Ep. 20 I Driven by Emotion or Informed by It? The Leadership Maturity Shift

Most leaders were taught to suppress emotion.

Push through. Stay logical. Deliver results.

But here’s what no one explains: suppressing emotion doesn’t eliminate it — it delays it. And what goes unprocessed doesn’t disappear. It drives behavior quietly, shaping your tone, your decisions, and the emotional climate around you.

In this episode, Amanda breaks down what’s actually happening inside the human system when you’re triggered, challenged, or under pressure — and why understanding it may be the most overlooked competitive advantage in leadership.

You’ll learn:

• The difference between emotions, narratives, and feelings
• Why awareness — not control — is the real power move
• How emotional suppression impacts culture, creativity, and long-term performance
• What leadership maturity actually looks like under pressure

This isn’t about becoming softer.
 It’s about becoming intentional.

Because leadership isn’t just about results — it’s about the emotional climate that determines whether trust expands, innovation flows, and human potential activates.

If this resonates, share it with three leaders in your network who are ready to master the inner game.

Transcript

Amanda Escobedo (00:10.034)
Welcome to the game changer by empower house coaching.

Amanda Escobedo (00:27.158)
Welcome to the Game Changer by Empower House Coaching, your podcast to master the mental game, elevate your brilliance and build a legacy of progress and impact. My name is Amanda Esquibido. I'm your host and intergame coach here to help you change the game. Welcome to episode 20.

So over the past few episodes, we've been really laying the foundation for how leadership actually works. And when I say leadership actually works, we're talking about from the inside out, from the mind. We're talking a lot about the foundation of the mind, how results are created by your thinking, how beliefs shape our perspective, our perception, how much of our leadership shows up automatically.

especially under pressure. Today, we're really focusing on something even more foundational and often deeply misunderstood. Your favorite subject, emotions and feelings. I can already feel some of you being like, ugh, feelings, I don't do that. It's really about understanding how emotions and feelings operate in the human system and how your relationship with them shapes how you lead at work at home.

and in those moments that really matter most. Because whether we acknowledge it or not, emotions are present every single day. And how you relate to them really determines whether you're leading from your power or if you're quietly giving it away. Now, why emotions have a bad rep? know, many of us were raised explicitly or implicitly with the idea that emotions are a liability.

You might recognize some version on this messaging, you know, stop crying, stop being so emotional. Don't be so sensitive. Feelings are for the weak. Or maybe even if you're at work, you might hear things like, you know, this is just part of the grind. It is what it is. You'll be fine. Let's just put it behind us. Now, especially in environments like tech and engineering and aerospace and startups and operations, places that really value precision.

Amanda Escobedo (02:42.306)
that value speed and execution, emotions can actually get labeled as inefficient, messy, or risky. So what do we do? We just suppress them. We ignore them. We dismiss them. We just push through. We stay busy. We intellectualize. But here's the key distinction most people never learn.

Suppressing your emotions doesn't eliminate them. They don't go away. They get delayed. And as we talked about in the last episode, whatever gets pushed underground doesn't disappear. It starts driving behavior from behind the scenes. And sometimes that shows up loud.

in your tone, in your sense of urgency, in control, micromanagement, or burnout of the team. And sometimes it shows up quiet. It shows up as passive aggressive, disengagement, avoidance of a real conversation. And or leaders can really in teams become jaded. Not because, again, we don't care. It's not because we don't care, but because they've stopped expecting things to change. When emotions aren't

processed, we don't extract the learnings from them. We don't pivot or adapt as maybe we should. And so the past just starts to get carried into our presence and we unknowingly just start to recreate the same future from it. And this isn't just to shape how leaders lead. It really, it shapes how teams operate as a whole. know, teams carry emotional memory too.

So when frustration, disappointment or mistrust isn't processed, it becomes a part of the culture. People stop speaking up, expectations quietly lower and the same issues resurface just dressed up as new problems. Not because the team is incapable, but because the learning never fully got integrated. And this is a part that really matters for most leadership.

Amanda Escobedo (04:55.02)
The cost of suppressing your emotions isn't emotional. It's actually behavioral. It shows up in how you lead. It shows up in how team experiences you, whether anything actually changes and behavior is leadership at the end of the day. So let's slow this down a bit for a moment because this distinction actually matters. I want to walk through the difference between emotions, narratives and feelings. Not so you can

label things perfectly, that isn't my goal, but so you can really just understand what's happening inside of you when something feels off. You can understand a little more of the human experience. Most people are never taught the language of emotions, especially in performance-driven environments. And when we don't really know what we're experiencing internally, we tend to judge it or suppress it or push past it.

And this is really about awareness. Educating you is about increasing your awareness because awareness gives you the power to choose. Now let's break down emotions. What are emotions? Emotions are instinctual. They're automatic physiol... Why can I not pronounce things? Automatic physiological signals.

They're your body's first response to something it perceives as significant. So it happens. It's a body experience. It happens before logic, before interpretation. So you'll experience something physical like a tight chest, a heavy chest, shallow or constricted breathing, a flushed or hot face, a closed or tight throat, tension in the jaw or the shoulders.

a sudden urge of energy or a noticeable drop. They happen really fast or involuntarily and they're just human. They're human experiences. Most physiological models identify a small number of core emotions. I think there's about 27 total, but there's a top six that most people kind of call in from. So fear, anger, sadness, joy, disgust, surprise.

Amanda Escobedo (07:13.198)
They're considered distinct because they're hardwired into our nervous system and are tied to our survival. And here's the key, you don't choose emotions. They just happen to you. They are signals, not instructions. Now, what is a narrative? So you've previously talked about, or we've previously talked about the results model and how...

a circumstance can really trigger a narrative, a story that you're telling yourself. So narratives are the meaning making stories your mind tells to explain what is happening. An emotion may actually show up first and almost instantly the mind asks, what does this mean? And that answer becomes your narrative, the story you're telling yourself. So the story you might be telling yourself, it might sound like, you know, this shouldn't be happening. I'm failing.

They don't respect me. I'm on my own. This is all on me. These stories are often unconscious. They're shaped by past experiences, by your identity, by your belief systems. And narratives, they don't create the initial emotion. They are shaped how the emotion is actually experienced. They actually, your narrative sits between...

the emotion and the feeling and sometimes and I'll take ownership. actually use the words emotion and feelings interchangeably and I probably should stop doing that. and so within that just, it's important to know that the narrative is in between the emotion and the feeling. There is a difference between your emotions and your feelings. So again, I want to reinforce emotions are just something that happens to you physically automatically. There's no choice. It's very instinctual.

And the narrative that you apply is then what shapes what you feel your feelings. So feelings are lived experiences that result when an emotion is filtered through your narrative. They're a little more nuanced. They're more personal. There's more layers to them. So as an example, you might say, or have feelings of anxiety, frustration, embarrassment, shame, defeat, motivation, confidence.

Amanda Escobedo (09:27.596)
And so the simple question is this, feelings are emotions and narratives put together. So fear paired with, I'm not ready becomes anxiety, right? So the fear of the emotion paired with the narrative, I'm not ready becomes anxiety as an example. Fear paired with the narrative, this matters and I care, can actually become excitement for you.

The same emotion, what I want to highlight here, both fear in these two different examples, it's the same emotion, but two different narratives applied to what that emotion means, then can generate two different feelings, two different experiences. Most people live at the feeling level. They say, I feel anxious. I feel overwhelmed. I feel unmotivated, but they don't actually see the underlining emotion or the story that's

feeding that feeling, which is why feelings can be confusing and out of their control or feel like what is out of their control. Now let's simplify this a little bit and give you an example. Let's say I have a niece or nephew that just jumps out from behind the door and tries to scare me. My body will have an initial reaction. My heart will jump. My adrenaline will spike fear and surprise, right?

before I know what's happening to me. That's that instinctual emotion. And then my mind will catch up and say, it's you. You got me, right? Once I noticed that's like, this bodily experiences from these kids, my niece or my nephew jumping out to scare me. And then suddenly the experience changes. The same initial emotion that could have turned into panic becomes now laughter, right? Same body response, but a different meaning and a different feeling.

That's the system in action. Now, let's bring all of this into leadership. Let's imagine that you're in a meeting and someone challenges your strategy in front of a team. Your body reacts first. There's a spike. It might be fear. It might be anger, heat in your face, tightness in your chest. That's the instinctual response. And then the narrative kicks in, right? They're undermining me. They don't respect my authority.

Amanda Escobedo (11:51.202)
This is a threat. Now the feeling becomes defensiveness, irritation, tension, your tone tightens, your response sharpens, the room starts to shift. Same initial emotion, but a different story could completely change that outcome. What if the narrative was, you know, they care enough to push? They're pressure testing the idea. This is engagement. Now the feeling shifts to curiosity.

It's the same spike of adrenaline, but maybe you're applying different meaning and a different leadership style. Now, if we zoom out a bit, we experience emotional signals far more often than we realize. Our internal state shifts throughout the day, sometimes subtly, sometimes more noticeably, often without us consciously naming what is happening.

So when someone says, I've been anxious all day, what usually is true to that is that their system has been moving through many emotional signals, but they've collapsed them into one broad feeling. And that doesn't mean something is wrong. It means the signal hasn't been decoded yet. And when we can't distinguish between an emotion and the story attached to it and the feeling that results,

emotions start to feel overwhelming or even inconvenient. But when you make that distinguish something that distinction, something starts to shift. You stop seeing emotions as a weakness, rather you start seeing emotions as information. Now, when a feeling shows up, leaders tend to respond in one of four ways. And listen here for yourself without judgment. I'd be curious to know

which way applies to you. And you might have different ways in different settings. But what I want you to recognize is how you might be responding to what you're feeling. So number one is a reaction. You have an ability to react to a feeling or an emotion. Both. Reaction can be immediate and unfiltered behavior to the story that you're telling yourself, right?

Amanda Escobedo (14:13.366)
So picture a real aerospace or manufacturing scenario. A ground test goes wrong. A jet gets damaged during movement or parking. A near miss is reported and a reactive leader storms in. What the hell has happened? This is unacceptable. Who screwed up, right? The underlining emotion might be and is often fear. Fear of a safety risk, fear of failure, fear of accountability.

but the narrative tends to drive a feeling of anger. And the term the team learns quickly, don't bring bad news early, filter information, protect yourself. And at home, reactions could look like snapping at your partner after a long day, raising your voice at your kids over something minor, being short, impatient, sharp, not because it's who you want to be, but because the emotion has hijacked the moment.

Now let's go number two, resistance. This is also very common on your response. So resistance is a suppression after the emotion has already arrived. So let's say you feel activated. You, maybe you feel embarrassed, you feel irritated, you feel dismissed, you feel frustrated, but instead of addressing it, you just shut it down. You tell yourself, it's not a big deal. I'll just let this go.

Now, now's not the time to address this and in leadership, this often looks like small moments that you don't speak into. So let's say you have a boss who is consistently talking over you in meetings, or you have a peer who never leaves space for other people's ideas, or you have a direct report who's chronically late, a stakeholder who always questions your direction in front of others. Each moment creates a small

emotional signal. Maybe it's irritation, maybe it's embarrassment, maybe it's frustration. But you don't name it. You don't address it. You don't give it real-time feedback. You resist it. You stay professional. You stay composed and you move on. But the emotion doesn't disappear. It goes underground. And then one day something small happens, something minor, and you snap. Your reactions feel

Amanda Escobedo (16:41.26)
disproportionate to the moment. To you, it feels like a last straw, but to everybody else, feels sudden. That's resistance. Think of it like a beach ball that you're holding underwater and that's no longer you're able to hold it down. The more forcefully it eventually surfaces back up. The third way to respond to your emotions and your feelings are avoidance.

avoidance is escaping the feeling all together. So if resistance is holding the emotion down, avoidance is redirecting away from it. So you don't suppress it, you distract from it. So in leadership that could actually look like productive production. So if something feels tense or unresolved, maybe you dive deeper into work. If a conversation feels uncomfortable,

you delay it and focus on something easier. If disappointment shows up, maybe you immediately move to the next goal, to the next plan, to the next milestone. You stay in motion. Outside of work, avoidance can look like overeating, over drinking, binge watching Netflix, scrolling, over training, over working. Anything you find yourself over indulging in, it's a good signal, especially when something feels unresolved.

It's a good signal that you might be avoiding your emotions and your feelings. And avoidance isn't about a weakness. It's really about relief. It's your system seeking something easier that's sitting with the emotion. The problem isn't the activity. It's when the activity replaces processing that emotion or that feeling. Because when emotions aren't acknowledged, they don't get resolved. It lingers.

And eventually it does resurface often in a different form. And then the last way to respond to a feeling and emotion is just that, respond. Responding is actually a conscious engagement. It's not suppressing the emotion, it's not ignoring it, it's not pretending it isn't there, it's processing it. And responding means noticing what you're feeling.

Amanda Escobedo (19:01.696)
Acknowledging that you're activated, allowing the physiological surge to settle down in your body, getting curious about the narrative attached to it, deciding how you want to act from a grounded place. So that could sound and look like, know, I'm noticing I'm triggered right now. I don't want to make a decision from the state of mind. Let's pause. Let's come back to this tomorrow. Now that's not a weakness. That communication is not a weakness.

That mindset is not a weakness. That's leadership maturity. Responding doesn't mean the emotion disappears. It means you have given it space to move through your body, move through your system instead of letting it dictate your behavior. You let the initial surge settle and then you ask, know, what was I actually feeling? What story did I attach to it? Is this connected to something from my past? Is something here out of alignment?

What information is this giving me? Now from there you choose not from urgency, not from ego, not from fear, but you choose from clarity. Responding is the difference between being driven by emotion and being informed by your emotions. Now there's a handful of emotions that when unexamined can quietly take leaders out of their power.

not because they're wrong, not because they're weak, not because they're potent. And if you don't understand how they're influencing you, then they're influencing everything around you. So let's walk through the top five that I see most often. So fear, fear is a top emotion that takes us out of our power. Fear is a natural, is natural, it's protective. It's wired for survival.

And so in leadership, often shows up in our decision-making process. The data says, go left, your intuition shaped by experience, pattern recognition, market shifts is telling you to go right. Or maybe it's the opposite. The spreadsheet supports one direction, your gut says something is changing and then fear enters. Well, what if I'm wrong following your gut or your intuition? What if this costs us market shares? What if this costs me credibility?

Amanda Escobedo (21:25.634)
What if this cost me my job? And if you follow the data, even though your gut is saying there's something off with the data, if you follow the data and the data fails you, at least you can blame the model. If you follow your conviction, your gut, your intuition, and that fails, then you own the failure. so fear doesn't just influence direction. It influences our ownership. So sometimes leaders stay with

what's defensible, not what's directional. Stagnation doesn't always come from incompetence. Sometimes it comes from fear of being wrong. And on the other side, some leaders use fear intentionally. They use it as a leadership style. They use it to increase pressure, amplify urgency to make consequences visible. And it can short drive short-term output, but fear narrows thinking.

It reduces creative risk. It teaches teams to protect themselves before they innovate. It has major consequences. Now the second emotion that takes us out of our power, shame. Shame is very much identity-based. It sounds like I am the failure, not the decision failed, more I am the failure. Imagine being

the CEO removed from your own board, from your own company. Publicly, it's called maybe a strategic shift, but privately, it can feel so humiliating. You built this business, you led this business, and now you've been kicked out of this business. And instead of quickly re-engaging in, let's say, a new venture, a new idea, shame can drive withdrawal.

You hesitate to show up in the same circles. You question whether you should start again. Not because you lack capability, but because shame makes exposure feel dangerous. Shame doesn't attack performance, it attacks identity. And when identity feels threatened, leaders shrink instead of stretch. The third emotion that can take us out of our power is guilt.

Amanda Escobedo (23:42.638)
Now guilt can say, you know, I did something wrong. Unlike shame, which attacks is who you are. Guilt attaches, attaches itself to your behavior. And so in leadership, guilt often shows up around responsibility. Maybe you push the team harder last quarter. Maybe someone really burns out and even maybe ended up on a leave of absence because of it. Maybe you missed important time at home yourself. Guilt can blur.

boundaries so it can make you over accommodate yourself. It can make you hesitate before holding someone accountable because you don't want to feel like the bad guy or the bad gal. And leaders sometimes use guilt to drive others in their behavior in teams. So maybe as a leader, you're communicating everyone else has stayed late. I thought you were more committed. We're counting on you. And it can absolutely drive behavior.

make people work harder, they may stay longer, they may comply, but guilt doesn't generate enthusiasm. It doesn't generate ownership. It generates pressure-driven output. And pressure-driven output rarely sustains high performance over time. And then we have embarrassment. Embarrassment is another...

emotion that takes us out of our power. Embarrassment is about social exposure. It's the moment you're seeing and not in the way you intended to be seen. So you're presenting, let's say in a board meeting and there's a visible error on your slide. You confidentially forecasted, let's say revenue and missed it. You're in a succession conversation with an elite peer listing credentials and you're thinking about your own unconventional past.

Embarrassment is immediate. It's hot face, tight throat, narrowed focus. It can make you defensive, reactive, short. And when embarrassment drives behavior, your tone starts to shift. So you might dismiss a question, you might cut someone off, you might minimize another person's contribution, not because the question was stupid, but because you felt exposed. Embarrassment can feel powerful.

Amanda Escobedo (26:04.896)
An unprocessed embarrassment can quietly shape how safe others feel around you. And then last but not least, our fifth emotion that takes us out of power, our top emotions that take us out of power, our disappointment. Disappointment is the gap between expectation and reality. A promotion you prepared for that didn't happen. A product launch that underperformed.

a hire you believed in who didn't deliver. Disappointment can feel heavy. It drains energy quietly and it can sound like, here we go again, what's the point? It may not create an explosion, but it can lower intensity. It can lower your belief. It can lower your ambition. And when leaders carry unprocessed disappointment, teams feel the drop in energy before they ever hear the words.

Now let's bring this all together. None of these emotions that I want to highlight are bad. They are just a part of the human experience. But when they're unexamined, they start to shape. They start to shape your risk tolerance. They start to shape your tone. They start to shape your boundaries, your decision, your culture. And when leaders use fear or shame or guilt, embarrassment or disappointment to drive behavior within their team,

They may get compliance, but compliance is not commitment and pressure is not power. And so here's what I want you to take with you from this episode today. You are influencing people every single day through your tone, through your presence, through your reactions, through your pauses, through what you say and what you don't say. Emotions constantly

They are constantly present with you, in you, in your team, in your home, in every room that you walk into. And the question isn't whether emotions are there. They are! They are there! The question is, are you aware of what is present? And how do you relate to them? Because as a leader, you are constantly influencing how other people feel. You influence the creativity in the room.

Amanda Escobedo (28:29.318)
or the contraction in the room, the activation of human potential or the blocking of it, the willingness to speak up or the instinct to self-protect. It's not a matter of if you're influencing emotion. It's a matter of whether the emotional climate you create matches your intention. You might get the result you want immediately. The deadline gets hit. The output increases. The meeting stay tight.

But what about the long-term goal? Growth, innovation, trust, team chemistry, flow. If your influence is driven by fear, shape, shame, guilt, embarrassment, or unprocessed disappointment, you again may get that compliance, but you won't get sustained engagement. And here's the shift. Stepping away from the emotion doesn't make you strong. It makes you automatic.

Stepping closer to your feelings with curiosity instead of judgment is how leaders reclaim their power. Not because emotions and feelings disappear, but because it becomes information instead of a driver. And that is leadership maturity. And so as you navigate this week, I want you to reflect on a few things. Number one, what is my mindset around emotions and feelings?

Do I see them as a weakness, as inconvenience, as something to push past, or do I see them as information? Because the way you think about emotions will shape how you respond to them. Number two, I want you to consider and reflect on when I feel something uncomfortable, what is my pattern? Do I react? Do I resist? Do I avoid?

Or do I consciously respond? If we ask the people closest to you at work or at home, what would they say about how you respond? What's your emotional brand? And finally, are there emotions that I've been carrying that I haven't actually processed? Old disappointments, unspoken resentment, lingering embarrassment.

Amanda Escobedo (30:54.104)
What's stopping me from walking closer to these emotions instead of walking around them? Because whatever you don't process, you repeat. Awareness is the beginning, not perfection, not emotional control, just awareness. Because once you can see your patterns, you can choose differently, and that's where your power lives. All right, folks.

I'm Amanda Esquibito and you've been listening to the Game Changer. If today sparked insights, ah-has or new perspectives, I'd be so grateful if you subscribe, left a review and shared this episode with at least three people in your network who are ready to master the inner game and unlock their potential. Your support helps others discover this resource and invites them to be the next Game Changer. Join me next time for another conversation on leadership.

culture and creating an impact that lasts. Thanks for listening.