How a leader’s emotional state affects their team

Last week I wrote about the stress wake we leave behind us, and how our nervous systems sync up with the people around us. There’s a flip side to that, and it’s good news, especially if we lead: if our stress can spread, so can our calm.

Psychologists call the spreading of a mood state ‘emotional contagion’: we pick up and mirror each other’s expressions, tone and posture, and start to feel something similar, mostly without noticing. And the research suggests it runs strongest from the top down. Sigal Barsade’s work found employees were more likely to catch a leader’s emotional tone than a peer’s. It may have deep roots: the state of the person in charge once carried real information about whether the group was safe.

This is why the research on what’s been called the ‘ripple effect’ matters for anyone who leads. A leader’s emotional state appears to shift their team’s performance, cooperation and quality of decision-making, more than most leaders realise.

Walk into a room rushed, tight, activated, and the whole team tends to tighten with us. Walk in grounded, and the team tends to settle. Our state sets the tone.

None of this is an argument for performing calm we don’t feel. People tend to read fake calm accurately, and it can erode trust rather than build it. It connects back to the last two editions: giving our nervous system its signal to calm, may be doing more for our team than we know.

There’s a genuinely useful reframe in that. Managing our own stress stops looking like a personal indulgence and starts looking like part of the job, because our state is one of the conditions everyone around us is working inside.

So perhaps the simplest, most powerful thing anyone in a leadership role can do is to settle themselves before walking into the room. And a question worth carrying into our weeks: are we spreading stress or calm?

Human Foundations is a weekly look at the science behind high performance and wellbeing at work, from keynote speaker, psychiatrist, comedian and author Dr Jo Prendergast. Subscribe to get each edition as it lands.

Next week: why recovery can’t be left to willpower, and what it looks like built into the system.