Leaders are individuals who feel comfortable with authority. They make fast decisions and focus their work on achieving goals. They are pragmatic, efficient and thrive in a fast-pace environment. A weakness often found in leaders is their perceived lack of emotional connectedness with the people they so rely on to do the job. It is quite common that leaders are often characterized as being insensitive and behave in a guarded manner.
Whether the leader is head of a business, a sport team or academic organization, the quality of the human interrelationship needed to succeed in any of those environments is not that different from that needed when relating with individuals outside those areas. The human connection is the cornerstone to achieve cooperation and understanding. A team can achieve its goal when each individual feels part of the greater goal. Not one individual can achieve a group goal. On the other hand, single individuals can certainly jeopardize a group success.
Our culture often tends to emphasize rationalization over connection. It is quite common that leaders try to rationalize with their team members to clear differences. Explaining is understood as the go-to approach to resolve conflict. As practical as this approach often is, behind any conflict there are unmet emotions. People’s feelings exist. They may not explicitly show, but pretending that rationalizing will resolve conflict may leave opened emotional wounds that linger and potentially affect team effectiveness.
Great leaders understand and practice to be mindful of the emotional impact conflict brings to individuals. They are aware that expressing disappointment in a public forum will create further tension and distrust. The embarrassment of the moment may be joked around or pretended it did not bother, but the truth is that an emotional wound was created.
To elicit great production from team members, successful leaders embrace the emotional side of human interactions. Leaders are cognizant that team members need to build trust. When members are emotionally met and understood, then they will be more willing to put forward a greater effort. At the core of any human connection, there is the simple need to be understood, not just from a cognitive perspective, but more importantly, at an emotional level.
To embrace the emotional side of human connections;
1. Spend one-on-one time to clarify any unresolved conflict while providing the opportunity to fully listen to the member’s perceived source of conflict;
2. Provide the opportunity to share solutions to the conflict as long as they still remain in line with the mission of the greater organization.