Your role as a leader includes the emotional state of your team members. You must look out for their emotional stability. There is someone in your team who is nursing a heartbreak. There is someone in your team who is emotionally down because of some personal and/or official issues.

If you can't find a way to heal him, don't hurt him the more. The corporate world often treats emotions like unwelcome guests at business meetings. Many leaders see it as something to be ignored, suppressed, or handled by HR. However, the most successful leaders understand a fundamental truth that people don't compartmentalize their hearts when they walk through office doors. The employee dealing with a divorce doesn't stop hurting when he clocks in at 8am. The member of your team grieving a loss doesn't pause their pain for quarterly reviews. The person struggling with family issues doesn't switch off their worries during team meetings.

When Cheryl Strayed was building Wild magazine, she noticed one of her top editors consistently missing deadlines and was seemingly distracted during editorial meetings. Instead of issuing warnings or performance improvement plans, she invited him for coffee. She discovered he was dealing with his father's terminal illness and felt guilty about taking time off work while trying to be present for his family's crisis. Rather than adding pressure, Strayed restructured his responsibilities temporarily, arranged for team members to cover his major projects, and gave him flexible scheduling to handle family needs.

The result wasn't just retained talent, but also deeper loyalty. That editor became one of the company's most committed advocates, often working extra hours when family circumstances allowed because he knew his leader cared about him as a person, not just a producer. This approach isn't about being soft. It's about being smart. People experiencing emotional turmoil can't perform at their peak capacity.

People who are having tough times in their personal lives make more mistakes, miss important details, struggle with creative thinking, and often become disengaged from team goals. A leader who ignores these realities isn't being tough but rather ineffective. One of the skills necessary for a leader is counseling skills. You must be able to speak words of healing to those who are ailing emotionally. You must have a heart for the people you lead for you to have a lasting legacy.

Listen to your team members to know where their heart aches. Sometimes a team member doesn't need advice, what they need is acknowledgment. They don't need fixes, they just need to feel heard. I have heard people say they are strictly concerned about work, but the truth is that even the leader can never do well at work if he is disturbed emotionally. In the same manner, your team members can never perform optimally if they are nursing pains and their leader is less concerned.

This "strictly business" mentality is not just misguided, it's counterproductive. Leaders who claim they only care about work results typically get worse work results because they ignore the emotional factors that drive performance. People don't perform in emotional vacuums. When Southwest Airlines faced the crisis after 9/11, CEO James Parker didn't just focus on operational challenges and financial survival. He recognized that his employees were emotionally shaken.

They were afraid of flying, worried about job security, and grieving for the victims and the industry they loved. Instead of pretending these emotions didn't matter, he made emotional recovery part of the business recovery strategy. Parker held company-wide meetings that weren't just about financial projections and operational adjustments but also about acknowledging fear, processing grief, and rebuilding confidence. He brought in counselors, created support groups, and gave employees permission to struggle while working together toward solutions. The airline didn't just survive the crisis but also emerged stronger because leadership addressed both operational and emotional challenges.

Marc Benioff of Salesforce has built his leadership philosophy around what he calls "compassionate capitalism." When the company faced major layoffs during economic downturns, Benioff didn't just announce numbers and severance packages. He personally met with affected employees, listened to their concerns about family finances and career futures, and connected them with resources for both emotional support and job placement assistance. More importantly, he recognized that the employees who remained were also emotionally affected by seeing their colleagues leave.

Instead of pretending everything was business as usual, he acknowledged the collective grief, provided counseling resources, and created space for people to process the changes. This wasn't just good human relations, but also strategic leadership. Teams that feel heard and supported through difficult transitions perform better than teams that are expected to simply "get over it." The counseling skill Benioff demonstrated doesn't require a psychology degree. It requires genuine curiosity about people's wellbeing and the willingness to listen without immediately jumping to solutions.

This approach requires leaders to develop what might be called "emotional intelligence in action." It's not enough to understand that emotions affect performance, the leader needs to develop practical skills for recognizing emotional distress and responding appropriately. Watch for changes in behavior patterns. They're signals that someone might be struggling with issues that affect their work performance.

Oluwole Dada is the General Manager at SecureID Limited, Africa’s largest smart card manufacturing plant in Lagos, Nigeria.