“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways “
– Sigmund Freud
Emotional Health(EH) is a new funda which entered my life in the last 3–4 years. In my thirties, I was hungry for the next promotion, the best employee award and gave my everything to my job.
One day, the phone rang at 12.05 am while I was sleeping. It was my wife’s sister wishing her a happy birthday. Oh Gosh! It was my wife’s birthday. It was her worst birthday and one of my very bad days.
But, my misconception that the harder I work, the more mind and thought I give to my tasks, the more successful I’ll be, was driving me. But success is not always seduced by hard work. Even after giving my everything, I had tough reviews, missed getting a few promotions and in that worry even lost a lot of hair on my head.
In the last 4–5 years, the reality has dawned that success has no, I repeat, no direct correlation to hard work in a leadership role. Don’t misunderstand me. As my level grew in senior leadership roles, hard work was possible but at times was detrimental to my relationship with my team. They thought I was trying to micromanage them, didn’t trust them with critical decisions and wanted to hog power.
In fact, with experience, I was able to listen to the words and body language of my team. 
I learnt to identify what decisions they were saying they were okay with, but their body language and their lack of eye contact (eyes speak the truth, man) gave a different reality. I worked hard in creating a climate where what they felt needed to be said was said, however shocking an impact it may have had on me, without any overreaction on my part.
Thus, was born the reality that leadership is all about emotions, and as a leader, I am responsible for the emotional health of myself, my team and in fact the entire organisation.
I became a more caring person, and however critical a task at hand, if a person was unwell or had a family emergency, I would force him to leave. The team would take care of the work and update him or call him for any doubts.
Of course, at times, I got annoyed with a team member’s work, but I tried my best to coach him to correct himself. But if he still persisted with the mistake, I did lose my cool, but my senses were analysing the impact of the anger. I never let my anger run me, but I was running my anger as a roleplay, and in a matter of seconds I would be back to normal (as if someone up there had said CUT).
After the person who was the target of my anger was through with his act, later in the day, I would always have a one-to-one discussion to understand the impact of my anger. Did he feel unfairly treated? Was he holding any grudge? I reiterate to that person that the anger was for his action and not HIM. I reaffirmed that I trusted him to take necessary actions for his turnaround and that I was equally concerned and responsible for his success/failure as it was my success/failure too.
Now, I am convinced that as we take care of our physical health by eating right and exercising regularly, we need to take care of our emotional health by ensuring that our mind is full of right thoughts and by guarding against emotional stress and strain.
As you are fully involved in your work, there will surely be occasions when you are under pressure, you land up doing things which you regret later, you get into right- wrong battles which never seem to get over, you have ego issues with someone around you and so on. But the secret ingredient to ensure these issues do not break your EH Suraksha Kavach(SK) is to:
- Manage your ego by not letting it dictate your actions
- Communicate softly, but confidently
- Change the cause if there are frequent pushes and pulls
It means the person or the emotional matters are breaking into your EH SK and you need to pull back, withdraw completely and reset life. It is possible. It may feel like things are getting worse for the short term, but what is a little more pain vs long-term BLISS?
When your mental conversations are in top gear, but in your actions, you are constrained, it means your EH SK is in danger. Watch out.
In fact, my next suggestion is radical to say the least.
In India, there is a negative mindset about psychiatrists, psychologists, and counsellors. I’m not mad. Why should I take help from a Dimag ka doctor(DkD)?
The truth is we are all mad ?. It’s just the degree of madness that may vary. Now can we harness our madness to be useful, or should we continuously be in a fight of denial with our madness? The choice is ours.
I’m proud to say I have actively taken help from counsellors, participated in the Landmark Forum, Vipassana, etc., on their suggestion. I use my DkD to find out if I am suppressing some emotions and to check if there are any blind spots which need to be looked into amongst other things.
For organisations, my suggestion is to have a part-time DkD on board to analyse meetings, right–wrong battles, ego tussles, politics in your organisation and to put the mirror of its impact on individuals and teams.
Meetings can be recorded on camera for them to be analysed by the DkD to understand the undercurrents and the intention behind the actions of individuals and groups. You will find cases where every proposal put forward by H10 is opposed by I9. On the other hand, every proposal given by H11 is vehemently supported by I9. They seem to think in tandem. And you are their senior. What could be the reason for the same? It’s worth going deeper into the issue with the help of a DkD.
-The article is syndicated from the Book ‘Experiments in Leadership – A Comprehensive Guide for Leaders with 80+ real life case studies’ by Girish Batra