Leaders should not ignore the fact that their ability to lead does not only related to the things that they do and say, but also to how their face looks like, according to Nikos Dimitriadis and Alexandros Psychogios
What a human being is cannot be effectively defined, if separated from behaviour.
Beyond our human biology that evolved though the ages, our human behaviour, as our physical, mental and social capacity to understand and react to external stimuli, has also evolved along with its main ingredients, our emotions.
So, to rephrase, we cannot understand the nature of a human being if we ignore his/her emotional self.
Emotions drive our behaviour, our decisions and our actions. Emotions motivate us to do things or to avoid others. Emotions intervene in all events that we experience in life. Emotions make us better (or worse) in our personal as well as professional life. Emotions are directly related to leadership. But why emotions are so important for leadership and how can leaders transmit emotions that influence?
Can leaders develop this skill?
The importance of emotions in influencing
Charles Darwin, in his 1872 book The Expression of Emotions in Man Animal, offered one of the earliest systematic approaches in understanding how emotions are reflected evolutionarily on physical bodily changes. Darwin’s main point was that humans have a set of emotions that, when experienced, are portrayed with distinct movements of facial muscles and features.
Since then, psychologist Silvan Solomon Tomkins in the early 1960s, and his student Paul Ekman in the late 1980s, expanded on Darwin’s early observations suggesting, respectively, a modern theory of basic emotions and a corresponding theory of universal facial expressions. Despite the geographical location or the particular cultural characteristics of human societies, proponents of the basic emotions theory claim that humans employ identical ways of revealing basic emotions through their facial expressions.
Although basic emotions theorists do not agree fully on the exact emotions and how these have evolved, overlapping between models is indeed substantial. Typically, such models include emotions such as fear, disgust, joy, surprise, sadness, and anger.
Regardless of the ‘basic emotions and expressions’ approaches, there is an overall (but not complete) consensus in psychology, neuroscience and other related fields, that emotions are key drivers of influence in human behaviour. Influence has different forms. Maybe the most recognisable one is motivation. Most of human action, as a product of brain processing, requires motivation. And motivation requires emotion. It is not hard to recognise that noteworthy achievement is based more on a passionate pursue of inspiring goals and less on understanding of abstract facts and numbers. What is surprising to most though is that even rational thinking is based on an emotionally healthy brain. This powerful insight, which breaks the outdated dualism of rationality vs. emotion, has been the key contribution of eminent neuroscientist Antonio Damasio in his chapter in the 2004 book Feelings and Emotions reveals that when specific parts of the emotional brain are impaired, by accident or disease, patients that look, act and think rational are longtermly inclined to take damaging decisions both for themselves and others. Emotions are the basis not only for influencing motivation but, surprisingly, for influencing intelligent decision-making as well.
Emotions form the biological force behind optimal psychological experience, cognitive processing and behavioural response. It is then not an overstatement to claim that emotions represent the bedrock of leadership practice, since leadership by definition is based on influence. But how do leaders communicate and influence through emotions? Or put it differently, how leaders communicate emotions to their followers? Well, it seems that their faces do a lot of work.
Leaders’ facial expressions as emotions’ communicators
There is extensive evidence supporting the importance of emotions in leadership process. The question though is can leaders improve the way that they influence through emotions? This is not an easy answer since there is still a debate onto the extent that leaders’ can control emotions and, thus, their behaviour. Nevertheless, there are strong evidence suggesting that emotions can be transmitted and therefore they can influence the behaviour of others. These are good news for leaders and we explain why. Just consider the following situation. A friend of yours is afraid of dogs. You ask your friend the reason of her fear to dogs and the answer is ‘I do not know’. You expected an answer that once a dog had hunted me or once a dog had bitten me. No. She has never had an experience like this. Then what? She is telling you that she remembers herself in their early years as a child to see her mother being afraid of dogs. Her mother actually had a reason. She had be bitten by one. Your friend (her daughter) never.
As you can probably understand, her mother transmitted the emotion of fear for dogs to her daughter without the latter having any negative experience about these adorable animals. The story is indicative of our ‘ability’ to transmit emotions.
Emotions can be transmitted through social learning process. We follow role models and we imitate their emotions. We transmit emotions, consciously and mainly unconsciously, by using any communication means and especially non-verbal that seems to be stronger than the verbal ones. One of the most powerful non-verbal means is our facial expressions.
This has enormous implications for leaders. There are studies suggesting that the face of someone is associated with his/her leadership capability.
In 2013, a study in the scientific journal PLOS ONE found that a dominant-looking face of a leader is enough to convince others to follow especially during a crisis. In addition, a feminine looking face of a leader inspires more in regular times, in contrast to a masculine looking one that works better for followers during hard times as academic Brian Spisak agues in an The Leadership Quarterly in 2012).
Another study in 2014, in the same publication, found that a lot of us we can recognise leader’s context (business, military, sports) just by looking their faces.
Facial expressions are crucial for engaging empathetically with others since our eyes are naturally directed in specific regions of someone’s face, eyes and mouth areas, in order to identify intuitively their emotional state.
We scan the faces of others automatically to make sure we understand and respond appropriately to their emotions.
This is particularly important considering that empathy is widely accepted as a necessary leadership trait, especially during our challenging times. In short, leaders should understand that their faces are used as transmitters of emotions and have an impact on our perception about them especially during action.
Conclusions
Based on the above, the critical question that needs to be answered is whether leaders can develop their capability to control their facial expressions? Or to put it differently, can leaders learn how to transmit the right emotions through their faces? Well, the answer is obviously not simple. Nevertheless, as we support in our study and book Neuroscience for Leaders there is always a bright side in applied neuroscience. There are empirical studies supporting the view that leaders can develop the ability to transmit the right emotions through the faces.
By providing specific training on how to talk and use facial expressions and body language, leaders can become more convincing as well as trustworthy towards groups of followers.
All in all, leaders should not ignore the fact that their ability to lead does not only related to the things that they do and say, but also to how their face looks like.
AMBA members can benefit from a discount on Neuroscience for Leaders courtesy of the AMBA Book Club.
Nikolaos Dimitriadis is an award-winning communications professional, educator and consultant. He is the co-author of the books Neuroscience for Leaders: A Brain Adaptive Leadership Approach and Advanced Marketing Management: Principles, Skills and Tools both for Kogan Page London.
He spoke at TEDx University of Strathclyde for the urgent need for brain-based communication, he is a certified NeuroMarketer, and he lectured at the NeuroMarketing Manager Program at Hamburg Media School.
He is a highly sought-after speaker and consultant, teaching regularly in MBA and corporate programs around the world. Dr Dimitriadis has studied more than 5,000 brains in 25 countries for marketing, leadership and HR purposes. He has worked with major brands such as IKEA, IBM, JTI, Nestle, Johnson&Johnson, AstraZeneca, T-Mobile, DELL, Pierre Fabre, Coca-Cola, Banca Intesa Sanpaolo, Microsoft, CISCO, SAP, Unicredit, VMware, Emirates NBD, Raiffeisen Bank, Societe Generale, Credit Agricole USAID and others.
He is the Head of Neuro Consulting Services at OptimalHRGroup, offering neuro-research, neuro-advisory and neuro-training services. In 2017 he co-founded and managed the applied neuroscience startup Trizma Neuro. He is also the Country Manager for Serbia for The University of Sheffield International Faculty, City College.
Alexandros Psychogios is a Professor of International HRM in Birmingham City Business School at Birmingham City University.
He is also a Visiting Professor at Cyprus International Institute of Management (CIIM) and a Research Associate in South Eastern European Research Centre (SEERC). His specialisation and research interests are on international human resource management; leadership, neuroscience and complexity; and performance management.
His work focuses on various management and leadership issues in different, but rather challenging contexts like small and medium companies, emerging and crisis economies, and project-based organisations.
Professor Psychogios has a wide-range experience of participating in various consultancy, training and research projects related to leadership & Performance management. In August 2020, he received from the Management Consulting Division of the Academy of Management the Benedictine University Award for Outstanding Research Work on Ethical Issues in Consulting for his work on crisis leadership.
