It seems strange that it’s often the people that are the most joyful, that can also be very depressed. It’s as if there are some people that live in parallel worlds, one that we see which is joyful and another where they often go down in spirals of depression. I would have never thought this possible had I not had first hand experience in this,as well as my involvement with clients all over the world who have also developed this pattern.

Perhaps an example can illustrate this point further. Let’s imagine that there is a child that is incredibly insecure but spends their time being one of the loudest in the class. You might be thinking, well this child can’t be that insecure if it were to behave like that. However, the reality is he develops this behaviour in order to make up for his insecurities. This too can be seen to occur with adults when you see entrepreneurs pretending to be one way in order to hide what is really going on. The business owners that I see around the world are incredibly adept at this and it can cause serious issues for them in the future if not dealt with early on.

Why do I say this? Well, lets look into the lives business owners. Every single day business owners must deal with a variety of problems and challenges constantly. Whether this is their private jet breaking down, a sales person they have to fire or a product shipment that has been delayed for their clients. These are just a few of an infinite number of problems that will occur for business owners.

Now as a strategy to deal with all of these issues; business owners more often than not will develop a capability to quickly switch their emotional state depending on the circumstance. They may have a call saying that they just lost $100,000 due to one of their employees embezzling money and 10 minutes later have a call with their investors. If they couldn’t emotionally manage their states then unfortunately they wouldn’t be able to adapt quickly and be an effective leader. Nor would they be able to motivate, inspire and lead their team on a consistent basis through good times and bad.Therefore, naturally the ability to emotionally detach from situations becomes a must and as time goes on this skill gets better and better. In essence, they become brilliant actors showing different sides of themselves where needed depending on the circumstances. We can see how useful this is in business and is often a must in order to be a strong leader.

As example of how adept people can be become I wanted to share with you a client I worked with for 12 months who also had this issue. When we first met this man was suicidal and I noticed that he had a very unique way of dealing with challenges that he didn’t want to speak about. For him he used humour and would laugh to redirect the conversation as a way to move out of an uncomfortable place he didn’t want to speak about. Luckily for him, I recognised this. However, this strategy would have fooled most people who wouldn’t be able to pick up on the defence mechanism that he developed in order to hide or not to share what is really going on. This is just one example of how business owners develop habitual patterns in order to move away from difficult conversations. Here he would emotionally dis-attach through humour and then change the conversation so that we wouldn’t speak about topics that he feared.

These habitual patterns to switch conversations, often hides the deeper issues. This will often lead to circumstances where the business owner may not share everything that is going on or use the nuances of language to give a story that will be interpreted in a way that isn’t reality. This is a clever way to hide issues and just share things on the surface.

This can affect team moral if the leader can’t show vulnerability to others. Leading from the top is important, if you want your managers to share everything with you, then its important to have transparency with them in order for them to model you as a leader. Those that are not transparent; will cause trouble down the line, as certain topics may be hidden by members of your organisation not wanting to share their own vulnerabilities. Moreover, the team may not feel they can relate to you as a leader. Instead by sharing the challenges and enrolling them into your vision, you will allow a stronger bond to form when facing future obstacles.

It’s not just the team but also the business owner themselves that suffer from this pattern. Often they spend so much time inspiring others and looking after their team, that they may isolate themselves in order to work on their business creatively and tackle problems. This can be brainstorming, walking or meditating all of which are great ways to come up with creative solutions to issues they are facing. Yet, through time this can also become a very lonely place as the mind starts to wonder onto other things despite business. This can then lead to depression, procrastination and suicidal thoughts as the isolation becomes more and more present in their lives. Not only that, they often will not share with the people around them due to them wanting and needing to be the rock that holds the organisation together. This pattern can occur where issues slowly eat away at them causing negative repercussions

Hopefully you can start to see how easy it is for business owners to emotionally detach and how it can affect the business. Perhaps you too are someone who detaches from his or her emotions. Its up to you if you want to start sharing, it will be vulnerable but remember that it takes more courage to be vulnerable and share, than to keep it bottled in.

I hope you found this article useful and please share this with anyone who you think will benefit.