Attitudes are contagious.
Thoughts on setting the tone
Picture this. Your team is gathering outside. It’s early. The sun won’t rise for another few hours. It’s raining, it’s dark, and it’s cold. You didn’t get much sleep the night before and you will be outside all day today training. How are you going to carry yourself as you start to interact with your team today? What attitude are you choosing to bring forth?
We have a massive opportunity as leaders to set the tone - our attitudes, just like those of our teammates, are contagious. Given the picture I painted above of an early morning training exercise - it would be understandable for team members to be glum, self-distracted, or disengaged. You might see it in their body language - shoulders hunched against the cold and the rain - or in their choice of words or tone. As a leader, what a powerful opportunity to decide how you want to show up, what energy you want to bring in, what contagious attitude you want to embody? What impact might it have on the team to see you standing upright, looking them in the eye, greeting them with a warm handshake, embodying the positive attitude you would love to see from your team?
As we collaborate with our teammates and those we lead, there is enormous power in the attitudes and energies we intentionally embody in those interactions. Attitudes are contagious - what constructive contagion do we want to bring into the mix? Below are a few thoughts on bringing this invitation into your leadership practice.
Reflect and choose. Be it (and sometimes say it). Balance.
Reflect and choose.
In order to exercise intention and embody an attitude or energy that serves us and the team, we must reflect on what we are feeling and our context. Reflection is a deeply important and effective practice for leaders, learners, and humans in general. In this instance, reflection will allow us a stable foundation of awareness - of self and context - from which to choose how we want to proceed. We can work to notice and name what we are feeling, what might be behind those feelings, what the team might be feeling, and what would serve us and the team in this moment. From here we can choose what attitude we want to embody for ourselves and for the team.
Be it (and sometimes say it).
When I think about the leaders who had the most meaningful impact on me - their actions and attitude stuck with me just as much, if not more, than their words. So when thinking about what attitude we want to bring forth, there is power in thinking about what it looks like and feels like, not just what it might sound like. By default we think through the words we plan to say. We have the opportunity to also think through how we will share our attitude and energy through non-verbal communication- where will we be, when will we be there, what body language or gestures are we inviting in. The broader invitation here is that there is great power in what we say and there is potentially greater power in what we do and how we choose to be with others.
Balance.
Picking the attitude you want to embody and honoring what you are feeling as a human can be a tough balance to strike - particularly when we are consistently implored to be our fullest authentic selves at every turn. Bringing your authentic self to work and showing up with intention as a leader can and should be mutually supportive efforts. My invitation here is to think about how you want to show up and take steps to do so for the benefit of your team in ways that are authentic to you and that are fully aligned with your values - sometimes that may call for vulnerability and revealing your humanity, sometimes it might call for taking a moment and deciding that bringing positive energy today will benefit you and the team - the key is that you have agency.
As leaders we have the opportunity to set the tone - with our language and with our attitude and energy. This is a delicate balancing act in many ways. We want to honor our feelings and our humanity and we want to put on a brave face for the good of the team. Things are often hard, complex, nuanced, difficult - and so we strive to thoughtfully temper our approach and strike the right chord, otherwise we risk appearing tone deaf, inauthentic, out of touch, or unrealistically optimistic. Leadership is a practice and it is demanding work - amidst all the challenges and uncertainty and complexity here’s what we can do: we can set our intention and try our very best.
Onward,
Emily
About this newsletter: A Human Endeavor is a newsletter that I write about leadership - it is imperfect. For me, it is an exercise in reflection, clarification, sharing, learning, growing, and being of service to others.
Thank you for reading.