How Your Mood Influences Your Team’s Performance

Hi there, I'm Ben Morton and welcome to another episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. It's the weekly micro edition of my podcast. Each episode is just six minutes long and is designed to provide you with tips, tools and tactics around specific aspects of leadership and management. It addresses some of the most common challenges you will face as a leader or manager. They are all recorded unscripted whilst I'm out walking in the countryside. So you'll probably hear birds tweeting in the background or just ambient noise as the people around me are going about their day to day life. That's all I'm going to say by way of an introduction. So let's dive straight in to this week's episode.

If you've ever noticed that your team's energy levels drop when you are feeling particularly stressed or low yourself, or that the team's energy levels rise when you are in a particularly good mood, then today's episode of the Leaders Kit Bag is for you. In this episode, we're diving into the topic of emotional contagion and how our mood as a leader or manager, be it positive or negative, has a dramatic impact on the team that we lead, particularly in terms of their motivation, overall productivity, and the degree to which they are collaborating effectively amongst themselves. Emotional contagion is the idea that we as individuals are constantly syncing and mimicking our mood and behavior with those people around us. According to the psychologist Professor Elaine Hadfield, this is a largely unconscious process, but one that has a dramatic impact on the overall morale of our team. And because as leaders and managers, we are very visible and people are always watching what we do and looking to us for their cues and guidance, we have a very high influence on the overall emotional climate of the team. So if we know emotions are contagious and can spread like a virus, then what can we do as leaders to spread positive emotional contagion? Well, in this episode of the Leaders Kit Bag, I've got three very simple tips for you. Number one is around intentional mood setting. This is a simple task where before we are going into our next meeting or perhaps even walking through the doors of the office in the morning, if we've had a particularly bad commute or a difficult start to the day at home, we just take a minute or two, even seconds to check ourselves and notice our mood. And then we can deliberately set some intentions about how we want to show up in the next meeting or with the next interaction with our team. And then we can reset by simply taking a few deep breaths. We might want to say a quick positive affirmation or even just remember a previous success or a previous positive experience you've had with the person or people you are about to go and meet with. So that's number one, intentional mood setting. Number two is around mirroring empathy. Here we can really practice the skills of active listening. And as well as just listening for what people are saying, we can use our ears and our eyes to listen for the mood and emotion that's going on and we can notice that and play it back to the person or people we are with. For example, if you are in a meeting with your team and you're noticing that they are a little quiet and the energy is a little flat, we could simply play that back to the team by saying something like, hey guys, I'm noticing we are a little quiet and flat this morning. The simple act of mirroring the emotion energy and playing it back can defuse any tension that there might be. And actually simply labeling and calling out what you are sensing in itself can oftentimes be lift the mood and energy of the team. The third tip I have, or perhaps more of a watch out really, this third one is about this idea that it's important to express positivity very authentically. The research from Kouzes and Pozner says, as well as people wanting a leader to be inspiring, we also want our leaders to be honest and authentic. So in trying to spread positive emotional contagion, this isn't about toxic positivity. This isn't about always putting a happy face on things. It's really just noticing the energy and being quite authentic with it. So instead of just putting on that happy face, we might want to express the positivity authentically by saying something along the lines of, hey guys, I know things are tough at the moment and we're all under a lot of pressure, but I absolutely believe we've got the skills and energy to get through this. And in the long run, this is going to be better for us. So you're being forward facing. You are sort of dealing in optimism while still acknowledging the challenging times. That's it for this episode of the Leaders Kit Bag. As always, I hope it's been useful. And look after yourself, look after those. You've got the privilege and responsibility to lead. And until next time, folks, lead on.