Jeffery Whippo on Why Rational Leadership Can Be a Much Better Approach than Emotional Leadership Jeffery Whippo, a professional educator and business leader, feels that as human beings are both rational and emotional, leaders have the ability to use rational techniques as well as emotional appeals. He describes how aroused feelings can be used by leaders either constructively or destructively, and that leaders need to be careful in considering both the rational and emotional consequences of their actions. Jeffery Whippo strongly believes that leaders have an expectation to influence their followers, develop them, inspire them, ask questions, and challenge the status quo by initiating positive and adaptive change. He further says that evidence supports the facts that rational leadership can be a much better approach than emotional leadership. He believes that emotions can be costly and can induce more harm than good and if not managed correctly, and in a logical manner. For example, when emotions are used in an argument, they can result in a real problem for one who is represented as a leader and representing their followers. Whippo cites Cederblom and Paulsen’s 1996 work in which they say that when confronting difficult issues, the expression
of even strongly held and fully articulated opinions about an issue is very far from critical thinking and opinions can be “fixed” by emotions resulted by fallacious reasoning. Whippo talks about how they also refer to the expression of opinions as a disagreement versus critical thinking and claim that mere disagreement is applied to separate individual statements, and they are judged only against the background of the reader’s or listener’s own beliefs. According to Jeff Whippo, that opinion is reiterated by Johnson and Blair (1994) in that opinion is an unexamined belief or simply a strong “attitude” about something. He says that they cite emotion-based opinions as a cause for fallacious reasoning: “The act of reasoning is rarely carried on in a situation that lacks an emotional dimension.” He further explains how they also suggest that it is an “emotional commitment” that makes us “undertake a careful and rational review of the arguments” and emphasize that emotions may not be totally “bereft of cognitive content.”