One
thing I have noticed, over time, is that successful people are
emotional. Show me a super successful person and I will show you a
super emotional person. I don't think you can have one without the
other.
At first
glance, you might not notice that a successful person is emotional.
He or she may have learned ways to cope with their emotions. Or, they
might simply be covering them up. The first president of the United
States, George Washington, is a good example of covering up emotions.
Washington was a man of intense emotions. And, the way he concealed
his emotions was with a staid, almost statuesque demeanor. He had
what we might call a poker face.
More
often than a cover-up successful people learn to cope with their
emotions. That is to say they learn to either channel their emotions
to productive use or they know how to adjust their lives to deal with
the ebbs and flows. Abraham Lincoln would be a great example here.
Lincoln was prone to bouts of serious depression. But, that didn't
stop him from becoming the closest thing to royalty that America has
ever produced.
Of
course, I intentionally draw attention to Lincoln and Washington
because they are, arguably, the two most successful presidents in the
history of the United States. Like I said a minute again, show me a
super successful person and I'll show you a super emotional person.
This is something I have learned observationally. But, it is a
concept that has also been codified academically.
Noel
Tichy is an interesting guy. Tichy is a professor at the University
of Michigan's Ross School of Business. The area he is probably best
known for is leadership. Have you ever read any of professor Tichy's
books? They're great. Jack Welch even selected Noel to lead General
Electric's Leadership Center in Crotonville, New York.
Many
years ago Professor Tichy wrote one of the landmark books in the
study of leadership. The book is titled The Leadership Engine and,
if you haven't already, I encourage you to read it. In the modern
age, it's more than just a quaint idea that each of us needs to be a
leader. And, leadership is an interesting thing in that it doesn't
operate under the laws of scarcity or elasticity. Meaning, it is not
a limited resource. The more leadership, the better.
According
to Tichy one of the key elements to effective leadership is emotional
energy. Speaking of what he calls, “Winning leaders,” in The
Leadership Engine, he writes,
“It is their emotional energy, and their ability to evoke emotional
energy in others, that truly marks them as a breed apart.” So, not
only do effective leaders have lots of emotional energy, they also
rev other people up as well. All the more reason to be good with
emotions.
The
question then becomes, how do we learn to cope with our emotions? I
think it's a good question. In however small a way, I hope this blog
helps. But, of course, there are fair better experts, out there, than
I. Since I am mentioned a landmark book I might as well bring
up one more. Some years ago Daniel Goleman wrote a really important
book titled Emotional Intelligence.
In the book, Goleman suggests that an ability to handle
emotions, what he would refer to as EQ, might be more important than
IQ.
I think
Goleman is on to something. And, this is a really important idea
because we live in a country that praises the Intelligence Quotient.
People are always curious what their IQ is. But, few pay attention to
their EQ, though that is changing. And, again, the EQ might be more
important. I wrote a overview of Goleman's book and you can find it
here: on EQ
Emotions
are a complicated subject. And, I do not profess to be the authority.
But, I do know a fair amount and I would like to pass it along. The
reason being, as I have tried to illustrate, emotions are extremely
important. Indeed, they are more fundamental than intelligence.
If you
read my book report, about Goleman's book, you will see how I make an
example of really smart people whose emotions are out of control.
Some people even pride themselves on not having emotions. That TV
show The Big Bang Theory does an outstanding job of depicting
uber-smart people who are emotionally retarded.
When we
are ignorant of a subject we often fear it or call it crazy. A lot of
us don't understand emotions so we think they are crazy. The fact is,
a lot of people label emotional behavior as crazy behavior. But, it's
not crazy. We simply do not understand it.
An
interesting thing to consider is what it takes to be super
successful. By definition success lies outside of our comfort zone.
The average person would prefer to do what's reasonable. And, that's
why the average person is average. Super success requires being
unreasonable. Indeed, even irrational. And, emotional thinking is
often irrational. I believe that learning to manage irrationality is
critically important if we wish to be all that we can be.
And,
that's what really matters. In this post I have repeatedly used the
word “successful” because it's a simple word that we are all
familiar with. But, as we know, success means different things to
different people. I think one good definition of success is to reach
our full potential. To become all that we are capable of. And, in
doing so, we will run right smack into a lot of emotionality.
Like
Steve Jobs said, “Here's to the crazy ones...”
