Emodiversity (Emotional Diversity) and Wise Leadership

Wise Leadership and Emodiversity (Emotional Diversity)

Are you experiencing brain fog? Or, maybe it’s a combination of brain fog, with a wide range of emotions? I wouldn’t be surprised. Stress can wreak havoc on our cognition and emotions. But take heart: wise leaders benefit from emodiversity, emotional diversity.

In the May 2019 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology, researchers published their findings on emotions and wise reasoning. In the past, theories suggested that the downregulation of emotion may lead to better decision making. But new research finds that recognizing and balancing emotions stimulates insights, and better reasoning.

The researchers studied over 3,500 participants in five studies, testing how wisdom-related characteristics— humility, recognition of a changing world, transcendence, and value for diversity of perspective­—relate to intensity and richness of emotions in specific situations. They found that a rich and balanced emotional life can benefit wise reasoning.

How do leaders balance their emotions? First, emotional awareness is key. Knowing what you feel, and how often you experience the feeling, may be more effective than knowing why. I find self-awareness is the most important trait for a meaningful coaching experience.

A Wise Leadership Journal

If you aren’t already, keep a journal. Give yourself permission to write your thoughts and feelings for a minimum of five minutes, without any editing: no grammar, spelling, or content corrections. Allow yourself to go longer, if needed.

A journal will also allow you to track your inner crowd, which I wrote about in my last post. As Dan Ciampa wrote in Harvard Business Review, “The More Senior Your Job Title, the More You Need to Keep a Journal” (July, 2017), learning what is important and what lessons should be learned happens after the fact. It allows for more meaningful, and productive, exploration of alternative solutions. A wise leader’s journal includes thoughts, feelings, and events: what happened, and how the leader reacted.

It also allows you to note positive and negative emotions, key to creating emodiversity.

The Balance of Positive and Negative Emotions

Wise leaders understand that both positive and negative emotions work in the decision making process. Positive emotions open us; they expand our social, physical and cognitive resources. Negative emotions serve to limit our thoughts and behaviors; they help us to focus and act more decisively in times of stress or crisis. But an imbalance can sap our energy and lead to brain fog.

Research conducted by organizational psychologist Marcial Losada, PhD, along with psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, PhD, finds that a 3:1 positivity-to-negativity ratio is ideal for optimal functioning. Wise leaders track their ratio, and when needed, increase positive moments.

To reduce the impact of negative moments, practice mindfulness meditation; observe your thoughts without judgment.

If you are getting caught up in negative thinking, try these tips suggested in Fredrickson’s book, Positivity: Groundbreaking Research Reveals How to Embrace the Hidden Strength of Positive Emotions, Overcome Negativity and Thrive (Crown Archetype, 2009):

1. Recognize and counter negative thinking habits (always/never, most/least, internal/external).

2. Distract yourself from rumination.

3. Practice mindfulness (observe without judgment).

4. Limit your exposure to bad news streams.

5. Avoid gossip and sarcasm, and increase positive feedback to others.

6. Practice gratitude, and smile more.

All these actions align with God’s Word as we are encouraged to capture our thoughts and to think positive thoughts by focusing on “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is admirable- if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” Philippians 4:8. An additional balance against negative thinking is focusing your mind on gratitude.

Wise leadership envisions the best possible future for everyone. As Stephen S. Hall writes in Wisdom (Random House, 2010),

In an age of reason, thought will seem like wisdom’s most esteemed companion. In an age of sentiment, emotion will seem like the wisest guide. But when human survival is paramount, social practicality and science are likelier to lead us through to better times.”

What do you think? How is your emodiversity? I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me here at marc@moleadershipcoaching.com and on LinkedIn

Let’s connect. Just to encourage one another. My work focuses on Family Enterprises where the family roles and enterprise roles have created chaos. My work helps navigate towards family peace and business performance.

Let’s connect for a quick call to see if we might help one another at Marc’s Calendar

Wise Leaders Gaining Wisdom from Others

As a leader, how often do you rely on the wisdom of the crowd in your decision making? How often do you rely on your intuition?

To be sure, part of wise leadership is ensuring you have the right people in your crowd: the right subject matter experts and godly counsel. I wrote about this in my last post.

Your crowd should include a variety of subject matter experts to form a collective opinion, rather than a single expert. If you have wise subject matter experts—if they have the abilities and characteristics I described in my prior two posts—research indicates that their aggregate knowledge would exceed the knowledge of any one individual expert. But there’s a caveat: diversity and process, with process centered on values.

Wisdom of the Crowd

As researchers from Duke University found, averaging cancels error when the crowd wisdom is based on two factors:

1.      Diversity: your subject matter experts should bring diverse perspectives. For example, one expert may focus on short-term goals, and the other on long-term goals.

2.      Process: your subject matter experts should not be influenced by others before sharing their findings.

When making decisions, you’ll also need to decide how much weight you give to their wisdom, as well as yours. This also comes in to play when you can’t find enough qualified subject matter experts, or when there simply isn’t a model or path to follow. That’s when wise leadership is put to the test.

In highly complex systems, when there is information overload or not enough pertinent data and analysis, how do you make high-stakes decisions?

In October 2019, Harvard Business Review author Laura Huang published an interesting article on the topic. According to Huang, it’s important to recognize two factors: what is the level of unknowability, and what is the context.

When there is just not enough information (when the level of unknowability is high – like COVID-19)), and, when there is not a proven model or schema (when there is not a map or context), you’ll need to use your inner wisdom.

Wisdom of the Inner Crowd

Recently published in the American Psychological Association quarterly journal for research on judgment and decision making, researchers shared their findings on how the wisdom of the inner crowd can boost accuracy of confidence judgments.

“Analytical and simulation results show that irrespective of the type of item, averaging consistently improves confidence judgments, but maximizing is risky…our results suggest that averaging—due to its robustness—should be the default strategy to harness one’s conflicting confidence judgments.” ~ Litvinova, A., Herzog, S. M., Kall, A. A., Pleskac, T. J., & Hertwig, R. “How the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ can boost accuracy of confidence judgments,” Decision, February 2020

These finding suggest that similar to the wisdom of the crowd, averaging yields better results. Once again the world discovers what God has declared for thousands of years. Of course, most of the wise leaders I know have not navigated their way through a pandemic. But, they are keen observers, have learned how to recognize patterns, and rely on mental models. They challenge themselves to make tough appraisals and learn from the consequences. When it comes time to reflect on the information they’ve gathered and analyzed, they apply the wisdom of the inner crowd.

I invest deeply in creating teams of shared values teams of Christian business owners. I do this through CBMC – Christian Business Men’s Connection. There are other offerings in the marketplace. The main idea is to find your TRIBE. Find your INNER crowd and listen. This increases your likeliness of minimizing risk and maximizing opportunity even when we are in uncharted waters.

What do you think? How do you use the wisdom of the crowd in your decision making? What about the wisdom of the inner crowd? I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me here at marc@moleadershipcoaching.com and on LinkedIn

If you are committed to following Jesus and have a passion for work, I would love to connect. Just to encourage one another. My work focuses on Family Enterprises where the family roles and enterprise roles often create chaos. Let’s connect for a quick call to see if we might help one another at Marc’s Calendar

Tough Decisions - Wisdom - 6 Areas to Target

The Six Abilities of Wise Business Leaders

Finding a clear path forward through a global pandemic requires wise business leaders. Where do we turn for models?

As I wrote in my last post, wise leadership is a combination of elements, including intelligence, self-awareness, acknowledgement of personal limitations, humility, patience, and emotional resilience. The best resource for growing wise leadership is in the Book of Proverbs, God says if you ask you will receive. If you are looking for wise leadership and the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience and understanding in making good decisions look closely at the Word of God.

Even the world acknowledges the need for wisdom, according to psychologist Dr. Robert J. Sternberg, “leaders are much more likely to fail because they are unwise or unethical than because they lack knowledge of general intelligence.”

Six Abilities of Wise Business Leaders

Professors Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi shared their research on the six abilities of wise leaders in the Harvard Business Review article, “The Big Idea: The Wise Leader.” They found that it isn’t just uncertainty that challenges leaders, rather, it’s leading people to adhere to values and ethics. As a coach, I have found this to be true. The six essential abilities are required and real and

1.       In complex situations, wise leaders quickly perceive the true nature of the reality; the underlying issues for people, things, and events taking place now, and projections for future consequences. Their explicit and tacit knowledge (honed by a love for learning), perspective (broadened by open-mindedness and their habit of asking “why?”), and creativity allows them to envision a future before jumping to decisions.

2.       Wise leaders practice moral discernment: they make decisions about what is good for the organization and society, and act on it. They strengthen their discernment with:

a.       Experience (especially facing adversity and overcoming failure)

b.      Adherence to values/ethics (self-awareness of values and ethics, which are modeled in business and organizations)

c.       Pursuit of excellence (not to be confused with perfection) 

d.      Learning (a breadth and depth of subjects, including history, philosophy, literature, and fine arts.)

3.       They enable symbiotic learning by providing opportunities to interact closely with—and between—others; wise leaders develop relationships, and the spaces to nurture them. Today, that may mean more virtual meetings and the development of new groups, teams, and networks, as well as technology skills.

4.       Wise leaders use applicable metaphors and stories to communicate their experience and understanding into tacit knowledge that all can understand. Great stories describe relationships (between people, places, times, or things). They don’t have to be long, but the right story, at the right time, can call others to take right action.

5.       They nurture wisdom in others through mentoring, apprenticeship, and distributed leadership. Mentoring focuses on learning to achieve competence, proficiency, skill, know-how and wisdom. Apprenticeship focuses on sharing experiences, contexts, and time.

6.       Wise leaders bring people together and inspire them to take action. They understand and consider differing points of view, emotions, needs, and the element of timing. Wise leaders embrace the paradoxes of life; they refrain from either/or thinking, and cultivate a both/and mindset.

All six essentials are areas to target for every leader. Understanding the impact is important but knowing the source is most important.

What do you think? Where do you see the model of wise leadership in your organization? I’d love to hear from you. You can reach me here marc@moleadershipcoaching.com and on LinkedIn

If you are committed to following Jesus and have a passion for work, I would love to connect. My work focuses on Family Enterprises where the family roles and enterprise roles often create chaos. Let’s connect for a quick call to see if we might help one another at Marc’s Calendar