As we prepare to host leaders for Dr. Abiola Salami International Leadership Bootcamp in Mombasa, Kenya in June 2024, we consider it important to discuss Emotional and Mental Health (EMH) in leadership this month of May. We started the month by discussing 10 Warning Signs A Leader’s Emotional & Mental Health Might Be At Great Risk. Today, we continue the discussion with 10 Excuses Top Executives Give About Their Emotional & Mental Health.

As we host leaders across the globe to drive transformational leadership with The Magic of Emotional IntelligenceTM in Mombasa, Kenya from June 23rd – 29th 2024, we started a conversation last week on 8 avoidable costs your team and organization may be incurring due to low emotional intelligence competence on your leadership.

In the last episode, we discovered four avoidable costs of low emotional intelligence – lower productivity, lower staff motivation, lower sales/revenue and lower empathy. This week, we will look at final four avoidable costs as follows:

E. Increase Attrition Rate
When leaders are not emotionally intelligent, team members constantly seek opportunities to leave the organization. The 6th President of the United States of America, John Quincy Adams, famously said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” Some leaders depress those they lead by their very words and actions. When the leader is tone-deaf, insensitive, and crude to employees, the recipients of such emotionally unintelligent behaviour will naturally loathe not just the leader by the entire workplace.
Nobody enjoys waking up in the morning every day just to go to a job to meet a boss who will constantly bash them. As much as your team members earn a living from the organizations, they are adding value in return for that compensation. Respect is a basic human need regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity and socioeconomic background. Emotionally intelligent leaders know how to make everyone around them feel important because regardless of their position on the corporate ladder, they are collaborators in achieving an organization’s vision. This fosters employee retention.

F. Lower Cohesion
Peak performing organizations intentionally coalesce three factors of production (land, labour and capital) to achieve overarching goals. The leader’s role which is traditionally known as the entrepreneurial ability is to coordinate the three factors of production. It takes a very high level of emotional intelligence to lead people who are different in terms of ideology, culture, religion, politics or even socio-economic strata towards achieving a singular objective. Whilst office politics is is present in every organization, a leadership with low levels of emotional intelligence will further exacerbate tensions and further polarize the team because different power blocs will engage in turf wars and superiority contests to the utter detriment of the organization’s vision. In extreme cases, team members sabotage one another just to prove senseless points and usually because leadership is aligned with a caucus or fraction, there is a divide-and-conquer approach to management which ultimately proves disastrous.

G. Lower Innovation & Creativity
When leaders are not emotionally intelligent, team members who can’t leave the organization yet, will mostly retreat to their shells. There are several documented instances where team members go through the motion and do the bare minimum just to fulfil all righteousness. Some leaders are intimidated or ignorant of the greatness of the talent pool available to them. Some other leaders still believe that the Chief Executive Officer must be the smartest person in the room. This isn’t only untrue, it’s counter-productive. Leaders with low emotional intelligence are killing the organizations they lead – not so much as the team members they think they are flexing their muscles over. When leaders lack emotional intelligence, their egos and grip on power stifles creativity and innovation. The brightest idea can come from the unlikeliest of sources and usually down the rungs of the corporate ladder – that idea if viable, has to be considered as more important than the person who put it forward or the ego of the leader who has to execute it.

H. Lower Objectivity In The Application Of Rewards & Penalty
The abuse of rewards and penalties is a signature of leaders with low levels of emotional intelligence. Successful organizations are unpinned by effective corporate governance which guides their actions and inactions; just like countries have constitutions that guide the actions of citizens – organizations also have their rule of law of codes of conduct. Leaders with low emotional intelligence are always keen to make individuals more powerful, as opposed to making the organizations they lead more powerful by enforcing the tents and ethos. Top performers must rewarded with appropriate incentives such as promotions, bonuses, improved physical working spaces or other fringe benefits. Conversely, underperforming team members should be subject to performance improvement initiatives or even shown the door when their behaviour is incorrigible. Leaders with low emotionally intelligence weaponize unethical means to protect their own personal interests over the corporate interests.
Emotional intelligence is non-negotiable for organizations looking to hire peak performing leaders. From the supervisor level to the board level, training and retraining should be a regular practice to develop the capacity of leaders to inspire a culture of peak performance.

Growth Opportunities
To further position your leaders for peak performance, you can download a free copy of the latest edition of The Peak Performer Magazine You can also enrol your Mid-level Leadership Team for the Made4More Accelerator Program and your Senior Leadership Team for the Dr. Abiola Salami International Leadership Bootcamp MOMBASA 2024 We also have an upcoming training for leaders in public service

About Dr. Abiola Salami
Dr. Abiola Salami is the Convener of Dr Abiola Salami International Leadership Bootcamp and The Peak PerformerTM. He is the Principal Performance Strategist at CHAMP – a full scale professional services firm trusted by high performing business leaders for providing Executive Coaching, Workforce Development & Advisory Services to improve performance. You can reach his team on hello@abiolachamp.com and connect with him @abiolachamp on all social media platforms.