Episode 114 - Who Said Showing Emotion Doesn’t Pay?

<h2 data-pm-slice="0 0 []"><strong>Summary</strong></h2> <p class="">This week we explore how showing the right amount of emotion can improve the impact you have on others and their willingness to invest in your ideas.</p> <p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true"> </p> <h2><strong>Transcript</strong></h2> <p class="">Hello and welcome to episode 114 of the Leadership Today podcast where each week we bring research to life in your leadership. This week we explore how showing the right amount of emotion can improve the impact you have on others and their willingness to invest in your ideas.</p> <p class="">A common misunderstanding of Emotional Intelligence is that it’s all about holding back our emotions. This is certainly a part of Emotional Intelligence. After all, yelling at someone in the lunch room at work for not putting their cup in the dishwasher is probably not going to win you an employee of the month award. But Emotional Intelligence is not just about holding back emotions that might have a negative impact on others. It’s also about harnessing our emotions to have a more positive impact on others. Our ability to understand our own emotional state and how to manage our emotions is crucial, as is being able to empathise with others and build effective relationships. The goal of building Emotional Intelligence isn’t to become emotion-less. Rather it’s to acknowledge and use our emotions to improve our impact and performance.</p> <p class="">However, showing too much emotion can also be off putting to others. We need to be able to read the situation. It ends up being the classic Goldilocks scenario, where we need to demonstrate enough, but not too much, emotion.</p> <p class="">This has been backed up by a recent study. Researchers used facial analysis software to scan through around 500 Kickstarter promotional videos. Kickstarter is a platform that allows people to gain funding for their prototype ideas with people committing funds to buy the product, but only being charged once the product is produced a