One of the most disturbing psychological principles I have found in my research is called “emotional contagion.” It refers to the human tendency to feel and express the emotions displayed by the people around us. Research on socialization shows that this instinctive reaction (especially when reinforced by peer pressure to “be like everyone else”) can transform almost any new hire into a clone who thinks and acts much like the people they work with every day.
Up Close and Personal
At one of my management training seminars, I was approached during a break by a participant who presented a problem he was facing as the supervisor of a busy production line. He told me that one of his biggest leadership challenges was the negative influence wielded by long-term employees on the line. These “lifers” were powerful “dampeners” of the upbeat attitude of many eager, hard-working newcomers. Their response to these highly productive hires was “Slow down, Sonny…you’re making the rest of us look bad.” Counteracting this influence was an insurmountable obstacle to efficiency and high productivity on the production line. Sad, but true.
This psychological mechanism has effect in many situations.
1. As I just illustrated, it can change the eager optimism of a new employee into the jaded mindset of apathetic “old-timers” who surround them on a team, lowering their productivity to the lowest common denominator.
2. It can destroy creativity and turn thoughtful and critical analysis into unproductive (and even dangerous) “group-think.” The saddest words to any creative thinker in an organization is: That will never work here.
3. It can transform a newly-promoted leader into a self-seeking, insensitive, uncaring, power-hungry elitist boss.
This is an example of the oft-repeated warning: POWER CORRUPTS!
This last example is very real! Research by Dacher Keltner at U.C. Berkeley and Deborah Gruenfeld at Stanford shows that 3 things happen when people are put into positions of power:
- (1) They focus more on satisfying their own needs.
- (2) They focus less on the needs of their underlings.
- (3) They act like “the rules” everyone is expected to follow don’t apply to them.
BTW… If this sounds like a problem we see a lot in Washington D.C., it may be more than coincidental!
So… What’s a leader to do? To echo the advice of sage Yoda:
DON’T GIVE IN TO THE DARK SIDE OF LEADERSHIP!
Don’t let newly-acquired power and authority corrupt your attitude and performance. Don’t be a jerk. Here are some practical suggestions:
1. Stay focused on your #1 job as a leader—to help your people succeed! Become a responsible and caring steward of your followers and commit to giving them the training, resources, support, and help they need, in order to do their very best work. The more you focus on helping your team, the less self-centered you will appear to everyone around you.
2. Listen more than you talk. Use the ideas in this valuable post to keep the communication lines open with your team members: MORE GREAT Questions Every Boss Needs Answered by Their Subordinates | The Boss Doctor
3. Create a team culture that recognizes and rewards hard work and productivity. Make sure you reinforce great work with great appropriate affirmation, praise, and recognition. When you recognize good work, you send the dual message:
I notice! And… I care!
Remember what management guru Ken Blanchard says:
What gets recognized, gets repeated!
4. Don’t allow low-performers to set the standard for your team (easier said than done). YOU MUST ADDRESS LOW PERFORMANCE! You must intervene to help struggling team members—BECAUSE IT’S YOUR #1 JOB TO HELP THEM SUCCEED! If you do nothing, you send the wrong message to the rest of your team. They will interpret your passivity to mean that you don’t care! They will assume that low performance is acceptable, and respond accordingly!
5. Draft a clear team vision statement with your team and make THAT the primary focus of your work together. (If you need help with this, get my book, Leading Teams, LeadPR.pdf (thebossdoctor.net) and use the information in Chapter 6 to guide you).
6. Create adversarial thinking as a regular part of your problem-solving and decision-making efforts. I teach leaders how to do this in my seminars on “Critical Thinking and Effective Decision-Making.” You can accomplish this quite easily by telling your team, “I want to really pick this idea apart. So I want us to think of all the reasons why this is a BAD idea and will probably FAIL and WHY it will probably fail!” It’s one of the simplest techniques for avoiding groupthink and gaining a more unbiased perspective on any idea or decision.
7. Seek out mentors, advisors, and trusted colleagues who will confront you if you start developing elitist attitudes and behaviors. There’s an old Jewish saying (you’ll find it in the Bible) that says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend.” It’s another way of encouraging us to have good friends that we can TRUST to TELL US THE TRUTH about OURSELVES. I wrote about this in a previous blogpost. You can read it here: Great Advice from Top CEO’s – #19 | The Boss Doctor
HERE’S THE POINT: The observations of an insightful third party can be of tremendous benefit to our journey of personal and professional growth. (That’s why I have work as an executive coach!)
8. ABOVE ALL… Get it through your head right now that YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT YOUR PEOPLE. You cannot succeed alone! You need your team’s help every step of the way. Don’t ever forget: The success of your team is the true measure of YOUR success!
9. AND MOST IMPORTANT… Use this principle to your advantage! Studies show that the mood of a leader is HIGHLY CONTAGIOUS! Emotional intelligence expert Daniel Goleman shared this insight in his ground-breaking book, Primal Leadership…
My research team and I have come to the conclusion that the mood of a leader travels through an organization like electricity through wires.
In other words, in your leadership role you have an incredible ability to set the mood for your entire team! They will take on whatever mood you display. So… Choose your mood wisely. Decide to take on a positive, enthusiastic, confident, and optimistic demeanor…and your team will adopt the same emotional state!
That may be why research reveals that leaders who display an optimistic and enthusiastic demeanor have a measurable positive impact on their team’s productivity and profitability!
There is one more thing you can do, that will multiply your power and influence—not just among your team members, but also across the organization you serve.
But I will save that discussion for the next newsletter and blogpost!
In the meantime… If you are looking for more ways to build high-performing teams in your organization, CALL US! We can help! We can bring tools and leadership techniques that can help your managers and supervisors break through resistant employee culture and create new ways of thinking, working, and performing!
Until next time… Yours for better leaders and better organizations,
Dr. Jim Dyke – “The Boss Doctor” ™ helping you to BE a better boss and to HAVE a better boss!
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