Leadership Influence: Controlling Emotional Contagion

Employees are not emotional islands. Rather, they continuously spread their own moods and receive and are influenced by others’ moods, a phenomenon known as emotional contagion. Contagion happens most powerfully when people are together physically, but new studies show that emotions also transfer across video, television, social media, and even email. The effects, which take place equally with positive and negative emotions, are even stronger in stable workgroups where there is greater interdependence.