Explore the intricate relationship between psychological safety, emotional intelligence, and leadership in an era of constant change. Uncover how these elements intertwine to shape resilient organizations and effective leaders, capable of navigating the unpredictable tides of the modern business landscape.
We are living through a period of extraordinary uncertainty-about our physical safety, our economic security, and the daily conditions in which we will be operating for the next six, 12, 18 months or longer
One consequence: an undercurrent of emotional disturbance characterized by rising levels of anxiety, depression, fear, and stress
- At the same time leaders are confronting these challenges on an individual level, they also are responsible for supporting a wide cross-section of people, all of whom have their own range of experiences, emotions, and resources for responding-and many who are paying a psychological toll that is still poorly understood.
Human beings are hardwired to unconsciously pick up on the emotions of others in eight to 40 thousandths of a second
When you’re in a more powerful position-such as a leader, a parent, a coach, a trainer, a professor-you tend to be more infectious
- It’s imperative they value their talent, not only for purposes of retainment, but to step aside and let succeed at their jobs
- COVID-19 accelerating the shift away from authoritarian leadership to new forms of distributed decision making, where decisions get pushed to the peripheries of the organization to meet the demands of faster business cycles
- Leaders need to resist the urge to fall into the trap of the hero mentality, sacrificing themselves for the greater good because it may do more damage than help
Psychological safety means an absence of interpersonal fear
When psychological safety is present, people are able to speak up with work-relevant content
- For many people during the pandemic, the explicitness of the physical lack of safety has been experienced as a shared fear, which has allowed them to be more open and intimate and more able to voice their thoughts and concerns with colleagues
- This collective fear thus becomes a potential driver of collaboration and innovation, further contributing to an open environment for producing and sharing ideas that under normal conditions may have remained unshared
How can leaders re-create these informal and organic conversations when they are not physically in the space?
With tools like Zoom, communications have become more explicit and structured
- Leaders must ask direct questions about what’s working and what isn’t, and they must engage in thoughtful discussions on how-in a rapidly evolving context-the vision for what we expect to happen is shifting accordingly
Richard Boyatzis:
Stress can cause the activation of the psychophysiological state of the negative emotional attractor
- This defensive state fills your brain with negative thoughts and can cause disorientation and cognitive and perceptual impairment
- One study showed how our peripheral vision drops from 180 degrees to 30 degrees during stress
Management by wandering around can have positive effects
Walking down a production line can bring a sense of purpose and purpose to a team
- Leaders need to listen, but they are also responsible for adding positivity
- Show genuine excitement over something you’re working on to lift the mood of the team
The disruption of our lives, the loss of normal familial interactions, and the economic and financial fears of losing our livelihoods all become a bigger source of threat than the virus itself
That’s why going back to routines and doing things that were normal really helps counteract this defensive state.
Technology and Well-Being
To what extent is technology aiding or hindering our emotional and psychological well-being?
- Face-to-face interactions allow for a level of intimacy and understanding that may be lost on a monitor, with video formats like Zoom you can still pick up cues and detect whether someone’s in some period of mild distress
- Another aspect of social media is that it sets up an evaluative context
- When we spend our life online-as so many of us are currently, more so than in the pre-COVID-19 days-we are entering a more explicitly evaluATIVE domain
- This creates another source of anxiety as well
- Even the top performers worry
