Emotions, for better or worse, are contagious. So be careful: how you feel can have a huge impact on how your team performs.
Every day you wake up with the thought of driving your company forward. If you are like many, you probably fell asleep making key decisions to be implemented the next day. While standing in line for coffee, your mind wandered to that pesky product decision that has hamstrung the team for the last few days. And, at lunch, you forced yourself to consider hiring that social marketing maven you met at the networking event last night.
All of these actions involve intense thought–the most critical element of your company’s future success. Right? Maybe not. If you are managing a team, your solo thoughts and subsequent decisions have a limited impact. I would posit that inspiring every team member to operate at his or her best has a much larger bearing on your success.
In my late 20s I had my first opportunity to manage a staff of professional cartographers at the US State Department in Washington, DC. Our newly installed digital mapping capability had inspired the higher-ups to place maps in many more publications than previously. The result was a lot more traffic to our doors from experts writing about some hot international issue. Our collective first response (after they had left our office) was usually to complain about how idiotic their request was.
Find out how this story ends and my thoughts on your mood here at INC.com.