Our emotions are the ultimate leadership power-up

It's been an emotional week. And it will be next week, too. And the one after that.

We can't escape our feelings.

Emotion has got a bit of a bad reputation over the years, but it's an essential quality of what it means to be human and there's no getting way from our emotions, no matter how hard we try.

Knowing that is an incredible power-up as an agency leader.

Thanks to advances in neuroscience, we have a far better understanding now of what emotion is and how it affects us than we ever have done. Science has given us a far deeper view of the complexity of our feelings, how they arise in certain parts of our brain and how they are regulated by other parts. We've learnt vast amounts about how they work in partnership with our rational mind, and more continues to be discovered.

These insights mean that we can finally debunk the myth that emotion is counterproductive. When embraced as an essential dimension of being human, our feelings can dramatically enhance our other capacities and resources. That's incredibly valuable in agency leadership.

That being said, we have to live in the modern world. Changes in technology, culture and the workplace mean that we are constantly presented with a myriad of challenges, things that trigger emotional responses. Now more than ever, we need tools and skills to regulate our emotions and prevent them from overpowering us.

This week I've talked about 3 that are vital tools for agency leaders:

💡 Reappraisal — being your own spin doctor in the way you give meaning to events

💡 Expression — the profound power of putting words to how you feel

💡 Acceptance — learning not to be controlled by emotions about what's outside your control

Learning these is not easy. They all take time and effort to help them become part of our reflexes … but when they do they are true super-powers, hugely enhancing our rational mind. And when they are instinctive, that's a much-needed power-up in agency leadership.

We all have different emotional tendencies, some more to fear, others less, some more to joy, others less. But if we appreciate our own feelings and understand our emotional profile more, they can be a huge asset to understanding ourselves, the world, and our role in it.

Other posts in this series:

• What have emotions got to do with leading an agency?
• Reappraise your emotions and give them some spin
• The super-power of putting your emotions into words
• The profound power of acceptance to regulate emotion