Great Leaders are Positively Infectious

A business simulation experiment at Yale University gave two groups of people the assignment of deciding how much of a bonus to give each employee from a set fund of money. Each person in the group was to get as large a bonus as possible for certain employees, while being fair to the entire employee population. In one group, the conflicting agendas led to stress and tension, while in the second group, everyone ended up feeling good about the result. The difference in emotional response was created by the “plants” – actors who had been secretly assigned to manipulate people’s feelings about the project. In the first group, the actor was negative and downbeat, and in the second, positive and upbeat. The emotional tone of the meetings followed the lead of each actor – although none of the group members understood how or why those particular feelings had emerged.

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© 2012 Carol Kinsey Goman

Labels: body language  carol kinsey goman