Managing Leadership^®

As we continue our struggle to learn how to organize our communities, develop ourselves and our children as individuals in society, and, of course, to manage our organizations, we keep creating unexpected side effects to deal with. For example, many people now entering the work force are exhibiting behaviors that mystify their baby-boomer managers, although they were instilled in them by those same baby-boomers as parents.

The WSJ has run a couple of items in the past week that highlight this. The first discusses the adjustments managers are trying to make in order to deal with “the most praised generation.” This group has been brought up on a steady diet of unconditional self-esteem, which is turning out to have some consequences on the job that need to be worked out.

One of these consequences, covered in the second item, is what many older workers and managers view as an inappropriate and indecorous emotional expressiveness at work. Young workers don’t seem to be able to separate personal feeling from organizational function, and burst into tears for what appear to their seniors to be the most perplexingly banal reasons. One employee cited in the article cried upon being asked to perform a perfectly routine task. When asked why, the reply was that the manager just generally seemed scary to this worker, who evidently felt it necessary to register that impression emotionally.

But is this really a problem? There is some evidence that it may actually be a solution. For example, Antonio Damasio, a prominent brain researcher and neurologist at the University of Southern California, argues in his book, “Descartes’ Error,” that people must have access to their emotions in order to act and organize. His studies indicate that when people have lost the part of their brains that deal with emotion, they not only don’t have feelings - they can’t organize projects or make decisions. When parts of the brain that deal with purely intellectual functions are undamaged and performing properly, people who have lost the part dealing with emotion are able to analyze situations as well as anyone else, but they can’t come to a decision or organize action about the matter at hand. See the last few paragraphs of this essay from The Economist for a concise and telling example of Dr. Damasio’s work in this area.

The suggestion is that some aspects of our continual talk of “right brain” and “left brain” may place an undue emphasis on the brain’s hemispheric separation of duties. The one is not expressed at the expense of the other - they both inform and enable each other. The deficiency of one doesn’t make you more effective in the other, but it rather more likely makes you deficient there as well.

Perhaps, when we think about this, we can recall examples of it in our own working lives; the so-called perfectionist who never gets anything done is an obvious one. On the other hand, I certainly have seen at work the power of emotion informing rational assessment.

We’re not talking about “passion,” here, by the way - at least not in the faddish sense it is used so often: as a general personality characteristic that every “leader” should have. As we’ve discussed previously in these pages, passion is inspired in people by their work, not in organizations by people who just happen to be (aimlessly) passionate. In other words, in the sense that it is important to organizations, passion comes from purpose, not from people; it is merely expressed and conveyed through people. Perhaps that is one area where the integration of emotion with rational intellect generates force and action.

In general, though, I think the essential character of the emotional content we are discussing here is its ability to provide sufficient contemplative traction to generate and apply insight to analysis, enabling decision and action.

So, these young workers, perhaps, may turn out to be okay after all. Indeed, we may find that the issue is not their uniting of their emotional and intellectual functioning at work, but in the ability of their managers to understand what is happening and to use it intelligently to the benefit of the organization and its members - and to the profit of all.

—

If you enjoyed reading this post, please do feel free to “Share This” with your friends and colleagues - and don’t forget to subscribe!

Technorati Tags: WSJ, Antonio Damasio, The Economist, Organizational Leadership, Passion, Leadership

Similar Posts:

• Bullies
• “Passion” and individual leadership
• The swaying sword of Damocles
• Decisiveness
• Leadership delirium