Purpose: The study’s purpose is to investigate leaders’ subjective experience of to whatdegree they are affected by threat response and emotional control versus what existing researchindicates.

Design/methodology/approach: The respondent’s experience was studied using aquantitative method to measure qualitative variables for emotional intelligence (EI) andperceived influence from a specific trigger for threat response (frustration) in differentsituations. Their answers provide a retrospective self-estimation of the emotional impact on therespondents and ability to handle their own threat response. The investigation result can beconsidered an answer to at what degree leaders are affected by their response to frustration andhow good their self-estimated ability to handle this response is. By using a qualitative analysisthe result is described as their self-awareness regarding the impact on them.

Findings: This study has found indication of a significant discrepancy between leaders’self-perceived degree of impact from a threat response and whether they can make an unbiasedassessment of this ability or not.

Implications: Although limited in scope, the study indicates that leaders make asignificant over-estimation of whether they are affected by being frustrated or not from a threatresponse. Knowing a threat response does affect an individual, this indicates limitedself-insight. This in turn leads to possible obstruction of leaders’ comprehension of the need forthemself to change before they can carry out an organizational change or improvement inemployees’ responses and behavior.

Originality/value: The purpose of the study is to look for empirical relevance for atheoretical problem regarding leaders’ perceived emotional impact from their own threatresponse – is there a discrepancy between perception and reality? The answer is yes.

Key words: Leadership, self-leadership, neuro leadership, cognitive neuroscience,organizational cognitive neuroscience, applied neuroscience, emotions, emotional intelligence,self-insight, self-control.