Issue No. 6 | March 10, 2026 | Dr. Jacqueline Ashley, PCC
Emotions Are Contagious
Your inner weather becomes your team's climate.
The outer work of emotional self-awareness
FEEL DEEPLY
You walk out of a conversation you're proud of. The strategy clicked. You feel clear and energized. You carry that into the next meeting and something shifts. People lean in. Ideas come faster. Someone takes a risk they wouldn't have taken last week.
You didn't give a speech. You didn't do anything to motivate anyone. You showed up carrying something, and your team caught it.
Now flip it. It's another day. You're still processing a difficult conversation with your boss. You haven't said anything, but the room reads you before you speak. Updates get shorter. The person who normally challenges timelines stays quiet again. People adjust around whatever you brought in.
This is emotional contagion. Your emotional state spreads in milliseconds, below conscious awareness.
Last week was about recognizing your own emotions. This week is about what happens when they leave the room with you.
When you carry steadiness or genuine curiosity, contagion works for you. Shared momentum builds faster and lasts longer than any one person's motivation.
When the emotion is unexamined frustration, anxiety, or distrust, the same amplification works against you. One difficult Monday is a storm. The same storm repeated becomes the forecast your team plans around. They start bracing for the climate.
Contagion doesn't pick sides. What you carry into the room does.
For leaders who hold marginalized identities, this dynamic carries extra weight. Your emotions are already being interpreted through filters you didn't create. The same expression that reads as "having a tough day" for one leader reads as "aggressive" or "can't handle the pressure" for another. You're managing what you feel and how it will be read.
THINK CRITICALLY
If I just stay professional, my emotions won't affect my team.
Good leaders keep their feelings out of the room.
Your feelings are already in the room. The question is whether you're leading with them intentionally or carrying weather you haven't named.
Imagine it's six months from now. Your most candid team member has stopped speaking up entirely. The team hits their numbers, but they stopped bringing ideas.
Work backward from that. What emotional climate, repeated week after week, made that outcome inevitable?
Emotional contagion is a leadership tool. Leverage it deliberately.
When you walk in grounded, your team settles. When you show genuine curiosity, you encourage them to share more ideas. When you're honest about difficulty without spiraling, you model resilience.
The practice starts before you enter the room. Choose what you bring genuinely. If you carried your current emotional state into the next conversation, what would your team absorb?
LEAD POWERFULLY
What you carry into the room is shaped by how you're built. Here are three of 34 CliftonStrengths:
If Arranger drives you, you instinctively rearrange the pieces for the best outcome. Apply that same instinct to the emotional climate of your team. Some leaders carry the extra labor of managing the room's energy on top of their work. Notice what emotional tone you're setting and adjust with intentionality.
If you lead with Connectedness, you sense the invisible threads between people. You feel when the room shifts. Not every leader's emotional attunement is read the same way. For some, it's called emotional intelligence. For others, it's dismissed as too sensitive. Trust what you're sensing.
If Strategic shapes your thinking, you see patterns others miss. Apply that pattern recognition to emotional dynamics. Track which emotional states create openness, and which create withdrawal. Map the pattern, then lead from the emotional state that serves the moment.
The Integration
Acknowledge that your emotions travel. They move through your team before your words do. It's how human connection works. Meet that reality with awareness instead of alarm.
Challenge the assumption that professionalism means emotional neutrality. Your team doesn't need you to stifle your emotions. They need you to know what you're feeling so you can lead with it instead of leak it.
Before your next meeting, pause. Name what you're carrying. Decide what serves the room and what to set down. That's the practice.
This Week's Momentum
What emotion will you check before carrying it into a room this week?
Face it 'til you ace it—sharing is the practice. Post on LinkedIn.
