Not dealing with emotions hurts us, our people, and our organizations. Worse, it holds us back from creating remarkable cultures and achieving incredible business results.

If you want to grow and scale your business, you must learn to develop your Emotional Intelligence. You need to learn how to feel comfortable with emotions.  Your emotions, and those of others, are not the enemy, but, in fact, are the basis of your strengths.

The six-step process below is backed by leading science and grounded in decades of in-the-field experience. Learn to identify the specific emotional skills that most impact your career, uncover barriers to growth, set goals, and tap into the motivation to change. This framework addresses five distinct areas of EI – self-perception, self-expression, interpersonal, decision-making, and stress management – along with the individual competencies associated with each.

1. Connect With Yourself

Take a hard look in the mirror to create an inventory of your existing EI strengths and areas for development. Ask yourself questions that probe all five areas of EI, such as: Am I aware of how I am feeling at any given moment?  Do I stand up for myself? Am I able to put myself in other people’s shoes?  

2. Consult With Others

People’s self-perception is not always accurate.  Therefore, it’s critical to interview others to learn how they are seen and then circle back to compare these results with their own perceptions. Ask questions like: “Does it seem that I care too much about what others think of me? Do I adequately manage my stress?  Do you think that I control my impulses?”

3. Clarify Focus

Once you’ve collected this information about your level of emotional intelligence, you’ll more likely change if you understand the why behind the EI gaps, and what these gaps are costing you. Look at your highest and lowest EI competencies, and then ask yourself: “Where does this development opportunity come from? Childhood? Life experience? How does it hold me back in the workplace?”

4. Consider Possibilities and Barriers

This step helps you figure out how to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be. First, brainstorm as many options as possible for reaching your EI goal, and then they think about what might get in the way of realizing each option. 

5. Craft an Action Plan

Develop an action plan broken down into bite-size chunks with target dates for completion, create a “relapse prevention” strategy for handling hiccups along the way.  This includes asking yourself: “What triggers do I anticipate experiencing as I attempt to reach my goal?  What can I do to avoid these triggers?”

6. Confirm Commitment and Close the Conversation

Establish accountability for your goals. Identify a “Competency Advisor” for support during your EI development process.  When you check in with your advisor, they will be asked such questions as: “What strategies have you tried to achieve your goal? How did it go? What are you learning about yourself? What is one thing you will do differently next time?”

Instead of spending time and money on dealing with the inappropriate behaviors and disrespectful communications stemming from emotional issues in the workplace, you can get to the heart of those issues and deal with your feelings, and the feelings of your people, head-on. Leaders need to embrace emotion and turn it into unparalleled strengths.

Elon Musk recently demanded that all Tesla staff return to the office full-time, according to an email sent to executive staff and leaked on social media. Musk said those who don’t want to come to office should “pretend to work somewhere else.”

This authoritarian, top-down approach rooted in mistrust and false assumptions goes against best practices. It speaks to an illusion of control that will undermine employee productivity, engagement, innovation, retention, and recruitment at Tesla.

One of Musk’s false assumptions involves the idea that employees “pretend” to work from home. In fact, research using both surveys and behavior tracking from the early days of the pandemic has shown that remote work resulted in higher productivity. More recently, academics demonstrated a further increase in productivity in remote work, from 5 percent in the summer of 2020 to 9 percent in May 2022. That’s because companies and employees grew better at working from home. 

Yet despite this easily-available evidence, Musk wrote in another leaked email that those who work remotely are “phoning it in.” He highlights the importance of being visible and cites his own notoriously long working hours as an example.

Such a focus on visibility in the office speaks to a highly traditionalist leadership mindset underpinned by the illusion of control. This cognitive bias describes our mind’s tendency to overestimate the extent to which we control external events. 

It’s especially prevalent in authoritarian executives who want to control their employees. They believe that having employees present in the office guarantees productivity.

In reality, research shows that in-office employees work much less than the full eight-hour day. They actually spend anywhere from 36 to 39 percent of their time working. The rest, according to these studies, is spent on other activities: checking social media, reading news websites, chit-chatting with colleagues about non-work topics, making non-work calls, and even looking for other jobs.

Musk’s desire for control is not simply emphatically unrealistic. It also goes directly against what we know is critical for productivity, engagement, and innovation for office-based workers: the desire for autonomy.

Studies show that we do our best work through intrinsic motivation, which involves autonomy and control over our work as a fundamental driver of effectiveness. Employees are most engaged, happy, and productive when they have autonomy. A key component of autonomy in the post-pandemic environment involves giving workers flexibility and self-control of where and when they work, rather than trying to shoehorn them into the pre-pandemic “normal.” And though Musk claims that forcing employees to come to the office under the threat of firing will help Tesla develop and make “the most exciting and meaningful products of any company on Earth,” a study of 307 companies finds that greater worker autonomy results in more innovation.

Musk’s obvious lack of trust in his employees contrasts with the much more flexible work policies of other organizations. That includes manufacturing and tech companies where Tesla’s employees might go. Consider the manufacturing company 3M’s approach, which the company explicitly calls “trust-based.” The company allows employees to “create a schedule that helps them work when and where they can most effectively.”

As another example of a potential place to work for Tesla staff, Applied Materials, a high-tech manufacturer, developed an “Excellence from Anywhere” modality. Rather than a top-down approach, Applied has a team-led model, where team leaders work with team members to figure out what works best for each team and employee. Applied is adopting best practices to facilitate innovation in remote and hybrid work such as virtual asynchronous brainstormingto sustain a competitive advantage.

Tesla’s research and development staff might also consider working in more research-focused tech environments, such as the Information Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California. By adopting research-driven approaches, ISI put itself in “a leadership position in terms of figuring out how to do hybrid work” through maximizing flexibility and autonomy for its staff.

Study after study after study shows that anywhere from 40 to 60% of employees would look for another job if forced to come to work against their wishes. And I would gladly eat my hat if we don’t see increased quit rates at Tesla as a consequence of a forced office return. After all, there’s a reason why a member of the executive staff leakedMusk’s emails on returning to the office.

Indeed, we immediately witnessed pushback against Musk’s demands for an office return by employee representatives in Germany, which has the first worker’s union across the whole of Tesla. Those without union representation will vote with their feet. My information indicates that recruiters are already using Musk’s words to target desirable Tesla employees. Musk’s illusion of control and false assumptions will result in serious losses to Tesla and a gain for companies that are innovating about the future of work.

As the world takes in the ravages and horrors of the war in Ukraine, it’s revealed an unexpected and heroic story about leadership.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has emerged as the steadfast leader his country desperately needed, while Russian President Vladimir Putin’s iron leadership is in doubt. Yet within these real-time battles are also crucial, real-world lessons for every leader and business, says one lauded wartime author-expert, Christopher D. Kolenda — a trusted adviser to three four-star generals and two undersecretaries of defense. He became the first American to have both fought the Taliban as a commander in combat and negotiated with them in peace talks. 

What comes to mind when you hear the word discipline? Most people think of punishment. They view discipline as a way to gain compliance and turn people into unquestioning automatons. This type of discipline is extrinsic, and it’s common in many compliance cultures.

But there’s a second form of discipline, one that you’ll find in the best military units: intrinsic discipline. Intrinsic discipline occurs when people advance the common good voluntarily. It comes about when people understand the difference between right and wrong and do what’s right—even when the boss isn’t watching or when times are difficult.

Intrinsic discipline is a powerful tool. It creates the trust that’s needed to promote organizational initiatives, it empowers your people, and it produces a durable competitive advantage—all factors that lead to success in business and on the battlefield.

However, intrinsic discipline doesn’t happen by accident. As a leader, you must develop it intentionally, or your teams will get stuck in extrinsic compliance. But where should you start?

1. Define and explain the common good.

The first step to gaining your team’s commitment to the common good is to define and explain it so your people understand what it is, why it’s important, and how the organization will get there.

Xenophon, a pupil of Socrates and an experienced military commander, was the first great thinker in the Western world to outline this component of discipline. According to Xenophon, the first step to intrinsic discipline begins with the leader, who must possess areté—a combination of character and competence—to gain support from followers even in times of great danger.

Xenophon explains that leaders must teach their followers the common good and the difference between correct and incorrect performance and behavior. Defining and explaining the common good will create clear expectations and explain why you’re asking people to do what they do.

“Obedience,” Xenophon tells us, “must be given voluntarily rather than under compulsion.”

2. Gain buy-in by building trust.

The second step is to gain buy-in by building trust. People need to trust their leader, the desired outcomes (your organization’s vision, mission, and goals), and how they’ll reach these outcomes (through values, expectations, and strategies).

As so many studies of human decision-making attest, people make choices based on emotion and then rationalize those decisions. Trust and mutual respect are what create this emotional connection.

Exceptional military leaders understand this. While admonishing the United States Military Academy Corps of Cadets to end the practice of hazing in 1879, Academy Superintendent General John M. Schofield crafted what’s now referred to as “Schofield’s Definition of Discipline,” which still must be memorized by all West Point cadets:

The discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary, such treatment is far more likely to destroy than to make an army. It is possible to impart instructions and to give commands in such a manner and such a tone of voice to inspire in the soldier no feeling but an intense desire to obey, while the opposite manner and tone of voice cannot fail to excite strong resentment and a desire to disobey.

The one mode or the other of dealing with subordinates springs from a corresponding spirit in the breast of the commander. He who feels the respect which is due to others cannot fail to inspire in them regard for himself, while he who feels, and hence manifests, disrespect toward others, especially his inferiors, cannot fail to inspire hatred against himself.

The takeaway? Leaders who are trustworthy and treat people with respect create an environment in which intrinsic discipline can emerge.

3. Strengthen accountability.

The third step is to strengthen accountability. Accountability means to be answerable. It’s a four-way intersection: up, down, and lateral. Everyone on the team needs to be answerable for doing the right things in the right ways.

Importantly, this includes you as a leader; accountability begins in the mirror. Leaders need to walk the talk and enforce standards consistently so that everyone sees that the standards are essential rather than arbitrary.

As Greek military leader Xenophon explains:

“Good workers get depressed when they see that, although they are the ones doing all of the work, the others get the same as they do, despite making no effort and being unprepared to face danger, if need be.”

Playing favorites and haphazard enforcement are morale killers—they indicate to everyone involved that the standards and expectations are arbitrary and unimportant. And Xenophon is quite clear that the leader, not the followers, is to blame if the expectations and their importance are unclear or selectively followed.

To illustrate this principle, Xenophon provides examples in his famous work Anabasis of two commanders during the expedition with Cyrus against the Persian king Xerxes in 401 B.C. Both commanders failed in different ways.

Clearchus, a Spartan commander, took pride in his severity, believing that soldiers should fear their superiors more than the enemy. Because his rule was considered arbitrary, many of his men deserted.

In contrast, Proxenus, a Boeotian and a friend of Xenophon, sought to win the love of his soldiers by withholding praise from wrongdoers instead of punishing them. He became an object of contempt, and his soldiers ran roughshod over him.

The bottom line

These three steps—clarity, buy-in, and accountability—are the foundations for intrinsic discipline. They interact like a Venn diagram: Clarity and buy-in without accountability mean that any good results are a matter of luck. Clarity and accountability without buy-in creates compliance only, and people won’t contribute their best. Buy-in and accountability without clarity creates the hamster wheel effect: a lot of activity but no movement toward your goals. Having all three in place helps organizations move from compliance to a deeply inspired culture.

Have you ever led a team that can’t seem to live up to its potential? Or a team that consistently misses deadlines? Team members don’t share information? Don’t contribute during meetings? Call each other names and don’t adhere to company culture?

Employees leaving in the Great Resignation say they don’t feel valued. Employees are downsizing their contributions, stating that they experience bias and don’t feel they can bring their authentic selves to work. Gallup estimates that active disengagement costs U.S. companies $450-$550 billion per year.

This begs the question for you as a leader: How do you keep and get the most out of your team? Whether you’re a supervisor or senior executive, knowing the answer to this question is the ticket to success. 

The answer is establishing a culture of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB). As proof, World Economic Council studies confirm that diverse organizations outperform their peers who aren’t diverse across a wide range of key performance metrics, including profitability (25-36%), innovation (20%), decision-making (30%), and employee engagement (statistically significant).

This is because when diverse people are included and treated equitably, they feel that they belong and can bring their authentic selves to work. They feel comfortable sharing their different perspectives. And different perspectives are necessary for high-performing teams. That’s the value of DEIB – a means to the end that is superior organizational performance.

But how is diversity achieved? How are equitable and inclusive practices executed? How are people made to feel that they belong? All these occur through the efforts of skilled leaders.

Leaders who’ve acquired the secret weapon of leading through DEIB go through what Jennifer Brown calls the “Leadership Continuum.”

Phase 1

A leader is unaware of diversity and its value. The leader thinks diversity is compliance-related — something the government makes you do. It’s considered simply tolerating others. Ensuring that DEIB happens is someone else’s job, not the leader’s, so it’s not worth paying attention to.

Phase 2

A leader becomes aware of having a role to play in DEIB and begins looking into how best to move forward at the interpersonal level. The levers that a leader can pull at this stage of development are:

• Showing respect for the opinion of every employee
• Keeping quiet when appropriate
• Challenging assumptions
• Having empathy and humor
• Interrupting any bias

Phase 3

A leader has shifted priorities and is finding a voice in taking meaningful action that supports others. This is moving away from an autocratic management style to a collaborative management style. The leader has shifted from acting in a private way to acting in a public way. The levers to pull to make this stage happen include:

• Mentoring and sponsoring
• Showing vulnerability
• Taping into your “why”

Being cognizant of the unique challenges faced by diverse people and being available to help them through these challenges.

Phase 4

A leader proactively and consistently confronts discrimination. The leader uses an equity lens and ensures that everyone else uses that equity lens. The leader works to bring about change in order to prevent discrimination on a systemic level by evaluating how policies and procedures are implemented and followed. The levers at this stage are:

• Examining norms with the goal of leveling the playing field at work and in life
• Identifying and working to correct systemic inequities
  
  Team members who feel that they’re included and supported will then:
  

• Trust their leader and others on the team, which reduces drama and delays
• Have clarity on what they need to do to contribute, which drives accuracy and coordination
• Feel a sense of accountability for their work, which drives completion of tasks on-time and on-budget
• Are more engaged because they know their work has meaning and impact, which drives productivity
• Exhibit a winning attitude that drives engagement and innovation.
  
  DEIB is a secret weapon for getting the most out of your team. Honing the skills to use this weapon comes from moving through the phases of unawareness, awareness, action, and advocacy. Granted, this takes time, but research proves that the results of leading high-performing teams are well worth an allocation in any leader’s schedule.

“The only way to become good at something is to practice the ordinary basics for an uncommon length of time. Most people get bored. They want excitement. They want something to talk about, and no- one talks about the boring basics. Boredom encourages you to stop doing what you know works and do something that might work.” – Farnam Street

I’ve had my struggles with ambition. 

For those familiar with the Enneagram tool for developing leaders, one of the nine Enneagram types is the Competitive Achiever, which describes individuals whose core motivation is to win or impress. 

It has its upsides in that these sorts of individuals get a lot done and create much energy that sweeps others up in their endeavors.

But there is a downside. Impatience.

Over time, I have learned to wait. To not act. To observe and consider my plans more carefully before I pull the trigger. To not put the rush of achievement aside and find a wiser part of me, has a better perspective, and makes better-informed choices.

When it comes to building your CEO skill set, the truth is that it is a long journey. Not a taxing journey – quite the opposite. But becoming a stand-out CEO is not an overnight thing and requires inch-gains over a long period to build a set of competencies that are sufficiently advanced to meet the requirements of the CEO role. 

My observation is that impatience can wreck the process of becoming a higher-order CEO. 

The desire to move the needle quickly by demanding instant results gets in the way of building this nuanced skill set. Impatience is an energy rush that eviscerates the care, dedication, and fine attention to detail that separates exceptional CEOs from average CEOs.

Take internal communication as an example. You can bang out an email that lays out your requirements. Or you can craft a communique that has a story to it, references anecdotal evidence, uses descriptive metaphors, and generously shares your insight and struggles. 

A quick email will do the job, but a communique will move people permanently by being compelling, persuasive, and enticing. The benefits will continue to pay dividends down the line and likely avoid the need for more directive and instructional communication.

You might question the ROT (Return on Time) of such efforts if you are impatient about your craft. 

But take the long view and recognize the wisdom in the above quote. You’ll warm to the task, do it excellently, and take one more step toward becoming a higher-order CEO, aggregating the myriad benefits along the way.

Behind every successful business is a finely balanced set of competing tensions. As a leader, it is your responsibility to find the right balance for your particular business in order to create long-term success.

Responding to the tensions they face is a critical decision for any leader, as the wrong response could tip the scales and lead to significant problems.

Tensions are an entirely natural part of business, and they can’t simply be ignored in the hope that everything will sort itself out in time; failure to make a decision is a choice by default.

The goal isn’t to eradicate tensions, as this is neither possible nor beneficial. What is needed is a strategic approach to managing these tensions, one where choices are made between competing demands. By doing so, a business starts to figure out exactly what kind of organization it wants to be and begins to prioritize the aspects that are most important.

Tensions are rising

We only have to look to COP26 to see how managing competing tensions around sustainability is playing out in businesses across the globe right now. As a planet, we must transition from a carbon-intensive economy to one that favors sustainability. This isn’t the natural position for many businesses that were not created with this goal in mind. For many, it’s an entirely new tension to manage as they figure out how to balance business growth, profits, and shareholder value with being environmentally and socially sustainable.

Another tension that is present in many businesses is the continued evolution of society, and the changing wants, needs, and motivations of younger generations of employees, customers, and stakeholders. A new breed of business is emerging, where decentralization and people-centricity supersede hierarchical ‘command and control’ style leadership. With every new idea comes a new model for success, new tensions to balance, new choices to make, new opportunities to grasp, and ultimately, a new balance to find.

Success v Failure

Businesses are under significant pressure to make these critical decisions in real time, and before any damage is done. Given the immediacy of modern global news reporting, it’s pretty clear which businesses are failing to balance their tensions effectively, as they’ll be the ones we read about in the news.

Some recent examples include the stories leaked from unhappy Amazon warehouse workers, where it appears that the tensions between command-and-control leadership and worker trust and autonomy are out of kilter. Shell and BP’s continued prioritization of short-term commercial reward over long-term sustainability is a tension that will only get tighter, particularly in light of greater awareness of the role fossil fuels play in climate change. Nokia’s historic fall from grace illustrates the danger of prioritizing incremental improvements in existing products over new product innovations, such as touchscreen technology.

These businesses are not alone, far from it. I could go on citing examples of businesses that are struggling to balance their business tensions effectively. It’s a constant process as different forces come in and out of play. What is much harder is to find those who have got the balance just right.

Many of the businesses that are balancing things well are hidden from sight, perhaps because the news doesn’t find their success ‘click worthy’. But I can assure you they are there.

One such example is Buurtzorg, a pioneering healthcare organization established in 2006 with a nurse-led model of holistic care that revolutionized community care. Buurtzorg is Dutch for ‘Neighborhood Care’ and their ability to balance the tensions has seen them grow from a small nurse-led start-up to providing support to nearly 100,000 people today. The company has created a way to balance patient needs with regulatory standards, nurses’ desire for autonomy over care pathways, and affordability.

Identifying tensions

The business of balancing tensions is unique to each organization, but that does not mean that the tensions themselves are different. There is much common ground between the varying strategic tensions that are present in modern business.

Common business tensions include:

● Short-term goals v long term vision
● Commercial ambition v sustainability
● Control v freedom
● Transformation v incremental change
● Challenge v support
● Purpose v profit

The Principles behind Balance

Having identified the key tensions a business faces, the next step is knowing which to prioritize. A business’s values alone cannot guide the decision-making process as they tend to be too vague to be enough in the face of a difficult choice.

Instead, it is essential to develop a set of strategy or design principles. These act as a set of rules to follow when faced with an important decision and help to define the type of organization you want to be.

These principles should ensure that making difficult decisions is easy. A great example of this was the response by Crossfit New England Owner Ben Bergeron to the Covid-19 outbreak. Given that the overarching goal of the company was to ‘optimize members’ health over the long-term, the decision to sacrifice short-term income by closing the gyms in order to protect them from infection, was crystal clear.

It doesn’t mean action will be easy, of course, that’s the toughest part. The next step is to build accountability systems so that these decisions aren’t ignored or overruled. Turning these principles into measurable behaviors or actions means that the organization can track its progress and celebrate when they are achieved.

Maintaining internal communications is essential to continued buy-in across the organization as is being transparent when the road has been rocky, but you stayed true to your principles.

The Board also has a major role to play in choosing which stakeholders matter the most, and in whose best interests the firm should act when faced with a difficult decision.

In conclusion, an organization is the culmination of every decision made by the company’s leaders when faced with competing tensions. Balancing the business scales simply cannot be left to chance; it’s not a decision you can abstain from. By consciously choosing what decisions you take and designing a set of principles that the business abides by, even when faced with difficult choices, you can ensure that the act of balancing becomes a deliberate one, the rewards of which are plentiful.

‘Leadership is a contact sport’.

To lead means to engage, to talk, the debate, to steer, to manage, to placate. All of that happens in conversations, and so it stands to reason that knowing how to architect a leadership conversation really matters. It’s an easily-dismissed point, however. After all, talking is natural and many leaders don’t feel that it requires a particular skill or more than a cursory focus.

But not if you believe in the craft of leadership; where every word uttered, every email sent, and every offsite held is an opportunity to shape people and their behaviors.

Here’s my take on what a great leadership conversation looks like:

• Settle people in so that their thinking is grounded, their nervous systems are placated and their thoughts are deliberate.
• Provide careful framing as to what is being discussed or decided. Be clear about what’s not on the table.
• Position the issue carefully, so that all important aspects of the conversation are understood (note: give yourself permission to be prescriptive here – you, as the CEO, have a far broader perspective than they do).
• Open it up for various points of view to surface. Listen for long periods of time so that the conversation evolves and you become more clear on the full range of perspectives.
• Share your summary observations about what is being said, what isn’t being said, and the choices that are available to make.
• Make a choice and communicate it fully, being clear about why you’ve chosen this direction and what the full implications are.
• Check for alignment, and name where you feel alignment isn’t there.
• Be clear about the next steps, who is responsible for which actions, and by when.
• Close the conversation so that everyone feels ‘complete and ready’ to move on to other things.

Once you appreciate how important and nuanced conversations are, it will open up a whole world of opportunities for you to express your leadership craft. The thoughts a CEO shares carry heavy, heavyweight and you want to be ultra-careful about giving conversations the attention they deserve.
Consider conversation to be a performance. That elevates them to the place they deserve to be.

Every so often, I try and share a broad perspective about what I’m seeing across my CEO advisory landscape to make a comparison with other CEOs or recognize similar challenges that CEOs are facing to yours.

My hope is that it a) gives you a sense that you are not alone, and b) gives you some ideas or inspiration to push on.

‘Pushing on’ matters because it’s linked to ambition, and ambition is a marker of sorts: about your level of vitality as well as a measure of your clarity of purpose.

Being on the cusp is probably a familiar position to find yourself in as a CEO. There’s a constant barrage of stimuli coming at you which can either function as an inspiration or a threat. Knowing this is one thing, but acting on it is another — and these actions require courage. Maybe some encouragement or prompting might push you over the rise and get you going on a more profound path.

Here’s what I’m seeing:

• The CEO’s choice to take on the new ways of operating that are now on offer, given the maturing understanding of what a relevant and modern business is.
• The decision to embrace leadership as a performance-enhancing lever and to invest generously in building good leaders around the CEO.
• The choice to interrogate the base viability of your business to ensure its future competitiveness and to be brave about revealing the blind spots that are so prevalent in business strategies and which keep businesses stuck in 2nd gear.
• The willingness to embrace the fact that the CEO position is a complex, nuanced position that requires deep attention being paid to the quality of the CEO’s development. A CEO’s character in particular.
• To embrace the fact that most CEOs are, in fact, struggling, and to do what it takes to change their reality from dis-ease to ease.
• To accept the fact that budgeting, as a practice, is a poor investment of time and energy and move to a more flexible, responsive way of allocating capital.
• To bravely accept when a business model has lost its edge and to come up with a new and better formula for success in order to reinvigorate a business.
• The common denominator is ‘will’. The will to change or elevate. There are plenty of reasons not to, given that remaining as-is offers the (false) specter of safety.

That’s a form of being ‘on the cusp’: teetering, wondering, hoping, waiting. If that’s where you feel you are, then push on. Take the leap.

Fortune favours the brave in this new world of work