Is intellect or emotion the best feature of a powerful leader?
Personal introduction
Thirty years ago, my life was predominantly ruled by what was happening in my head. Rationality determined what I could and could not do, and I acted accordingly. Even though as a child I was perfectly capable of accepting my feelings, dared to trust my intuition and act in line with it, I’d suppressed this ability during my adolescence.
As a result of my parents’ painful divorce, I’d learned that as long as I refused to allow myself to really feel my emotions, I wouldn’t get hurt. Of course, that wasn’t true, because it was obvious I’d been hurt, while I did my best not to feel it.
This armour of rationality came at a price. For example, I found it difficult to enter into and maintain relationships with others. I was quite insecure, and I lived a rather reclusive life. To camouflage these disadvantages, I started overcompensating in my contacts with others. I lost count of the times I shouted myself down. I now know that many people weren’t very pleased to meet me in that situation. This led me to feel more rejected more often, and I withdrew even more.
In the past 30 years, I have worked hard on myself. I discovered the power of accepting and truly embracing my feelings. The more in contact I am with myself, the more sincere my contact becomes with others. If I trust in myself, I can give true trust to others. If I truly respect myself, I can respect others with integrity, irrespective of whether I agree with their way of thinking or not.
In other words, the key to engaging in powerful relationships with others is to engage in the relationship with yourself. And, based on the sincere connection with yourself, you can engage in genuine connections with others at the team and organization levels, which helps in achieving the agreed-upon results (or even surpassing them).
Attributes of best teams
What is the best team you were ever a member of and what are the attributes that made that team the best? The first thing you will probably think of is a business environment or a sports team. But try placing the concept of ‘team’ in a wider context. We can also talk of a team and teamwork within your family, within a group of friends, or in a club or society you’ve been a member of.
One-third related to intellect
I have asked countless people around the world the ‘best team’ question. Listening to the answers, a clear pattern emerges. A third of the specified attributes are related to the intellect.
Among other things, the best teams:
- Have an end goal in mind that has been commonly agreed on
- Are aware of the strategy needed to achieve it
- Have defined their priorities
- Have made clear agreements regarding tasks and roles
- Consist of team members with the relevant expertise
- Invest in personal and team development
- Have a clear and effective decision-making procedure in place
- Have an agreement regarding the resources required, and these have been allocated.
These rational attributes are the firm conditions required for implementing the fundamental starting point of ‘teams exist to achieve results.’
Two-thirds emotion
By fulfilling only the rational attributes, a team will never be able to become the best team. Other qualities are required for this and these, are they’re concerned with emotion. This is only logical because teams and organizations consist of people. And, putting people together creates an emotional dynamic by definition, which contributes to creating a powerful connection and collaboration (or not).
The emotional attributes form two thirds of the answer to the question regarding the attributes of the best teams. For example, the best teams:
- Give and receive trust to articulate different thoughts
- Collectively share and celebrate successes of both the group and individuals
- Specify and articulate conflicts, because these are regarded as opportunities for new discoveries, growth and creativity
- Value with an open mind each other’s differences in ideas, background, standpoints, personality, approach and way of living
- Give and receive feedback on a daily basis
- Create an atmosphere of mutual respect and genuine appreciation
- Have enthusiastic team members who look ahead and value each other
Strong attributes of powerful leaders
If I ask people about the attributes of the best teams, consistently a third of the answers will relate to rational attributes and two thirds to emotional attributes. This ratio between intellect and emotion becomes even more skewed if I ask people about the attributes of powerful leaders.
In this empirical study, I have referred from the start to leaders in the broadest sense of the word. Besides leaders in a business or political context, you also have people you experience as a leader within your family, within your social environment, or within every other random connection that sounds logical to you.
The ratio between rational and emotional attributes in the answers to my question concerning powerful leaders is even more skewed than for the question concerning best teams: 10% are about rational attributes and as many as 90% of the answers concern emotional attributes.
Some of the attributes I constantly hear about leaders who are considered to be powerful are:
• He radiates pleasure, enthusiasm and passion
• He shows respect and trust
• He treats me as an equal
• He believes in me
• He challenges me
• He creates a safe environment in which I feel supported
• He takes the time to really listen to me and my viewpoints
The impact on the other person is that he feels heard and seen, he is stimulated to put in maximum effort, and he willingly follows the leader in achieving his vision and goals.
The paradox of equivalence
The consistency in the answers to the two questions leads me to observe that within the best teams, and regarding powerful leaders, conscious or unconscious attention is paid to the emotional side of engaging in connections and collaborations. Does this mean that in day-to-day situations more attention must be paid to the emotional aspects of collaborating instead of to the rational aspects?
In my opinion we have a paradox here. In a sense they are equal, and yet at the same time they’re not.
When creating the best teams, the rational and emotional attributes are equal because paying less or no attention at all to one of the two elements will immediately create problems within the team or the organization. If, for example, you don’t create enough clarity about rational attributes such as goals, tasks and procedures, questions about the direction and the functional side of the collaboration will arise. This has an impact on the effectiveness of the team.
If insufficient attention is paid to emotional attributes such as trust, respect and transparency, the collaboration will immediately become less sincere. This also has an impact on the collaboration and effectiveness of the team. In this context, both attributes are of equal value when creating best teams.
Putting process above people?
The starting point is that emotion and intellect are fundamentally of equal value in order for a team to be effective. Unfortunately, intellect still dominates, at least in the case of many leaders. Based on this focus, more attention is paid to optimally structuring the team.
For example, following the defined procedures becomes more important, and much emphasis is placed on accountability. When that happens, the process becomes laborious and there’s less flexibility. The team works together in an increasingly mechanical way. The result is that the power of the connection and emotion is reduced to zero through over-organization.
In an extreme situation, employees are reduced to simply a means of production to achieve results.
Similarly, if the leader focuses primarily on the emotions and takes this too far, it will also have an impact on the effectiveness of the team. For example, if he insists on continually talking to everyone about the management side, instead of defining boundaries and determining the path to follow, at some point this will negatively affect the results. No choices are made, and the employees don’t know what’s expected of them (or they do what they think best).
In other words, the prime cause of imbalance between intellect and emotion is directly linked to the natural focus of you as a leader.
Additionally, I’m convinced that it is the emotional factor that contains the natural source of inspiration for powerful collaboration and achieving results. Think, for example, of the love for the patient, the attention for the pupil, the passion for numbers, the dream of a better world, etc. These motivations belong to the domain of the emotions and are an inexhaustible source of commitment.
If you can create the right circumstances to make use of this natural source in a sincere manner, results that were considered impossible before suddenly become realistic. For example, this can occur when teachers themselves start to connect more and are willing to make an extra effort in the classroom by making a connection between the source of inspiration of ‘the growth of children’ and the activities they carry out.
They work less for the money, more for their ‘belief’. The same applies to all employees. The more they believe in the product or the service, and thus feel the connection, the more they are willing to work for it.
But there is a risk involved here. Based on loyalty and belief, employees may push their own needs to the background and accept too many changes and rules because they simply want to carry out their profession (focus on the customer). The belief or idealism then starts to work against them, which can lead to frustration, tension and burnout. In other words, the secondary cause of an imbalance between intellect and emotion is directly linked to how you motivate your employees (or unconsciously demotivate them). It pays to focus on the emotional factor as a leader.
A point to reflect on
What do you think would happen in society if you and your family members, neighbours, people with different cultural backgrounds or religious beliefs all worked on the emotional connection with themselves, and then engaged in an emotional connection with others? Would there still be so many wars, conflicts and arguments?
ASSIGNMENT: Accelerating excellence
In your next team meeting, ask this question: What is the best team you were ever a member of, and what are the three to five attributes that made that team the best?
Give them a couple of minutes to think about it and then invite everyone to share their thoughts with the others. Ask them to give a short description of the team they had in mind (just sharing these insights can lead to unexpected situations and fresh insights regarding the other person) followed by the three to five attributes.
Write the rational attributes on the left side of the flip chart, and the emotional attributes on the right. Once all the attributes have been written down, discuss with team members whether they can see any patterns. Discuss also the attention given to the rational and emotional sides of working within teams. Talk about what is needed to make this team the best team that has ever existed.
What insights do you discover and what agreements do you want to make about them? What kind of connection do you all want to have?
You can decide rationally to pay more attention to your emotions. Can you decide emotionally to pay less attention to your intellect?
Drs. Marco Buschman
Eager to hear more?
Do you want to hear more about how to develop these kind of skills as a connected manager? Then listen to this podcast ‘How a culture of understanding transforms teams and organisations’. My managementbook THE CONNECTION QUOTIENT is available at your local Amazon webpage, Kindle, Kobo or Apple and at Bol.com.
