Head or Heart and the flip of a coin – What’s your call?

I was recently in a meeting where I was told that the organization the person works for is “better at the head than we are at the heart.” I was struck by the statement and thought it was such a great way to describe the culture there. Right away I got a sense for the place and the types of dynamics that probably arise as a result of this organization’s overly developed head approach to their existence.

I was there to talk with them about emotional intelligence and how important I believe it is to successful leadership, career development and healthy organizations. The head and heart comment struck right to the core of what most people think when they hear emotional intelligence. “Isn’t that an oxymoron?” “I thought people were either one or the other.” These are the kind of reactions I get when I talk about emotional intelligence. I found myself excited to be in an organization that was astute enough to declare where they stood on this paradoxical dilemma of head and heart.

What was exciting to me was that the person I met with saw this dilemma as a continuum that needs to be balanced rather than an either/or conversation that needs to be decided. In my experience a growing number of organizations are more in the later camp. The current economic climate has made it even more about the bottom line, ROI, doing more with less and squeezing costs, etc. The result is that most organizations are putting more and more strain on their employees.

The more the organization increases the stress of their people the more they run the risk of decreasing productivity in the long run and I would argue the more people’s overall emotional intelligence decreases due to the stress. In other words, the head takes over, the heart gets squashed because everyone is operating in survival mode and the downward spiral feeds on itself because there is no room or time for the heart. Most organizations have chosen heads and gone with the policy of having their employees check their hearts at the door in the morning.

A recent study done by the Institute for Corporate Productivity on Emotional Intelligence in Today’s Organizations backs up my belief. 51.4% of organizations surveyed said that they had not and did not plan to implement an emotional intelligence initiative in their organization. This is obviously not a huge majority. It is still a striking number to me and not surprising given the current climate.

The employee / leadership development types of initiatives have always had a legacy of being nice to haves and not really contributing to the bottom line. In the end that makes them the first to go or the last to be considered when the initiative prioritization is driven by NPV, ROI, or whatever single financial metric a company uses to try and make apple and orange comparisons.

The truth is that as the survey suggests it is really a fifty/fifty proposition, just like flipping a coin, as to whether or not an organization is going to implement an initiative to encourage their employees to recognize and understand their emotions and develop the skills to use their awareness to manage himself or herself more effectively. The only hope beyond the random flip of a coin landing the right way is for more people to be as courageous as the person I met with.

Her act of bravery was that she came out and named the reality that her organization focused more on the head than the heart. She spoke eloquently about the impact it was having on her team and her leader’s in terms of unresolved and avoided conflict. She was curious about what to do about the bias toward headiness and how to begin to bring more focus on the heart side of the coin. All of which are great questions and worthy of longer conversations.

This discussion is also worth a lot more than just a simple toss of the coin. However if it takes a coin toss to start the conversation or force the thought, then so be it. So why don’t you try it? Flip the coin, heads for headiness and tails for heart. What would you call for yourself or for your organization? Remember, the coin speaks the truth. However I would argue that most organizations and individuals would be a lot better off if there was room for both. What about you?