Scaling Up Emotional
Intelligence to Inspire the Crowd
Five ways to inspire purposeful collective action on a grand scale.
While it’s bad to ignore a crisis, the more
serious problems for today’s leaders arise when they try to rouse collective
will to address or prevent organisational emergencies. Heads nod around
conference tables as well laid out rationales and action plans for strategic
change are presented. Months later, however, the promised results fail to
arrive. Somewhere, somehow, a silent disconnect has intervened between those
who see the big vision and those tasked with executing it, as if both groups
hadn’t been on the same page all along, or even on the same team.
This sort of failure
in strategy execution may
be more common than most executives are willing to admit. Clear thinking and
logic can chart a navigable path up the mountain, but the commitment to brave a
risky climb can come only from the heart. And, as too many leaders discover,
verbal commitments mean little when they aren’t backed by collective
emotional engagement.
The substantial body of literature on “emotional
intelligence” brims with tips on how leaders can inspire people one-on-one, or
in small groups. But creating an inspiration ripple effect that can be felt
throughout large collectives necessitates a different, though related skillset.
Group-level emotion
Inspirational leaders such as Martin Luther
King, Jr. may have shaped history by crystallising their cause into a rallying
cry for millions, but for the most part political victories are less about coasting on charisma and more
about carefully orchestrated words and actions. Large groups of people can be motivated by
observing that something or someone they strongly identify with has been
valued, much as thousands of sports fans can experience joy about their team’s
victory even if they did not gain any tangible (economic) benefit personally.
Building on this phenomenon, research
has shown that a social mechanism
called “group-level emotion” is critical in strategy execution.
Managing collective emotions is especially
important in times of crisis, when people are dominated by fear that the future
will only get worse. Collective fear will yield only to another emotion as
powerful as itself, so rather than trying to talk their way out of the problem
leaders need to align their words with their actions to inspire constructive
emotions such as passion, hope, self-worth.
Renault-Nissan
Research
suggests that great leaders
can use five levers to develop this sort of emotional
capital within organisations. To make the discussion as concrete as possible I will use the
example of Carlos Ghosn and the Renault-Nissan Alliance. In 1999, Renault
invested over five billion dollars to acquire a minority equity stake in the
flagging Japanese automaker Nissan. Nissan was burdened with high debt,
unprofitable product lines, and losses over six of the previous seven years.
Other carmakers were afraid to touch the company, in part due to anticipation
of Japanese resistance to change even under serious financial difficulty. The
perceived cultural difference between France and Japan increased observers’
scepticism about the investment, with many predicting a massive failure. The
Renault executive chosen as architect of the alliance was Carlos Ghosn. Within three years, a business miracle
happened: Nissan became profitable—not only through cost-cutting but also
through enormous strides in innovation.
Five emotional levers to build emotional capital
If Ghosn was asked to explain his success, he
would probably have highlighted traditional change tools such as building
trust, transparency, clarity of change goals, etc. While these logical,
“left-brain” explanations make intuitive sense, they do not fully explain why he
succeeded so decisively. To draw a better picture of his success I show how
Ghosn masterfully applied these tools to elicit five different types of
collective emotions.
· Respectful
Authenticity – Alignment between thought, action, and feelings. Ghosn
realised that attempts simply to impose changes from the top, would
have failed. He had to open up unconventional channels for constructive
criticism. With this in mind he decreed that all top-level meetings be
conducted, and all reports be prepared, in English, so that senior leaders
could start fresh on neutral territory. By doing so, Ghosn prepared the way for
frank and open discussion in formal meetings (rather than in corridors), and
actively encouraged Japanese managers to disagree and debate their points with
him. Hitherto-hidden feelings toward leadership and change—in particular
negative ones—could be expressed as long as it was done in a mutually
respectful way.
· Deserved
Pride – The feeling that we are appreciated for our differences
and concrete contributions to others. This was especially important
for Ghosn, the self-proclaimed “outsider”. He included Japanese middle
managers in strategy development and assigned company president Yoshikawa
Hanawa the face-saving duty of picking the Japanese members of the executive
committee. In so doing, Ghosn demonstrated to employees that Nissan’s cultural
identity was something they could be proud of.
· Realistic
Hope – A feeling that today’s actions will improve the collective
future. Ghosn wasted little time in signaling his faith in Nissan’s
long-term growth. By mid-2000, the “Nissan Revival Plan” was in full swing,
with Ghosn announcing plans to introduce 22 all-new models over the next three
years. He set about hiring new engineers for electric cars and invested $922
million building new plants in the U.S. In addition to making good business
sense, his actions encouraged employees to focus on Nissan’s bright prospects.
· Aspirational
Discontent – The belief that it is possible to fulfill one’s
highest potential. Not all positive, productive emotions are warm and
fuzzy. Restlessness and dissatisfaction have their place, as long as they do
not devolve into apathy. Even narcissistic ambition can be channeled in a healthy
direction. After the Nissan Revival Plan began to bear fruit, Ghosn refused to
proclaim ultimate victory, saying, “My biggest worry is complacency inside
Nissan.” For him, targets were bars to vault over, not boxes to tick. Human
beings want to be a part of something great. No obituary ever began with the sentence, “He
met his targets.”
· Thoughtful
Passion – The feeling of deep, high-energy personal
engagement. We are never more passionate than when an exciting new
challenge beckons. Aware of this, Ghosn assembled nine cross-functional teams
composed solely of middle managers from different departments and divisions
within Nissan and assigned them to develop an ambitious corporate strategy for
renewal. Understandably, this unaccustomed authority kindled extraordinary
passion, pride, and effort in the middle managers.
Note that all of the actions above could have
been ascribed to sound business rationale alone. Herein lies the “magic” of
emotional capital actions: they display both left-brain logic and right-brain
emotional engagement—and don’t require one-on-one interactions to inspire large
crowds.
Conclusion
Building emotional capital for collective action
is ultimately a matter of careful attunement to the emotional needs of your
various constituencies such as customers, employees and communities. The five
levers of emotional capital can be applied almost anywhere leaders seek to
influence more people than they can closely engage with, using left-brain
and right-brain alignment to inspire positive collective action within their
organisations.
Quy
Huy is Professor of
Strategic Management at INSEAD. He is also Programme Director of the Strategy
Execution Programme, part of INSEAD’s suite of Executive Development
Programmes.
Read more at http://knowledge.insead.edu/blog/insead-blog/scaling-up-emotional-intelligence-to-inspire-the-crowd-4607#AgjElLhTXY1vcUbw.99
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