Neuroscience and Leadership: Therapy or Coaching?

In “Neuroscience and Leadership: The Promise of Insights,” Richard Boyatzis discusses implications of recent studies that say a leader’s emotional state effects their employees – in as quickly as 8 milliseconds. That's instantly. This is reminiscent of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink.

“Our unconscious emotional states are arousing emotions in those with whom we interact before we or they know it. And it spreads from these interactions to others.”

Science is catching up with what many of us know intuitively. You know if your boss is having a good or bad day. You can feel their energy as they walk by. This is actually their electromagnetic field preceding them and you literally sense it.

Do you really need these studies to tell you it’s better to be social and engage your employees in positive, hopeful discussions versus being negative and only focusing on metrics?What's new is Boyatzis and Goldman, etc. continue to pave the way for making it okay for leaders to talk about “having techniques to notice [your] feelings (i.e., know that you are having feelings and become aware of them), label or understand what they are (i.e., giving a label to vague or gnawing sensations), and then signal yourself that you should do something to change your mood and state.”

Therapy or Coaching? Does it matter the label as long as we stay clear on the business goals and context to support more of your engaging, positive self showing up with your employees. The reality is coaching steals techniques from therapy and vice versa. The lines are blurred. Fostering greater emotional awareness doesn’t mean necessarily putting someone into psychoanalysis. The end goal is to have the leader “be” in such a way that s/he engenders an open environment where employees can do their most creative work. Isn’t this what all leaders want?