ABSTRACT
Subliminal influence is pervasive in organizational environments – some struggle with it, others use it to their advantage. The olfactory and auditory information we emit subliminally informs others about our intentions and feelings – if subliminal information and deliberate messages conflict, trust breaks down, and with it the foundation of leadership. Influence-as-leadership is as much about influencing others emotionally as it is about self-leadership, the skill of recognizing it when our emotions and feelings take over our brain. Our evolutionary biology however creates major obstacles for self-leadership and Emotional Intelligence. To come to fast decisions in both life-threatening and status-threatening situations our thinking brain has a tendency to switch off and leave all decisions to the fast limbic brain, often with disastrous consequences. Fearless leadership is however not the answer, the key to self-leadership is effective fear management.
