follow? I suspect it's the ones who were broadly consistent. You knew what to expect of them in terms of their mood and energy. I suspect it wasn't the Jekyll and Hyde type leader when you never knew who was going to show up or when you felt like you was constantly walking on eggshells around them because you was worried, scared even about triggering them and the reaction that might come. We know that positive emotions tend to inspire motivation and cohesion within teams, whereas negative emotions create stress and disengagement. Professor Barbara Friedrichson's Broaden and Build theory further suggests that that leaders who can regulate their emotion create environment where people are more effective at coming up with creative solutions to problems. It creates broader perspective and thinking amongst our teams. So if you want a team that is more innovative, resilient, or has a greater capacity for solving problems effectively, we need to start by learning to regulate our emotions and at the very same time, we need to be wary of excessive emotional control. And this is something that I personally struggled with in the past. As a boy at school, I was described as a natural leader and my ability to stay calm and composed was highlighted. I then went on to join the British army and went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where the ability to stay calm, cool, collected, composed is seen as a key critical leadership competence. So I dialed this right up to the max. I became a master at emotional control, which is different to emotional regulation. Only later in life, certainly when I left the army, this started to become a problem for me both in my personal and in my work life. Personally, I struggled to really make sense of and express emotions, both positive and negative. And in a work setting, I started to find, or it was pointed out to me rather, that because I had such a high level of emotional control, people sometimes didn't connect with me. They didn't know how I felt about a situation or project. Sometimes I appeared distant or aloof because I was controlling my emotions so much. So, like anything in leadership, emotional regulation and emotional control is a fine balancing act. Yes, we need to be able to regulate our emotions because that has an incredibly positive impact on those around us, not just those that we lead. But excessive emotional control can mean others find it difficult to connect with us. And as you've heard me speak about before, if you're a regular on the Leader's Kit Bag, human connection really is one of the key currencies of leadership. That's it for this episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. If you're getting value from these, do check out Ben AI via the link in the notes wherever you happen to be watching. Ben AI is my brand new virtual coach. I've created a clone of myself based on all of the content I've created and all that I've learned over the past 20 years. What it means for you is that whenever you've got a leadership management or personal development type question, you can go to Ben AI, type in your own question and get a specific response direct to you that's tailored exactly to your challenge. And if you want, you can even have a voice call with Ben AI. He sounds remarkably like me. I'm super excited about Ben AI and I know you're going to love it when you take a look, so do check it out by the link in the notes accompanying this episode. That is it for now though. As always, look after yourself. Look after those you've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. And until next time. Lead on.