RSOG LEADERSHIP FORUM
Keeping Emotion in Check – My Clinical Journey
with
Nadiah Wan
When | : | 21 February 2017 |
Where | : | Razak School of Government |
Speaker | : | Nadiah Wan |
About the Seminar
A famous critic once said “Your intellect may be confused, but your emotions will never lie to you”. It seems that the heart is much more difficult to manage as compared to the head. The two could also be perceived as a built-in check and balance in every human being. Be that as it may, many employees appear to struggle with managing their emotions in particularly for those who work in the frontline with rather pressing working conditions. The worst part is that they are facing them day in day out, likely for the rest of their working life. How do they keep their emotions in check? How do they synchronise the head and heart, if it is possible? Perhaps, in the first place, what is emotion to them and are there ways to describe them? Nadiah Wan will share her thoughts and experience relating to the topic in this Leadership Forum.
Summary
Leadership is generally a process of motivating people and mobilising resources to accomplish common goals. Great leaders are aware of their own leadership style. For them, having awareness of how their style influences their team makes these already great leaders, exceptional. However, the world today is characterised by increasing variety, interdependency and connectivity. There is a mountain of research revealing that what people want from their leaders today keep changing dramatically as the world is relentlessly fast and dynamic. There is no doubt that more human touch is needed to deal with these emerging challenges and demands. Hence, with the growing trend of personalisation, emotional leadership has been identified as one of the more effective ways to lead people. Emotional leadership is a process that leaders use to influence their followers towards a common goal.
When people hear about emotional leadership, negative thoughts, such as irrationality, immaturity, unpredictability and danger, would mostly come to mind. People tend to misunderstand this art of leadership as it involves feelings and emotions rather than strategic planning and thinking. However, the speaker believes that emotional leadership only works when a person is adaptive, has high emotional intelligence, practices mindfulness and possess boundless networking.
Firstly, the speaker emphasised the need for adaptive skills – amongst others to regulate distress and maintain disciplined attention as leaders can become better equipped in taking on the gradual but meaningful process of change. A complex technical problem can be solved with knowledge and procedures already at hand, while adaptive challenges requires new ways to understand new patterns of behaviours. Many will feel threatened as they are pushed through major changes, but the responsibility of the adaptive leader is to understand and identify the root cause of the challenges and to find a way to effectively and sustainably make it work. Practicing adaptive leadership is a hands-on affair, one that takes people outside of their comfort zones and address problems objectively. In addition, adaptive leaders embody a true sense of transparency and forthcoming in their character, which enables the assessment of the capability of other people to develop others while maintaining their credibility and fairness.
Secondly, high emotional intelligence allows a leader to identify, understand and not only manage their own emotions, but also do that with others in a very empowering way. While being adaptive gives credit to a leader in managing challenges and changes, emotional intelligence is understanding and managing both personal as well as other people’s emotions. The speaker highlighted that the emotional leader is about being sensitive to the self and being able to manage emotions around others. Managing emotions include self-regulation and understanding self-motivation. However, the core of emotional intelligence is self-awareness. The speaker stressed that a leader must understand their own motivations and behaviours to develop an understanding of others. A lack of self-awareness can prevent the ability to think rationally and apply technical capabilities. Empathetic leaders also learn from their own and other people’s mental state to recognise, connect with others. Thus, empathy is a crucial social skill that bridges an emotional leader to its people to get them involved and mobilise them in managing conflict.
Thirdly, mindfulness is the practice of self-observation without judgment with a focus on our minds and inner voices. The speaker emphasised the need for leaders to develop mindful practices such as meditation and prayer to clear the mind of clutter, instill creativity and to focus on what is important. Practicing mindfulness enables a leader to attentively recognise the problems or a situation before making any judgement or decisions. Becoming a mindful leader is about giving some time for yourself to sit, think and reflect. As a leader becomes more mindful, one will become more fulfilled to generate ideas, mobilise people and network.
Fourthly, the speaker stated that leaders must practice operational networking to build relationships with people who can refer to you as well as assist in developing yourself. The context of networking can be both internal and external to extract useful information which can help to figure out future priorities or to gain stakeholders support. She stressed that building relationships with people indirectly benefits a leader to gather contacts to form a coalition for work related activities or hobbies. In addition to that, a leader’s networking circle should be boundless (i.e. regardless of age, gender, etc.) for leaders to stay at the top of both personal and professional position. For instance, cultivating a mentor-mentee relationship will allow a leader to be taught while developing other people as well.
Finally, the speaker highlighted the lust for lifelong learning as one of the traits of an emotional leader. Continuous learning helps leaders to keep up with the pace of today’s world as leaders must be adaptive to sustain their environment and maintain engagement with people around them, with high emotional intelligence. On the other hand, emotional leader must practice mindfulness to ensure a balanced mental health to develop new and creative ideas in today’s world while exploring a wide range of networking. She concluded that being an emotional leader is simply to be human, to manage the self on how we react in everyday life, to inspire people, to tap into their best and to deliver amazing work.
Key Issues Raised
- Mindfulness is not merely about meditation but it is a mental note that will help you lead a more positive and happy life. This can be as simple as starting the day with a cup of coffee. The speaker advised to practice things that will create positive energy fields and discipline yourself to commit. The success of mindfulness is based on the allocation of quality time to think about life and to self-reflect. Different people have different views of time and resources but one needs to treat it as precious things that they own.
- To change others is not easy. Emotional leaders must always be mindful about other people’s emotions as they are naturally empathetic people. Signaling the process of change before drastic actions may help leaders to implement changes slowly. Otherwise, find alternatives that creates tension to get them used to the idea during the transition.
- It is always a challenge to understand people and their motivation. Being an emotional leader, one must dive into diversifying their social sphere. However, it is vital for a leader to understand their motivations. As motivation keeps changing, it is essential to find new ones. This will help to gain a fresh perspective, to experience something new, to find new hobbies and to expose yourself to new people. Be kind to yourself to create a mental balance and spread positivity to other people. Hence, learn to let go, share experience, practice give and take, and recognise people’s emotions.
- Leaders tend to micromanage as they fear things do not turn out as expected. Being adaptive with high emotional intelligence, a leader must put trust on people at the right time for the right job, clear the expectation, set up a system and build the road for them to develop themselves.
- It is natural for a leader to feel lonely at the top. Do not let poison take charge of your life and take it as a challenge. As opportunity always comes in a time of crisis, it is important to find the right people who understand and support you to take up the challenge. In addition, find a mentor as your role model to navigate through the challenges because having a right mentor will prevent the crisis of low self-esteem and frustration in career development and self-growth.
- In dealing with younger generations such as Gen-Ys, always remember that it is important for them to have their own space, but to also help them to find themselves. The right way to approach them is through coaching as they need directions, not orders. Build networks and close the gap to cultivate people’s trust. Having the social network is important to always update what is currently happening around you.
About the Speaker
Nadiah Wan holds a Masters in Public Health (Nutrition) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard College. Nadiah has worked with the Sunway Group since 2011, first as a Manager with the Group Strategy and Corporate Development department and later as Director, Business Development and Corporate Communications at Sunway Medical Centre. She has played a significant role in strategy development and driving revenue growth for the hospital. As the Chief Operating Officer (Clinical Services), Nadiah oversees Medical Services, Medical Affairs, Clinical Services Development and Legal Services. Prior to joining Sunway, Nadiah worked as an Associate at the Boston Consulting Group Southeast Asian office based in Kuala Lumpur. She is currently the Vice-President of the Harvard Club of Malaysia.
Contact
To get more information on this event, you can contact us via email at programmes@rsog.com.my