#425 Emotions, Leadership, Business - Article written by Niels Brabandt

Emotions, Leadership, Business

Article written by Niels Brabandt

Emotions happen.

Most people have certainly found themselves in situations that they found difficult, challenging or even overwhelming. For a long time, it was said that such emotions had no place in leadership and business. The debate about whether this view is still relevant today continues. What is certain is that the topic is frequently discussed. This aspect makes it all the more important to be prepared for it.

How can you optimally prepare yourself as an organisation and as a manager?

Cases

The debate about emotions is not a new phenomenon. It comes up again and again, and reactions vary greatly. Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the United Kingdom, the equivalent of what is usually referred to as the finance minister or financial secretary in countries such as Germany, showed clear signs of emotional distress when Prime Minister Keir Starmer read out the decision on social cuts in Parliament. Later, when asked by the press, Reeves stated that it was a personal matter unrelated to politics.

Presenter Markus Lanz sharply attacked Sahra Wagenknecht at the time, and did so with evident emotion. He was heavily criticised for this, and a discussion about journalistic standards began. Lanz himself repeatedly emphasises in his programme that he is concerned with the issue at hand and not with an emotional description of the situation.

Just recently, footballer Diogo Jota, a player for Liverpool FC and the Portuguese national team, died in a fatal car accident at the age of 28. Players, officials and fans openly showed their sympathy.

Three situations, three assessments, three completely different consequences – all played out through emotions.

Aspects

When dealing with emotions, always consider the factor that concerns you personally first. Hiding emotions is harmful. This behaviour can have serious psychological and, as a result, physical consequences. However, if you are a person who is subject to the perception of others in your role, there are other factors to consider. Always consider your environment as well. An emotionally affected Ministry of Finance can quickly throw entire markets into uncertainty. Failure to comply with journalistic standards through emotionalisation can bring the profession as a whole or the publishing organisation into disrepute. Unfortunately, subjective factors are also relevant in this context. As unfair as it is, women and minorities in particular are much more likely to be attacked for emotional behaviour than privileged white men.

The example of Diogo Jota's death illustrates this. The players', officials' and fans' emotions, which were rightly shown openly in a sport that is otherwise often known for toxic masculinity, were received openly and positively. This behaviour is a positive example of how to deal with emotions.

Therefore, be mindful of yourself, your environment and your wider environment when interacting in public.

You can find more on this in this week's videocast and podcast; see links below.

Call To Action

As a general rule, it is best not to hide your emotions. This behaviour is particularly harmful to you and not helpful to those around you. It also prevents you from receiving help that would otherwise be available to you. However, you also need to be aware of your surroundings. Imagine that, before the plane you are sitting in takes off, you are informed by an announcement that the person flying the aircraft today is going through a difficult personal break-up and they just wanted to share this with you. Do you feel safer now? Probably not. Every emotion has a context. In private life, that context is often completely different from the business context. If you notice that you are too emotionally affected, consider taking sick leave rather than acting in a way that is not beneficial to the organisation or company. Awareness of your public image becomes increasingly important as you gain more leadership and power, and even more so if you are frequently seen and judged in public.

However, the focus is always on mental health first. If that is impaired, it becomes virtually impossible to achieve anything in your private or professional life. Take care of your mental health so that your emotional state does not become a negative factor for yourself or your organisation, as far as possible.

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More on this topic in this week's podcast: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify

For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.

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Contact: Niels Brabandt on LinkedIn

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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.

Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, moderator.

Porcast Transcript

Niels Brabandt

And the emotion was there. You probably saw Rachel Reeves, who was visibly upset when Keir Starmer wrote out the benefit cuts in the UK Parliament. However, the conclusions were as quick and incorrect as they were to be expected. The first conclusion, of course, was you can't show any kind of being visibly upset. When you, the Chancellor to the Exchequer, you always should sort out your emotions. Never show any emotions in public. And the other group saying you, you need to be authentic, always okay to show emotions, always show anything you have on your soul, show it to the general public, it's all fine. Surprise, surprise.

Simple solutions in complex environments are never correct. And this is no exception to this rule. Very important here. As soon as anything is simplistic, it is usually not the right answer. We are going to talk about today about emotions and leadership and emotions in business. Very important here to get the definition right. There. There is no business which is only free enterprise driven, driven by which bills need to be paid or whatever.

It is very important here. What we're talking about is any kind of organisation. You can be a charity, you can be a political party, you can be a nonprofit organisation, but you can also be free enterprise. Stock exchange, there's all kinds of organisations. So we cover anything from the absolutely nonprofit via politics to public service, anything very important. I'm going to quote a couple of media situations here. Everything of that is of course fair use and that means it's fully protected.

And also of course I can quote just to show you that this actually happened. When we talk about emotions and leadership, very important here is we need cases. So case number one is, as I just told you, Rachel Reeves in the UK Parliament, Chancellor to the Exchequer, who then says, when she was questioned about it, what made you so upset? Because people thought, after the Labour Party was arguing for weeks and weeks ongoing, then people thought it's all about the argument. She is just frustrated. She probably doesn't agree on the politics, she doesn't agree on the welfare cut. She has a very, she has a very different opinion on it.

People thought this is genuine disagreement. And when she was asked about it, she said it was a personal matter, so something completely outside of politics, which of course surprised many people. Some people said, oh, it's a cheap excuse. Other people said it's very reasonable to have these kind of reactions. And then it was ongoing from there. There. The second case we have is a German TV host.

Marcus Lanz is his name. He has one of the most well watched TV talk shows every single evening. It's on air from Monday to Friday and he had Sarah Wagenknecht at his show. Zara Wagner, a far left wing politician today in a new populist party she founded in a couple of years. He had her there and he very much kicked off at her very, very obviously. It was very obvious to anyone who watched that he doesn't like her politics. Well, as a self employed entrepreneur, I don't support that far left wing party as well, especially as their politics are not backed by any kind of science, facts or evidence.

It simply wouldn't work. It's just populist left wing. I neither like populist left wing nor right wing. Both of the absolute utter nonsense. However, when you are German TVOs, is it acceptable that you show these kind of emotions, that you're obviously disgusted by someone, that you obviously do not support someone's politics? Is that acceptable for a publicly funded TV station? Question mark and the third case we have here is UK football.

A pretty, pretty, pretty bad tragedy which just happened last week. Diogo Yota from FC Liverpool died in a tragic car accident, only being 28 years old. And of course when the next football game happened, they had a minute of silence for him and they, they thought of him. And you saw players as well as officials and the fans being visibly upset. So these are emotions where also of course we see emotions publicly. So three very different cases where we need to talk about what are the aspects of showing emotions in public and what are also the consequences of that. So first let's talk about the aspects we have here.

The aspects we have here of course is number one, yourself. You have to take care of yourself first. However, it is not only about yourself because as soon as you are somehow visible in the general public, especially expect a public reaction. However, it always has to be number one, take care of yourself. And when you say I am really affected by this, by a personal matter, I cannot keep my emotions outside the meeting room, outside the parliament room or wherever you have to go. Then probably it's better to either say you're participating online or you're not participating at all. When you cannot, when you say it is not reasonable to put these emotions on display because people might draw wrong conclusions, whole markets might be affected, customers might be affected, your business might be affected, organisations might be affected, people might draw all the wrong conclusions from it.

Maybe take a day off work or a week or a month, as much as you need. Very important is take care of yourself first because you have to see that there's always the next step and these are your circumstances. We are no one of us. No one of us exists outside circumstances. The circumstances you have here is, for example, your political party. What kind of picture will people derive from your action here?

Will it harm others? So, for example, and by the way, that's not the last bit, the most brutal part are usually the wider circumstances. When you and I tell you from my referee experience, as soon as the general public starts to do an online beating with you, it's not going to be pleasant. I can tell you that even in business, when you have something that people talk down on you in the most brutal way, it's not easy to handle. I can tell you, you get used to it in one way or the other, especially when they are unreasonably wrong, which they mostly are. However, you have to see that the wider circumstances will judge you in one way or the other. You may like it or not like it, still, they will judge you if you like it or not.

So what do you have to do now? Let's say in the UK Parliament, you can take care of yourself. Your circumstances will be a political party. The wider circumstance will be the UK economy, even on an international basis. So when people say, she's so upset, what's wrong with the numbers? Is the UK in financial trouble? Is the Labour Party unable to govern the country?

Are they unable to agree within their own party? Are they unable to lead the country? And that, of course, is something you do not want to have as a discussion. So probably, as much as this is understandable, when Rachel Reeves said, it's a personal matter, I probably think it's a better idea not to be seen in public in that situation, in tears, because people will always conclude you disagree with your party leader. You're not aware of what's going on, you're not in control of the country, and especially you're not in control of the finances. And that is your number one job, to take care of the numbers, to be sure that the country becomes financially more stable. And then the wider circumstances always will mean that people from your opposition will tear you apart on social media, anywhere online, any discussion, any interview, plus the media landscape you have in the uk, which is pretty brutal.

So when you have that, you harm others as well. So be aware that it's not only about you. Take care of yourself, but be aware, as soon as you go to public, it's not only about you. From there, when we go to the German TV host, is it okay to be aggressive towards someone you simply politically disagree with? The conclusion here can simply be that people say, I knew it this is how public TV stations are unnecessarily aggressive and they are not impartial, or people will even go further and say this is how everyone on TV is, or they go even further, say this is how everyone in the media is, or they go even further and say anyone who publishes any journal is exactly like that. They are all not impartial, but they pretend to be. So you can harm a whole industry with your behaviour, especially when you are well known.

Be aware that from yourself to your circumstances, to the wider circumstances discussion happens if you like it or not. So in my opinion, it is not acceptable to show this kind of aggression on tv. You may or may not agree on the political party programme or manifesto they have and then ask smart question and expose what they did wrong. Of course, when you have a party which is not democratic, doesn't want to have democracy out there, wants to be on the fascist side, you can call them out left, right and centre, because we all want to live in. Any reasonable person wants to live in a democracy. And with the third case in UK football, that's a good example how positive impact is designed. So you see people crying on TV and for the first time many people said, finally, someone in football shows emotions and it's not about winning a game or winning a tournament, being the winner of anything, or the very, very few moments where people are allowed to show negative emotions in high commas.

Negative emotions, for example, crying on TV when they, for example, got relegated or lost the cup final. Usually football is known for being pretty toxic regarding emotions, especially toxic masculinity. This moment, although it's a tragedy and we really hope that Diogo Yota, his family and friends, anyone, I wish them a lot of strength in these extremely hard times now and his team, anyone around that, that tragedy, I really wish them all the best. These bereavements are extremely hard. What they have done well is they have shown that emotions can happen and they can happen in public to make a change for the better. And that happened in exactly this case, because many people then said, look, it is possible to show emotions. We have to get rid of this toxic masculinity.

Stiff upper lip, man up, whatever else they usually say it is possible to show emotions and this is the way how to do it. Of course, now when you see reactions 1, 2 and 3, you wonder what are the consequences here? And the first consequence, of course, is always, and that is something I will always double. Never hide. But never hide does not mean put yourself out there in plain public. Never hide means Never hide your emotions. When you think that you can simply move on and you hide these emotions, you never show them anywhere.

This will have, and there's unambiguous scientific evidence that this will have a massive impact on your mental health in the long run. It will have severe consequences which are usually, which usually end up in a situation where you need professional help. So never hide your emotions. Seek help in your circle of friends and relatives and people you know and acquaintances you, you can speak to and trust to. And if you need, get professional help, there's no shame in that. However, never hide your emotions. But, and again, never hide your emotions.

However, there is a public awareness you need to have. As soon as you put your emotions on display and you are a person that ends up on social media when your name is known, when people don't like you for whatever reason. And these can be the most random reason I speak on first hand experience as a part of the LGBT community, QIA community. As soon as there's any kind of public awareness, things out there become pretty brutal. And that is something you need to take into consideration. You might harm yourself, you might even harm others, you might harm people around you, you might harm whole entities that are around you. And that was never deliberate in most cases.

However, when you did that, it means that other people suffer while you are suffering. And you shouldn't make other people suffer just because you suffer. That's pretty obvious. So the public awareness needs to be there. The number one priority for you always needs to be your mental health. And your mental health is what you need to focus on. As soon as you focus on your mental health, things will become better gradually, step by step from there.

When you miss people a lot, when they are not there anymore, this can take a significant amount of time. And I can tell you, I speak from firsthand experience here as well. Mental health need to be, needs to be taken care of. That is always the number one. The public awareness is crucial because the public out there is usually not nice, especially when you go on social media, it's an absolute, it's an absolute mop out there, many of them who are only there to spread hate online. So when you put these consequences in place, so when you see the reaction yourself, your circumstances, your wider circumstances, you take all of that into consideration. You get help while not hiding from your closest friends and colleagues, then everything will become better from there.

And as soon as you put it in place in that way, not going unnecessarily public because you feel pushed to or feel obliged to do so when you take care of yourself and have the public awareness, everything becomes better from there. And I wish you all the best doing so. And when you now say, oh, that's a tough, tough topic.

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