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When the designated leader lacks credibility for some reason, people may turn for emotional guidance to someone else who they trust and respect. Still, not all “official” leaders in a group are necessarily the emotional leaders. All these acts help determine a leader’s primal emotional impact.
Effectiveness of leaders moods and emotions how to#
They can guide in ways that give people a sense of clarity and direction in their work and that encourage flexibility, setting people free to use their best sense of how to get the job done. They can frame the group’s mission in ways that give more meaning to each person’s contribution-or not. Leaders give praise or withhold it, criticize well or destructively, offer support or turn a blind eye to people’s needs. Direct Effects Of Leaders Emotion-Based Decisions In a sense, the leader sets the emotional standard. Indeed, group members generally see the leader’s emotional reaction as the most valid response, and so model their own on it-particularly in an ambiguous situation, where various members react differently. When people raised a question for the group as a whole, they would keep their eyes on the leader to see his or her response.
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In these studies, even when leaders were not talking, they were watched more carefully than anyone else in the group. Because the leader’s way of seeing things has special weight, leaders “manage meaning” for a group, offering a way to interpret, and so react emotionally to, a given situation.īut the impact on emotions goes beyond what a leader says. Leaders were also usually the first to speak out on a subject, and when others made comments, their remarks most often referred to what the leader had said than to anyone else’s comments. Leaders typically talked more than anyone else, and what they said was listened to more carefully. Careful observations of working groups in action revealed several ways the leader plays such a pivotal role in determining the shared emotions. Even when the boss isn’t highly visible-for example, the CEO who works behind closed doors on an upper floor-his attitude affects the moods of his direct reports, and a domino effect ripples throughout the company’s emotional climate. People take their emotional cues from the top.
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