If you’re a leader, you’re contagious.
By contagious, I don’t mean the tropical disease kind of contagious (although if you had a tropical disease, I’m sure that would be the case).
No, what I mean is that you impact your organization more clearly and directly than you probably realize. In fact, you can try not to impact your organization, and your non-action will be contagious.
As a leader, you set:
- The mood…
- The tone…
- The direction…
- … and just about everything else in the organization.
What’s worse is that many leaders are oblivious to that fact.
Over the years, I also resisted the notion that I was contagious, preferring to think of myself as ‘one of the team’ or as ‘neutral,’ but that’s not true.
If you’re trying to be neutral and you’re the senior leader, that’s impossible.
When you’re the leader, your non-action communicates as much as your action. Your absence communicates as much as your presence. Your disengagement communicates as much as your engagement.
In other words, every senior leader has an inevitable and invaluable role to play. This leads to the inescapable conclusion that whatever you do or don’t do as a leader, spreads.
Like it or not, if you’re a leader, you’re contagious. Whatever you (or don’t do) has a much bigger impact than you think.
To be an effective leader, you need to keep your eye on these 7 aspects of your mood and tone to keep your organization healthy:
1. Mood
It’s so easy to be moody as a leader. You have good days and bad days, just like everyone else, and things that seem out of your control can interfere with what you want to accomplish.
Left unaddressed, I can be a moody leader.
The challenge is that your mood sets the tone for your entire team.
If you’re constantly stressed, anxious, or irritable, that negative energy leaks out on everyone around you.
On the flip side, if you’re positive, optimistic, and composed, your team will start to feel more at ease and motivated.
As a leader, your mood either becomes highly motivating or highly demotivating.
So, what do you need to keep a steady and overall positive mood at work?
2. Level of Engagement
Engagement is infectious.
If you’re engaged, your team will be engaged. If you’re disengaged, don’t expect your team to do any better than you are.
When you show up with energy, enthusiasm, and a clear sense of purpose, your team feels it.
It’s not uncommon for leaders to struggle with engagement over time. It’s too easy to become a little bored with things or to even begin feeling entitled.
Your involvement in projects, your attention in meetings, and your overall commitment to the mission set a standard for everyone else.
3. Integrity
If a lack of integrity isn’t at a crisis level in the church these days, it’s close.
Integrity isn’t just about the big things, though (scandals, deceit, deception, immorality), it’s also about the little things.
When you start compromising as a leader, you’ll see a chain reaction on your team. You don’t even need to say anything. If they notice you’re not putting in the effort or blurring lines about what’s acceptable, they’ll realize they can compromise, too. Leaders, 1,000 little compromises leave you—and your mission—compromised. SHARE ON X
4. Positivity
You want to be positive as a leader and create a positive culture, but sometimes that can descend into a toxic positivity where everyone has to pretend everything is great all the time. That’s not healthy either.
Alternatively, another problem for a lot of leaders is that you see everything that’s wrong. Part of that reality is great: If you don’t spot what’s wrong, it’s hard to make things right.
But the shadow side is that you can easily end up discouraging your team and setting a negative tone for your entire organization.
A rule that’s generally worked for me is to tell the team that you need to be your organization’s greatest critic and greatest supporter. Keeping both in tension helps you never rest on your laurels but also deeply supports your team. You need to be your organization’s greatest critic and greatest supporter. SHARE ON X
5. Faith
Leading a church can be hazardous to your faith.
Just look at the spate of de-conversions happening, often from leaders who preached passionately about Jesus but lost faith along the way.
It’s normal to have doubts and questions, but if you let those doubts fester without addressing them, people will eventually detect that you’re talking the talk about not walking the walk.
One of the weird things about ministry is we get paid to talk about what we believe, which is inherently confusing and bizarre. The line between what we believe and what we do can become thin.
So, a few years into my leadership, I started asking myself and my team this question: “If ministry was over for all of us today, what would be left of our faith?”
Out of that question came a commitment to develop a devotional life that has little to do with work. That way, if ministry ended tomorrow, my faith wouldn’t.
Your faith is contagious. If you don’t nurture it, the staleness spreads.
6. Curiosity
One casualty of leadership over time is curiosity. As a leader, you’re often put on the spot to have the answers, which can lead you to stop asking questions.
That’s a mistake for numerous reasons. Chief among them though is that you could stop becoming a learning organization.
Curiosity fuels learning. It also fuels breakthroughs.
When you embrace curiosity, you signal to your team that it’s okay to ask questions, that it’s all right not to know, and that it’s fine to try to figure it out. Those are the exact ingredients you need to have a learning organization.
7. Openness
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve talked to church staff who are very interested in a new idea or strategy but then almost immediately say, “Yeah, but our senior pastor would never go for that.”
It’s sad how often team members stop dreaming because they realize their leader is going to shoot their idea—and new idea—down.
So, as a leader, be open. Be open to new ideas. Be open to things you didn’t think of. Be open to what your team would love to share.
Openness is also the key to leading a church that effectively reaches people for decades. After all, what worked yesterday won’t necessarily work tomorrow. And what got you here won’t get you there.
Final Word
If you’re the leader, you’re contagious. So the question becomes; What are you spreading around?
