As leaders, we’re often taught that emotional control is paramount. We learn to stay calm under pressure, think before we speak, and approach every situation with level-headed rationality. But what if this approach—while valuable—is missing a crucial component of effective leadership?
The Feedback That Changed Everything
During my participation in a leadership accelerator program at Relias, I received feedback that fundamentally challenged how I viewed effective leadership. The comprehensive assessment revealed something I hadn’t considered: my pride in remaining emotionally detached might actually be limiting my effectiveness as a leader.
The conversation involved a leader I deeply respect—someone whose approach differs completely from mine yet achieves remarkable results. Through our discussion with a facilitator from our parent company, an uncomfortable truth emerged about my leadership style.
My Default Leadership Response
For years, I’ve operated under a specific framework when facing challenging situations or feeling upset:
- Remove myself from the immediate situation
- Process emotions privately until I feel calm and level-headed
- Return to address the issue without emotional involvement
- Focus on constructive, forward-moving solutions
This approach felt rational, professional, and respectful. It aligned with my personal values and seemed to avoid the pitfalls of reactive, emotion-driven communication that I’d witnessed create problems in other contexts.
The Surprising Truth About Leadership Communication
The feedback I received was both simple and profound: “It’s important as a leader that you sometimes let people know that you are unhappy with them.”
This statement struck me like lightning because it ran completely counter to my self-image as a leader. I had spent considerable effort developing systems to avoid communicating emotionally, believing this made me more effective and professional.
Why Emotional Detachment Can Backfire
What I learned through this experience is that my well-intentioned approach was creating an unintended consequence. By removing all emotion from my communication, I was inadvertently:
- Downplaying the severity of situations that warranted concern
- Depriving team members of important contextual information about the impact of their actions
- Missing opportunities for immediate course correction through emotional feedback
- Reducing the motivational impact of my leadership communication
The Strategic Value of Showing Unhappiness
The revelation helped me understand that a leader’s unhappiness with a situation serves multiple strategic purposes:
Immediate Signal Strength
When team members see that their leader is genuinely upset about an outcome, it immediately communicates the gravity of the situation in ways that calm, rational feedback cannot.
Creating Coachable Moments
That moment when someone thinks, “Oh no, my boss is upset with me because of this” becomes a powerful catalyst for self-reflection and behavioral change.
Authentic Relationship Building
Showing genuine emotion (when appropriate) demonstrates that you’re invested in outcomes and care deeply about the team’s success.
Clear Expectation Setting
Your emotional response helps team members calibrate their understanding of what matters most and what standards they’re expected to meet.
The Two-Phase Leadership Approach
The key insight wasn’t to abandon my thoughtful, rational approach entirely, but rather to implement a two-phase strategy:
Phase 1: Immediate Emotional Feedback
Allow team members to witness and understand your genuine reaction to situations when they occur. This provides immediate context and impact.
Phase 2: Reflective Problem-Solving
Later, when emotions have settled, engage in the deeper, analytical conversation about what happened and how to improve moving forward.
Balancing Emotional Intelligence with Authentic Leadership
This experience taught me that effective leadership isn’t about eliminating emotion—it’s about using emotion strategically. The goal isn’t to become reactive or lose professional composure, but rather to ensure that the full picture of your leadership perspective is communicated.
Your frustration, disappointment, or concern about a situation is itself valuable information for your team. It helps them understand not just what went wrong, but how significantly it impacted the broader goals and relationships they care about.
Implementing Constructive Emotional Leadership
If you’re like me and tend toward emotional restraint in leadership situations, consider these strategies:
Allow Initial Reactions: Give yourself permission to show genuine concern or disappointment when it first occurs, rather than immediately suppressing it.
Use Emotion as Data: Treat your emotional responses as valuable information to share with your team about priorities and expectations.
Follow Up Thoughtfully: Maintain your commitment to reflective, solution-oriented conversations, but don’t let them replace the immediate emotional feedback.
Model Emotional Intelligence: Show your team that emotions can be acknowledged and expressed professionally without derailing productive communication.
The Leadership Growth Mindset
Perhaps the most valuable aspect of this feedback was how it challenged my assumptions about what makes a “good” leader. Growth in leadership often requires us to examine our comfortable patterns and consider whether they’re serving our teams as effectively as we believe.
The leader who gave me this feedback approaches leadership completely differently than I do, yet achieves incredible results. This experience reminded me that there’s no single template for effective leadership—but there are always opportunities to expand our toolkit.
Moving Forward: Emotion as Leadership Tool
Today, I’m still the same person who values thoughtful, rational problem-solving. But I’ve added a new dimension to my leadership approach: the strategic use of authentic emotional communication.
When something goes wrong now, I don’t hide my disappointment. I let my team see that I’m genuinely upset about the outcome, because that unhappiness is part of the feedback they need to fully understand the situation and grow from it.
The goal isn’t to become more emotional as a leader—it’s to become more complete in how we communicate the full spectrum of our leadership perspective.
What surprising feedback have you received that changed your approach to leadership? How do you balance emotional authenticity with professional communication in your role?