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The Emotional Leader

Modern science, however, disagrees with Bacon, one of its illustrious founding fathers, even though scientists have drawn heavily on the insights of philosophers, theologians, and poets, and their ‘breakthrough’ discoveries often echo ancient wisdom.  The objective of mental health practice is to help mentally unstable people by applying what science tells us about the proper functioning of our senses and affectivities.

Unfortunately, the mechanistic worldview of Modernity has misled many scientists into ignoring the immaterial nature of mind and free will, and too many practitioners simply conflate mind and brain.  The undeniable reality of immaterial phenomena like numbers, concepts, propositions, and possibilities exposes the incoherence of the mechanical worldview, but anti-religious prejudice still blinds many people to the fact that the material world is not all there is to reality.

The human mind, with its unique capacity for abstract thinking and free decision making, is inexplicable in material terms, though it necessarily depends on the bodily senses and the brain to engage in those activities.  Human beings have the capacity to distinguish the concrete from the abstract, true from false, and good from evil.  This obviously makes human emotion far more complex and enigmatic than mere animal emotions.

The fact that the human mind is then even more profoundly shaped by culture makes a person’s worldview a crucial element in trying to understand his or her emotional state.  And the complexity further intensifies when cultures collide: for example, Christian and Muslim young people today are heavily influenced by secular modernity, with predictable consequences for the emotional states they experience.  Young people in thrall to the nihilism of secular consumer society, told to create their own meaning and purpose in life, will obviously be prone to the emotional chaos associated with selfishness, greed, promiscuity, and a lack of courage.

Differing degrees of mental illness occurs when people have difficulty in maintaining a healthy balance between thinking and feeling, between reason and emotions and animal urges.

Such people are unable to make realistic life decisions, and effectively lose the human freedom to flourish, enslaving themselves, for example, to irrational fantasies, drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, consumerist excesses, eating disorders, emotional chaos, and all too often, toxic combinations of those destructive social scourges.  The impact on relationships is predictable, and as they descend into various degrees of dysfunction, the emotional roller-coaster becomes ever more hazardous.

Emotional instability afflicts all of us to some degree or other, and, as already indicated, there are many reasons for this uncomfortable reality: broken families, unloving upbringing, poor education, disordered and conflicting worldviews, the nihilism, narcissism, and moral confusion that characterise secular modernity, the debilitating busy-ness and stress inherent in a technocratic consumerist society, the climate of fear created by a 24-hour news cycle that sensationalises the already ghoulish realities of today’s world, and the perversity of human nature itself.

Science has made clear that the social and environmental conditions produced by human perversity have caused defects in the human genome in individuals and hereditary lines.  Birth defects, low IQ, and a deleterious array of nervous and hormonal irregularities afflict many people even before they have to contend with a hostile world.  There is much more to the failing student, the disruptive worker, the unfaithful husband, and the corrupt professional than meets the eye.

Having lived with the nagging uncertainty of obsessive-compulsive disorder for most of my life, I have been both subject and researcher in a longitudinal case study.  The emotional upheavals of this persistent state of excessive anxiety and the heavy burden of scrupulosity meant that feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and alienation were constant marauders in my life.  Faith, the love of my wife, and a firm conviction in the rationality of the cosmos showed me that the condition was certainly controllable, if not curable.  The roots of OCD may be genetic (in my case this seems likely), hormonal, or neurotic, but the decades-long, well-informed conversation I have had with myself, a form of self-directed Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), has confirmed what so many great thinkers have emphasised over the centuries: our rational minds must control our passions.

It is highly significant that CBT, the most effective remedy for many of the mental and emotional problems in our society, echoes the wise advice good parents give their children, as well as the lessons of the Bible, Confucius, Aesop, and other literary classics.  CBT comes down to defining reality in the face of the cognitive distortions that emotionally distraught people often indulge in.  Defining reality is simply being honest with oneself and others.

It goes without saying that it is easier and more effective to socialise a child than to try and reform anti-social behaviour in an adult.  Teaching children how to manage their emotions enables them to not only cope with the inevitable stresses and struggles of life, but also to develop and maintain healthy relationships.  The link here with morality and mental health is obvious: selfishness, dishonesty, greed, aggression, cowardice, and cruelty are all destructive attitudes that are encouraged by uncontrolled emotions like desire, fear, envy, anger, and aversion.

To lead requires one to be fully human, which means embracing your emotions, but always being in control of them.

Your speeches will only inspire if they appeal to the hearts of your audience.  Your arguments will only convince if they acknowledge the passion all sides bring to discussions.  Your most strenuous efforts to drive a challenging project will succeed only if you marshal the emotional realities involved in you and your team.  And so on.

The ancient Greek word sophrosyne and its Latin counterpart temperantia denoted “directing reason”, applying rational thinking to every aspect of one’s life.  Temperance was understood as the rational cultivation of every part of a person, body and soul, into a unified and properly functioning whole.  So temperance is the control of one’s emotions, putting reason in charge of feelings, for one’s own good as well as that of the community.  Aristotle noted this common-sense reality a long time ago: “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

There are countless Annas in our troubled world, in management, the workforce, communities, schools, and homes.  They need relief, not repudiation; leaders are required to inspire people, not indict them.  Emotions are essential to being human, and they can be either a blessing or a curse, helping people to either flourish or flounder.

The answer to the challenge of human emotion is leadership, embodied in self-leaders who are themselves emotionally balanced, shaped by the virtues of practical wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance, and driven by a worldview defined by a commitment to human flourishing.

Andre van Heerden
Andre van Heerdenhttp://www.powerofintegrity.com/
ANDRE heads the corporate leadership program The Power of Integrity, and is the author of three books on leadership, Leaders and Misleaders, An Educational Bridge for Leaders, and Leading Like You Mean It. He has unique qualifications for addressing the leadership crisis. Since studying law at Rhodes University, he has been a history teacher, a deputy headmaster, a soldier, a refugee, an advertising writer, a creative director, an account director on multinational brands, a marketing consultant, and a leadership educator. He has worked in all business categories on blue-chip brands like Toyota, Ford, Jaguar, Canon, American Express, S C Johnson, Kimberley Clark, and John Deere, while leadership coaching has seen him help leaders and aspirant leaders in Real Estate, Retail, the Science Sector, Local Government, Education, Food Safety, Banking, and many other areas. Subscribe to my Substack HERE.

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6 CONVERSATIONS

  1. Before learning to manage people, projects, companies or to carry out any human activity, you need also in private life.to learn to manage yourself. This rule is valid for anything; it not only applies in the world of work but
    Enthusiasm, energy, motivation, positivity, calm, serenity, joy, feelings, moods and emotional states, but also behaviors and emotional reactions to events, to external stimuli , and people, are elements that we must learn to self-produce, manage and control on command. Also because this also increases the self-esteem that can guide us in decisions.
    But in the head of a leader who must obtain results, and cannot do it alone, there must also be room for a reasonable preponderance of the relationship over organizational processes. It must be essential that the people he is surrounded by feel “at home”, that they can feel free to express their emotions, perplexities and criticisms and to ask for help if in difficulty. And, perhaps, that they can also have fun.
    Each of us is a leader in our sphere of influence. Whether we like it or not, whether we are aware of it or not, whether it is wanted or totally random, there are people around us who observe, study and base many of their thoughts and behaviors on our actions. They see us as a guide, a point to orient theirselves in life, a compass that indicates a direction. We can inspire someone every time we talk, act, and make decisions. We can induce thoughts and behaviors whenever we communicate and when we interact with others. By itself being aware of our leadership role increases the likelihood that our leadership will be effective. Already only the very awareness that others can see in us a model of thought and behavior can give substance to our leadership.
    The essence of leadership is to stay focused on others. Being aware that what they do and say will be seen, heard, perceived by others, and that with their behavior, thoughts, actions, they can inspire, motivate, influence others, both positively and negatively. This awareness afford a leader to realize that he cannot do but be continually present inside the team, with authoritativeness but also with flexible involvement.

  2. Andre, I appreciate your clarity such that we can all have a better relationship to our emotions as humans living together.

    I tend to see this part a little differently however; ’emotion is an organic reaction that unsettles normal bodily functions, affecting the state of blood vessels and muscles, heartbeat and respiration, sensory awareness, the condition of the skin, and mental agility. The degree of disturbance obviously varies greatly between the different emotions, and also between different people affected by the same emotion.’.

    I see emotions as information looking to get our attention. Negative emotions typically are alerting us that we are not getting what we want or getting something we don’t want. I think we need to move from holding emotions as a disturbance to holding emotions as critical information that we need to make space to communicate with us in positive and helpful ways.

    Would love to discuss further with you offline! Thank you for this very helpful piece.

  3. Andre: An excellent article. We seldom know the dragons that the other person battles behind the curtain that separates his/her private and public life. Those issues sometimes become more than the person can rationally cope with causing an abrupt change of behavior. The normal calm, productive, and personable employee or friend can abruptly become aggressive and disruptive.

    Put under enough pressure everyone will change from their normal sphere of actions.

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