Developing Emotional Intelligence Enhances Personal Mastery
Paul Walsh, Chairman and CEO of Pillsbury, is quoted as saying, “The missing link in leadership development is growing the person to grow the leader.” Kevin Cashman, in his book Leadership From the Inside Out (now in its 2nd edition) addresses this missing link. He identifies “seven pathways to mastery…with each path supporting progress toward a more fulfilling destination: leading more effectively from within.”
The first of these paths is Personal Mastery – leading through authentic self-expression. Cashman defines Personal Mastery as, “…the ongoing commitment to unfolding and authentically expressing who we are.”
Learning to express ourselves authentically begins by developing self-awareness (a foundational Emotional Intelligence competency). With respect to leading authentically, Cashman’s self-awareness is at a deeper level than just being aware of one’s emotions. The leader must identify whether his decisions and actions come from his character, “the essence of oneself,” or his persona, “the external personality created to help cope with everyday life.” Cashman tells us that, “character transforms, persona copes.”
Like night and day (or, perhaps more like good and evil), Cashman suggests that character and persona possess opposite qualities: Character leads from the inside; persona from the outside. Character is guided by admirable traits such as authenticity, purpose, openness, trust compassion, courage and more. On the other hand, persona manifests with less desirable characteristics such as fear, control, safety/security, self-interest, etc.
Character, if viewed from an Emotional Intelligence perspective represents that part of us that is confident, helpful, optimistic, eager, etc. In other words, this is the part of us that operates from a base of positive emotions. Character is inclusive and one might even go so far as to say that it represents the Self, with large “S” where the person is as concerned about others as he is about him self. We might even say character operates on a belief of unity and oneness of mankind. Persona on the other hand operates out of a place of duality and fear, me vs. you, win vs. lose, always concerned with “protecting” it self (small “s”) from others.
Leading authentically isn’t about eliminating the persona – this is a part of our being, the global mindset we are each born into and taught to believe. Leading authentically is about developing our character to a point where it is the primary force behind our actions. It’s about making a difference and creating value as opposed to just looking good, protecting oneself, or being “one-up” on others.
I suggest that an important first step in growing and developing our character is to enhance our skills to recognize and manage our emotions. Not to let the negative emotions that are generated from perceived psychological threats to our security to “hi-jack” our thinking and put us in an “us vs. them” emotional mindset. After recognizing the negative emotions we need to enhance our skill in choosing and transforming negative emotions into positive ones.
When we step back and really look at leaders and the best leaders we have ever worked with all we have to do is ask ourselves, “Where they good at managing their emotions most of the time?” To develop leaders from the inside out we must develop our Emotional Intelligence skills.
