Today a generous leader took my challenge and got emotional. He showed why he’s the head of the system. He took my energy, turned it into his own, and it came out “passionate and positive,” according to his someday successor. SS took my challenge and got emotional too. His emotion was more a combination of angry and frustrated. Normal.
Emotions are powerful and are meant to move us, remember. The best of the best regulate the temperature in the room. Normal ones simply reflect the heat or the frigidity coming their way. The BTL leader is real, raw, and a regulator. Like a freakin’ magic thermostat they keep the room comfortable when the heat is on and even when it’s ice cold. Normal leaders simply reflect back whatever temp is registered in the room. Kinda like a giant, systemwide thermometer. The number one emotion the team is tuned toward is kinda crazy. The team wants to feel how much the leader cares.
You most likely think you are not what your team thinks you are. Funny, the only way to know is to take their temperature by asking.
Good work today by a couple leaders learning from each other. Good work team of two. You are becoming one the only way it is possible – through practice. And, sometimes the best ones are NOT the ones we’ve planned. Funny, huh…
How would your team describe you? Thermostat or thermometer?
BUILT TO LEAD 
Toto this one goes up with one of your best all time blogs. We will cite this one often.
Friedman in “A Failure of Nerve” does too. Perhaps THE main role of leaders, through their very PRESENCE, is to foster IN the team the emotionally mature characteristics found in a strong CORE.
As the saying goes, you can’t give away what you don’t have. Or as Yogi Berra might have said, you can’t REPLICATE what YOU can’t replicate.
If your team mirrors the emotional regression tendencies in our society, they will be reactive to events and circumstances and one another. They will practice “herding” to the level of the most immature member. They will practice blame displacement and victimhood. They will focus on the quick-fix.
Most leaders today have compromised their ability to be effective through a denial of fundamental human emotional processes and a devaluing of the individuality that is necessary for summoning “nerve.” Through failure of nerve to build and lead out of their own strong CORE, they act as “thermometers” that only serve to validate and perpetuate the emotional regression and chronic anxiety resulting from the team’s weak core.
“Thermostatic” leaders practice self-regulation — they lean against reactivity. They adapt TOWARD strength, and teach the team to run together as mustangs, not herd like mules. They model and instill a growth-producing response to challenge. And their strong keel allows evolutionary processes to mature.
This is SO “why we build how we build” at BUILT TO LEAD. Head of the system, the two greatest gifts you can give your team is FIRST becoming a stronger thermostat — a core-centered, self-controlling, and self-differentiated leader. And SECONDLY practicing the gift of “being with” them. In doing so you will live out our purpose — to awaken, challenge and together transform a few individuals, teams and leaders into ONE. One that is distinct AND deeply connected. One that is BUILT TO LEAD.
One that will thrive in crisis and produce generations of self-differentiated “thermostats.”