When I Weep: The Invitation to Emotional Vitality
SoulWork: The Core of Reflective Leadership
"Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy." — Psalm 126:5
Wait a second! Grown men don't cry! It's a weakness!
Yeah, brother, let me know how that stoicism is working for you when you lose a loved one, when you hold your six-pound, two-ounce baby girl looking into your eyes after birth, or when you dance with your daughter on her wedding day.
I grew up in a construction culture—surrounded by tough, unpretentious, no-BS individuals who let you know exactly where you stand. They'll make a man out of you or shame you to death until you buck up or move on. If you're not tough, then, well, you know what happens. Right or wrong, it's real.
This dynamic isn't unique to construction. Working in healthcare for a few years, I observed nursing women establishing pecking orders that reflected similar cultural norms. My buddies in the military describe the same phenomenon. An authoritarian culture elevates the smartest, fastest, most challenging, and most substantial to the top of the hill.
These cultural norms stand in direct opposition to Jesus's upside-down biblical premise: "Blessed are the meek" (Matthew 5:5). We might give a nod to this notion on Sunday morning, but Monday through Saturday, it's "blessed are the strong."
The Hidden Cost of Emotional Stoicism
When was the last time you wept?
I recently spent a week with construction field leaders up in the mountains for leadership training. Ironworkers build steel skyscrapers, union representatives run concrete operations in Chicago, superintendents manage crews of a hundred workers on railyard rehabilitation projects, and field leaders lay hundreds of miles of pipe. These men and women are builders, many of whom believe you check your feelings at the gate.
Construction sites, professional workplaces, and other work areas often operate on the premise that vulnerability equals weakness. If I'm vulnerable, then I am weak. Thus, we maintain a veneer of strength in the world where we work and, more often than not, where we live.
For parents, caregivers, and leaders, this worldview compounds: everyone depends on my strength, so how can I possibly be weak? The guard never comes down. Regardless of age, this belief fortifies a veneer around emotions that often leaks out in unhealthy ways I frame as the "5 Is":
Irritability leading to anger
Indulgence leading to addiction
Intensity leading to abuse
Invisibility leading to absence
Indifference leading to abandonment
Disconnection from our emotions leads to isolation from ourselves and others. Emotional constipation might seem humorous at first but proves painful over time.
The Leadership Paradox: Tough Outside, Tender Inside
Balancing the need to be tough outside yet tender inside creates genuine tension for leaders. So, where's the balance between stoicism and oversensitivity?
Nearly 30 years ago, wrestling with this tension as a young man and husband, I found insight in Stu Weber's "Tender Warrior" and later his "Four Pillars of Man," which gave language to this paradox of strength and weakness. Weber frames the roles of manhood by examining the archetypes of king, warrior, mentor, and friend. There's a call for strength and the need to acknowledge when we're tender in each realm. Everyday leadership demands both.
The most effective leaders I've known have mastered this paradox. They can make difficult decisions that impact others while maintaining access to their emotional core—the compass that guides ethical decision-making and authentic connection.
Soul-Level Impacts: When Life Scratches the Surface
Life events can scratch up against something soul-deep, shattering our emotional equilibrium. It's those hit-and-run moments when a casual comment from a friend or foe feels like an arrow to the heart. We try to compose ourselves mentally and emotionally as we peel our inner selves off the pavement. What just happened? Our cognitive function realigns as stars circle our heads.
Then, someone dares to ask, "How are you doing?" We compose ourselves quickly with an utterance: "I'm fine, I'm good." Now, we're more offset because someone probed beneath the surface of our emotions, and the dam of our tears or anger threatens to break.
In these moments, we need to take a beat, pause, breathe, take a soul-level intake, and exhale.
Blaise Pascal, the 16th-century theologian, philosopher, and physicist, observed, "The heart has its reasons that the mind does not know." Life's most significant moments hold space where words fall short in our souls.
The Five Unhealthy Responses to Emotions
What do you do with those emotions when they emerge from deep places? I've noticed five unhealthy responses:
1. The Stuffer
Those living busy lives often acknowledge, "I don't have time for that," and stuff emotions back down. Leaders who stuff emotions believe they prioritize productivity, but they're compounding emotional debt that will eventually demand repayment—often with interest.
2. The Silencer
Suppose you're one who, when experiencing emotions within yourself or witnessing them in others, doesn't provide safety or space for them to be shared. In that case, you silence them since they're deemed inappropriate or unwelcome. Silencers create environments where team members hide authentic responses, leading to superficial engagement and diminished trust.
3. The Stoic
You're a stoic if you're resolved to show self-control and restraint, waiting for reason to reveal emotion rather than risking raw feelings. Stoics often pride themselves on rationality while missing the intuitive signals that emotions provide about what truly matters.
4. The Sarcastic
Then there's the sincere moment of emotion revealed, waved off by some backhanded humor diminishing the validity of the feeling expressed. Sarcasm veneers what's most tender. When emotions surface, leaders who resort to sarcasm teach their teams that vulnerability will be met with ridicule rather than respect.
5. The Cynic
Finally, the cynic, who at best says, "Get over it," or worse, twists the tenderness of those feelings, perhaps as a cover for their jaded memory. Cynics create cultures of disillusionment where idealism and passion are systematically extinguished.
Whether a stuffer, silencer, stoic, sarcastic, or cynic, we've all had moments of each, deflecting feelings not welcome. These labels give language to tendencies where we can drift. What's the risk if our behavioral patterns interfere with how we think or treat ourselves or others? Our life becomes less than God intended: full-hearted, healed, healthy, vital.
The Leadership Cost of Emotional Avoidance
When leaders avoid emotional engagement, the costs compound across multiple dimensions:
Diminished Decision-Making
Research consistently shows that emotions are essential to sound judgment. Without emotional data, leaders make decisions disconnected from values and human impact. Antonio Damasio's work with patients who had damage to emotion-processing brain regions revealed they couldn't make even simple decisions despite intact logical reasoning.
Compromised Team Trust
Teams intuitively sense when a leader is emotionally disconnected. This creates an authenticity gap that erodes trust. As Patrick Lencioni notes in "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team," vulnerability-based trust is the foundation of effective teams.
Reduced Innovation
Creativity requires emotional engagement. When we suppress emotions, we restrict the neural pathways that connect disparate ideas. Leaders who maintain emotional walls inadvertently wall off breakthrough thinking.
Impaired Ethical Reasoning
Moral decision-making is fundamentally emotional. Empathy, compassion, and moral outrage are emotional responses that guide ethical leadership. Without these emotional anchors, ethical reasoning becomes merely technical compliance.
Personal Health Consequences
The physiological toll of emotional suppression is well-documented. From cardiovascular issues to immune system suppression, leaders who chronically avoid emotional processing pay a physical price.
The Full-Hearted Leadership Alternative
If you reflect on your life, you've experienced moments of being full-hearted, broken-hearted, half-hearted, tender-hearted, and hard-hearted. Life hits you for good or bad, easy or hard, extraordinary or ordinary, happy or sad; we get to process those unmet expectations.
Emotions are complex because you are complex. What's the invitation here? We can be wholehearted and healthy emotionally. It's the life you're invited to live. Jesus said, "I've come to give life and to the full" (John 10:10). Not through religion, rules, or holding onto regret, but through the good news of a life of love, peace, and grace—free from shame, guilt, and unforgiveness. It's found in relationships.
In the complex world where our inner thoughts and feelings integrate with the outside world of others, I propose a pathway to wholeheartedness. It's found in confession, connection, and courage.
Confession: Naming What Is Real
Wholehearted leaders practice emotional honesty, first with themselves and then with trusted others. This isn't emotional indulgence but emotional intelligence—the capacity to recognize, name, and understand our emotional responses.
Confession begins with self-awareness. What am I feeling right now? Where do I feel it in my body? What story am I telling myself about this situation? These questions invite us to move from emotional reactivity to emotional responsibility.
For teams, creating confession spaces means normalizing phrases like "I'm feeling frustrated by this situation" or "I'm concerned about the direction we're taking." When leaders model emotional naming without emotional flooding, they create psychological safety for others to do the same.
Connection: Finding Community in Vulnerability
Emotion derives from the Latin emovere—to move out. Emotions connect us to others, not isolate us in individual experiences. Wholehearted leaders create connection points where appropriate vulnerability builds rather than diminishes trust.
This doesn't mean sharing every feeling with every person. Discernment matters. But it does mean rejecting the false dichotomy between professional distance and authentic presence. The most effective leaders maintain appropriate boundaries while allowing genuine connection.
Connection happens when we recognize that our emotions—even difficult ones like fear, disappointment, or uncertainty—are universal human experiences. Acknowledging these with trusted team members or mentors transforms potential isolation into community.
Courage: The Choice to Feel Fully
Emotional vitality ultimately requires courage—the willingness to feel what is present rather than comfortable. This courage manifests in several ways:
The courage to sit with discomfort rather than rush to solutions
The courage to question our emotional habits and patterns
The courage to invite feedback about our emotional impact on others
The courage to celebrate joyfully without minimizing its significance
The courage to grieve losses completely without artificial timelines
Courage in leadership means rejecting the false separation between "emotional" and "rational" dimensions of experience. The most courageous leaders recognize that these dimensions inform each other, creating wisdom neither could produce alone.
The Weeping Leader: Strength in Vulnerability
When I weep, it's not often enough. However, I found myself visiting my Dad's memorial site. He passed nearly 5 years ago. I can't believe it's already been that long. Sitting in the sun Friday afternoon, wondering how I even found my way to this sacred space, I finally uttered, "I miss you, Dad," and the dam broke. I wept.
In that moment of authentic grief, I connected more deeply with my father's legacy than in all the months of "staying strong" that preceded it. Those tears weren't weakness—they were the most honest expression of love's enduring power.
As leaders, our tears—whether shed or acknowledged—create space for authentic connection. They remind us and those we lead that our shared humanity lies beneath our roles and responsibilities. A leader who can weep when appropriate demonstrates vulnerability not as a weakness but as the ultimate expression of security and strength.
The invitation to emotional vitality challenges us to integrate, not segregate, our emotional lives from our leadership capacity. When we accept this invitation, we discover that our effectiveness increases rather than diminishes. We make better decisions because they're informed by both heart and mind. We build stronger teams because authentic leadership cultivates authentic followership. We sustain our leadership journey by drawing from an integrated, renewable inner resource rather than compartmentalizing and depleting ourselves.
The next time emotion rises unexpectedly in your leadership journey, consider it not an interruption but an invitation to greater wholeness, more profound wisdom, and more authentic impact. Those who sow in tears shall indeed reap with shouts of joy, not despite their tears but because of them.