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Emotional Contagion is the Real Driver of Change’s Success

Emotional Contagion is the Real Driver of Change’s Success

by | Jun 23, 2026 | Leadership, Leading Through Uncertainty, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

For eight days, the Tartan Army filled Boston’s streets with kilts, bagpipes, and the constant refrain of “No Scotland. No Party.”  Bars ran out of beer, traffic cones adorned statues, and resident’s souls were healed.

Now, some are saying corporate managers should have the same effect on the people around them (presumably without consuming all the beer in the office).

The possibility of collective effervescence

Collective effervescence is everywhere right now: in New York at the Knicks’ championship parade, the Tarps Off shirtless section at baseball games, at every unexpected draw or win at the World Cup.

It’s the “emotional electricity or excitement that lifts people outside of themselves and makes them feel like they’re connecting to something transcendent,” explains Christina Simko, and associate professor of sociology at William College. “They (members of a crowd) have to have a common focus and a common mood, and through that physical interaction, they generate something … greater than the sum of its parts.”

Greater than the sum of its parts.

Where have a I heard that before?

Could it be in every press release announcing an acquisition, all-hands meeting kicking of a transformation, and email confirming a re-org?

Which explains why I’m reading about the need for executives to create collective effervescence to ensure the success of transformational initiatives.

Seventy percent of transformations fail and one of the leading causes of failure is insufficiently high aspirations. Collective effervescence is sufficiently high but setting that as a metric of success will only drive up the failure rate.

The probability of emotional contagion

Emotional contagion is also everywhere: in the laugh that spreads through a room, the frown that moves around a conference table, the yawns that can’t be suppressed in meetings.

It’s the “phenomenon in which a person unconsciously mirrors or mimics the emotions of those around them” through nonverbal, conversational, or behavioral cues. It can be positive, like smiles and laughs, or negative like frowns or the tension from a tough conversation.

That’s good news for executives.

Leaders are “emotional amplifiers” because team members are more likely to mirror the leader’s tone than their peers. Research out of USC also indicates that, historically, positive emotions are more contagious than negative ones.

It’s also bad news for executives.

The emotional amplifier role cuts both ways and research shows that people tend to “overperceive” negative cues from leaders, even magnifying small emotional cues well beyond what a leader intended.

That means the frown everyone on the company-wide Zoom was most likely interpreted as disagreement, even opposition, to what was being discussed. And not that your shoes are too tight.

 The reality of leading humans through change

Leading people through change is hard. It’s even harder when you’re under a microscope and every smile, frown, sigh, cough, and eye roll is scrutinized and interpreted as if it were a secret code foretelling the future of thousands.

It’s not. But your team believes it is.

And perception is reality.

Here’s how to start shaping reality to make the changes happen:

  • Start with self-awareness. What is your mood right now? If it’s useful to the team, spend time with them. If it’s not, reschedule the meeting or send a proxy.
  • Make direct eye contact with people. According to the research, eye contact during verbal communication activates brain regions that help us understand what someone is saying and what they mean. Just don’t stare. That’s creepy.
  • Neutralize the negativity publicly. A bit of skepticism can be healthy for teams going through change but too much easily crosses over into pessimism and even hostility that spreads throughout the team. So stop the spread by publicly and patiently calling out the behavior and seeking to understand the root cause.

You don’t need collective effervescence to successfully lead change.

You do need spread the belief that change is possible and beneficial.

And you can do that without wearing a kilt.

What Leaders Can Learn From Lobsters (Or, The Importance of Asking Why)

What Leaders Can Learn From Lobsters (Or, The Importance of Asking Why)

by | Jun 17, 2026 | Leadership, Leading Through Uncertainty, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

Up and down New England’s coastline you’ll find lobster (pronounced “lob-stah”) shacks.  These weathered wood structures produce the freshest lobster and crispiest fried seafood anywhere, enjoyed on picnic tables as the sun beats down and the waves crash against the rocky shore.

It was at one of these shacks that, many years ago, I learned priceless lesson.

As my friends and I placed our orders, I asked that the head of my lobster be removed before serving. The waitress looked at me like I had nine heads but wrote down my request and returned to the kitchen. A few minutes later she reappeared and announced that the kitchen refused to decapitate the lobster prior to serving.

“I don’t like making eye contact with my food,” I stammered.

She nodded and walked away.

When she returned with our lobsters, they all had heads but one was noticeably different. It was wearing “sunglasses” made of olives and toothpicks.

“Here,” our waitress said. “Now you don’t have to make eye contact with it.”

 

 

A short-term “solution”

As VUCA-ness (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) accelerates, C-suite executives do everything possible to create certainty and construct safety. After all, if the company doesn’t survive the short-term, even the best long-term plans don’t matter.

Evidence of this approach is everywhere:

When these decisions land on your desk, you sigh, knowing they are short-sighted but understanding the rationale. Then, you go implement them, knowing unintended consequences are coming.

 

 

Unintended doesn’t mean unpredictable

In fact, because you are on the frontlines of your business, striving to deliver today and build tomorrow, you can predict what those consequences will be:

It’s frustrating to see the problems coming but feel powerless to avoid them.

But what does any of this have to do with a lobster wearing sunglasses?

 

 

When you know the Why, you can choose the How

When directives land on your desk, don’t sigh and roll them out. Ask for the Why behind the What.

  • Why are employees being forced back to the office? Did productivity decrease? Are mission-critical operations not occurring? Are top-performers leaving for in-person roles?
  • Why are experienced people being let go? Is the work being outsourced or has it genuinely gone? Why are you no longer hiring entry-level people? Are they too expensive to train? Is retention genuinely poor?
  • Why are innovation initiatives being cut? Is the core business in that much trouble? Do we lack the talent? Are we pursuing growth through other means?

Each directive’s Why is different which means you have more options than you realize for delivering the How. Understanding the outcomes the company needs, reveals options for delivering it while minimizing the unintended consequences.

 

 

Don’t decapitate the lobster. Find opportunities for sunglasses.

The kitchen could have easily removed the head from my lobster, but they foresaw the unintended consequences of a disappointing dining experience. When they understood my why, they created a spectacular how.

You don’t control the system so asking “Why?” feels scary, hostile, even mutinous.

You do control your piece of it. You know it better than anyone, so there’s no one better to determine the how.

“Do More with Less” Without Burning Out in 3 Practical Steps

“Do More with Less” Without Burning Out in 3 Practical Steps

by | Jun 10, 2026 | Leadership, Tips, Tricks, & Tools

We have entered the “do more with less” era of management edicts.

And, just like the eras of “fail fast,” “synergy,” and “we’re a family,” the phrase is met with eye rolls, silent groans, and a deepening certainty that management is completely out of touch with the reality on the ground.

But what if doing more with less is possible without the extra hours and stress that lead to burnout?

 

(Re)Define “more.”

When we hear “more,” we naturally think of work. More meetings. More emails. More Slacks, texts, Zooms. For most of my career, I believed the more emails I received, meetings I attended, and documents I wrote, the more valuable I was.

Volume does not equal value.

“More” can’t (and shouldn’t) mean more work. It must mean something else.

More value creation. Less box checking.

More progress. Less process.

More meaningful work. Less meaningless activity.

What is the “more” you want from your team? Define it or you’ll get more emails, meetings, and documents. Name it (value, efficiency, progress), and your team will figure out how to do it.

 

Experiment with “less.”

A client’s team stopped sending meeting summaries. They didn’t send shorter ones, change the distribution list, or even share the link to the AI note-taker. They just stopped.

No one noticed.

Six months later, a new team member asked if they would send a meeting summary. The team leader said no but offered to recap next steps before everyone left the room. No one argued. Everyone left the meeting with clarity on what they needed to do next.

Activity does not equal achievement.

 Our days are filled with BS work, tasks that we do because we’ve always done them, because they feel important, and because we worry what happens if we stop.

Documents don’t ensure that people are informed, aligned, or are ready to act.

Meetings don’t guarantee that everyone has thoughtfully considered and agreed on a decision.

Meeting summaries don’t make people complete their next steps.

It doesn’t mean we don’t need documents, meetings, or meeting summaries. But “less” is possible.

Ask your team what you can do less of. Stop doing things and see if people notice. If you can’t stop something completely, ask what less of it looks like. Instead of a meeting summary, send next steps. Instead of a presentation, write a one-page summary. Instead of a spreadsheet build a visual dashboard.

 

Rethink “indispensable.”

The managers in my client’s training program were in roles that everyone called the most pivotal in the company. They didn’t feel pivotal. They felt reactive and overwhelmed, with no control over their own calendars.

The COO’s fix was simple. Just stop attending.

It surprised him that they wouldn’t. They couldn’t. The fear of missing something kept them in every room, including the ones that ran fine without them.

You’re in every meeting because you’re good at your job. Being good got you invited into every decision, and somewhere along the way no one uninvited you. Now you stay out of habit, not need. The permission to step back is usually there. You just haven’t tested it long enough to know what happens.

 Presence does not equal performance.

Look at your calendar for the meetings you sit in out of habit. Pick one this week to not attend. Resist the urge to instructions. Simply tell the team lead you won’t attend and that you trust them to keep things moving.

Your absence isn’t dropping the ball. It’s demonstrating that you trust the team and empowering them to do their jobs. It’s the rare version of less that gives you more time and your team their autonomy.

 

“Do more with less” isn’t a demand to work harder

The constraint isn’t going anywhere. Volume isn’t value. Activity isn’t achievement. Presence isn’t performance. It’s a reason to finally drop what doesn’t matter.

What Unconscious Trade-Offs Are You Making? And What Are They Costing You?

What Unconscious Trade-Offs Are You Making? And What Are They Costing You?

by | Jun 3, 2026 | Leadership, Strategy

“How much did your last 1,000 long-distance calls cost you?”

Juan Enríquez Cabot, Mexican-American academic, businessman, author, and speaker.

Strategy requires making choices. It’s an exercise in trade-offs. It requires prioritizing one thing over another and saying “no” to more things than you say “yes.”

The same is true for life. It also requires making choices, setting priorities, saying “no,” and making trade-offs.

 

 

But what happens when you no longer need to make trade-offs?

That’s one of the questions that Juan Enriquez, best-selling author and TED All-Star, posed during his speech “An Uncertain, Scary, Exciting Future.”  To illustrate his point, he took us back to the late 20th century when we used to pay for long-distance calls. In the 1970s, long-distance (state-to-state) calls cost a minimum of $3.50 per minute (in 2020 dollars). In the 1980s as industry competition increased, phone companies started offering discounted rates for evening and late-night calls.

I remember my mom talking to my grandma in Pennsylvania for an hour each week and my grandma in California for two hours each month. Assuming those were the only interstate calls made (they weren’t), at a discounted rate of $1.25/minute, those five calls cost $450 in 2020 dollars.

That’s more than 3x what I currently pay for unlimited calls and text.

We used to trade off money, frequency, convenience, and quality simply to stay in touch with family and friends. Now we don’t.

But we’re still making trade-offs.

 

There are ALWAYS trade-offs

 No one likes trade-offs. We’d much rather have everything than just one thing. After all, if you have (or do) everything then when things change, you’re prepared. You’re safe.

But “all of the above” is not an option.

My mom would have been stuck on the phone for hours every day talking to my grandmas if long-distance calls were free. But, because we couldn’t afford the financial trade-off required for daily multi-hour, long-distance calls, my mom was free to live her life untethered from the kitchen phone.

Now, the financial and physical trade-offs of long-distance calls have gone away but we’re still tethered to our phones. Instead, we’re trading away our attention and energy, data and privacy, even our mental well-being for the “convenience” of always being connected and accessible.

 

What trade-offs are you making (because you ARE making them)?

Look at your business strategy, your team, your daily calendar. What are you trading off? What will you stop doing so that you can invest more in starting or accelerating something else?

If you’re like most executives, you can’t answer those two questions because you choose “all of the above.”

But you did make trade-offs.  You’re trading off time spent with friends and family and your physical and mental well-being to do more with less. You’re trading off your business’ future to maximize today’s profits.

There are always trade-offs. The ones you proactively and consciously choose are always better than the ones that creep up on you, promising “all of the above” while taking the things you’d never knowingly give up.

3 Deaths. 3 Lessons. 3 Questions to Survive (and Thrive)

3 Deaths. 3 Lessons. 3 Questions to Survive (and Thrive)

by | May 5, 2026 | Leadership, Leading Through Uncertainty, Stories & Examples, Strategy

Sunday morning, my phone blew up. Thirty-three text messages. Most mornings, I have zero, so my first thought was “who died?”

The texts were about a death. Sort of.

Sloan Management Review died (ceased publication) and a group chat filled with academics, thought leaders, and consultants were having an absolute meltdown.

Knowing that my husband, an actual Sloan graduate, hadn’t yet seen the news, I broke it to him gently. “Okay,” he shrugged, not even glancing up from his phone.

This was in stark contrast to his reactions to the demise of Spirit Airlines (howling with laughter at the memes) and the resurrection of Allbirds as an AI company (thoughtful and incredibly technical analysis).

Lesson 1: The Race to the Bottom Never Ends Well

CNN’s headline said it all, “Why did Spirit fail? Too many passengers hated flying it.” To prove the point, the article opens,

“Lousy service, not the Iran war, killed Spirit Airlines.  Spirit was doomed to fail because of mismanagement, deep financial problems, and – crucially – its reputation for poor customer service.  The spike in jet fuel prices during the war just accelerated Spirit’s inevitable demise.”

If that can be written about your business, you don’t deserve to be in business.

It’s only a matter of time until you’re not.

 

Lesson 2: Be Patient for Growth and Impatient for Profit

Allbirds raised $348 million when it IPOed in 2021 and, at one point, was valued at $4.1 billion despite never turning a profit. Six years later, its stock price had fallen 95% and it sold its business and IP to a brand management company for $39 million.

How did this happen? There are plenty of theories – it expanded too aggressively into bricks and mortar retail, it made ugly shoes but operated like a fashion brand, its Tech Bro image is no longer aspirational for Gen Z customers – but the fact is that it prioritized growth over profit and that ultimately bit them in the balance sheet.

 

Lesson 3: Some Businesses are Butterflies

While my colleagues’ alarm was understandable, it missed the bigger picture.

Sloan Management Review (SMR) didn’t die. It metamorphosed.

Yes, the SMR brand is going away, but future ideas, research and findings will continue to be shared through digital newsletters, short-form videos, podcasts, and social-first content.

In effect, SMR is metamorphosing to better reflect how its subscribers consume information. Busy executives don’t have the time to read long-form, dense research articles. They grab information in snippets and soundbites. This change ensures the people who need the ideas the most get them.

3 Questions to Find Your Fate
  1. Do you treat your customers like they exist for your benefit? In other words, are you more focused on value extraction than value creation and delivery? If yes, start planning your business’ funeral and don’t expect anyone to attend.
  1. Do you have a financially and operationally sustainable business model? If no, start planning your funeral but take comfort in the fact that people will attend and may even say nice things about you.
  1. Do you know the unique, relevant, valuable, and hard to imitate reason why you exist? Can you articulate the rare and essential Job to be Done you do for your customers? If no, you’re on life support. When you can answer yes, you’ll be ready to be a butterfly.

 

One quick caveat

When businesses die, people lose their jobs and that is incredibly tragic. The psychological, financial, and relational impacts of job loss are tremendous, impacting people far beyond the individual laid off. It can take months, even years for people and families to recover and, for some, it never happens.

Creative destruction is real and necessary for long-term economic, technological, and societal growth. But the short-term impact has human consequences that should never be ignored.