Many of you know I’m on assignment in Iowa helping a team and a coach re-build their high-performance culture. It’s been going pretty well so far, but last night I had a learning moment. On the surface, it should have been a great night. Our team is 4-0-2—undefeated. We are 6 games in, and already we have won as many games as they did last season. I’m proud of this accomplishment.

However, at the end of the game, something happened that I am not particularly proud of.

I let my response to the emotional presentation of others get the best of me. Several players had negative reactions:  negative body language, no eye contact and not joining in the goal celebration of their teammates. Long story short, I was not pleased! I called everybody into the locker room, and I gave them a few choice words. I reminded them of the team’s goals we had for the season--what we are here to accomplish. While I was at it, I laid out my frustrations with their performance in the midfield and their lack of focus during training this past week. Basically, I threw the kitchen sink of problems at them; and in doing so, I robbed them of their joy in the moment. They didn’t get to revel in their victory. I feel like I tainted a great effort by a large majority of the team.

Twenty-four hours later, I can reflect and think.

“Wow, we just went six games undefeated. We didn’t get a goal scored against us in that match. We finished phase one exceeding the goals we set for ourselves. There’s a lot to celebrate here.”

Instead, I got caught up in the negative emotion of others and amplified it to even more folks who did not deserve it. I know better.

Emotion is contagious, and I know better than to react.

The problem is that when our emotions are running high, the logical center of our brain is polluted with the chemistry of our upset. In the moment, we just can’t access all of those important things we know that would guide us to a better resolution of the problem at hand. 

Psychological researchers have studied emotional contagion for many years and found cross-cultural evidence that humans do, in fact, read each other’s emotional states and respond empathetically to mimic them. Marketers exploit this all of the time to engender a positive feeling about a product or experience they are selling by using actors to portray this favorable response in ads. Anger and fear are known to elicit the strongest physiological arousal response of emotional contagion.

I am only human. I made a mistake.

I wish I had paid attention to my cues and my triggers. As a leader, I need to stay attuned to the people I lead. When players don’t give me eye contact or walk away when I’m talking to them, that’s one of my triggers. I can feel myself becoming tense, my heart races and I can feel my respiration rate quicken.

I should have recognized this and left the issue for later when the chemical release which spurred my immediate emotional response had dissipated from my brain and body. If I did exercise this discipline, everybody would have been in a better space to hear and receive the message later. I would have been in a better space to articulate the salient and specific message without emotion but rather as matter of fact, so it could be received as intended becoming a teachable moment.

This is has happened to me in leadership positions, as well. I remember someone blowing up at me and catching me off guard. I had to take a moment to reflect on what was happening here. In that instance, I was able to refrain from getting drawn into a heated debate. The next day, the colleague came back to apologize to me for ‘being over the top,’ and we were able to restore our collegial relationship and get back to work quickly.

Two lessons here:

1. For those of you who are the empath and take on other’s emotional intensity, recognize it and speak it into the room. For example, ‘I can feel how strongly you feel about this right now. I am listening, but I’m also reacting. I think we’ll both get to a better understanding if we pause here and try again a little later.’  This is about focusing on the working relationship and avoiding a breach that will damage that and disrupt the work of the team. Picking the right time to address conflict is critical to coming to resolutions that build trust and foster high performance in your team.

2. The second lesson is, if you have overreacted, what are you going to do about it to fix it and right the ship?

Apologize.

You are never too old or experienced to learn a powerful lesson and share a powerful lesson. We owe an apology, and sharing our mistakes sets a tone for our team that we don’t expect that everyone will always get everything right. Sharing your fix helps others rebound quickly when future problems arise in the team. Apology invites others to do their part to amend the situation, as well.