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Why the best strategic leaders are emotional

Emotions can catalyze more creative thinking and help you develop strategies that meet the moment

What word comes to mind when you think about strategy development? Probably not emotion.


Strategy is often a dry, analytical exercise led by the few at the top of an organization and broadcast to the rest of the organization in long, turgid presentations. It’s no wonder that few strategies work. Many ignore how emotions influence creativity, decision-making, problem-solving, and motivation. Ignoring or dismissing human emotions when developing or executing strategy leads to ineffective or unsustainable approaches that often fail to resonate with stakeholders or motivate them to action.


To improve the quality of your strategies, you must harness the power of emotions in each phase of strategy development. Here are five ways to do this:


EXPLORE YOUR CUSTOMERS’ NEEDS

Developing a new strategy requires identifying your customers’ underlying motivations and desires and imagining new possibilities to delight them. You can’t do this effectively if you’re solely head-down in your computer crunching numbers.

For example, many people care deeply about protecting the environment and reducing their carbon footprint. The companies that first understood this emotion were able to launch a range of lucrative eco-friendly products and implement corporate social responsibility programs that boosted employee and customer loyalty.

Ask yourself how well you understand your customers’ needs, wishes, and expectations. Your strategy will miss the boat unless you deeply understand what they think and feel. Why are customers coming to you now? What can you do to develop a personal connection that instills loyalty beyond reason? What frictions—such as poor packaging, delivery, and after-sales care—could get in the way of your customers feeling delighted? 


SPARK IMAGINATION

The best strategies are not created in a vacuum. Instead, they often come from the intersections of disparate ideas from outside sources of inspiration, such as other industries, ecosystems, or domains such as the arts and sciences.

Ideas also come from your interactions with others, so long as you create a generative climate where people feel psychologically safe to push against the status quo and share their ideas with you. To spark imagination as you develop strategies, you must override fear and people’s natural inclination to self-protect. 

Encourage people to generate multiple ideas and options rather than provide one fully baked approach. Imposing an idea quota—a predetermined number of ideas—can stimulate creative thinking and prevent people from writing off out-of-the-box ideas. Failure can also stimulate creativity, so work to create a team culture of experimentation in which people feel safe to make and share mistakes.

Just as powerful emotions like love or anger may inspire an artist to create a painting or a writer to compose a poem, emotions can catalyze more creative thinking and help you develop strategies that meet the moment.


ANTICIPATE FEELINGS WHEN MAKING DECISIONS

Making strategic choices is hard when faced with considerable uncertainty, constraints, competition, and expectations. It can evoke strong emotions that impact your decision-making ability when you need a clear head. Stress can result in myopia and restrict the range of options under consideration, overconfidence can lead to big bets in uncharted territory, and impulsiveness can lead to hasty decisions that are soon regretted.

Reflect on your emotions and reactive tendencies when making decisions, and implement mechanisms that mitigate their impact. For example, surround yourself with people who have different skills, expertise, and styles and are unafraid of challenging you. Never go it alone. Allow more time in the process to allow for proper interrogation and fresh insights. Frame conversations thoughtfully to encourage proper inquiry, challenge, and dialogue.


INSPIRE PEOPLE TO TAKE ACTION

If you want your organization to rally behind a strategy, you must create widespread belief in a better, brighter future and credibility in the choices that will help you get there. Sound logic and structured arguments create a foundation of trust but they’re not enough to inspire action. You must also grab peoples’ hearts.

Tap into people’s emotions by describing the opportunities ahead in vivid detail and what they mean for the organization and individuals involved. Explain the reasons for a change in strategy and the implications of not changing the status quo. Use visualization in the form of pictures, photos, or stories to help people imagine what success will look like. Disclose your own motivations and aspirations, conveying your commitment to the cause. Create pilots to test new approaches and build trust before scaling them across the board.


SUPPORT PEOPLE TO OVERCOME THEIR FEARS

To create momentum behind a new strategy, empower people to decide how they want to contribute. In times of anxiety, trying something new and giving up something familiar feels risky because loss aversion kicks in. To overcome this, explore what might be holding you back, such as the fear of failing or a lack of trust in your coworkers and boss to support you.

Ask members of your team to answer the following questions, one by one: What will help you most contribute to the strategy? What choices do you feel you have? What’s going to hold you back? Invite coworkers to share their suggestions on how each person can overcome the fears they share. Put in place support that will help them overcome these fears, such as on-the-job training, development programs, or coaching.

Harnessing emotions can be an asset as you develop and implement strategy, helping you understand the needs and motivations of your customers, ensuring high-quality decision-making, and inspiring your team and organization to rally behind a new direction.


David Lancefield is a catalyst, strategist, and coach to C-suite leaders in companies such as the BBC, Microsoft, and The Guardian.

Dina Denham Smith is an executive coach and the founder of Cognitas, a leadership coaching and consulting firm. Her clients include senior leaders and teams at companies such as Adobe, Netflix, and PwC.

Why the best strategic leaders are emotional

03 May, 2023
Emotions can catalyze more creative thinking and help you develop strategies that meet the moment

Leadership thoughts from Glastonbury

By Julie Horne • 27 Jan, 2023
Ever wondered how much influence leaders really have on the culture and behaviours in their organisations? And does that ‘values’ statement really mean anything in the day to day of life? I was thinking about this as I returned from another glorious Glastonbury festival this week full of the great sounds, sights, and experiences that only the Worlds best festival can give you. No mud this year, but as always, great music, entertainment, and people. It’s a miracle to me how 200,000 people (the equivalent to a city like Bath) can descend on some fields in Somerset for 5 days without major incident or chaos ensuing. Sure, there is a massive amount of organization, but there is also a very strong cultural ethos that guides the way we behave together. The founder and leader, Michael Eaves, is very open about his values and they are embodied in his love of the creative arts, music, politics and environmental causes. Here are some of his values I am very aware of every time I go to Glastonbury: Choose Love: ‘Consider each other and Move as one’ Love the Farm, Leave no trace Express yourself in positive ways Keep an open mind to experience and difference Detox – give yourself some time off for self-expression and fun In addition, he supports charities that reflect these values (Oxfam, Wateraid, and Green Peace) and encourages us all to support them too. You cannot help but be guided by these values and it gives the festival a unique vibe quite different to any other. What are your values? and how do they show up in your organisation?

Use video conferencing to develop executive presence

By Julie Horne • 12 Jan, 2023
In the last twelve months we’ve all become used to working through video conferencing platforms. While this has no doubt presented challenges - communication tactics that work well among colleagues in a conference room may not translate seamlessly to squares on a computer screen – here I talk about how you can take advantage of this medium to improve your executive presence. Be aware of things that may distract you from being who you want to be Having executive presence is about inspiring confidence – in those you lead, work with or are led by. If there are things about the virtual environment that are knocking you off balance, identify them and address them. Do you hate seeing yourself all the time? Place a sticky note over your own image or turn off self-view. Perhaps you find a screen full of faces in small boxes off putting. Use speaker view instead of gallery view or shrink the screen so you see fewer faces. Do you get flustered by technical glitches? Make sure you know how to use all the tools in advance and if things do go wrong – technical glitches happen that may be out of your control – model how to stay calm and grounded and maintain your presence. Do you get easily distracted by other things like your email or your phone? Remove distractions, notifications, and shut other tabs and documents and turn your phone over. In this way, the virtual space provides a great opportunity to understand and address environmental factors that may undermine your ability to have executive presence. Record calls and play them back to get valuable feedback on your presence One thing the virtual environment gives you is the opportunity to observe yourself in a way that you rarely can in face-to-face gatherings. Watching a recording of yourself lead a meeting or have a conversation is an excellent way of seeing the things you do (or don’t do) that contribute to your executive presence. Identify opportunities when you can record a call, ask permission of participants to do so and then watch it back. Keep an eye out for some of the classics that contribute to (or detract from) executive presence - hand gestures; space fillers (ums and ahs); shuffling papers or fiddling with your hair – or any others you spot. Also look out for phrases you use that diminish you, such as apologizing or deferring to others. There’s perhaps no better way to get a clear picture of how you come across; ask yourself, am I inspiring confidence? Hone your communication skills Even if seated, take the opportunity to think about how your posture affects your presentation. Do you lean forward, or sit back? How are you framed on the screen? Try standing up to project greater confidence. Without as much body language (your own or others) to support you, other communication skills become even more important. How do you use facial expressions to make it easier for others to read you in the absence of body language? Do you make eye contact (this takes some getting used to in video calls as it involves looking at the camera on your computer not at the faces)? Speaking to a computer screen can make us rush through what we are saying. Remember to speak at a moderate pace, slowing or speeding up for effect and using pauses to keep people’s attention. Radiate confidence by speaking in a loud, clear voice. How can you be an effective listener in the virtual environment? Lags in connection, time to unmute or simply hesitation to speak when you can’t read the group can mean delays in people speaking and then being spoken over or missed. You may need to allow more time for people to respond and be heard. So, this strange virtual communication time is also presenting new opportunities to observe and build your self-awareness of how you exude executive presence. New skills developed this way will also be invaluable when you return to in-person meetings.

Missed out on a promotion?

By Julie Horne • 12 Mar, 2019
Missing out on a promotion is always a disappointment. In the wake of such a disappointment, how do you respond, and how does that serve you? Perhaps it knocks you back and you retreat, tail between your legs, telling yourself that it just wasn’t the right time or role, or you just don’t have what it takes. Perhaps you get busy, in the belief that doing more will get you promoted next time or, at the very least, distract you from your perceived failure. Both these reactions are very normal, but do they help you get what you want? Everyone faces setbacks and disappointments but how you respond determines what happens next. Instead of giving up or getting busy, get strategic. Feel : Be self-aware. Acknowledge the range of feelings that come up in response to not getting what you wanted or hoped for and observe how it makes your respond. What does it make you think and do? Placing this space between your reaction and your action can allow for a more intentional and constructive response. Allow yourself to feel whatever emotions come up but keep it in perspective and don’t let it drive you to act impulsively, emotionally or reflexively. Act : Once you have regrouped and recentered, seek feedback. If possible, talk to the decision-makers themselves. It can be easy to make assumptions about why you didn’t get the promotion, but instead, seek clear and specific feedback. Prepare yourself to receive that feedback well – listen carefully, seek clarification if needed but avoid getting defensive. Sometimes missed promotions are more about how we do things rather than what we do, and this can be hard to hear. Try to remember that this is an opportunity to grow and learn and ultimately get you where you want to be. Once you know what you need to work on, seek out opportunities to develop these skills. What do you need to do more or less of? Remember this may be about soft skills too. What does this look like in your day-to-day work? Who might you enlist to help you make these changes or give you some ongoing constructive feedback? You might feel vulnerable inviting such feedback, but it can help you develop, keep you focused and show your commitment to making the necessary changes. Reframe and reset : Take the opportunity to reassess. Look for positives in the situation you find yourself in. What you get out of your existing position? How you can grow and develop from the feedback you’ve received? Can you find ways to enjoy developing these new skills? Congratulate yourself for handling the experience constructively and reflect on what you have learnt. Perhaps set yourself some new goals and celebrate your success as you meet them. Not only will you feel better responding in this way, but it is also an indicator to others of your self-awareness, temperament, character and resilience. An executive coach can really help you work through each stage and make the development more sustainable and more enjoyable. And many employers are seeing the value of coaching support now too, so why not ask and see if is available for you?
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