“If you've never cried after giving everything you had to something that mattered, you've probably never given everything you had to something that mattered.”

– Steve Magness, performance coach and author

I had a message this week that struck a deep chord with it. It was from a successful entrepreneur and he told me it was his ‘Man in the Arena’ moment (my favorite speech of all time).

He’d been dealing with a client relationship where his team was being treated badly – dismissive and disrespectful to the point of it constituting a toxic relationship.

He called for a meeting with their MD, prepared for it rigorously, laid out the facts, and resigned the account with his integrity intact.

Then he went home and cried.

It was one of the most impressive things I'd heard in a long time. Because what I took from it was his level of emotional investment – in his team and in his standards. And the crying? You don't cry over things that don't matter. 

We've built a professional culture that mistakes emotional suppression as emotional regulation. They are not the same thing. And the cost of confusing the two is significant.

THE EVIDENCE

Bill Campbell spent decades as Silicon Valley's most influential coach. He had a profound instinct for what actually drives human performance, which is why luminaries such as Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Larry Page chose to work with him.

His core conviction, the one that ran through everything he did, was straightforward: the top priority of any leader is the wellbeing and success of their people. He believed that teams built on genuine emotional investment – by that I mean trust, care and authentic connection – consistently outperformed those built on process and hierarchy alone. In a world obsessed with hard data and measurable outputs, he kept bringing it back to the same place. The power of emotion.

THE THEORY

What Campbell understood intuitively, neuroscience now explains. When we are emotionally invested in something – a person, a mission, a task –  the brain's reward circuitry activates in a fundamentally different way. Research consistently shows that people who care about what they're doing sustain higher performance for longer, recover faster from setbacks, and show greater cognitive flexibility under pressure.

The opposite is equally true. Emotional detachment isn't neutral. A brain disengaged from meaning operates in a lower gear and at a slower pace – think of that as your  capable, but not committed state. 

As you’re reading this, I’m sure this is ringing true. You know the differences in how you show up – the times where you really care deeply about something versus when you’re just going through the motions. 

When you’re emotionally invested in something I I liken it to what I call ‘aliveness’ – it’s you at your best and you have an intense sense of energy and focus.

We can also ‘read’ the emotions of others, and as a leader, the people around you will pick up on your unconscious behaviours – if you’re emotionally invested, you don’t just perform better as an individual, you create the conditions for them to do the same – you lift everyone up. That’s leadership. 

THE APPLICATION

I trained in the psycho-dynamic model of coaching at INSEAD, which has a strong focus on unconscious behaviours. One of the most powerful tools I took from that was the value of treating emotions as data points. Your own emotional responses, when you intentionally tune into them rather than just operating on auto-pilot, tell you something real about what's happening in a situation. That data is incredibly valuable if you’re willing to explore what’s behind it.

Another valuable ‘unlock’ is learning to apply that same curiosity outward. Your team is giving you data constantly and a significant amount of it isn't in what they're saying. It's in the gap between what they're saying and what they’re doing. It’s also about what they aren’t saying. Be curious about those gaps. Don't accept the surface because you’re time poor. Dig into what's underneath it. That investment will pay you back immediately and compound in the long-term.

The entrepreneur I know didn't just protect his team by ending that client relationship. He showed them, without a word of explanation, exactly how much they mattered to him. That's emotional investment in action. And it is, without question, one of the most important investments any leader can make.

I opened this week’s missive with a quote from performance expert and author Steve Magness. I’m also going to leave the final words to him as he says it better than I can:

“It’s only by stepping into the arena and taking that risk that we find out how good we can be, and more importantly, who we are. The potential for tears is the price of admission.”

Are you willing to pay it? 

Always here to support.

J.

🔥  LIVE BETTER, LEAD BETTER  

The best content I researched this week:

1. The best writing challenges your assumptions and encourages you to think differently, which is why I’d  encourage all of you to read the Steve Magness article in full. 

2. “Experimenting with your emotions helps you move from self-judgment to self-curiosity,” says neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff. Check out her practical tips here.

3. And finally, a deep dive into how to master emotional regulation as a skill with Dr. Marc Brackett, Director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.