Welcome to the Monthly Newsletter by Amer Kaissi 

Edition #15, February 2021

Many of the executives that I coach struggle with how to express feelings at work in an effective way. The book for this edition- Leading with Feeling: Nine Strategies of Emotionally Intelligent Leadership– is probably one of the best to address this topic in a data-driven and practical way.

The authors are Carry Cherniss, a professor at Rutgers, and Cornelia Roche, an executive coach. Together, they asked executive coaches, management consultants, and other HR professionals to identify star leaders who were effective and who used and managed emotions especially well. They ended up with sample of 13 female and 12 male leaders at mid-level and senior-level from all different types of organizations. They then asked each one of those leaders to describe situations where they managed or used emotion effectively to deal with a problem or achieve a goal. Based on 126 such situations, they came up with the following nine strategies for emotionally intelligent leadership: 1) Monitor the emotional climate; 2) Express your feelings to motivate others; 3) Consider how your own behavior influences others’ emotions; 4) Put yourself in others’ shoes; 5) Use your understanding of emotion to figure out the underlying dynamics of a situation; 6) Reframe how you think about the situation; 7) Create optimal interpersonal boundaries; 8) Seek out others for help in managing emotions; and 9) Help others develop their emotional intelligence abilities.

The book is full of vivid examples and practical strategies and tactics such as how to detect a simmering conflict, how to strengthen positive relations by expressing sorrow after a negative event, how to express one’s feelings to help employees cope with layoffs, and how to express anger in an effective and controlled way, among many others.  My favorite quote: “Trying to appear calm by denying or minimizing the challenges that the leader and his or her group faces probably will not work. A better approach for leaders is to acknowledge those challenges and to empathize with how others may be feeling while maintaining a calm composure.”

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Dr. Amer Kaissi is a Top Leadership Keynote Speaker. He speaks about leadership, teams and culture.