Emotional Manipulation; Flip Side of Emotional Intelligence?

In my previous post, I talked about Emotional Intelligence — EQ or EI. One of the readers wrote back to me about a dark side of EQ. Her feedback got me thinking… Could leaders use emotional intelligence to manipulate others in the wrong way? I mean, could EQ have a flip side?

This line of thinking led to my writing this post. We will explore Emotional Manipulation and see how it can be used by leaders for the good of the team, and also how other leaders can use it in the wrong way.

From my previous article, there is no doubt that EQ is crucial to success in leadership and generally life. Leaders with a high degree of EQ have used it to manipulate others to behave in a certain way.

Manipulation has a negative connotation, but for me, it has a positive side. What would you call the way of converting negative energy into a positive one through the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual aspects? That is positive manipulation! It is actually a common occurrence that most of us know how to apply to some aspects of our lives, but choose not to use in others.

You may not know that the word “manipulate” has no negative connotations in the first two definitions of the Webster dictionary. The following are taken from the dictionary, verbatim:

• To treat or operate manually or mechanically esp. with skill.
• To manage or use skilfully.

Someone said “If I were to hand you a piece of clay and ask you to ‘manipulate’ it into the form of a human body, you would begin to frame and shape the material into your best version of a man or woman without thinking twice about the verb I used.” This shows that “manipulate” is not necessarily negative.

Leaders are the vision bearers in organizations. They thus have to learn how to manipulate others, as it is one of the ways to get the team do what the leaders believe in. As part of the manipulation, leaders have to learn how to master their emotions and make the people they lead receptive to their contrived feelings.

A good example of a leader who positively manipulated people by use of emotional intelligence is Martin Luther King, Jr. When he presented his dream, he chose a language that would stir the hearts of his audience.

“Instead of honoring this sacred obligation” to liberty, King thundered, “America has given the Negro people a bad check.” He promised that a land “sweltering with the heat of oppression” could be “transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice,” and envisioned a future in which “on the red hills of Georgia sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”

In his speech, Dr. King demonstrated remarkable skill in managing his own emotions and in sparking emotions that moved his audience to action. Simply, manipulating his audience!

Every leader gets to a time they strongly believe in something that not everyone in the team supports. They try all sorts of tactics to make the team buy into the idea, but everything fails. Might it then be okay for the leader to “manipulate” the team into compliance? — that is, for the organization’s good? In fact, if the leader’s motives could hardly be described as self-interested, is it even accurate to designate their tactics — however surreptitious, crafty, or devious — as manipulative at all?

I however have to point out that Manipulation in most cases self-destructs leaders. Word gets out on manipulators and people grow less and less likely to respond in a positive manner to their manipulation. This leads me to the dark side of high levels of EQ; negative manipulation.

People with high emotional intelligence can use it to unfair advantage. This can be in a way of helping, protecting, and promoting oneself and others, or using EQ to promote oneself at the cost of others. In this way, EQ gets closer to Machiavellianism — the art of socially manipulating others in order to achieve one’s own selfish ends. When used in this way, other people become social tools to be used to push oneself forward even at considerable expense to them.

Majority of leaders with high levels of EQ use their emotional skills to manipulate people they lead for personal gain. If you polish your emotional skills, you are more likely to become better at manipulating others. When you’re good at controlling your own emotions, you can disguise your true feelings. When you know what others are feeling, you can jerk at their heartstrings and motivate them to act against their own best interests.

This is what becomes negative emotional manipulation which has led to the fall of many leaders. Such leaders find it easy to rob people of their capacities to reason. If their values are out of step with those of the people they lead, the results can be devastating.

We need to be aware of leaders who have self-serving motives, and use emotional intelligence as a weapon for manipulating others. Such leaders intentionally shape their emotions to fabricate favorable impressions of themselves.

So, due to the growing recognition that emotional intelligence — like any other skill — can be used for good or evil in leadership, it is critical to consider the values that go along with it and where it’s actually useful. This should be incorporated in leadership trainings. One should hold it in mind and heart as they sharpen their own leadership skills.