PART2
WINNING EMOTIONAL
COMMITMENT
LEADERS HAVE NO MORE IMPORTANT OR MORE POTENT TOOL than themselves. They are the primary expression of their stories. Their artistic mediums—mind, emotion, and spirit—are not separate from who they are as people. They are the medium and they are the message. As previous chapters have shown, their lives, insights, and vision all contribute to winning intellectual commitment. But their lives and their insights are in the past, and their vision is about the future. Winning emotional commitment is more a function of how a leader relates to others in the present than it is a function of the past or the future. This form of commitment flows from how leaders are seen to conduct themselves on a day-to-day and moment-to-moment basis, and particularly when those days and moments are laden with emotion. It is during such times that leaders must make speedy or spontaneous choices about how they will behave in relation to their circumstances and to others.
There are three leadership competencies involved in winning emotional commitment: self-awareness, emotional engagement, and fostering hope. Self-awareness is a precondition for emotional engagement. When such engagement occurs, a leader then has the opportunity to tap into constructive emotional energy and to transform unconstructive emotions. He can then also foster the hope that is a foundation for committed action. This process is shown in Figure Part 2-1.
Figure Part 2-1. The process of winning emotional commitment.
Much can be achieved when followers are mobilized by a leader’s insight, vision, and storytelling ability—when they become intellectually committed. When they also feel hopeful, emotional commitment can arise, and emotional commitment can work in tandem with intellectual commitment, becoming a far more powerful force than either is alone. The words of Jacob Bronowski, first cited in Chapter 1, are worth repeating here: “. . . the intellectual and the emotional commitment working together as one, has made the Ascent of Man.”