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Hilary Cropper, chief executive of the FI Group, inclines more

toward the management of emotions:

I don’t think you should show emotions at work. Yet you must obviously be

emotional to make effective relationships. You have therefore, as a leader,

to create a synthetic emotion, but one that is based on your genuine beliefs.

Leadership is about deliberately creating a personality that is the right one

for your company, and as such must involve playing a role. You need to be

an actor, but it’s not an act.

Joyce Taylor, managing director of Discovery Networks Europe, is

more upbeat: “It is the positive emotions that are really important,

elation, joy and optimism.”

By contrast, the experienced industrial leader Sir Bob Reid,

who has had to deliver some difficult news in his time, says:

It’s very important to show you are really upset by some of the situations I’ve

had to deal with in the oil and rail industries. Normally you must behave

with equanimity, but for real issues, for example involving death, you must

sometimes show your real emotions.

There would seem to be some negative emotions which are, by and

large, unhelpful. These would include anger, fear, distress, and envy.

By the same token, it would seem to be advantageous to show joy

and pleasure.

But where does this list begin and end? What is appropriate and what is not? What do you

think?

My one note of certainty is that we should all use what Stephen

Covey calls the “pause button” a little more often. This is the inter-

nal switch we all have like the one on our video recorders. It puts

us into a freeze-frame mode and gives us a few moments to calm

down and reflect before going on with the action.

If you want people to feel wanted, then one of the most

important things that any leader or manager in any organization

needs to have in their emotional toolkit is the ability to show their

42 Power Up Your Mind

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