Leadership and Emotions

Building a Bridge

The training sessions continue in Valuemate! After having put the "tools" of communication and conflict in the toolbox, we spent an afternoon together reflecting on the theme of emotions and their specific role in the workplace.

It is inevitable to bring on board Daniel Goleman and his Emotional Intelligence. "We have two minds, one that thinks, the other that feels. These two modes of knowledge, so fundamentally different, interact to build our mental life".

Here, in an increasingly complex world, the Emotional Quotient is forcefully placed alongside the Intelligence Quotient.

The ability to read one's own and other people's emotions becomes fundamental to best exercise one's leadership. Exercise it using which and how many styles? Visionary, Directive, Affiliative, Democratic, Trailblazer, Coach? The "perfect" manager uses them all, based on the people and situations in which he finds himself.

But maybe, if you think about it, the companies that work best are those in which everyone feels the co-responsibility of leadership and... takes charge of personally conducting the activities to be carried out, even if they do not have the "title" of manager in their job description! We can all be "leaders"!

And since you "learn by doing" and having fun, we then tested ourselves in a team competition that involved building a bridge. Within the two groups, since there was no designated "project leader", each had to exercise their own leadership, using their preferred style, to get to the final result.

The aesthetics could be improved, but both bridges have withstood the load test!