Inspirational Presence. Jeff Evans

and act upon it. The oldest portion of the brain is at the juncture of the spinal cord and the brain and is called the amygdule. It is also referred to as the “reptilian brain” or the primitive brain. This portion of the brain developed millennia before the frontal lobes and the higher order processing that is handled there. The amygdule has some very basic functions. It looks at information in front of us and processes it through survival functions. Is it something we need to kill, eat, mate with, or ignore? This is the location for “fight, flight, freeze, or follow.” These primordial functions are what kept humans alive and the species perpetuated.

      Through the years, the frontal lobes developed to a point of taking over most of the higher-order processing and dealing with the world in a more rules-based and rational fashion. This, however, has not taken the amygdule out of the equation. It is still alive and well and wired into our hormonal system to provide us with all the energy we need to chase down a mastodon or flee a saber-toothed tiger. Its evolutionary path has been slow and has maintained its old focus through the millennia.

      Our emotions are associated with hormonal states in our bodies. There seems to be a correlation effect, not necessarily a cause-and-effect relationship. In other words, emotions and hormone levels tend to be predictably associated. One can expect that with certain hormonal changes, predictable emotions will follow. For instance, if an athlete begins taking steroids and bringing up his testosterone levels, it is fairly predictable that emotional outbursts (’roid rages) will follow.

      Another example of this is related to fear. If we watch a particularly scary movie, we begin to feel the fear in our bodies. If it is strong enough, we will even begin to taste the adrenaline response. Our hearts will race; our breathing will quicken. To take that even farther, days later, just thinking about that movie may produce the same effect. The brain does not really know the difference between something fearful being in front of it or our just thinking about something frightening. Let’s expand this even more. After we’ve watched the really scary movie, it is possible that that night will be filled with noises and unidentified shapes that can quickly be identified as terrible threats (usually imagined). The point here is that our hormonal systems and our brains are joined in ways that work together to create our reality. If we get scared, our brains will quickly begin finding more threats. At the same time, if we get calm and trusting, our brains will quickly begin finding opportunities and possibilities. A fearful mind looks for bad things, and a calm mind looks for good things.

      Going back to the correlation effect, if we start thinking about threats, our bodies will correspondingly create the hormonal reactions that are associated with fight-or-flight. If we start thinking about creative opportunities, we get an altogether different hormonal response. Our stress levels go down, we relax more, and our thinking becomes more expansive.

      Furthermore, we also know that consistently living in specific emotional states, such as anger, also are followed by a physiological change. Ultimately, we will change at a biological, or cellular, level to be consistent with an overall recurring emotional state. For example, when a cell that has been loaded with the peptide response to anger divides, it creates a new cell that “wants” that same level of anger peptides. At that point, the biological need will trigger the brain to look for reasons to be angry in order to satisfy the cellular need for the hormonal response to anger. By the same token, if we have developed a body that lives in heightened states of happiness, our cells will call out for events that will fill the cellular need for happiness. Either one can impact the other, or they work both ways. Our bodies can become habitually tied to a hormonal and emotional state, and therefore, it becomes the energy that we project to others, just by getting close to them.

      What does this have to do with leadership, and why are we talking about it now? The answer goes back to the social evolution of a tribe. While we are talking about the individual phenomenon of the emotional/mental/physical connection, there is also a group connection of the same sort. This is another function of the limbic system.

      To fully make the connection to leadership, we need to remember the social aspect of tribal living, with deep similarities to how pack animals operate. We are born with our limbic systems attuned to our mothers. That continues in life, as we learn to attune to others to provide information in social settings. We learn to follow the lead in our family systems of people to whom we give authority to keep us safe or to give us guidance. That continues throughout our lives and shows up in every group setting we experience.

      As we move through groups during the course of life, each one of us is transmitting emotional information to others around us as well as receiving emotional information from those same people. As we spend more time together, as when we establish a team or social group, the limbic systems of that group will learn an order of emotional listening and develop a pattern of emotions that plays out predictably when that group comes together. The key for leaders is that every group, at a deep and subconscious level, is looking for the person in that group who is the emotional leader and who will provide group direction and guidance. If there is a social hierarchy at play, those patterns help the group attune to a person more quickly and consistently. For instance, if the group knows that a particular person is “in charge”, the individuals tend to look first to that person for leadership signals before they look elsewhere. In the absence of clear leadership signals, the group will move to any strong emotion that feels compelling—but this can be very destructive.

      We can see many examples of groups where the emotional leadership arises from a basis of fear. British psychoanalyst W. R. Bion said that the natural leader of a group would be the one who was the most paranoid and the first to find a reason to enter an emotional state of fight-or-flight. In context, Bion was working with British soldiers during World War II who had just been evacuated from Dunkirk and were suffering from “shell shock,” as it was called at the time. (We would now term this posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.) These men had every reason to feel traumatized and paranoid at that time, but the significance here still remains clear. Leadership of a group can come from a place of fear, distrust, and doubt. The limbic system works either way, and a group follows either way. As we talk about leadership, it becomes increasingly clear that the emotional state of a leader is absolutely critical. Also, every group will eventually find a source of leadership. Whoever is the formal leader of a group either can lead it—or watch it be led.

      Daniel Goleman’s work Emotional Intelligence (1996) points out some other more positive examples of why the emotional state of the leader is important. It is clear from the research on emotions and leadership in the workplace that positive moods have a positive correlation to productivity and job performance. By the same token, moods like anger, resentment, and hostility can have a negative impact on job performance and increase turnover in the workplace. I believe that we all know this correlation from our experience in life. How many of us have found ourselves making errors at critical times, simply because we are in a bad mood? Or, when we have felt great, we’ve noticed that all of our tasks seem to be easier and faster. Many of the leaders with whom I have worked have described this correlation as intuitively obvious, to the point of labeling it with the Disney tune of “Whistle While You Work.” Indeed, intuition is a strong part of our ability as humans to lead others, to navigate social networks, and to create a path through uncharted regions. Most of us know this from experience. If we are in a relationship of any sort—work, family, romantic, or social—where the mood is unhappy, heavy, or depressing, we feel ourselves dragged down. We will feel uninspired. Conversely, if that same situation has optimism and enthusiasm, we will feel that mood moving through us as well. How often, in even the smallest ways, has a social setting inspired us to try something? People who are in emotionally safe, trusting, and supportive environments take more risks. They feel freer to be creative and spontaneous.

      Try this out for yourself—based on your experience, can you feel the difference in your own performance based on mood? The Dali Lama states it this way: “Choose optimism. It feels better.”

      Here, I am making a point for leadership. While there are many, many research studies that basically illustrate the correlational impact of emotions and job performance, discussing those in depth would talk to your head. In order to fully grasp the leadership concept discussed in this book, I ask you to take a different approach. The type of leader described here is balanced in approaching the world through