I am contagious, you are contagious and I’m not talking about a dose of the flu or a cold, or any other infection that may be going around at the moment. I’m talking about your mood and how you behave.
You know, we are all equipped with mirror neurons in the brain, neurons that mirror what we see in other people. So if we meet people that are happy we’d be happy, if we meet people that are grumpy we’d be grumpy.
So if I am happy, laughing, smiling, being nice and welcoming and you know just being a pleasant person, people around me will kind of turn towards being pleasant even if they were not that pleasant to begin with.
This is because they mirror me as I give the happiness to them. They can’t resist it. The same thing happens if I come in and I’m really grumpy and I just yell at people and I say bad things, and I’m in a bad mood and no one really wants to be with me. People are all going to move towards that mood if they meet me the because of the same system. It’s contagious. You give it away whether you want to or not.
Why am I talking about this?
Because you become whatever or whoever you are dealing with. If you are in groups, and I am sure that most of you have been workgroups, where everyone is complaining, and the more people are complaining the more everyone else starts complaining and the more bad things everyone finds in things. It’s a downward spiral.
It goes on and on and on, and it’s very hard for someone to be happy, to try to be positive and try to turn it around. It’s very very hard. It’s because you have all these other people that are mirroring each other now in a negative way and that are kind of telling each other this negativity is the truth. This is the truth.
The same thing happens if you have a workgroup that is positive and everyone is cheering each other, they are smiling towards each other and they think where they are and what they’re doing is nice and everyone just loves it and then everyone will work in that positive way.
Now if someone who is grumpy comes into that it’s hard for the grumpy person to turn the other ones to being grumpy. It’s easier for the happier people to turn the grumpier one into a positive mood and to get into that positive spiral.
Why is this important?
Because if you have a workgroup that is always complaining and who is working on the dark side so to speak with a negative mind, then people are going to be negative in their surroundings and it’s going to show to your customers, it’s going to show to people that are in the other departments at work and you’ll get a reputation of being the grumpy group. You don’t want to be that, right?
You as the leader have a big role in playing a good role model in this situation to show that you can be a happy and nice kind of person so that the group can then be a happy kind of group.
If everyone in the group is happy and they like each other and they help each other and they cheer each other and they smile when they meet, they say hello and are just nice in general. I mean you don’t have to love each other, you just have to respect each other and be in a nice way. If you have that then your workgroup is going to glow and you are going to be the best workgroup in the company and you’ll get all the benefits of doing that, and you, of course, you will be profitable. That’s going to be a much nicer experience than being the grumpy bunch.
This is a tool, a mindset or a knowledge that you can use in your actual work as a leader. It’s sometimes hard work if you have a lot of people in your group that are on the ground beside you and you have to work get them over to the sunny side, however, you as the leader set the tone and you can do wonders if you get this right.
If you need help to get there then feel free to take the link below and we can have a short chat to see what your needs are and if you have colleagues that you think would benefit from this kind of information, and I am actually sure you do have colleagues that need this kind of information, then feel free to share the link to this video with them.
So happy happiness. Be the nice person, the leader and role model that you want to have yourself. Good luck.
