Are Men Really Too Emotional to Lead?

A headline in a newspaper caught my eye: ‘Face it - men are too emotional to be leaders’. At first it made me laugh.  (I’ll get back to my sense of humour later.)

Then I stopped to think again and to get serious: time to bust this myth! We’ve been perpetuating it for centuries, the myth that women are emotional and men are not and so therefore men are better leaders. Which begs the question, what does it mean to ‘be emotional’ anyway?

In my experience, - working in the field of human emotions for the best part of my adult life -, ‘being emotional’ means that a person’s actions or communications are largely driven by their emotions with little thought given to impact or consequences. Often referred to as a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction, the emotionally driven behaviour is hardly ever accompanied by self-awareness, nor impulse-control - both key components of emotional intelligence - and so with that in mind, I would agree that anyone who is ‘being emotional’ is not going to be a good leader. The myth however, is that this applies more to women than to men. And on that point, I beg to differ (and I believe the headline’s references to some of our world leaders would bear me out –--- but I digress!) In my experience, we ALL suffer from a lack of self-awareness, without which our emotions will inevitably take charge, with often unfortunate consequences.

On the other hand, the ability to be self-aware and to emotionally self-managed is key to good leadership (among other things) and while it may generally show up differently in the sexes, we are all equally capable of developing it ….. (or not, as we can see evidenced in leadership around the world…..).

The sad thing is that the myth has contributed to disempowering women – and we here at Applied Emotional Mastery are all done with that!

Being women of this time in history ourselves, we know what it is to be raised to expect to ‘have it all’ but find instead we are expected to ‘do it all’ – (even with the best partner in the world!) We also know that women have the capacity to be as good leaders as any of the men in our lives, but that too often the juggling required to balance all the doing, combined with the disempowering myth(s) still impacting us, and well – emotions take over and overwhelm and stress happens! (If this resonates with you, read more here).

But we can, men and women alike, bust this myth and develop our innate capacities! – And that begins with taking our emotions and their impact on our actions seriously. Seriously.

Which brings me back to something else I take very seriously, humour.

It’s because of a question that comes up a lot these days: how do you stay focused, centred, with the world in such disarray? And I wonder, how do you do it? We would love to hear from you! For me, when there’s a situation or an experience of the world that makes me feel a bit helpless, even hopeless, and it really doesn’t feel like there’s anything you can do about it, I go to humour – I find what’s funny, even if it’s just my own reflection! My sense of humour might not be the same as yours, but I have yet to meet anyone that doesn’t feel benefit from a good laugh in a difficult situation – and sometimes that’s all we can do, ‘find the funny’!

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