Case Study - The Emotional Executive

A senior executive at a multinational corporation in the technology space.

In our experience, women executives have shown to be more emotionally transparent than men. We consider this good, except where it affects their judgment, and/or has them perceived as unstable. In this case, a successful senior executive entered into an emotionally unstable phase due to several organizational and team conditions, which made her seemingly not in control.

The client had awareness of her problems. This was a good start. She didn’t know what to do, since several trigger factors were outside her control. Her gender could have been an issue as well. The real challenge to us was to help her become aware that she was fine and needed to be centered, and allow her to confront the external issues. Upon her request, we had joint sessions with the team and multi-source feedback. She learned to relax and let go. As a part of the process, she improved upon her team building and delegation skills. Self-mastery of intrapersonal issues led to social mastery of interpersonal issues.

The client and her team were crucial to the company’s growth. We went through three levels of intervention — individual, team and organizational. Establishing intrapersonal emotional mastery was the foundation. This took 3 – 4 sessions. Together, we worked with the team on alignment and emotional bonding for nearly two days. A number of interpersonal issues surfaced and were resolved. Finally, two stakeholder meetings dealt with organizational issues that affected leadership in the organization. The manager and team developed a powerful vision and action plan that produced excellent results.