Introduction
What triggers you?
A senior employee challenges your judgement in front of others.
A customer unfairly criticises your business.
Someone repeatedly fails to do what they promised.
A business partner questions your decision.
An employee makes an expensive mistake.
A supplier lets you down at precisely the wrong time.
Your numbers come in well below budget.
Someone interrupts you, ignores your advice, challenges your authority, or simply moves far more slowly than you would like.
What happens next?
Do you remain calm, curious and objective?
Or does something happen almost instantaneously inside you?
Your heart rate increases. Your muscles tighten. Your patience disappears. Your tone changes. You interrupt. You become defensive. You withdraw. You attack. You send an email you later regret.
Sometimes the most dangerous person in the room isn’t the difficult employee, unreasonable customer or argumentative business partner.
Sometimes it is the version of ourselves that appears when somebody presses exactly the right, or wrong, button.
For small-to-medium business owners and leaders, understanding emotional intelligence, self-awareness and emotional triggers isn’t simply an exercise in personal development. It is an important component of Leadership Development Perth, because the emotional behaviour of the owner or leader can influence decision-making, communication, conflict, culture, employee engagement, customer relationships, negotiation, governance and ultimately business performance.
The smaller the business, the greater this influence can become.
In a large corporation, employees may rarely encounter the CEO.
In an SME, people may encounter the owner every day.
They know whether Monday morning is a good time to approach you.
They know which subjects make you defensive.
They know whether bad news should be delivered immediately, or carefully delayed.
They know whether disagreement is genuinely encouraged.
They know whether mistakes become learning opportunities or public executions.
And, perhaps without either party realising it, they may gradually learn to manage your emotions rather than concentrating exclusively on managing the business.
That should concern every SME owner.
Throughout almost four decades of big corporate, being a start-up entrepreneur, and advising businesses across Australia and internationally, I have worked in environments involving substantial financial responsibility, complex negotiations, organisational transformation, boards, acquisitions, start-ups, strategic alliances and large teams. My experience has reinforced that technical competence and intelligence alone are not enough. Leadership also requires the capacity to understand yourself, understand other people and manage your behaviour when circumstances become difficult. My career has included leading 300 employees and 17 executive managers, business transformation, governance, strategic planning and complex stakeholder engagement, environments where the leader’s behaviour inevitably affects the people around them.
So perhaps one of the most important leadership questions you can ask isn’t:
“What is wrong with them?”
It is:
“What is happening inside me, and why am I reacting this way?”
That is where emotional intelligence begins.
Table of Contents
- Emotional Intelligence: What Does It Really Mean for an SME Leader?
- Why Emotional Intelligence Matters So Much in Small-to-Medium Businesses
- Self-Awareness: The Leadership Skill That Comes Before Everything Else
- What Triggers You, and Why?
- The Emotional Chain Reaction: From Trigger to Business Consequence
- The Most Common Emotional Triggers for SME Owners & Leaders
- When Your Greatest Strength Becomes Your Greatest Weakness
- The Amygdala Hijack: Why Intelligent People Sometimes React Irrationally
- Emotional Intelligence and Difficult Conversations
- Emotional Intelligence and Better Business Decision-Making
- The Dangerous Leadership Blind Spot: Intention Versus Impact
- Emotional Intelligence, Culture and Psychological Safety
- The Emotional Intelligence – Business Performance Connection
- A Practical Emotional Trigger Audit for SME Owners & Leaders
- The PAUSE Framework: How to Respond Rather Than React
- Practical Recommendations for SME Owners & Leaders
- Key Takeaways
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Conclusion: You Cannot Lead Others Effectively Until You Can Lead Yourself
Emotional Intelligence: What Does It Really Mean for an SME Leader? (Leadership Development Perth)
Emotional intelligence, commonly referred to as EI or EQ, is essentially the ability to recognise, understand and appropriately manage your own emotions while also recognising and responding effectively to the emotions of other people.
Psychologist and author Daniel Goleman helped bring emotional intelligence into mainstream leadership thinking. His widely recognised model focuses on five interconnected capabilities.
1. Self-Awareness
Can you recognise what you are feeling, understand why you are feeling it and appreciate how your emotional state affects your behaviour?
2. Self-Regulation
Can you control impulses and choose an appropriate response rather than automatically acting upon emotion?
3. Motivation
Can you maintain drive, resilience and focus despite setbacks, frustration and uncertainty?
4. Empathy
Can you genuinely understand another person’s perspective, even when you disagree with them?
5. Social Skills
Can you communicate, influence, build relationships, manage conflict and work effectively with different personalities?
For an SME owner, these capabilities aren’t abstract psychological concepts.
They play out continuously.
When an employee performs poorly.
When a customer complains.
When cash flow tightens.
When a manager disagrees with you.
When a negotiation becomes difficult.
When your business partner sees things differently.
When someone tells you something you simply don’t want to hear.
The real test of emotional intelligence isn’t what you know about EI.
It is what you do at precisely those moments.
Why Emotional Intelligence Matters So Much in Small-to-Medium Businesses (Leadership Development Perth)
The owner of an SME can have an extraordinarily powerful emotional influence over the organisation.
Your behaviour sends signals.
If you react aggressively to bad news, people may stop bringing you bad news.
If you humiliate employees for mistakes, people may begin hiding mistakes.
If you become defensive whenever challenged, people may eventually stop challenging you.
If your mood determines the atmosphere of the office, employees may spend considerable energy trying to determine which version of you has arrived at work.
If you continually interrupt people, they may stop explaining what they really think.
The result can be dangerous.
The owner believes:
“Nobody disagrees with me, so everybody must support the strategy.”
The employees think:
“There is no point disagreeing because he has already decided.”
Those are very different realities.
Your Emotional Behaviour Becomes Organisational Information
Employees continuously learn:
- What can safely be discussed.
- Which mistakes can be admitted.
- Whether dissent is tolerated.
- Whether difficult questions are welcome.
- How conflict is handled.
- Whether accountability means improvement or blame.
That is why emotional intelligence isn’t simply about being a “nicer” leader.
It can affect the quality of information upon which you make business decisions.
And that makes it commercially important.
Self-Awareness: The Leadership Skill That Comes Before Everything Else (Leadership Development Perth)
You cannot effectively manage something you cannot see.
That is why self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence.
Self-awareness requires more than knowing that you occasionally become angry, impatient or frustrated.
It requires understanding:
- What triggers those emotions.
- What assumptions sit behind them.
- What happens to your behaviour.
- How other people experience that behaviour.
- What consequences follow.
The difficult part is that most of us judge ourselves according to our intentions.
Other people judge us according to our behaviour.
You may think:
“I am decisive.”
Your management team may experience:
“He doesn’t listen.”
You may think:
“I have high standards.”
Your employees may experience:
“Nothing is ever good enough.”
You may think:
“I am passionate.”
Others may experience:
“He becomes intimidating when challenged.”
You may think:
“I empower my managers.”
They may experience:
“Every meaningful decision still has to go through the owner.”
Self-awareness lives in the uncomfortable space between those two perspectives.
What Triggers You, and Why? (Leadership Development Perth)
An emotional trigger is an event, comment, behaviour or circumstance that produces a strong emotional response.
The interesting part is that two people can experience exactly the same event and react completely differently.
Imagine a senior manager saying:
“I don’t agree with your strategy.”
Leader A thinks:
“Excellent. Let’s understand why.”
Leader B thinks:
“He is questioning my competence.”
Same words.
Different interpretation.
Different emotion.
Different response.
Leader A becomes curious.
Leader B becomes defensive.
Why?
Because we don’t simply respond to events.
We frequently respond to the meaning we attach to events.
That meaning may connect to:
- Ego.
- Identity.
- Fear.
- Insecurity.
- Previous experiences.
- Expectations.
- Need for control.
- Desire for recognition.
- Sensitivity to criticism.
- Perceived disrespect.
Understanding your triggers therefore requires going deeper than:
“That person makes me angry.”
Ask instead:
“What does that person’s behaviour mean to me, and why?”
That question is far more revealing.
The Emotional Chain Reaction: From Trigger to Business Consequence (Business Improvement Perth)
Emotional reactions can be understood as a chain:
Trigger → Interpretation → Emotion → Impulse → Behaviour → Consequence
Consider a simple SME example.
Trigger
Your Financial Controller tells you that profit will be significantly below budget.
Interpretation
“Management has lost control of the business.”
Emotion
Fear and frustration.
Impulse
Find out who is responsible.
Behaviour
You aggressively interrogate the Financial Controller and criticise several managers.
Consequence
The next time there is potentially bad news, people delay telling you until they are certain.
You wanted more control.
Your reaction created less visibility.
Now introduce emotional intelligence:
Trigger → Awareness → Pause → Question → Understanding → Deliberate Response → Better Outcome
The response might become:
“That’s obviously concerning. Talk me through what has changed, the underlying causes, what is within our control and what actions you recommend.”
Same financial problem.
Different leadership behaviour.
Very different organisational consequences.
This is why emotional intelligence belongs firmly within Business Improvement Perth thinking.
The Most Common Emotional Triggers for SME Owners & Leaders (Leadership Development Perth)
Every leader is different, but several triggers occur repeatedly.
Being Challenged
Entrepreneurs are accustomed to backing their judgement.
Challenge can therefore feel like criticism rather than constructive debate.
Losing Control
Many SME owners built their businesses by personally controlling almost everything.
Growth requires delegation, which can feel uncomfortable.
Perceived Incompetence
High-performing owners can become intensely frustrated when others don’t work at their speed or standard.
Disrespect
Being ignored, contradicted, bypassed or interrupted can trigger disproportionately strong reactions.
Criticism
When personal identity becomes closely intertwined with the business, criticism of the business can feel like criticism of the owner.
Financial Pressure
Cash-flow stress, falling profitability, debt and missed targets can dramatically reduce emotional tolerance.
Uncertainty
Some leaders are comfortable with risk but uncomfortable admitting:
“I don’t know.”
Failure
Achievement-oriented entrepreneurs can interpret commercial failure as personal failure.
Broken Trust
Dishonesty, concealed information or commitments not honoured can generate particularly strong reactions.
Feeling Excluded
Discovering that an important conversation occurred without you can trigger concerns about control, authority or relevance.
Your triggers aren’t necessarily your fault.
But managing your response to them is your responsibility.
When Your Greatest Strength Becomes Your Greatest Weakness (Leadership Development Perth)
One of the most useful self-awareness exercises is recognising that many leadership weaknesses are actually strengths taken too far.
Consider the following:
Decisiveness → Impatience
Confidence → Arrogance
Persistence → Stubbornness
Attention to detail → Micromanagement
Passion → Aggression
High standards → Perfectionism
Independence → Failure to delegate
Optimism → Unrealistic forecasting
Commercial discipline → Insensitivity
Empathy → Avoidance of difficult decisions
This is particularly important for entrepreneurs.
The behaviours that helped you create the business may eventually constrain it.
When there were three employees, knowing everything may have been essential.
When there are thirty employees, needing to know everything can become a bottleneck.
When the business was fighting for survival, relentless personal involvement may have been necessary.
When the business is established, the same behaviour can prevent managers developing.
Leadership development therefore isn’t always about adding more.
Sometimes it is about recognising when enough becomes too much.
The Amygdala Hijack: Why Intelligent People Sometimes React Irrationally (Leadership Development Perth)
Emotional intelligence becomes particularly important because strong emotional responses can temporarily overwhelm more considered thinking.
The term “amygdala hijack”, popularised by Daniel Goleman, describes situations where the brain’s emotional threat response effectively overtakes our more deliberate reasoning.
You probably know the feeling.
Someone says something.
Your reaction is immediate.
Before you have properly processed what was said:
You interrupt.
You raise your voice.
You become defensive.
You send the email.
You make the accusation.
Twenty minutes later you think:
“I probably shouldn’t have done that.”
Intelligence doesn’t make us immune.
Experience doesn’t make us immune.
Seniority doesn’t make us immune.
In fact, seniority can sometimes make the consequences worse because fewer people are willing to tell the leader:
“You handled that badly.”
The Objective Isn’t Emotional Suppression
Emotional intelligence does not mean becoming emotionless.
Anger can alert us to injustice.
Fear can alert us to risk.
Frustration can indicate that something needs to change.
The objective is not:
Don’t feel.
It is:
Feel it. Recognise it. Understand it. Then decide what to do with it.
Emotional Intelligence and Difficult Conversations (Leadership Development Perth)
Leadership inevitably involves difficult conversations.
You may need to tell someone:
- Their performance is unacceptable.
- Their behaviour must change.
- Their proposal has been rejected.
- They aren’t ready for promotion.
- Their role is changing.
- Their employment is ending.
Emotional intelligence doesn’t mean avoiding those conversations.
That would be poor leadership.
It means conducting them constructively.
Attack the Problem, Not the Person
Instead of:
“You’re unreliable.”
consider:
“We agreed this would be completed Friday. It wasn’t delivered until Tuesday, which affected the customer commitment. I need to understand what happened and what will change.”
Both approaches address accountability.
Only one attacks the person’s identity.
Empathy Does Not Mean Weakness
This distinction is critical.
You can understand why somebody failed and still hold them accountable.
You can care about someone and still terminate their employment when necessary.
You can listen carefully and still disagree.
You can be emotionally intelligent and commercially tough.
In fact, the strongest leaders frequently combine high empathy with high accountability.
Emotional Intelligence and Better Business Decision-Making (Business Improvement Perth)
Business decisions are often presented as rational exercises.
In reality, emotion is frequently sitting quietly at the table.
Consider:
“We cannot discontinue that product, we have sold it for twenty years.”
Is that strategy?
Or emotional attachment?
“I’m not selling the business for that price.”
Is that valuation?
Or ego?
“We have already spent $1 million, so we can’t stop now.”
Is that sound capital allocation?
Or escalation of commitment?
“I knew from the beginning that employee wasn’t right.”
Is that evidence?
Or hindsight bias?
“Nobody knows this market better than I do.”
Is that experience?
Or overconfidence?
Self-awareness allows leaders to ask an extraordinarily valuable question:
“What does the evidence actually tell me, and what do I emotionally want to be true?”
The difference between those two answers can be worth millions of dollars.
The Dangerous Leadership Blind Spot: Intention Versus Impact (Leadership Development Perth)
Most leaders have good intentions.
But employees don’t experience intentions.
They experience behaviour.
You intended to challenge thinking.
They experienced humiliation.
You intended to move the discussion forward.
They experienced interruption.
You intended to maintain standards.
They experienced relentless criticism.
You intended to protect the business.
They experienced micromanagement.
This creates one of the most important equations in leadership:
Intent ≠ Impact
Self-aware leaders therefore seek feedback.
Ask trusted people:
“What do I do when I am under pressure that makes your job harder?”
Then resist the temptation to explain yourself.
Listen.
Another powerful question is:
“What is something people around here are reluctant to tell me?”
The answer can reveal far more about your leadership culture than an employee-engagement survey.
Emotional Intelligence, Culture and Psychological Safety (Leadership Development Perth)
Imagine two businesses.
In Business A, an employee discovers a serious mistake.
Their first thought is:
“I need to tell the owner immediately.”
In Business B, their first thought is:
“How can I fix this before the owner finds out?”
Which organisation would you rather lead?
The difference may be psychological safety, the degree to which people believe they can raise concerns, admit mistakes, ask questions and challenge ideas without unreasonable interpersonal punishment.
This doesn’t mean lowering standards.
Quite the opposite.
High-performing organisations need truth.
They need problems surfaced quickly.
They need assumptions challenged.
They need employees willing to say:
“I think we are making a mistake.”
That sentence could save an SME hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars.
But employees will only say it if experience tells them it is safe to do so.
Your emotional responses therefore influence not only culture.
They influence what information reaches you.
The Emotional Intelligence – Business Performance Connection (Business Improvement Perth)
Emotional intelligence doesn’t appear as a line item in the P&L.
Its consequences can.
Poor emotional leadership can contribute to:
- Higher employee turnover.
- Weak management capability.
- Poor communication.
- Delayed escalation of problems.
- Customer conflict.
- Dysfunctional shareholder relationships.
- Management dependency.
- Weak succession.
- Poor-quality decisions.
- Reduced innovation.
- Lower productivity.
- Destructive workplace conflict.
Conversely, emotionally intelligent leadership can contribute to:
- Better communication.
- Stronger employee engagement.
- Faster identification of problems.
- More constructive debate.
- Improved delegation.
- Better negotiation.
- Stronger management teams.
- More effective succession.
- Better decision-making.
The commercial relationship isn’t always simple or directly measurable.
But the underlying principle is compelling:
Better leadership behaviour creates conditions in which better business performance becomes more likely.
A Practical Emotional Trigger Audit for SME Owners & Leaders (Leadership Development Perth)
Understanding emotional intelligence intellectually is useful.
Understanding yourself is far more valuable.
For the next 30 days, conduct a simple Trigger Audit.
Whenever you experience a strong emotional reaction at work, record seven things.
1. What Happened?
Describe only the facts.
2. What Did I Immediately Think?
What story did you tell yourself?
3. What Emotion Did I Feel?
Anger? Fear? Frustration? Embarrassment? Anxiety?
4. What Was I Protecting?
Control? Ego? Reputation? Authority? Certainty?
5. What Did I Want to Do?
Attack? Defend? Withdraw? Interrupt? Control?
6. What Did I Actually Do?
Be honest.
7. What Happened Afterwards?
Did your response improve or worsen the situation?
After a month, review the patterns.
You may discover:
Challenge → defensiveness
Uncertainty → control
Slow performance → impatience
Criticism → argument
Financial pressure → aggression
Mistakes → blame
Those patterns are leadership intelligence.
Because once you recognise them, you gain an opportunity to change them.
The PAUSE Framework: How to Respond Rather Than React (Leadership Development Perth)
A simple framework can help create space between emotion and behaviour.
P – Pause
Don’t immediately react.
Even five seconds can matter.
A – Acknowledge
Name what you are feeling.
“I am becoming defensive.”
“I am angry.”
“This is making me anxious.”
Naming the emotion helps make it observable rather than automatic.
U – Understand
Ask:
Why has this triggered me?
What meaning am I attaching to the situation?
S – Separate
Separate:
Facts from assumptions.
The issue from the person.
Your ego from the business decision.
E – Engage Deliberately
Ask:
What outcome do I actually want?
Then choose the response most likely to achieve it.
The goal isn’t to become passive.
It is to become deliberate.
Practical Recommendations for SME Owners & Leaders (Leadership Development Perth)
1. Identify Your Five Biggest Triggers
Write them down.
Specificity matters.
2. Recognise Your Physical Warning Signs
Your body may identify emotional activation before your conscious mind does.
Watch for:
- Faster speech.
- Tight shoulders.
- Raised voice.
- Increased heart rate.
- Interrupting.
- Restlessness.
3. Create Space Before Responding
Not every email requires an immediate reply.
Not every disagreement requires an immediate decision.
4. Separate Facts From Stories
Ask:
What do I know?
Then:
What am I assuming?
5. Become More Curious
Replace:
“How could you possibly do that?”
with:
“Help me understand what happened.”
6. Ask for Feedback
Self-awareness developed entirely by yourself has obvious limitations.
7. Examine Repeating Conflicts
If the same conflict follows you from employee to employee, consider whether you might be the common variable.
8. Never Send the Angry Email Immediately
Write it.
Save it.
Return later.
Frequently, you will rewrite it completely.
9. Stop Solving Every Problem
Ask managers:
“What do you recommend?”
Develop judgement rather than dependency.
10. Encourage Constructive Challenge
Explicitly reward people for identifying risks and questioning assumptions.
11. Don’t Make Major Decisions in Highly Emotional States
Excitement can distort judgement just as easily as anger or fear.
12. Look After Your Capacity
Fatigue, stress and overload reduce emotional regulation.
13. Admit When You Get It Wrong
Few things strengthen leadership credibility more than:
“I handled that badly. I apologise.”
14. Consider Independent Coaching or Mentoring
A trusted independent adviser can sometimes see behavioural patterns that colleagues are reluctant to discuss.
15. Measure Behavioural Change
The objective isn’t knowing more about emotional intelligence.
The objective is behaving differently when the trigger arrives.
Key Takeaways for SME Owners & Leaders
- Emotional intelligence is a practical leadership capability with real business consequences.
- Self-awareness is the foundation of emotional intelligence.
- Your triggers often reveal deeper assumptions about control, identity, ego, fear and expectations.
- You don’t simply react to events, you often react to the meaning you attach to them.
- The emotional behaviour of an SME owner can influence the culture of the entire organisation.
- Employees who fear your reactions may withhold bad news, challenge and information.
- Many leadership weaknesses are strengths that have been overused.
- Emotional intelligence doesn’t mean avoiding conflict or accountability.
- Strong leadership combines empathy with commercial discipline.
- Emotional self-awareness can materially improve strategic and financial decision-making.
- The gap between leadership intention and leadership impact can create significant blind spots.
- The goal isn’t to eliminate emotion, it is to create sufficient awareness to choose your response.
Frequently Asked Questions About Emotional Intelligence, Self-Awareness and Leadership
What is emotional intelligence?
Emotional intelligence is the capacity to recognise, understand and manage your own emotions while effectively recognising and responding to the emotions of others.
Why is emotional intelligence important for SME owners?
SME owners frequently have direct and substantial influence over employees, management behaviour, culture and decision-making. Their emotional behaviour can therefore affect the entire organisation.
What is self-awareness in leadership?
Self-awareness means understanding your emotions, behavioural tendencies, strengths, weaknesses and triggers, and recognising how your behaviour affects other people.
What is an emotional trigger?
An emotional trigger is an event, behaviour, comment or circumstance that generates a strong emotional response.
What are common emotional triggers for business owners?
Common triggers include criticism, disagreement, perceived disrespect, loss of control, poor performance, financial pressure, uncertainty, failure and broken trust.
Can emotional intelligence be learned?
Yes. Emotional intelligence can be developed through reflection, feedback, behavioural practice, leadership development, mentoring and coaching.
Does emotional intelligence mean suppressing emotion?
No. Emotional intelligence involves recognising and understanding emotions rather than pretending they don’t exist. The objective is to respond appropriately rather than automatically.
Does emotional intelligence make leaders less decisive?
No. Strong emotional intelligence can improve decision-making by helping leaders distinguish objective judgement from impulsive reactions driven by anger, fear, ego or excitement.
What is an amygdala hijack?
It describes a situation in which an intense emotional response temporarily overwhelms more deliberate, rational thinking, producing an impulsive reaction.
How can I identify my emotional triggers?
Keep a Trigger Audit for several weeks, recording the event, your interpretation, emotion, impulse, behaviour and eventual consequence.
What is the relationship between emotional intelligence and business performance?
Emotionally intelligent leadership can contribute to better communication, stronger employee engagement, more constructive conflict, improved decision-making and stronger management capability.
How does emotional intelligence affect company culture?
Employees observe how leaders react to mistakes, disagreement and bad news. Those reactions help establish what behaviours are considered safe and acceptable.
Can a highly intelligent leader have low emotional intelligence?
Absolutely. Technical intelligence, academic achievement and business experience don’t automatically create self-awareness, empathy or emotional regulation.
Can emotional intelligence help with negotiation?
Yes. Understanding your own emotional reactions and accurately reading the other party can improve communication, patience, judgement and negotiation effectiveness.
What is the first thing an SME owner should do to improve emotional intelligence?
Ask yourself:
“What situations reliably bring out the worst version of me?”
Then begin examining what those situations have in common.
Conclusion: You Cannot Lead Others Effectively Until You Can Lead Yourself (Leadership Development Perth)
SME owners spend enormous amounts of time trying to understand their businesses.
They analyse revenue.
Profitability.
Cash flow.
Customers.
Competitors.
Employees.
Markets.
Technology.
Risk.
Strategy.
Yet one of the most important assets, and potential liabilities, in the organisation is rarely subjected to the same degree of analysis:
The person leading it.
What triggers you?
Why?
What happens to your judgement when you are angry?
What happens when somebody challenges you?
What happens when you feel you are losing control?
Do you listen differently when someone disagrees with you?
Does your behaviour encourage people to tell you the truth, or encourage them to tell you what they think you want to hear?
Throughout almost four decades of big corporate, being a start-up entrepreneur, and advising businesses across Australia and internationally, one thing has become increasingly apparent to me: leadership is tested most clearly when things aren’t going according to plan.
It is easy to be calm when the numbers are good.
It is easy to listen when people agree.
It is easy to delegate when nothing important is at stake.
The real test comes when circumstances press exactly the buttons that matter most to you.
And this is why emotional intelligence and self-awareness are so important.
They create something enormously valuable between the trigger and the reaction:
Choice.
The choice to pause.
The choice to listen.
The choice to question your assumptions.
The choice to challenge without humiliating.
The choice to disagree without becoming defensive.
The choice to hold somebody accountable without attacking them personally.
The choice to make a commercial decision based upon evidence rather than ego.
The choice to respond strategically rather than react emotionally.
Perhaps the most important leadership question is therefore not:
“How do I stop other people pressing my buttons?”
It is:
“If other people know exactly which buttons to press, and pressing them determines my behaviour, who is actually in control?”
For every SME owner and leader, that question is worth thinking about.
Because understanding your business is important.
Understanding yourself as the person leading it may be even more important.
Call to Action
If your business has reached the point where stronger leadership, better communication, greater accountability, more effective management or improved strategic decision-making are required, analysing the business alone may not be enough.
Sometimes the next stage of business improvement begins with leadership improvement.
As a Fractional CEO, Non-Executive Chairman, Business Advisor and Coach & Mentor, I work with SME owners, Boards and leadership teams to strengthen leadership effectiveness, strategic thinking, governance, accountability, management capability and business performance.
The objective isn’t to remove emotion from leadership.
It is to develop leaders with enough self-awareness to recognise emotion, understand what is driving it and make better choices about what happens next.
Because the strongest leader in the room isn’t necessarily the person who reacts fastest or speaks loudest.
It is often the person who understands themselves well enough to choose their response.
