The Emotional Side of Leadership
The COVID-19 pandemic has stretched and challenged our leaders to manage so much more than just their operations. They have needed to manage emotions on a scale like never before. When employees are dealing with fear, anxiety and other emotions, how do you motivate? How do you possibly deliver even more bad news when they are already feeling so much? And what emotional toll does this take on our leaders?
During this webinar, three Milwaukee-area business leaders dive in with moderator, Kimberly Kane. Panelists include:
Beth Ridley, President of The Brimful Life
Héctor Colón, President & CEO of Lutheran Social Services
Marty Brooks, President & CEO of Wisconsin Center District
We discussed how leaders can help their teams to process emotions, how leaders can ensure they’re maintaining a healthy emotional balance and philosophies you can learn more about to help strengthen your EQ.
Some major takeaways from our panelists include:
From Beth Ridley, Founder and CEO of The Brimful Life: “I think the question for a lot of people ask is, ‘How much of your emotions do you allow to come forward in the workplace?’ You have to ask yourself two questions. One is, ‘What feels authentic to you?’ And then, two, ‘How’s that working for you?’ It may be that you have to be able to moderate how much emotion and what types of emotion that you carry forward into the workplace. In order to be successful, you must be able to gauge and manage your own emotions and understand how your emotions can affect the emotions of other people.
From Héctor Colón, President and CEO of Lutheran Social Services: “The more frequent, transparent communications we can have answering the questions of our staff – that’s what’s going to make them feel comfortable. That’s what’s going to make them trust and provide us with information. Provide them with information about our financials, about how we’re doing as an organization, what we need to do in order to be successful. Because when the organization is successful, the staff will be successful and the individuals we serve will be successful.”
From Marty Brooks, President and CEO of Wisconsin Center District: “We have to demonstrate to our staff, that when they come back to work, whether they’re a food service person, an usher, a ticket taker, or even the administrative staff, they feel that the environment that they’re coming into is safe and that we are working on their behalf to make sure that we’re doing everything necessary to create a safe environment for them. Additionally, I am reaching out every day, multiple times a day to the people within the organization that I rely on, and letting them know they’re all key components of our organization. I need their guidance, I need their support.”
You can watch the full webinar by clicking on the video above.