In Issue 15 of IGW Insights we emphasized the importance of culture, and specifically that the worst behavior you tolerate defines your culture. In Issue 16 we discussed the tantrum metric, and implied that it should be zero. When you have a senior leader who regularly throws tantrums, it is not only childish but also destructive of your culture.
What if the senior leader throwing tantrums is you?
You must understand that the leader brings the weather. As the leader goes emotionally, so goes the organization. And this is because your team, subconsciously or otherwise, has all eyes on you for signals as to how to behave, as to what is acceptable.
All eyes on you, in other words, for the model of how the culture is supposed to be actualized through behavior.
Think Eeyore. The classic character from Winnie the Pooh. He is often drawn with a rain cloud over his head:
If Pooh gets too close to Eeyore, he gets drenched too. When the leader brings the storm cloud to work, the only way for employees to avoid getting drenched is to keep their distance. And then not only does bringing the storm cloud become the culture (because your behavior gave everyone else permission to act likewise), but avoidance does as well. Not a great foundation for collaboration if you ask me.
To be clear: I’m not arguing for suppressing or denying our emotions. Human beings have emotions. It’s part of life.
What I am suggesting is that the reason why leaders who are otherwise grown adults throw tantrums is because a) the culture permits it and b) because they don’t have the tools to regulate emotions.
I don’t know why but Western culture is only relatively recently getting hip to the concept of self-care. Perhaps it is because it is not associated with selflessness and sacrifice, which are Western values. But if we refrain from self-care long enough, it burns us out. One of my teachers always uses the phrase “nurturing the resource.” That’s your body. But it’s also your emotions. And they are inseparable.
Ultimately any practice that increases your capacity, in terms of skill or emotional resilience, is a selfless act. When you build skills, you make yourself more valuable, and more able to contribute to the realization of your vision. Increasing your emotional resilience improves your capacity to bring sunny weather to groups or individuals, in turn, building culture by providing the impetus for everyone around you to bring sunnier weather too.
But it also builds trust. An essential element of trust is intimacy. Intimacy is the feeling you create in others that they can take emotional or intellectual risks without being punished. In today’s vernacular it would be called creating a feeling of safety. This is the opposite of the avoidance your storm created.
By bringing sunny weather, you get a sunny culture. You also get employees who want to take emotional and intellectual risks. This is where innovation and execution come from. When your teammates take risks and innovate, your leadership scales. And all you have to do is show up.
But you must show up prepared. This means doing the work on yourself to interrupt the negative pattern, regulate, and reset.
To show up in the office, in meetings, or in personal interactions with positivity (or, at least without the rain cloud), we need first to recognize how we’re feeling. Then we must regulate and reset.
As we discussed in Issue 16:
“…tantrums belong in the domain of childhood, not only because they are childish, by which I mean not age appropriate when committed by an adult, but also because they represent the result of a lack of a particular skill. Let’s call that skill self-regulation.
If you’re an engineer, you know what a regulator is. It’s a valve for controlling the pressure in a system. All kinds of industrial processes require regulators. Because industrial machines with an excess of pressure explode. And everybody gets killed. That’s bad.”
Do this to increase the odds that you won’t explode the next time you start to feel the pressure of anger, resentment, and frustration build:
- Set a timer for two minutes. Journal the following prompt: “I feel angry, resentful, or frustrated because…” Two minutes, nonstop, pen moving across the page
- When the timer goes off, tear those pages out of your notebook and rip them to shreds
- Then take 10 deep breaths. Six count in through the nose, eight count out through the mouth, making the shh sound. I know this is already making you uncomfortable reading this. But deep breathing is scientifically proven to regulate emotions such as fear, anger, anxiety, frustration.
- Finally, set a time for two minutes again. Journal the following prompts:
- How must I show up in order to make this meeting productive?
- What do I want out of this meeting?
This is a seven-minute process that helps you bring if not sunshine, then at least clear skies when you need a short-term solution. But self-care also means long-term strategies for “nurturing the resource,” such as exercise, nutrition, journaling, and meditation. Self-care is not only not selfish, it is a gift to all those around you because it increases your emotional capacity.
When you show up emotionally stable and regulated despite feelings of frustration or anger, you are demonstrating leadership of the self. This not only sends a clear cultural message, but it also builds trust. The higher the level of trust, the stronger the relationship.
And it is, after all, relationships that are going to deliver everything you’re trying to achieve.
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