‘Leadership’ has become a holy grail of the last decade or two. Scores of books, journal articles and research papers have been dedicated to the task of trying to understand what great leadership is and how it might be replicated. There are countless ‘shopping lists’ of outstanding leadership characteristics, with the implication that all one needs to do to be a better leader is take more of these items off the shelf, that is, to learn more skills.

Yet when we look at the outstanding leaders in the real world who we have worked with, we see that there is no single ‘ideal’ of leadership. Some outstanding leaders are highly charismatic while some are quite reserved. Some bounce into every meeting bursting with energy and ideas while others are measured and methodical in the way they go about their work. Some are products of wisdom they have acquired over many years; others seem to have been given that wisdom as a childhood birthday gift and apply it to leadership very early in their lives.

Put simply, there is no ‘mould’ for leadership. Great leaders just ‘are’ … or so it sometimes seems. But of course it is not as simple as that

In the world of leadership, there is increasing recognition of a distinction between ‘horizontal’ capability – the widely taught base skills, abilities and behaviours of leadership – and ‘vertical’ development, which is essential to sustainable, empowering leadership. It is vertical development, not horizontal capability, that differentiates great leadership from good leadership*.

Our work has led us to the view that increasing emotional health is a potent example of this vertical development. A leader’s emotional health influences not what they do but the way they see, respond to and interact with the world. It guides the way they engage and work with others by providing a better understanding of the impact they have on those others.

For our upcoming book, The Emotionally Healthy Leader, we spoke at length to three leaders with whom we have worked and who we recognise as being exceptional at what they do. They are, unsurprisingly, all different: they have different personalities, different backgrounds, and work in quite different industries. They also differ in the ways they go about leading – in what would typically be called their leadership ‘styles’. At the same time, there are powerful aspects of the way they approach leadership which bind them together. Both individually and collectively, these three leaders represent what we call the ‘Emotionally Healthy Leader’.

In the book we detail the characteristics of emotionally healthy leadership and describe how leaders, as they move into the higher emotional health levels, are able to access the gifts and strengths of nine ‘leadership distinctions’ as and when they need to.

As a result, emotionally healthy leaders achieve what seems to be a paradoxical balancing act. They manage to be both compassionate and caring, as well as decisive and courageous. They display very low levels of ego driven behaviour or self-centredness: it’s not about them, it’s about others and the organisation. At the same time they display very high levels of behavioural freedom – rather than making automatic or knee-jerk decisions, especially when the pressure is on, they make considered decisions almost all the time, and nearly always relate authentically and effectively with others.

Emotionally healthy leaders drive positive emotions in their workplaces; they create resonance by inspiring others through the creation of a genuinely shared vision, then coaching them to be all that they can be as they work towards achieving that vision.

It’s important to understand that building emotional health cannot be achieved through ‘thinking’ or ‘knowing’ about it. It is not a cognitive process. To improve their level of emotional health, a leader needs to ‘be present’ in his or her own experiences – to be increasingly self-aware and mindful ‘in the moment’. They need to gain a progressively deeper understanding of their own responses and reactions, and of the impact they have on others as they choose their next course of action.

All of this takes time and dedication. It requires resilience – everyone comes up against barriers to growth at different times in their lives. It also requires support – not everyone has the capacity to move past these barriers with just determination and persistence.

We believe that emotionally healthy leadership can have a positive impact – on leaders, their organisations, and on the wider community. This is why, in our work, we pursue the development of emotionally healthy leadership as something which can create a better world.

Gayle