How One Leader’s Mood Shapes a Team

If you lead people, a hard week rarely stays inside your own office. Your team picks up your tone in a short email and the way you walk into a meeting. Research on emotional contagion helps explain why one person’s state can travel through a whole group, and the same research shows that the movement can go in a better direction.

Moods spread in a room

In a 2002 study, Sigal Barsade set up small groups to make management decisions together and placed a trained actor in each group who displayed a particular mood. People’s moods shifted toward the actor’s, both in how they rated themselves and in how outside observers coded them. Neither the pleasantness of the mood nor its energy level changed how strongly it spread. When the mood was positive, the groups cooperated more, had less conflict and believed they had performed better on the task.

When the mood comes from the leader

A 2005 study looked at leaders specifically. When the leader was in a positive mood, members felt more positive and less negative, and the group as a whole carried a more positive emotional tone. Those groups also coordinated better. Groups led by someone in a negative mood actually put in more effort, so a hard mood at the top did not mean people stopped working. What changed was how well they worked together and how they felt while doing it.

Burnout can move between coworkers

Burnout itself can pass from person to person. In a survey of 154 Dutch high school teachers, the burnout teachers saw in their colleagues was linked most closely to their own exhaustion and depersonalization, an emotional distancing that is part of burnout, when two conditions were present. Those teachers were especially sensitive to other people’s emotions, and they often talked with colleagues about problems at work. Because this was a survey, it shows a connection and cannot prove that one person caused another person’s burnout.

Your shift can travel too

Taken together, these studies point somewhere hopeful. If a heavy mood can spread through a team, a steadier one can spread as well, and Barsade’s groups that caught a positive mood cooperated more and argued less. Getting help for your own burnout is often treated as a private decision, yet this research suggests the people who work beside you feel the difference too.

Our intensives for executives and business leaders run 6 to 29 days in Redding with a team of licensed clinicians. Each one includes 20 hours of neurofeedback, individual and group counseling, two massages a week and four clinical aftercare sessions once you are home. Your company receives nothing about your care without your signed release. If your team has been feeling the weight you carry, call us at 530-338-0087 or read more about our executive burnout intensive. My team and I would be glad to talk with you about what that could look like.

Sources

Bakker, A. B., & Schaufeli, W. B. (2000). Burnout contagion processes among teachers. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 30(11), 2289–2308. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2000.tb02437.x

Barsade, S. G. (2002). The ripple effect: Emotional contagion and its influence on group behavior. Administrative Science Quarterly, 47(4), 644–675. https://doi.org/10.2307/3094912

Sy, T., Côté, S., & Saavedra, R. (2005). The contagious leader: Impact of the leader’s mood on the mood of group members, group affective tone, and group processes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(2), 295–305. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.90.2.295