# Emotional Intelligence as Core Leadership Strategy

**Podcast:** LEITWOLF Podcast - Leadership, Führung & Management
**Published:** 2026-09-17

## Transcript

You're pissed, you're furious, you're angry, you're disappointed, you're scared, you feel fear.
And all of these emotions are absolutely human and understandable.
And you should have them, but you should never allow them to take control over your behavior, what you actually do.
So the simple formula is name it, pause it, choose it.
Hello and welcome to today's Lightwolf Leadership Podcast.
Great that you're dialing in on a very special and a very human, deeply human topic.
It's all about emotion.
Title is Master Your Emotions Before They Master You.
The essential leadership skill that every leader needs.
I don't know how you experience emotion at your workplace.
In yourself, in your boss, in your team, in the people around you.
Emotions are valuable signals, but poor guides.
Great leadership shows under pressure, not in smooth sailing.
It's easy to lead well when everything works.
But it's decisive and crucial that we lead well when the going gets tough.
You may know these moments.
A customer walks away.
Maybe your boss criticizes someone in public.
It's already embarrassing.
If it's not you who gets criticized.
It's even more embarrassing if it's yourself.
A team member reporting to you fails to deliver for the third time in a row.
The board dismisses months of work.
You're pissed.
You're furious.
You're angry.
You're disappointed.
You're scared.
You feel fear.
And all of these emotions are absolutely human and understandable.
And you should have them.
But you should never allow them to take control over your behavior, what you actually do, right?
The problem is not your emotions.
It's how you respond to them.
Great leadership means recognizing emotions without letting them take control over your behavior.
This moment always reminds me of something that's in fact a little joke.
But I find it really nice.
It works even better in German, but let me try it in English as well.
I don't get worked up.
Other people work me up.
So it's completely denying any responsibility for getting upset yourself.
It's always the others that are responsible and accountable for upsetting me.
I love this joke.
Or it also reminds me of a nice car ride I had on a motorway in Europe the other day.
When we came by a gas station, we stopped.
And as in many of those gas stations, there was a shop attached to the gas station and there was a cup entitled, In the Next Life, I'll Do Something Without Idiots.
My thinking was, well, what an arrogant attitude of this person who thinks like this.
I still burst into laughter because I thought, like, what a funny attitude.
But it's, in fact, Das ist einfach nur symptomatisch.
Also, dass ich es lief über.
Es ist symptomatisch der Wahrheit behind.
Und ich erlebe ein paar Probleme mit dem Erinnerung an der Arbeit.
Zum Beispiel, du reagierst bevor du denkst.
Es passiert.
Ich versuche es, aber es passiert mir auch.
Es gibt einen Trigger, das mich anstürzt, und I draft and maybe even send a harsh email to defend, to defuse, to attack, to justify.
And I share a rushed decision rather than a smart, considered thought.
Let me share a personal example.
Stefan was just 26, a young marketing assistant in an outstanding global company.
He worked in a business unit.
Ich habe immer noch die Branden gehalten, weil ich Kinder und ich arbeite in den Paper-Industriebe.
Ich fühle mich mit der Branden von zwei Angeln.
Als ein Young Assistant, ich war für eine der größten Innovationen der kommenden Jahre.
Ich schreibe eine e-mail an den Multifunctional Team und ich bekomme Antworten von unseren Logistik Experten, die die Worten Pallet Stability oder Pallet Instability und Risk of delaying the launch.
And I go like, ah!
I'm scared.
Because there is cinema in my mind that starts with those two words.
And I'm getting worried that I might be responsible for a delayed launch.
Or for an instable palette and product falling on people in retail stores.
Which, by the way, never happened.
But that was what I had in my mind.
I was scared.
So my emotion controlled my reaction because I drafted an email and then sent it.
And in the second after sending, I felt relieved.
But already three seconds after sending, I went like, I'm not sure whether that's a good idea.
Anyway, it was out and nothing really happened because I was surrounded by experienced, outstanding professionals, which were all over the place in this outstanding company.
And I learned.
I learned.
There is a space between my emotion and my reaction.
What matters is the space between them, between trigger and response.
Leadership starts there.
Another problem is that your emotions are contagious.
I am going to kick off an international leadership development program.
Wir sind mit ein paar in unserem Team, so drei unserer Coaches, selbst included, werden die Trainings.
Die Team behind den Team ist bereits busy, helping, kommunikating, designing communication material, bevor, during und after den Workshops.
Und ich bin schon ein, was ich vielleicht noch einmal wiederholt, was ich eine Person zu sagen, und er oder seine Hand.
Was ich dann werde ich dann einfach...
Put my hand on top of her or his hand and put pressure on the hand.
And what's very likely to happen is that I'm going to get pressure back.
Why?
Because humans mirror human behavior.
Always.
So let's use that insight and let's make sure that we send the right behavior.
A nervous CEO creates a nervous leadership team.
An aggressive leader creates a defensive or even aggressive team.
A hectic leader creates an environment where everyone thinks, well, every little problem becomes a major crisis.
But calm, confident, clarity is contagious too.
That's the reassuring insight here.
So let's make sure we send the right signals, we send the right emotions and sometimes ask ourselves as leaders, what emotion am I bringing to the room right now?
And a final problem I sometimes observe in our leadership development or even strategy development work with clients is, some people think that emotional control means to suppress emotions.
And I completely disagree.
Emotional control is not to suppress emotions.
Thoughts from the last millennium, like don't show fear, Stay composed.
Don't show anger.
I think they are wrong.
Emotions provide valuable information.
Anger means there was a boundary crossed.
Fear means there is a risk perceived.
And fear can help us prevent fatal risks.
Disappointment means there is an unmet need, an unmet expectation.
And all of them...
may be helpful for us if we read them, if we read them right, and if we show the right reaction to emotion.
But we always should keep in mind, emotions are signals, not instructions for action.
And I'd like to share with you three tips for your consideration.
Name it, pause it, choose it.
Tip number one, name it.
Name the emotion.
What am I really feeling?
Am I feeling disappointed?
Afraid?
Angry?
Hurt?
What is it?
Naming the emotion can help you create a distance and enables you to choose a conscious response rather than showing an emotional reaction.
Distance can help you choose your response.
So name it before you act on it.
Two, pause it.
Create space.
Create space both from a room perspective and time perspective.
Take a break.
Breathe.
Let oxygen flow into your blood.
Breathing.
Breathing calmly reduces your blood pressure, your pulse, gets more oxygen into your brain and improves your thinking quality.
So breathe.
Drink some water.
An outstanding leadership program I participated in 27 years ago created a habit in my life, which is always have a glass of water in sight.
Because only when I can see it am I reminded of actually drinking it.
So drink water.
Ask questions instead of responding to an interpretation, right?
One of the other things I took away from this fantastic leadership program, Beyond Drinking Water as a Habit, was the insight that I'm never responding to reality.
I thought for a long time that I respond to reality.
In this program, I learned I never respond to reality.
I always respond to my own interpretation of my own perception in my own brain.
That's what I respond to.
My interpretation goes through many, many filters, like my gender, my age, my skin color, my religion and many others.
And typically, anger is just a result of a misunderstanding.
Not always, but often.
So we should not allow emotions to take control over our behavior.
Create a pause.
Step away.
If you're furious about someone or something, draft an email, but do not press the send button.
Draft it and save it.
Whenever I've done this in my life, typically an hour later or later the next morning, the anger was gone and I didn't need to send the email any longer.
So pause it, drink water, breathe and reflect.
What is the right thing to do once I'm no longer angry, hurt or afraid?
So that's tip number two.
Pause it and create space.
And tip number three, choose it.
Choose your response consciously.
Don't ask, what do I want to get off my chest?
Leadership is not about relieving you, but what impact do I want to have on others?
Do I want to clarify accountability?
Do I want them to take accountability for action, activity, development or result?
What do I want them to take accountability for?
Clarity.
Do I want to create clarity?
Do I want to earn other people's trust?
Do I want to set a clear boundary?
What is the impact I want?
And then choose your behavior accordingly so that you achieve the impact you want.
Emotional self-leadership is not about being nice all the time or being tough all the time.
It's about being intentionally Impactful.
Ideally all the time.
So the simple formula is name it, pause it, choose it.
Name it, what am I feeling, pause it, don't react automatically and choose it.
What impact do I want?
Idea for you.
In the next two weeks, notice your emotional trigger when you feel triggered in a moment.
Do it in the moment.
Notice it.
Reflect it right away.
Not just a day after, but maybe also a day after.
But reflect right away.
What is triggering me?
And then name it, pause it and choose it.
By the way, should you be, should this topic be interesting?
Should you be interested in getting input on emotion, on how to create an environment at your workspace that you want?
How to create the leadership culture you want.
How to help teams in your entire organization to just get stronger results by better leadership, stronger teams or better strategy implementation.
It would be my pleasure and the pleasure of my partners to spend whatever 15, 20, 25 minutes with you at your discretion just to exchange and see whether with a simple conversation we might be able to give you one idea that helps you move on.
If you're interested, You'll find the link to our calendars in the show notes of this podcast.
Looking forward to meeting you.
So in a nutshell, to close it, name it, pause it, choose it.
You can't always control what happens to you, but you can control how you respond.
That's where leadership starts.
I hope you enjoyed it.
I thank you for your time and I look forward.
to you dialing in into the Lightwolf Leadership Podcast again soon.
Take care and have a great week.