If You Don’t FEEL Well, You Can’t LEAD Well

In my last video, I asked, “If You Don’t FEEL Well, Can You Truly Make a Difference?”

FEEL is an acronym for Freedom, Energy, Enthusiasm, and Love. If you FEEL great, that’s going to have an empowering impact on your ability and skill in making a difference. And the better you FEEL the easier it is to LEAD.

So, what are the core aspects that support how much influence and impact you will have when you LEAD?

To explain, I’ve created another acronym. L.E.A.D. stands for:

• Love
• Empathy
• Actualization
• Direction

LOVE: Acceptance, connection, and care.

Did you notice that Love is also part of my acronym for FEEL (Freedom, Energy, Enthusiasm, Love)?

Love is a human-hearted emotion, one that’s expressed or felt in many other ways, including acceptance, connection, and care. How can you accept another person without prejudice and connect with them unless you feel that crazy little thing called love?

When it comes to leadership, consider who’s been the most impactful and influential leader in your life. Who’s made a difference in how you think, feel, act, and believe in yourself?

Next, how would you describe the core emotion that supported their leadership?

Now, let’s flip the question. How do you LEAD from a place of LOVE?

What does that FEEL (Freedom, Energy, Enthusiasm, Love) when you LEAD from LOVE?

What does that look like to others? Would they describe your leadership as evoking acceptance, connection, and care? And if not, why not?

EMPATHY: The emotional skill to understand what someone is feeling without over-identifying.

Empathy, sympathy, and compassion often get confused because there are similarities in how these three feelings are expressed.

It’s important that we understand what we are feeling and how to describe those feelings. How we communicate with others is one form of how we share our emotions. I defer to Brené Brown’s detailed descriptions of these three emotions in “Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience.”

According to Brown’s research, empathy shows up as,

“understanding what someone is feeling, not feeling it for them. If someone is feeling lonely, empathy doesn't require us to feel lonely too, only to reach back into our own experience with loneliness, so we can understand and connect.”

When you are in a leadership role, you’re not taking someone by the hand and trying to directly experience and feel their emotions.

It's something of a paradox that you maintain distance without “dis-connection” (recall connection as an aspect of LOVE). Distance is the required space for you to be who you are without losing yourself in the other person’s feelings.

Empathy is a bridge to compassion.

If you can understand what the person is feeling without experiencing your history of that feeling, then you can practice compassion, which Brown describes as:

“Compassion is the daily practice of recognizing and accepting our shared humanity so that we treat ourselves and others with loving-kindness, and we take action in the face of suffering.”

ACTUALIZATION: Bringing ideas to light and reality.

Is there anything more powerful and wonderful than bringing your ideas and dreams to life — to accomplish your goals and celebrate those wins with others you love?

As a coach, one of the most powerful moments I experience with a client is when they realize their potential, start acting on their dream, and finally bring it into the world to share with others. What they FEEL (Freedom, Energy, Enthusiasm, Love) goes from “meh” and mediocre to off the charts.

This is how I define transformational leadership:

As human-hearted leaders, we walk alongside or behind the person or people we support – never out in front or above them.

When you lead well, those you support will believe that they accomplished their goals and dreams by themselves — almost naturally.

The great leader speaks little.
He never speaks carelessly.
He works without self-interest
and leaves no trace.
When all is finished, the people say,
“We did it ourselves.” (1)

DIRECTION: A clear path and tools to stay on track

“A journey of a thousand miles
Begins beneath the feet” (2)

If you know where you stand, you can chart a course and take the first step on the right path. Even if you veer off course, you can get back on track because you know the place from where you started.

As metaphorical as this sounds, do you sense the truth of this?

Your honesty and truth are found in the direction of your leadership — in how you lead yourself and how others follow your lead.

Truth and honesty are two of the more profound human qualities of leadership, which in turn invite the trust of others, and allow you to guide them to where they want to go.

Remember:

Your wisdom, leadership, and guidance are precisely what someone, somewhere, needs right now. So don’t hold yourself back!

Footnotes

1. Verse 17: Dyer, Wayne W. Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life: Living the Wisdom of the Tao. New York: Hay House, 2007.
2. Verse 64: Lin, Derek, trans. Tao Te Ching: Annotated & Explained. Vermont: Skylight Paths, 2011.