17. The Power & Purpose of Emotions
Do you ever feel like your emotions are holding you back as a leader? What if I told you that your emotions - all of them - are actually your greatest asset for achieving more in your leadership journey?
In today's episode, I dive into the real reasons the five primary emotions - fear, anger, hurt, joy, sadness - all have power and purpose. Research shows that 90% of top performers and leaders have high emotional intelligence, so if you’ve ever felt like your innate and unique capacity to feel deeply is “unprofessional,” it's time to flip the script on this limiting belief.
Join me this week to hear how learning to work with your emotions instead of against them will set you apart as a leader. We'll explore the five primary emotions, how to recognize and process them, and most importantly, how to use them to your advantage. Emotional resilience and intelligence are the competitive edge you need to unlock new levels of confidence, clarity, and influence in your leadership.
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What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
Why emotions are your greatest leadership asset, not a weakness.
The purpose of each of the five primary emotions and how they move you from pain to pleasure.
How to use fear to better prepare and anticipate challenges.
Why anger is a powerful tool for setting boundaries and showing up confidently in male-dominated spaces.
How embracing sadness creates space for healing, connection, and authenticity.
The importance of celebrating and amplifying joy to boost confidence, and a simple tip for inviting more of it into your life.
Listen to the Full Episode:
Featured on the Show:
If you haven’t already, please follow the podcast and leave a rating and review to let me know what you think. Find complete instructions here!
Full Episode Transcript:
Did you know that women with high emotional intelligence are three times more likely to become top performers in their organization? Or that leaders with strong emotional awareness are 36% more effective in their roles than those who lack it?
Today, we're going to talk about the real reason why emotions, yes, all of them, are your greatest asset for achieving more in your leadership journey. Fear, anger, hurt, joy, sadness, they all have a purpose. And learning to work with them instead of against them will set you apart as a leader.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Welcome podcast listeners, we have a very important episode today about the purpose and power of emotions, your secret weapon to leadership success. So I want to share that often people overlook the value of emotions, especially for professional women, particularly in leadership roles.
But professional women and just being women in general, I know this is a bit of generalization, but I think it's an important point to underline here. Women often feel a lot of things. We have these emotional capacities that are much stronger than men. We feel a room, we are naturally more nurturing, we are - whether you have a kid or not, if you hear somebody, a baby crying, you will probably feel a lot more primal emotional connection and awareness than other people, mostly men.
We have this innate and unique capacity to feel deeply, to feel quickly, because that is part of how we are raised as women, right? We come from women, we are women, and we're naturally more nurturing in that sense. And when we're more nurturing, we're also more aware of what's happening both within us and with other people.
Sometimes when I coach people, they are way too focused on other people's emotions and not focused enough on their own. Or sometimes you might be somebody who is so focused on your own emotion and you're indulgent in it, you don't know how to use it and you wanna just put it away in a box because you're like, I don't know how to deal with these emotions that I'm having.
They're really strong, they're coming up often, I feel stressed, I feel criticized, I'm really concerned that these emotions aren't going to help me, especially when a lot of the leaders that we see are these male leaders that are oftentimes stoic, emotionless, don't have a lot of emotion, or they don't seem to show it.
Although I will say that a lot of people, and this is where emotions really play into the bigger game of leadership, even though you might not experience it as much, everybody knows what it feels like to hear somebody speak, feel emotionally connected with them, to them, and to feel inspired, to feel something shift internally. And that is really the power of emotions.
But oftentimes it's misunderstood because it's confusing. If nobody's ever taught you how to use these emotions in a way that helps elevate your leadership and to integrate emotional intelligence into the way you lead you might feel like I don't know. I just don't know. It seems more like a weakness especially if you have a lot of leaders around you that are more stoic in nature, right? And that are not as emotional or show as much emotion.
But I wanna say research shows that 90% of top performers have high emotional intelligence. But women often suppress their emotions believing that showing them is unprofessional. Today, we are going to flip that belief and I'm gonna share with you more of being emotional. It's knowing how to deal with emotions and process them.
And why this is incredibly important is, as you grow in your leadership, as you accelerate in your career, you're going to have more responsibility, and you're going to have more things come your way that are tougher to deal with. That means you're going to have more emotions to deal with.
Oftentimes what I see in women leaders is they try to control their world and they try to control their emotions. And instead of learning how to be with their emotions and process them and use them in a way that is impactful and powerful for them, they try to control people's emotions around them. They try to control their own emotions and they try to control the environment which could be very limiting.
So if this is you, it might sound like, oof, I don't wanna take on that leadership role or that promotion or that special project because I'm gonna feel stressed. I'm going to be seen more so people will criticize me more. Basically, all of those things are saying I'm going to have more emotions. I'm going to have more feelings in my body and I don't know how to deal with them. So it's limiting, right? So it's stressful.
Stress is not bad if you know how to deal with stress. Stress just happens, but if you're able to deal with your emotions, process them, then you're going to be more open and willing to take risks because you built this emotional resiliency. If your belief is that I don't know how to deal with the stress, I don't know how to deal with the criticism or the challenges, basically meaning I don't know how to deal with the emotions, process them, and allow them to complete, express them, and be able to move on and feel confident in myself, then it is really limiting.
This is why emotional resilience is so important because people who have emotional resilience and are able to not only understand their emotions, but use their emotions in a way that support them, that help them progress and move forward, they're not as scared to take risks because they're like, what's the worst that's gonna happen? I might fail, I might have some bad feelings about myself. But if I know how to deal with those feelings about those bad feelings, those negative emotions, maybe hurt, sadness, or anger, then I'm less scared of my emotions, right?
There's a purpose to emotions, and there's a power to them if you can process them. So today's episode, I'm going to talk to you about each of the five primary emotions. This is how I learned them from the Organization of Human Potentials where I did a lot of my coaching, and we really focused on the five primary emotions, which I find really impactful because if you are able to name your emotions, then you're also able to calm your nervous system down.
And I like the five primary emotions because it helps us get really clear on what the emotion is. When some people say, I'm annoyed, right? And I'm like, what does annoyed mean? Tell me, use the five primary emotions. The more we can boil it down to an emotion, the more we can understand the purpose of that emotion, versus staying stuck in, I feel annoyed, I feel guilty, I feel, let's dive into what does it mostly feel like?
Because this is really where you get to understand your emotion and understand how all of these emotions are helping us move from pain to pleasure. And so there's a purpose around it. But we in society haven't had a lot of education around emotions.
So oftentimes we are scared and these narratives that we have around emotions are causing people to dive into toxic positivity or to say, don't feel sad, it's gonna lead to depression. There's all these narratives around it because there's just a lack of education. So today we're gonna focus on the five primary emotions.
The more you're able to start recognizing and noticing your own emotions and processing them, the more you are going to be able to show up at work with your emotions and using them on purpose to not only connect with yourself, but to connect with the audience around you, to be able to notice the emotions and help that lead you into making decisions that are best for not only yourself, but people around you, listening to that intuition. This is a next level leadership skill that is open to you.
So let's first dive into fear. So fear, it's a common one. It obviously comes up a lot when we're feeling like we're pushing our boundaries, we're taking risks, we're stepping into bigger roles. And oftentimes people feel like fear is the enemy. If I feel fear, I feel out of control. That's the story around fear versus just noticing that fear is good to feel. Fear is telling you like, hey, wake up, your kid is about to touch the stove. Let's move, let's get into it.
But fear often comes up when you're taking a bold move. So when you're negotiating for a raise or asking for a bigger project or advocating for your team. Instead of letting that fear hold you back from asking, you wanna ask yourself, how can I use this fear to better prepare, to anticipate potential challenges, to come out stronger?
You want to notice, oh, if I'm asking for a raise and we're about to sell this organization or your company's about to go through a transaction, how might I use that knowledge and use that fear of things that are gonna be unstable to my advantage? You wanna identify your current fear and be able to use it to again move from pain to pleasure. There's a fear of somebody's gonna say no to me, but then you ask yourself more, why would they say no to me? Oh, okay, so maybe there's some budget constraints. Let me understand more, let me understand what's going on.
So instead of allowing that fear to just stop you from making a move, you get to understand it and you ask yourself, what is that fear about? A leader once told me, or a coach once told me that fear is just sometimes we have this strong fear in us, but it's just like a crying baby. It's something that is telling us we need to watch out for something. But oftentimes if you're not engaged with your fear and you're covering up your fear, you're not able to say what you're fearful about then you won't be able to use that data, that emotional data towards moving you towards safety, right?
So, you know, if you're doing a big project, one of the big things you fear is you're not gonna get enough support from leadership, then you might ask, hey, if I take on this project, can these people be my executive sponsors? My fear is that this project is going to fail if it doesn't have enough executive sponsorship. And these are the executive sponsors that I think make the most sense to be sponsoring this project. Is that available?
So there you use fear for a purpose, to create more safety for yourself, to create more structure and security for this project. So you wanna notice that piece for yourself. That's a pretty simple example, but that's what fear is for. It's there to notice, get you out of danger.
The next thing is hurt. Hurt is really about noticing that emotion inside of you and allowing yourself, if you're saying you're hurt, you're opening yourself up to getting comforted. And I know hurt is a hard one for a lot of people because it feels like weak, right? Hurt shows up when we experience rejection, failure, or criticism. Feelings that are all too common in male-dominated spaces.
So if you're a woman leader and you're like, I feel hurt a lot of the time, or maybe you haven't even been able to name what the feeling is. For me, hurt feels like a sinking feeling in my heart. I notice that coming in. And leaders that are able to use hurt as an opportunity for reflection and growth find this emotion helps them push towards deeper self-awareness and resilience. You can be with your hurt, you can get tough feedback or overlooked in your emotions, and you can feel this. It's easy to feel hurt. But the pain is a signal for something more.
This pain is because it matters. Something matters to you here. So you can ask yourself, what can I learn here? What part of my leadership style do I need to refine? How can I turn this moment into a powerful shift? Instead of brushing off the hurt feelings, you really feel them because when we feel hurt, there's something that matters to us. There's something that we feel that we're moving towards, right? So you wanna sit with that hurt. What do they reveal about what you care about or what needs to change for you?
I have to say just personally, I felt a lot of hurt when I was dating and I was trying to find my partner and I didn't know how to deal with it. But the more I could get curious about my pain, the more I could get curious about what was coming up for me, the more I could comfort and heal myself, and the more I could ask for comfort from other people because I could share with them, these are the things that have been hurtful to me in the past.
And owning allowed me to have more information about myself and also allowed me to invite other people into getting to know me better. Well, those are the things that you felt hurt about, tell me more about that.
This is really about connecting with yourself and understanding what matters to you and why. So when hurt happens, instead of trying to brush it off or blaming other people, the more you can sit with the hurt and ask the hurt, what is it trying to tell me? What do I really care about? What is this? What can I learn from this? This is where you're going to start unlocking more intentional action for yourself and more clarity for yourself through hurt.
One of my coaches used to say that the legacy of pain is love. The legacy of pain is love. Like when you feel pain, what you feel after you express that pain is that it actually brings love and peace. Those were actually the two things. So the legacy of pain is peace and love. And so if you're allowing yourself to feel that hurt and that pain, then you get to know yourself better. And then you can have more love for yourself and more peace for yourself.
The next one that I wanna talk about, and I'm going to have a lot more episodes about this, is anger. This is the number one emotion that is often seen as a negative emotion for women, but I will tell you, this is the number one emotion that in the women that I coach is the most powerful tool for change. It signals that something is out of alignment with your values or goals. And oftentimes women, we are socialized and learn to basically extinguish our anger, our fire with tears. It's better to be crying and tearful because if you are a powerful woman with anger, this could be very scary.
So you want to notice, for example, if you're feeling frustrated with a team dynamic or there's repeated microaggressions and you feel angry about it. That anger is telling you something. It's telling you to set a boundary, make a bold request, take action that aligns with your vision for success.
I have to tell you, so of course my name is Yann and it’s said wrong a lot of times. I used to get an emotional trigger by it. Now, if people say it wrong, I just correct them. But I worked with this leader who kept saying it wrong over and over. And I remember I was in a meeting with lots of people, a lot of peers, with my boss, and he just kept saying my name wrong.
And I felt a lot of anger in that moment so much so that I had a really hard time following what they were talking about because I just had so much anger, and so instead of just stewing in my anger and not listening to everything else that was happening around me I got really present with myself and I said to him, hey, listen, John, my name is Yann. Can you please say it properly so that I can make sure that people here know that you're talking to me and that I know you're talking to me?
And I said it in a really firm way that, I guess maybe it might've come across a little bitchy, but I actually was okay to take a stand at that moment. Just noticing, okay, there was my anger. And he said, oh, I'm so sorry, I keep doing it wrong. And in that moment, I just was more present and aware. And I said, okay, let's move forward. But at least I could put that boundary down instead of stewing there, not really paying attention, not being fully present, people just wondering what's going on with me.
So this also, this anger allows you to take action intentionally to move from pain to pleasure. Again, I wanna be seen, I wanna be heard, I want people to know my name. I'm the only person in the room that is not white, so my name is different, and I want everybody to respect that and to know that, and everybody in the room has the right to be called their proper name. So whether it's John or Sarah or Yann, especially it's a leadership team where we're all working together.
So I wanted to be seen in that way and I use that anger in that moment. So I always tell my clients, it's important to notice your anger because what happens to a lot of the women that I coach is they leave meetings feeling angry and frustrated and they feel like they don't have a voice. But here's the thing, you do have a voice. And the more that you notice your anger in your body, the more you ask yourself questions of what am I angry about? Do I need to set a boundary? Do I need to make a request? What action do I want to take?
The more you can have that relationship with your anger and know it's there as a protective force for you, an intentional protective force, you can use it, again, to move from pain to pleasure versus feeling stuck. Okay, so that is anger. Like I said, we're gonna do a lots more episode on this. It is the number one emotion that helps women show up confidently convicted and with lots of clarity when they are in male-dominated spaces. So we're gonna do more on that.
But let's move to the next one. It is sadness. This is about embracing vulnerability for growth. When we notice that we're sad, right, It's often a response to loss or disappointment. It's an emotion that women in leadership are told to hide, right? Don't let them see that you're upset. Don't let them see that you're sad. But in reality, sadness can create a space for healing, connection, and authenticity.
Embracing sadness allows leaders to model vulnerability, create deeper connections with their team, and foster trust. So when you're experiencing a setback, like losing a key project or facing a personal challenge, don't just rush to move on. Sadness gives you time to process and to reflect.
It's a powerful way to show your team that it's okay to be human, to be seen, and to come back stronger. So the next time you are noticing sadness, it's typically a loss of a pleasure. You want to allow yourself space to reflect and connect. And truly when I have felt sadness with other leaders or with my CEO, maybe we went for, we went to get a big funding request and we felt sad because it didn't land right.
When you are able to show sadness, oftentimes with my CEOs or male leaders, they also notice, oh, this person cares as much as I do. They may not express it, but they're also upset. But what you'll notice too, if you start noticing your own emotions you'll also notice how men in leadership express their emotions and sadness might sound like anger like I'm really frustrated we didn't get the approval for this funding but there's sadness underneath it or maybe there's fear underneath it.
Typically, underneath anger is hurt, fear, or sadness, but that's when men obviously end up showing anger when this happens because it's a more acceptable emotion for men to feel or to display because of our society and how we've grown up. But know that sadness can actually help connect you with other people and again allow for comfort to be understood, to be able to authentically show up as you and say, this was really upsetting for me, or it was really sad that this didn't work out because we gave it our all.
There's a difference between staying in sadness and creating victimhood around it versus saying, I feel sad, I'm going to give myself the day to feel sad about this and sit with this and reflect and comfort myself through it versus staying stuck in it. I think sometimes people think if you stay stuck in it, like you'll automatically become a victim so they just move quickly towards the next emotion that seems more acceptable or more positive. But just saying, hey, I'm sad about this, that's disappointing, it's okay. It's just validating that emotion.
And if other members of your team also feel disappointed, guess what? You guys get to connect together and be aligned together, not just cognitively in what you wanna get done, but emotionally, which actually creates more bonds, creates more trust and rapport. Okay, so let's go to the final emotion, joy. It's amplifying success and confidence.
I think this is one that is hard for a lot of women because they are so used to being in the struggle mindset that when something joyous happens, it could feel really weird in your body. It could feel weird to celebrate so much. But joy is an emotion we all want more of, but as leaders we sometimes forget to celebrate.
I also think what gets in the way of joy a lot of times is people feel like, oh my gosh, if I celebrate, the other shoe is going to drop. Something bad is going to happen. And so it gets us in this cycle to not celebrate and not be joyous. But joy's purpose is to remind you to celebrate and share your success. Again, sharing your success builds connection and builds memories around that.
I want you to think about this for yourself because it could really, again, celebrating your own achievements can help inspire and elevate other people and invites them and gives them permission to celebrate themselves as well. A lot of women deflect positive feedback or comments. I have a client that does this a lot. And your job to be in the joy of things is to sit with that positive attention, to sit with it.
Because this is where a lot of women feel discomfort of just everything's okay, you're enough, people are celebrating you. And the more you learn how to sit in that, the more capacity for joy you'll have and the more joy you'll be attracting into your life because you'll really be able to receive it.
So an example might be when your team hits a milestone or when you've accomplished something significant, don't hold back your joy. Celebrating openly and authentically not only boosts your own confidence, but also creates a positive ripple effect in your organization. And more and more people are going to feel like they have permission to do it and they're going to be wanting to be in that joy more often than not.
So this is a little tip for yourself. If you're also noticing, wow, I'm like, joy is one of the hardest emotions. You might also notice if joy is a hard emotion, you get really triggered when you're around very joyous, happy people. You might notice you're being like, that person is so annoying, they're so happy all the time. You may need to build your capacity to have more joy in your life.
So here is one practical tip that you could do is take five minutes to reflect on what brought you joy and to share it with someone, whether it's your team, your boss, or your colleague. Let that energy fuel your next step. Play with that, see how that works. We are oftentimes in that brain that we're not enough, that we can't celebrate joy, something bad's gonna happen. But this amplifying success and confidence is going to invite more and more of it into your life.
All right, so why emotional intelligence is your competitive edge? I want to, again, invite you to think about how you could be using these emotions and especially as a high achieving woman you're going to have lots of emotions. You're going to feel hurt when you try to speak up in a room full of men or interrupt, your ability to be with that hurt versus shy away from it is the difference between your success and moving forward versus you staying stuck and feeling frustrated.
So the more you can deal with your emotions, process them, the better able you're going to be as you continue advancing in your career and the more fun you'll have because you will be able to connect with yourself and probably take yourself less seriously.
According to research from Talent Smart, emotional intelligence accounts for nearly 60% of job performance in top leaders. Imagine the competitive edge you gain by not just managing, but harnessing your emotions for success.
I want you to go out there and notice your emotional responses during the day. This is your assignment to take away. What is the emotion trying to teach you? How can I grow from the motion? How can I just sit with emotions?
Sometimes I just tell my clients, just notice what's coming up, what body sensations you're having, and that will also help you name what emotion you're having. So sometimes when I feel angry, my jaw tenses and my butt gets tense, and you know what I do? I notice in meetings, I ask myself, what am I feeling angry about? And this again, helps me get clear, put a request out there, state a boundary, say something that helps me align to what I wanna see happen in that meeting.
So this is really the power of emotions, but in order to use it you need to understand it. So the main takeaway here is that emotions are not your enemy. They are your greatest source of strength and leadership power and by working with your emotions instead of suppressing them, you unlock new levels of confidence, clarity, and influence, as well as capacity.
People who carry around a lot of emotional baggage, I'm sure you've known them. I'm sure you have worked with them. It's not fun. It's not inviting. You don't feel like confident in their abilities to do more and more. You feel like they're stuck in their emotions.
So I wanna invite you and other women leaders to share your emotions, notice your emotions, and ask yourself, what is this emotion trying to do here? What is it moving me from pain to pleasure? What's coming up for me?
I invite you to start having a relationship with your emotions to a deeper level. And I want to hear how it all works for you. So leave me a message, write about this review, how did this episode hit you? What's coming up for you around emotions? And when you start connecting with yourself and emotions, I wanna hear how it's impacting you in your life and in your career.
All right, that is our episode for this week. Have a great week and I'll see you soon. Go out there, embrace your emotions, embrace the power that is within you. See you soon.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
Today, we're going to talk about the real reason why emotions, yes, all of them, are your greatest asset for achieving more in your leadership journey. Fear, anger, hurt, joy, sadness, they all have a purpose. And learning to work with them instead of against them will set you apart as a leader.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Welcome podcast listeners, we have a very important episode today about the purpose and power of emotions, your secret weapon to leadership success. So I want to share that often people overlook the value of emotions, especially for professional women, particularly in leadership roles.
But professional women and just being women in general, I know this is a bit of generalization, but I think it's an important point to underline here. Women often feel a lot of things. We have these emotional capacities that are much stronger than men. We feel a room, we are naturally more nurturing, we are - whether you have a kid or not, if you hear somebody, a baby crying, you will probably feel a lot more primal emotional connection and awareness than other people, mostly men.
We have this innate and unique capacity to feel deeply, to feel quickly, because that is part of how we are raised as women, right? We come from women, we are women, and we're naturally more nurturing in that sense. And when we're more nurturing, we're also more aware of what's happening both within us and with other people.
Sometimes when I coach people, they are way too focused on other people's emotions and not focused enough on their own. Or sometimes you might be somebody who is so focused on your own emotion and you're indulgent in it, you don't know how to use it and you wanna just put it away in a box because you're like, I don't know how to deal with these emotions that I'm having.
They're really strong, they're coming up often, I feel stressed, I feel criticized, I'm really concerned that these emotions aren't going to help me, especially when a lot of the leaders that we see are these male leaders that are oftentimes stoic, emotionless, don't have a lot of emotion, or they don't seem to show it.
Although I will say that a lot of people, and this is where emotions really play into the bigger game of leadership, even though you might not experience it as much, everybody knows what it feels like to hear somebody speak, feel emotionally connected with them, to them, and to feel inspired, to feel something shift internally. And that is really the power of emotions.
But oftentimes it's misunderstood because it's confusing. If nobody's ever taught you how to use these emotions in a way that helps elevate your leadership and to integrate emotional intelligence into the way you lead you might feel like I don't know. I just don't know. It seems more like a weakness especially if you have a lot of leaders around you that are more stoic in nature, right? And that are not as emotional or show as much emotion.
But I wanna say research shows that 90% of top performers have high emotional intelligence. But women often suppress their emotions believing that showing them is unprofessional. Today, we are going to flip that belief and I'm gonna share with you more of being emotional. It's knowing how to deal with emotions and process them.
And why this is incredibly important is, as you grow in your leadership, as you accelerate in your career, you're going to have more responsibility, and you're going to have more things come your way that are tougher to deal with. That means you're going to have more emotions to deal with.
Oftentimes what I see in women leaders is they try to control their world and they try to control their emotions. And instead of learning how to be with their emotions and process them and use them in a way that is impactful and powerful for them, they try to control people's emotions around them. They try to control their own emotions and they try to control the environment which could be very limiting.
So if this is you, it might sound like, oof, I don't wanna take on that leadership role or that promotion or that special project because I'm gonna feel stressed. I'm going to be seen more so people will criticize me more. Basically, all of those things are saying I'm going to have more emotions. I'm going to have more feelings in my body and I don't know how to deal with them. So it's limiting, right? So it's stressful.
Stress is not bad if you know how to deal with stress. Stress just happens, but if you're able to deal with your emotions, process them, then you're going to be more open and willing to take risks because you built this emotional resiliency. If your belief is that I don't know how to deal with the stress, I don't know how to deal with the criticism or the challenges, basically meaning I don't know how to deal with the emotions, process them, and allow them to complete, express them, and be able to move on and feel confident in myself, then it is really limiting.
This is why emotional resilience is so important because people who have emotional resilience and are able to not only understand their emotions, but use their emotions in a way that support them, that help them progress and move forward, they're not as scared to take risks because they're like, what's the worst that's gonna happen? I might fail, I might have some bad feelings about myself. But if I know how to deal with those feelings about those bad feelings, those negative emotions, maybe hurt, sadness, or anger, then I'm less scared of my emotions, right?
There's a purpose to emotions, and there's a power to them if you can process them. So today's episode, I'm going to talk to you about each of the five primary emotions. This is how I learned them from the Organization of Human Potentials where I did a lot of my coaching, and we really focused on the five primary emotions, which I find really impactful because if you are able to name your emotions, then you're also able to calm your nervous system down.
And I like the five primary emotions because it helps us get really clear on what the emotion is. When some people say, I'm annoyed, right? And I'm like, what does annoyed mean? Tell me, use the five primary emotions. The more we can boil it down to an emotion, the more we can understand the purpose of that emotion, versus staying stuck in, I feel annoyed, I feel guilty, I feel, let's dive into what does it mostly feel like?
Because this is really where you get to understand your emotion and understand how all of these emotions are helping us move from pain to pleasure. And so there's a purpose around it. But we in society haven't had a lot of education around emotions.
So oftentimes we are scared and these narratives that we have around emotions are causing people to dive into toxic positivity or to say, don't feel sad, it's gonna lead to depression. There's all these narratives around it because there's just a lack of education. So today we're gonna focus on the five primary emotions.
The more you're able to start recognizing and noticing your own emotions and processing them, the more you are going to be able to show up at work with your emotions and using them on purpose to not only connect with yourself, but to connect with the audience around you, to be able to notice the emotions and help that lead you into making decisions that are best for not only yourself, but people around you, listening to that intuition. This is a next level leadership skill that is open to you.
So let's first dive into fear. So fear, it's a common one. It obviously comes up a lot when we're feeling like we're pushing our boundaries, we're taking risks, we're stepping into bigger roles. And oftentimes people feel like fear is the enemy. If I feel fear, I feel out of control. That's the story around fear versus just noticing that fear is good to feel. Fear is telling you like, hey, wake up, your kid is about to touch the stove. Let's move, let's get into it.
But fear often comes up when you're taking a bold move. So when you're negotiating for a raise or asking for a bigger project or advocating for your team. Instead of letting that fear hold you back from asking, you wanna ask yourself, how can I use this fear to better prepare, to anticipate potential challenges, to come out stronger?
You want to notice, oh, if I'm asking for a raise and we're about to sell this organization or your company's about to go through a transaction, how might I use that knowledge and use that fear of things that are gonna be unstable to my advantage? You wanna identify your current fear and be able to use it to again move from pain to pleasure. There's a fear of somebody's gonna say no to me, but then you ask yourself more, why would they say no to me? Oh, okay, so maybe there's some budget constraints. Let me understand more, let me understand what's going on.
So instead of allowing that fear to just stop you from making a move, you get to understand it and you ask yourself, what is that fear about? A leader once told me, or a coach once told me that fear is just sometimes we have this strong fear in us, but it's just like a crying baby. It's something that is telling us we need to watch out for something. But oftentimes if you're not engaged with your fear and you're covering up your fear, you're not able to say what you're fearful about then you won't be able to use that data, that emotional data towards moving you towards safety, right?
So, you know, if you're doing a big project, one of the big things you fear is you're not gonna get enough support from leadership, then you might ask, hey, if I take on this project, can these people be my executive sponsors? My fear is that this project is going to fail if it doesn't have enough executive sponsorship. And these are the executive sponsors that I think make the most sense to be sponsoring this project. Is that available?
So there you use fear for a purpose, to create more safety for yourself, to create more structure and security for this project. So you wanna notice that piece for yourself. That's a pretty simple example, but that's what fear is for. It's there to notice, get you out of danger.
The next thing is hurt. Hurt is really about noticing that emotion inside of you and allowing yourself, if you're saying you're hurt, you're opening yourself up to getting comforted. And I know hurt is a hard one for a lot of people because it feels like weak, right? Hurt shows up when we experience rejection, failure, or criticism. Feelings that are all too common in male-dominated spaces.
So if you're a woman leader and you're like, I feel hurt a lot of the time, or maybe you haven't even been able to name what the feeling is. For me, hurt feels like a sinking feeling in my heart. I notice that coming in. And leaders that are able to use hurt as an opportunity for reflection and growth find this emotion helps them push towards deeper self-awareness and resilience. You can be with your hurt, you can get tough feedback or overlooked in your emotions, and you can feel this. It's easy to feel hurt. But the pain is a signal for something more.
This pain is because it matters. Something matters to you here. So you can ask yourself, what can I learn here? What part of my leadership style do I need to refine? How can I turn this moment into a powerful shift? Instead of brushing off the hurt feelings, you really feel them because when we feel hurt, there's something that matters to us. There's something that we feel that we're moving towards, right? So you wanna sit with that hurt. What do they reveal about what you care about or what needs to change for you?
I have to say just personally, I felt a lot of hurt when I was dating and I was trying to find my partner and I didn't know how to deal with it. But the more I could get curious about my pain, the more I could get curious about what was coming up for me, the more I could comfort and heal myself, and the more I could ask for comfort from other people because I could share with them, these are the things that have been hurtful to me in the past.
And owning allowed me to have more information about myself and also allowed me to invite other people into getting to know me better. Well, those are the things that you felt hurt about, tell me more about that.
This is really about connecting with yourself and understanding what matters to you and why. So when hurt happens, instead of trying to brush it off or blaming other people, the more you can sit with the hurt and ask the hurt, what is it trying to tell me? What do I really care about? What is this? What can I learn from this? This is where you're going to start unlocking more intentional action for yourself and more clarity for yourself through hurt.
One of my coaches used to say that the legacy of pain is love. The legacy of pain is love. Like when you feel pain, what you feel after you express that pain is that it actually brings love and peace. Those were actually the two things. So the legacy of pain is peace and love. And so if you're allowing yourself to feel that hurt and that pain, then you get to know yourself better. And then you can have more love for yourself and more peace for yourself.
The next one that I wanna talk about, and I'm going to have a lot more episodes about this, is anger. This is the number one emotion that is often seen as a negative emotion for women, but I will tell you, this is the number one emotion that in the women that I coach is the most powerful tool for change. It signals that something is out of alignment with your values or goals. And oftentimes women, we are socialized and learn to basically extinguish our anger, our fire with tears. It's better to be crying and tearful because if you are a powerful woman with anger, this could be very scary.
So you want to notice, for example, if you're feeling frustrated with a team dynamic or there's repeated microaggressions and you feel angry about it. That anger is telling you something. It's telling you to set a boundary, make a bold request, take action that aligns with your vision for success.
I have to tell you, so of course my name is Yann and it’s said wrong a lot of times. I used to get an emotional trigger by it. Now, if people say it wrong, I just correct them. But I worked with this leader who kept saying it wrong over and over. And I remember I was in a meeting with lots of people, a lot of peers, with my boss, and he just kept saying my name wrong.
And I felt a lot of anger in that moment so much so that I had a really hard time following what they were talking about because I just had so much anger, and so instead of just stewing in my anger and not listening to everything else that was happening around me I got really present with myself and I said to him, hey, listen, John, my name is Yann. Can you please say it properly so that I can make sure that people here know that you're talking to me and that I know you're talking to me?
And I said it in a really firm way that, I guess maybe it might've come across a little bitchy, but I actually was okay to take a stand at that moment. Just noticing, okay, there was my anger. And he said, oh, I'm so sorry, I keep doing it wrong. And in that moment, I just was more present and aware. And I said, okay, let's move forward. But at least I could put that boundary down instead of stewing there, not really paying attention, not being fully present, people just wondering what's going on with me.
So this also, this anger allows you to take action intentionally to move from pain to pleasure. Again, I wanna be seen, I wanna be heard, I want people to know my name. I'm the only person in the room that is not white, so my name is different, and I want everybody to respect that and to know that, and everybody in the room has the right to be called their proper name. So whether it's John or Sarah or Yann, especially it's a leadership team where we're all working together.
So I wanted to be seen in that way and I use that anger in that moment. So I always tell my clients, it's important to notice your anger because what happens to a lot of the women that I coach is they leave meetings feeling angry and frustrated and they feel like they don't have a voice. But here's the thing, you do have a voice. And the more that you notice your anger in your body, the more you ask yourself questions of what am I angry about? Do I need to set a boundary? Do I need to make a request? What action do I want to take?
The more you can have that relationship with your anger and know it's there as a protective force for you, an intentional protective force, you can use it, again, to move from pain to pleasure versus feeling stuck. Okay, so that is anger. Like I said, we're gonna do a lots more episode on this. It is the number one emotion that helps women show up confidently convicted and with lots of clarity when they are in male-dominated spaces. So we're gonna do more on that.
But let's move to the next one. It is sadness. This is about embracing vulnerability for growth. When we notice that we're sad, right, It's often a response to loss or disappointment. It's an emotion that women in leadership are told to hide, right? Don't let them see that you're upset. Don't let them see that you're sad. But in reality, sadness can create a space for healing, connection, and authenticity.
Embracing sadness allows leaders to model vulnerability, create deeper connections with their team, and foster trust. So when you're experiencing a setback, like losing a key project or facing a personal challenge, don't just rush to move on. Sadness gives you time to process and to reflect.
It's a powerful way to show your team that it's okay to be human, to be seen, and to come back stronger. So the next time you are noticing sadness, it's typically a loss of a pleasure. You want to allow yourself space to reflect and connect. And truly when I have felt sadness with other leaders or with my CEO, maybe we went for, we went to get a big funding request and we felt sad because it didn't land right.
When you are able to show sadness, oftentimes with my CEOs or male leaders, they also notice, oh, this person cares as much as I do. They may not express it, but they're also upset. But what you'll notice too, if you start noticing your own emotions you'll also notice how men in leadership express their emotions and sadness might sound like anger like I'm really frustrated we didn't get the approval for this funding but there's sadness underneath it or maybe there's fear underneath it.
Typically, underneath anger is hurt, fear, or sadness, but that's when men obviously end up showing anger when this happens because it's a more acceptable emotion for men to feel or to display because of our society and how we've grown up. But know that sadness can actually help connect you with other people and again allow for comfort to be understood, to be able to authentically show up as you and say, this was really upsetting for me, or it was really sad that this didn't work out because we gave it our all.
There's a difference between staying in sadness and creating victimhood around it versus saying, I feel sad, I'm going to give myself the day to feel sad about this and sit with this and reflect and comfort myself through it versus staying stuck in it. I think sometimes people think if you stay stuck in it, like you'll automatically become a victim so they just move quickly towards the next emotion that seems more acceptable or more positive. But just saying, hey, I'm sad about this, that's disappointing, it's okay. It's just validating that emotion.
And if other members of your team also feel disappointed, guess what? You guys get to connect together and be aligned together, not just cognitively in what you wanna get done, but emotionally, which actually creates more bonds, creates more trust and rapport. Okay, so let's go to the final emotion, joy. It's amplifying success and confidence.
I think this is one that is hard for a lot of women because they are so used to being in the struggle mindset that when something joyous happens, it could feel really weird in your body. It could feel weird to celebrate so much. But joy is an emotion we all want more of, but as leaders we sometimes forget to celebrate.
I also think what gets in the way of joy a lot of times is people feel like, oh my gosh, if I celebrate, the other shoe is going to drop. Something bad is going to happen. And so it gets us in this cycle to not celebrate and not be joyous. But joy's purpose is to remind you to celebrate and share your success. Again, sharing your success builds connection and builds memories around that.
I want you to think about this for yourself because it could really, again, celebrating your own achievements can help inspire and elevate other people and invites them and gives them permission to celebrate themselves as well. A lot of women deflect positive feedback or comments. I have a client that does this a lot. And your job to be in the joy of things is to sit with that positive attention, to sit with it.
Because this is where a lot of women feel discomfort of just everything's okay, you're enough, people are celebrating you. And the more you learn how to sit in that, the more capacity for joy you'll have and the more joy you'll be attracting into your life because you'll really be able to receive it.
So an example might be when your team hits a milestone or when you've accomplished something significant, don't hold back your joy. Celebrating openly and authentically not only boosts your own confidence, but also creates a positive ripple effect in your organization. And more and more people are going to feel like they have permission to do it and they're going to be wanting to be in that joy more often than not.
So this is a little tip for yourself. If you're also noticing, wow, I'm like, joy is one of the hardest emotions. You might also notice if joy is a hard emotion, you get really triggered when you're around very joyous, happy people. You might notice you're being like, that person is so annoying, they're so happy all the time. You may need to build your capacity to have more joy in your life.
So here is one practical tip that you could do is take five minutes to reflect on what brought you joy and to share it with someone, whether it's your team, your boss, or your colleague. Let that energy fuel your next step. Play with that, see how that works. We are oftentimes in that brain that we're not enough, that we can't celebrate joy, something bad's gonna happen. But this amplifying success and confidence is going to invite more and more of it into your life.
All right, so why emotional intelligence is your competitive edge? I want to, again, invite you to think about how you could be using these emotions and especially as a high achieving woman you're going to have lots of emotions. You're going to feel hurt when you try to speak up in a room full of men or interrupt, your ability to be with that hurt versus shy away from it is the difference between your success and moving forward versus you staying stuck and feeling frustrated.
So the more you can deal with your emotions, process them, the better able you're going to be as you continue advancing in your career and the more fun you'll have because you will be able to connect with yourself and probably take yourself less seriously.
According to research from Talent Smart, emotional intelligence accounts for nearly 60% of job performance in top leaders. Imagine the competitive edge you gain by not just managing, but harnessing your emotions for success.
I want you to go out there and notice your emotional responses during the day. This is your assignment to take away. What is the emotion trying to teach you? How can I grow from the motion? How can I just sit with emotions?
Sometimes I just tell my clients, just notice what's coming up, what body sensations you're having, and that will also help you name what emotion you're having. So sometimes when I feel angry, my jaw tenses and my butt gets tense, and you know what I do? I notice in meetings, I ask myself, what am I feeling angry about? And this again, helps me get clear, put a request out there, state a boundary, say something that helps me align to what I wanna see happen in that meeting.
So this is really the power of emotions, but in order to use it you need to understand it. So the main takeaway here is that emotions are not your enemy. They are your greatest source of strength and leadership power and by working with your emotions instead of suppressing them, you unlock new levels of confidence, clarity, and influence, as well as capacity.
People who carry around a lot of emotional baggage, I'm sure you've known them. I'm sure you have worked with them. It's not fun. It's not inviting. You don't feel like confident in their abilities to do more and more. You feel like they're stuck in their emotions.
So I wanna invite you and other women leaders to share your emotions, notice your emotions, and ask yourself, what is this emotion trying to do here? What is it moving me from pain to pleasure? What's coming up for me?
I invite you to start having a relationship with your emotions to a deeper level. And I want to hear how it all works for you. So leave me a message, write about this review, how did this episode hit you? What's coming up for you around emotions? And when you start connecting with yourself and emotions, I wanna hear how it's impacting you in your life and in your career.
All right, that is our episode for this week. Have a great week and I'll see you soon. Go out there, embrace your emotions, embrace the power that is within you. See you soon.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
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