Emotionally mature leaders and team members show up differently, especially under pressure and in conflict.
They know how to regulate their emotions and not allow them to negatively influence their thinking and reactions.
They can sit with awkward and uncomfortable feelings—such as rejection, uncertainty, and criticism—without dramatizing them.
This makes emotional maturity a critical asset for every leader and team member.
Any leader who has experienced managing an emotionally immature team member, one who consistently creates theatre and drama and reacts emotionally to just about everything, can attest to how important this quality is.
Because emotionally mature people learn differently, this quality is an important but often overlooked indicator of talent.
Emotionally mature people are more open to feedback and willing to change patterns in their behavior that aren’t serving them well. Those who are emotionally immature typically reflect the opposite mindset.
No one is born emotionally mature.
But people are born with the emotional potential to learn how to remain honest, responsible, and intentional with their emotions, even on messy days.
While some people have innate temperamental advantages, emotional maturity is largely developed through life experiences, feedback, and practice.
How emotions were handled in the family, the feedback people received when they reacted to failure, loss, and conflict, and the practice of emotional regulation help to shape this lifelong quality.
Working on becoming more emotionally mature includes practice at identifying feelings during and after situations, slowing reactions when emotions are triggered, and communicating directly and on task without allowing emotions to overly influence the intensity of responding.
In addition to practice, research confirms that people who experience hardships and adversity and learn to reflect on, draw lessons from, and take responsibility for them develop emotional maturity more rapidly.
Adversity creates the conditions for emotional maturity to develop, but doesn’t guarantee it. What matters is how adversity is processed.
This idea supplies leaders with a fertile line of discussion when selecting talent.
Exploring what adversity a prospective team member has faced in their lives, how they overcame it, and what lessons they took away can provide a lens into their emotional maturity and other qualities.
Even what counts as “adversity” in the candidate’s mind often provides great insight into who they are and how they may respond to setbacks in the future.
For many people, adversity reveals character, while reflection refines it into maturity. Pain is a test that teaches different lessons to different people.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
