I recently met a management team that had built up a new company within a larger group. The management team consisted of very talented and experienced people. They were efficient and focused, and in a surprisingly short time they had everything in place and were fully operational. Then it hit rock bottom. Noise and resistance came from many quarters in the new company. The management team was caught off guard; what on earth was going on? Where did all the resistance suddenly come from?
They had forgotten to involve the people in the organization. The employees' feelings and reactions were forgotten in the leaders' rational and efficient establishment of the new company. The management team was made up of quite similar profiles; people with a focus on thinking and logic, and less on empathy and interest in the employees and their feelings.
Critical elements of the leadership role are the people you lead, your relationships with them, with an emphasis on both facts and feelings. It is what you do together that creates results. A successful leadership career will naturally be built on an interest in people . A leader must be curious about what drives their employees and, together with them, learn to handle both facts and emotions in their daily work.
Many leaders believe they are more interested in people they lead than they actually are. From a rational starting point based on reports, analyses, plans etc. they perceive themselves as very involved in the business. With a one-sided rational perception of reality, many will block their opportunities for a successful leadership career! It is when leaders with a strong foundation in the logical-rational do not take the emotional seriously that problems arise. By relying too much on the rational and not dealing with emotions, a leader will be perceived as distant, impersonal and not very interested in his or her employees.
There are many pitfalls that leaders with a one-sided foundation in the logically rational can stumble into. One example is that they make rational, but often emotionally unintelligent, decisions too quickly. This meets unexpected reactions from employees who experience the leader's decisions as meaningless and react with irritation and resentment. The leader experiences such reactions as unfair, as the decisions are considered clearly rational and absolutely necessary. Employees, on the other hand, see a leader without emotional intelligence!
In businesses where change is a natural part of everyday life , good handling of both facts and emotions will be a clear prerequisite for performing the leadership job. Even leaders with long practical leadership experience find it challenging to handle both the rational and the emotional in the management job. Handling of Emotions are not "the soft part", but "the hard part" in leadership and interaction between people.
Implementation power is created through the "activation" of human resources. Therefore, leaders need emotional intelligence to engage people and handle both facts and emotions in change efforts.
Several of Norway's largest companies have annual evaluations to ensure that managers, in addition to achieving various business goals, also score well (enough) on relationship management. All managers who want a career in these companies must therefore take this into account.
Not all leaders have emotions as part of their natural leadership behavior. But everyone can sharpen their skills and, for example, start with the following:
- Recognize that leadership is both facts and emotions
- Seek feedback about your own leadership
- Engage and involve employees
- Develop management processes and teamwork
The focus of the management team from the beginning was efficiency and goal achievement. But it would have been much more effective if they had involved the employees from the start. Now the management team lost time in regaining trust, resolving conflicts and getting the team on board.
Facts plus emotions is efficiency.
