Episode 120
John Barker: Transferable Emotional States as a Leader
John Barker discusses his experiences where a leader's emotional states transfer to other team members that in most cases negatively affecting performance.
John discusses the need to remain stoic and a "we got this" attitude when things are not going your way to have any chance of success.
Transcript
Welcome to the business samurai podcast.
Speaker:I'm your host, John Barker today.
Speaker:I've got another solo take an emotion emotional.
Speaker:I'm going to be talking about emotions today.
Speaker:Educational video of my years in the trenches and what I've seen to.
Speaker:Be a better tactician within your business, a better leader within
Speaker:your business, and try to help get you to the goals that you
Speaker:want to achieve to aspire to.
Speaker:So today is people feeding off your emotions as a leader, and
Speaker:this is something I've seen a lot.
Speaker:So what I'm going to do during this this episode, Okay, quickly break down a
Speaker:couple of stories that I've experienced and what you, if, whether you're running
Speaker:a small team, maybe it's your first time running a group, or whether you're
Speaker:the CEO of a large organization, how you conduct and manage your emotional
Speaker:state absolutely affects your direct reports and it will actually affect
Speaker:the outcomes that you're trying to go.
Speaker:Quick story.
Speaker:Years ago running a was running a project that a company had been
Speaker:awarded, but, and I'm going to get into some of this of later on about
Speaker:project management and the pitfalls.
Speaker:If leadership will not make decisions in a timely manner fashion, but essentially
Speaker:it was a high profile project that I ended up becoming in charge of with a
Speaker:very small team during the course of.
Speaker:The implementation, the scope kept increasing meaning we had to keep adding
Speaker:on work to it, but also our time was decreasing and we weren't getting a lot
Speaker:more resources to help with this stuff.
Speaker:Again, I may break this down a little bit more detail on project
Speaker:management do's or don'ts and not that I was even in control, but what was
Speaker:happening was as this project for the organization was pretty highly visible.
Speaker:It was clear that with all the changes that senior leadership was
Speaker:getting absolutely stressed out, we were getting into these situations
Speaker:where they were worrying they're running in and checking on progress.
Speaker:It was like every hour or wanting to have these crazy meetings
Speaker:that was pulling away my team.
Speaker:And I've always prided myself on maintaining.
Speaker:I don't, I, I hesitate to use the words, a stoic approach to stuff, but getting
Speaker:overly, emotionally amped up, whether it was too happy, too sad, too angry in the
Speaker:moment afterwards, let her rip, but in the moment, getting overly, emotionally
Speaker:amped up to me meant I, the chances that I was going to see the project were going.
Speaker:Greatly be reduced.
Speaker:What was happening was as the other senior leaders in the organization,
Speaker:because it was in this particular project, it was very top heavy.
Speaker:Again, I think there was more top heavy management, not actively involved in
Speaker:the execution of trying to get this off the ground as there were on my team,
Speaker:actually trying to make it happen.
Speaker:If I recall.
Speaker:So we, what was happening was, is they were getting around and
Speaker:worrying and you could see it.
Speaker:Just talking to them nervousness in their voice and this stuff, the team
Speaker:that I was having to work with to execute the project started mimicking that.
Speaker:To the point that it was becoming detrimental because now their worry
Speaker:was overtaking execution of what we needed to meet to get done.
Speaker:And I remember going in, and finally, as this was coming to a boiling point,
Speaker:I think we'd had another thing of, Hey, you're we you've got two less
Speaker:days to execute on this that I told the team that if the changes did not come
Speaker:from my mouth, you were to disregard.
Speaker:To only listen to me.
Speaker:I don't care if someone that quote unquote is higher up on the totem
Speaker:pole comes and tells you to do something related to this project.
Speaker:You do not do it without talking to me because they were not being,
Speaker:there was just no structure around what was happening during this
Speaker:hour long with the emotional state.
Speaker:And you could watch the emotional states transferring from the
Speaker:leader to the other staff.
Speaker:When I finally told the upper management in this particular case, leave me alone,
Speaker:or this will not get done and stop asking me things that I know to be true.
Speaker:Get basically get out of my way, which finally did we get through the
Speaker:project with three hours to spare?
Speaker:It was the closest I've ever come to missing a deadline of something that I.
Speaker:Quote unquote was in charge of granted.
Speaker:It really didn't feel like it in the moment, but by being able to become a
Speaker:buffer between the team that I needed to execute and I needed them to execute well.
Speaker:We were working between 12 and 16 hour days.
Speaker:It particularly in the last couple of weeks to make this happen, I needed them
Speaker:to be on point and not be distracted by worrywarts other in the organization.
Speaker:This is something that you, if you're running a team, if you're
Speaker:running a project, if you're, you need to be aware of how you have.
Speaker:Stressful situations if you are going out and you're worrying all the time,
Speaker:if your angry all the time, if you're happy, worsen in some cases is if
Speaker:you're just indifferent to what ever is going on, your team will actually start
Speaker:mimicking that and be cognizant of that.
Speaker:Be aware of what your emotional state is.
Speaker:And it's one thing to be, have a flash in the pan angry moment versus.
Speaker:A prolonged, this is week in, week out, the de facto state of things,
Speaker:because you're going to wonder why a performance is degraded.
Speaker:Quite frankly, look in the mirror because if you can sit there and identify
Speaker:what you're doing, change yourself.
Speaker:Your team will follow suit.
Speaker:It may not be instantaneous, but should be pretty quick because I know in the
Speaker:case where I've, where I put myself in the mix and in the middle between
Speaker:my, my I use junior team for lack of a better word, even though some of them,
Speaker:they were senior roles, but put myself in the mix of that and became a, an
Speaker:emotional buffer performance went up.
Speaker:They were much happier.
Speaker:The times that I said, go home, don't worry about this.
Speaker:I, I'll just run some of the, some of this to ground because I need
Speaker:your fresh for the next phase.
Speaker:They would willingly stay there to help me out.
Speaker:And didn't complain about it.
Speaker:The complaints even went down.
Speaker:When you get all said and done, you got to debrief and figure out how
Speaker:do we avoid that situation again?
Speaker:But it all started with the emotional state.
Speaker:So if you want your team to be resilient, That we've got a, we've got this attitude,
Speaker:no matter what obstacles come your way, because not obstacle, not all obstacles
Speaker:that you're going to approach are going to be internally driven, even though a
Speaker:lot of the ones I've seen in the last few years are definitely internally driven.
Speaker:You're going to get those external blocks, those external obstacles that
Speaker:you've got, that you've got to overcome, that you necessarily weren't expecting.
Speaker:Didn't pop up in a risk management assessment that are just there.
Speaker:So be aware of your emotional state, the more stoic that you
Speaker:can be in your response, going, okay, this is what's happened.
Speaker:I can't control that this is the situation that occurred, but I'm going
Speaker:to control my response to it because I need to set the example for my.
Speaker:By doing that, you'll get through whatever the challenge is faster and
Speaker:more successfully than if you go around, like your hair's on fire worrying
Speaker:and going, oh, we don't got this.
Speaker:I'm not sure what's going to happen.
Speaker:You've got to say we got this up until the last second of the clock ticks down
Speaker:of when you were supposed to go live.
Speaker:That is the approach that you've got to do.
Speaker:So I remember that.
Speaker:It was 20 some years ago, a place I was working at I was a little
Speaker:bit more hotheaded in those days.
Speaker:Except during the time periods, when everything was falling apart around
Speaker:me, I was running a pretty decent size network and we didn't have a lot of budget
Speaker:for the newest, latest and greatest.
Speaker:So there was like these bandaid fixes and we would experience some crashes.
Speaker:And I remember the CIO at the time, we'd have an outage that may affected
Speaker:the website going down or email going down for a period of time.
Speaker:And everybody's running around like the world's coming to an end and
Speaker:mind you, it's not like there was a life and death situation, but
Speaker:there obviously is a cost to the business by being down downtime cost.
Speaker:So again, not necessarily something I was familiar with when I was 21, 22, but.
Speaker:I never lost my cool in those moments, even at the age of 21, 22 to the
Speaker:point that he came in and I'll never forget this, I was in the server room.
Speaker:The racks open people were constantly banging on the door.
Speaker:We'd go in there and shut the, lock the door behind us just to be left alone.
Speaker:But constantly every few minutes until finally, the CIO comes in and he's all
Speaker:in a panic and he S he made the comment.
Speaker:How do you remain.
Speaker:So cool and calm.
Speaker:I said, how would it help me to be like you right now?
Speaker:Do you think I'll actually solve this problem easier by getting
Speaker:all emotionally ramped up?
Speaker:I won't think clearly I won't be able to put logic behind my problem solving
Speaker:and I won't be able to get this up as fast if I'm acting like you and pretty
Speaker:much everybody else in the office.
Speaker:And at that he turned around and.
Speaker:I never got hurt.
Speaker:Talk to about that ever again.
Speaker:And to me that is the type of presence as a leader that you need to have, if
Speaker:you want to try to make sure that you can successfully overcome again, the obstacles
Speaker:within your business or a project that do appear because of course they will.
Speaker:Hopefully not a super frequent where it's a day in day out thing, even though there
Speaker:can be minor challenges, but I'm talking about the big gigantic things that you got
Speaker:to work on for, weeks or months at a time.
Speaker:So anyway, be cognizant.
Speaker:Of how you how you handle yourself in front of your team, they will mimic you.
Speaker:And then if you found any of this useful, please go give me a rating on
Speaker:Spotify, apple podcast, just a thumbs up.
Speaker:If you see the post on LinkedIn or Twitter or something along that line, just to let
Speaker:me know I'm going down the right path.
Speaker:And hopefully you get some of this useful.
Speaker:And until next time I am John Barker here at the business.
