This is your Brain on Leadership: Neuroscience and Emotional Intelligence

Leadership, at the best of times, is a challenging endeavour. From the outside-in: an uncertain economy, shifting political and environmental winds, volatile markets and ever-changing technology. From the inside-out: the pressures of maintaining work-life balance, continuing to grow in skills and competence in a continually-evolving knowledge landscape, and advancing a career without losing site of who you are and where you want to be in life. And the in-between space: being the kind of leader that your team needs to thrive, grow, be successful and contribute.

Leaders need to have the education, technical skills and business acumen required to succeed in their discipline, organization and sector. Let’s accept those as the base case. What else is required for success? What are the key differentiators that will enable focused and capable leaders to not only meet these challenges but to thrive as they pursue them? Two inter-related domains offer insight and potential direction: emotional intelligence (EI or EQ) and neuroscience.

EI entered the leadership landscape in 1995 with the publication of the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. In the intervening years, EI has come to dominate the landscape as one of those ‘differentiating factors’ that can help a leader to take his or her success to the next level. The core competencies that comprise EI include high self-awareness; effective emotional self-management; empathy and the ability to build and sustain effective inter-personal relationships up, down and across organizations. Interestingly, a number of research studies have investigated the nature of leadership derailers. These are the factors that cause otherwise highly successful leaders to lose their way and fall short of personal and career success - regardless of the fact that ‘on paper’ they had everything required to achieve success. Although the specific factors vary from study to study, there are key themes as to what derailed these individuals: poor emotional self-awareness and self-management; a lack of empathy; poor social skills; and being so ambitious that they regularly sacrificed relationships in favour of self-advancement. They became isolated individuals whose colleagues and bosses could not trust and whose employees did not want to work for. All of these contributing factors tie directly to the core elements of emotional intelligence outlined above. It was the absence of these factors that led these otherwise talented individuals to derail. Clearly, emotional intelligence makes a difference.

The upside to the story is that these are all learnable skills. That is not to imply that it is necessarily easy to grow in these competency areas. It takes an investment of time, energy and determination. This is where insights from neuroscience help us to understand why this kind of growth can be challenging. Building EI requires social and emotional learning, and we have to put the learning into practice. Reading about it in a blog or book might inform us about emotional intelligence, but it will not make us more emotionally intelligent. When it comes to modifying attitudes and behaviours, neuroscience shows that we must unlearn old patterns before we can acquire and exhibit new ones.

For instance, even if we accept that some of our typical behaviours do not represent the better angels of our nature, they often become synonymous with who we are and letting go of habits can be very challenging. I have worked with several leaders ­­known to be tough cookies who were demanding, no-nonsense leaders with very dominant styles. These leaders preferred to tell rather than sell their ideas to their teams. This style had brought them a level of success in their careers. But as they advanced in their career, this power-based, ‘top down’ approach no longer worked well for them as their responsibilities became more complex and their team members more senior, capable and confident. The team did not want to be told; they wanted to be empowered and enabled to succeed.

It is challenging for a leader with a ‘hands-on’ style to let go, listen and trust. Challenging, but not impossible. Leaders need to learn about themselves, acknowledge who they are, celebrate and build on their strengths. They also need to learn to develop more behavioural flexibility in areas that they recognize as delivering sub-optimal results: to stop doing what is not working and to replace it with different, more effective behaviour. The good news is that neuroscientists confirm that it can be done thanks to neuroplasticity, the ability to change our brain’s functioning. Essentially mirroring the way that we can change the shape of our body through exercise, we can literally change the shape and function of our brain by practicing new behaviours. Using EI as a framework, we can enhance our self-awareness, appreciate how different behaviours can create better results, decrease the frequency of our old less-functional behaviours, and practice the new ones. This approach works equally well regardless of the type of behaviour that a leader chooses to modify from ‘toning down the top-down’ to assisting a leader who may lack self-confidence to learn how to take charge without feeling like they are taking over. 

In each case, developing these new behaviours helps to enhance our personal success and effectiveness by becoming a more emotionally intelligent leader. Not necessarily easy, but clearly worth the investment.

If you are interested in understanding your emotional intelligence and how to improve it, Fred Jacques will be facilitating Emotionally Intelligent Leader, starting in April, 2018. This program is eligible for grant funding up to five weeks before the program start date which will cover 2/3 of program investment. 

About the Author: Fred Jacques, PhD
Fred is a leadership educator and consultant with over 30 years of experience in both the public and the private sectors. He has designed and delivered leadership development programs that incorporate best practices in adult learning, experiential exercises, 360-degree feedback and individualized coaching. Fred is a sought-after facilitator and coach and is known for his attention to client needs and his sense of humour. Fred has a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Haskayne School of Business and an M.A. in Applied Behavioral Sciences from the Leadership Institute of Seattle at City University. He is a Certified Human Resources Professional and is accredited in the use of the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), the EQi-2.0 and numerous other assessment tools.