w h at m a k e s a l e a d e r ?
Can we launch a new product within six months?
People who assess themselves honestly – that is,
self-aware people – are well suited to do the same
for the organizations they run.
Self-Regulation
Biological impulses drive our emotions. We cannot
do away with them – but we can do much to manage them. Self-regulation, which is like an ongoing
inner conversation, is the component of emotional
intelligence that frees us from being prisoners of
our feelings. People engaged in such a conversation
feel bad moods and emotional impulses just as
everyone else does, but they find
ways to control them and even to
channel them in useful ways.
Imagine an executive who has
just watched a team of his employees present a botched analysis to the company’s board of
directors. In the gloom that follows, the executive might find
himself tempted to pound on the
table in anger or kick over a chair.
He could leap up and scream at
the group. Or he might maintain
a grim silence, glaring at everyone before stalking off.
But if he had a gift for self-regulation, he would choose a different approach. He would pick his
words carefully, acknowledging
the team’s poor performance
without rushing to any hasty judgment. He would
then step back to consider the reasons for the failure. Are they personal – a lack of effort? Are there
any mitigating factors? What was his role in the debacle? After considering these questions, he would
call the team together, lay out the incident’s consequences, and offer his feelings about it. He would
then present his analysis of the problem and a wellconsidered solution.
Why does self-regulation matter so much for
leaders? First of all, people who are in control of
their feelings and impulses – that is, people who are
reasonable – are able to create an environment of
trust and fairness. In such an environment, politics
and infighting are sharply reduced and productivity
is high. Talented people flock to the organization
and aren’t tempted to leave. And self-regulation has
a trickle-down effect. No one wants to be known as a
hothead when the boss is known for her calm approach. Fewer bad moods at the top mean fewer
throughout the organization.
Second, self-regulation is important for competitive reasons. Everyone knows that business today is
rife with ambiguity and change. Companies merge
and break apart regularly. Technology transforms
work at a dizzying pace. People who have mastered
their emotions are able to roll with the changes.
When a new change program is announced, they
don’t panic; instead, they are able to suspend judgment, seek out information, and listen to executives explain the new program. As the initiative
moves forward, they are able to move with it.
Sometimes they even lead the way. Consider the
case of a manager at a large manufacturing company. Like her colleagues, she had used a certain
software program for five years.
The program drove how she collected and reported data and how
she thought about the company’s
strategy. One day, senior executives announced that a new program was to be installed that
would radically change how information was gathered and assessed within the organization.
While many people in the company complained bitterly about
how disruptive the change would
be, the manager mulled over the
reasons for the new program and
was convinced of its potential to
improve performance. She eagerly
attended training sessions – some
of her colleagues refused to do
so – and was eventually promoted
to run several divisions, in part because she used
the new technology so effectively.
I want to push the importance of self-regulation
to leadership even further and make the case that it
enhances integrity, which is not only a personal
virtue but also an organizational strength. Many of
the bad things that happen in companies are a function of impulsive behavior. People rarely plan to exaggerate profits, pad expense accounts, dip into the
till, or abuse power for selfish ends. Instead, an opportunity presents itself, and people with low impulse control just say yes.
By contrast, consider the behavior of the senior
executive at a large food company. The executive
was scrupulously honest in his negotiations with
local distributors. He would routinely lay out his
cost structure in detail, thereby giving the distributors a realistic understanding of the company’s pricing. This approach meant the executive couldn’t always drive a hard bargain. Now, on occasion, he felt
the urge to increase profits by withholding informa-
People who
have mastered
their emotions
are able to
roll with the
changes. They
don’t panic.
98
harvard business review
November–December 1998