Emotion Focused Leadership
How can leading figures in commerce and industry utilize the information content of their emotions more effectively?
The present financial crisis has brought a new target group into the focus of attention of psychotherapy and its research: leading figures in commerce and industry.
The family members of medium-sized family businesses are particularly threatened. What are the guidelines for their decisions when not only the firm is endangered but also the life’s work of several generations for which those in charge of the business feel responsible not only financially but also morally? How do they cope emotionally with down-sizing and the concomitant redundancy of loyal employees? Conventional strategies for stress and crisis management are no longer effective because they fail to recognize the significance of emotions as elementary control mechanisms of human actions.
If leading figures in business lose touch with their negative emotions such as anxiety and the feeling of being under constant threat, they run the risk of making irresponsible decisions. On the other hand such emotions undermine their self-confidence.
Professor Leslie Greenberg of York University in Toronto is currently studying the problem of handling critical existential situations with particular emphasis on the perceptions and action patterns of emotional intelligence. He has developed a method of effectively influencing anxiety and depression, strengthening and simultaneously stabilizing the personality. In 2008 he received an award from the Fitzer Institute of Chicago for this work. The Breuninger Foundation has cooperated with York University since 2009 in order to adapt Greenberg’s approach to the needs of leading figures in business.
contact: Helga Breuninger