EMOTIONAL MANIPULATION
Emotional Manipulation:
Flipside Of Emotional
Intelligence
By George Mbithi
S
ometimes back, I wrote an
article
about
Emotional
Intelligence in leadership. One
of the readers wrote back to me about
a dark side of that subject, which is
not commonly talked about. Her
feedback got me thinking … Could
leaders use emotional intelligence to
manipulate others in the wrong way?
I mean, could EQ have a flipside?
In this article, I seek to 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.
In this day and age, 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. 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.
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 skillfully. 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.
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.
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 skillfully
42 MAL21/17 ISSUE
“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