The Leaders Toolkit Includes Cognition
How we as leaders handle the cognitive parts of our work responsibilities matters. To obtain a position in leadership, one is required to have a certain level of technical ability, skill set, and experience. However, this threshold ability does not determine our ability to deal with life and our ability to lead effectively. When it comes to our senses and leadership should we give ourselves permission to feel?
Podcast Review: Brené Brown and Dr. Marc Brackett on “Permission to Feel”
In her Unlocking Us podcast episode with Dr. Marc Brackett, author and researcher Brené Brown states that she has ‘never met a truly transformational leader that did not have a deep understanding of their own emotional landscape and the emotional landscape of other people’. We recommend you listen to this podcast episode. Below are some of the key things that stood out.
Key Points to Listen For
=> Brackett asserts that leaders must have skills in managing people which includes managing their own feelings. Brackett illustrated this point in talking about a study that he did a few years ago with 15,000 people across the workforce. The stats between leaders with higher emotional awareness over leaders who had lower emotional intelligence painted a picture of the tangible impact that leaders had on their own and their team’s burnout, inspiration, turnover, and even ethical behaviour.
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=> Brackett shared his ‘RULER’ acronym, which is a systematic, evidenced base approach to emotional literacy shared in his book, ‘Permission to Feel’. Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, and Regulating emotions. The RULER principles are being used in schools and in large companies.
=> As individuals and as teams, Brown and Brackett assert that most adults will need to unlearn suppression, denial, and blaming before we can start to learn healthy emotional functioning. Permission to Feel and the RULER principles means being present, being a learner, making sound decisions, building and maintaining great relationships, and achieving your dreams.
=> Our children sure do need these skills integrated throughout their education, but so do we as adults need these skills integrated throughout the workforce. If we want to be ‘transformational leaders’, it is up to us to develop our own emotional navigation skills and learn how to transfer those navigational skills to those whom we lead. We’d love to come alongside you to support transferring and integrating these emotional intelligence skills to you and your team.
RELATED: Enjoy our Soft Skills for Leaders Series on Emotional Intelligence, Interpersonal Relationships, Problem Solving and Flexibilty
Please contact us to start the conversation of how we become transformational leaders. It starts with how well we know ourselves.