Elevate Your Mood And Lift Your Company

These are uncertain times, and it would be no surprise if all the talk about tariffs, stock market jitters, and other concerns has left you in a sour mood.

But despite all the reasons to let worries overwhelm you, if you are a leader, you should find a way to boost your personal mood, not only for your own good, but for the good of your business. A company often takes on the personality of its leader, which means your mood plays a critical role in influencing your company's morale, culture, and performance.

That can be good––or it can be bad, depending on what kind of mood you bring to work each day. Want your company to be a happier place to work? Then start by elevating your own mood and happiness.

When you lift your personal mood––addressing underlying emotions such as anger and fear––you help your business significantly. There is perhaps no more important leadership strategy than learning to elevate your emotions.

But it takes a concerted effort on your part. One place to start is to recognize the negative moods that can take your leadership off track. There are eight such moods to be especially watchful of: pride, anger, desire, fear, sadness, hopelessness, guilt, and shame.

If you are experiencing any of those moods, or if one of them is driving your behavior, your employees will sense that negative emotion emanating from you even if on the surface you're saying and doing the right things and executing the right strategies. The negative moods behind your words and actions create an unhappy, tense, and less effective work environment.

Confronting and overcoming disagreeable moods

Here's an example of how mood can undermine the success of your business: A leader who can never be pleased may be driven by the guilt they feel about not accomplishing enough themselves. If this leader tells an employee that their efforts never measure up, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The employee loses confidence and shuts down.

The answer, of course, is a change in mindset and approach on the part of the leader. Instead of focusing on what's going wrong, point out to employees what they are doing well. Such positivity flowing from the leader permeates the company, and people are inspired to perform well, knowing they will be commended, not reprimanded. The negative self-fulfilling prophecy becomes a positive self-fulfilling prophecy instead.

But it works only when the leader confronts their own moody shortcomings––in this example guilt––and strives to overcome them.

When leaders feel excited and happy, loving and joyful, the positive impact on those around them expands. Creativity also expands. Every person around the leader picks up on that energy.

Your positive tone also begins to influence the way team members communicate with clients and prospects. In turn, those clients and prospects start to respond to your company based on the way that you interact with your people, and how your employees interact with them. The clients and prospective clients see a company representative who loves what they do and loves helping people.

A good relationship builds.

Helping struggling employees

Of course, even when you strive to keep things positive there will be instances where bad news must be addressed. On occasion, for example, a leader needs to deliver a negative performance review to a poor-performing employee. It's difficult to be upbeat in that situation, so what kind of mood or approach should a leader bring to that meeting? How can they positively affect an employee who is on thin ice and, as a result, is disheartened and disengaged?

The setting and the leader's approach can make a significant difference. Try this: Instead of creating a performance-improvement plan for the struggling employee, take them to lunch where the atmosphere will be less tense than if you summoned them to your office. Identify which of the eight negative emotions is creating their behavior problem. Is it fear? Is it hopelessness? Try to see their world the way they see it.

Encourage the employee to believe they can be happier and more successful by examining why they are experiencing a negative emotion and striving to elevate it. In other words, help them as people first rather than as employees. This approach often can free them to be all they can be.

But not in all cases. If a person is defensive and not open to changing their approach so that they can be happier and find success, then it might be time to part ways, partly because their disharmony can bring down the mood of others in the business.

Elevating employees' emotional growth and mindset

The overarching point to remember, though, is that a leader can set the tone with their mood and help others who are struggling in similar ways.

Emotional growth is the foundation of everything else for employees. They could do all the right things on the job. They could make all the right calls, and they could say all the right things in their presentations. But they might not succeed if their emotional signature is off.

Leaders can find all kinds of ways to foster emotional growth and elevate their employees' mindsets. Here are a few ideas:

• At meetings, give everyone a voice, allowing them to provide input that will make a real difference in the company.
• Have everyone on your team read the same book and each month discuss a section of that book.
• Break into groups where the employees discuss new information in your field and what the company can do with that information. Anytime you can put employees into groups where they're talking and putting their minds to work, it's far better for them than if they are just being talked at. In such an atmosphere, energy really elevates. Listen to the ideas from each group and display the best ideas on a board so that everyone can learn from each other.
• Have employees journal about activities they do to elevate their mindset. Some might say they practice breathing techniques or that walking their dog every morning helps. Some could say keeping a gratitude journal or practicing gratitude helps them, while for others reading religious material is the answer. Talk about these techniques and suggest that everyone add one of the practices to their day.

Give your employees—and yourself—space

Each person has to find what makes them grounded, so the most important thing is to make the space and time for it. Every day, find quiet time to connect with that greater source. And from there, the anxiety can go away.

The leader needs to prioritize that space for themselves above everything else. If you don't, you end up showing up to work feeling frantic, and your fears, anger, worry––whatever the negative emotions are––get pushed down to the people you work with. And they start to feel frantic, and then they push that onto the clients.

Remember, with a commitment to elevating your mood and helping your employees do the same, negative moods can be turned around. Your company can get back on course, sailing as never before.

About Matt O'Neill

Matt O'Neill is the author of Good Mood Revolution: Igniting The Power Of Conscious Happiness and host of the Good Mood Revolution podcast, on which he engages with influential thought leaders to offer insights to enhance everyday happiness. As the founder and CEO of Matt O'Neill Real Estate, his leadership has spurred significant success, with over $3 billion in real estate sold. O'Neill credits the virtues implemented in his company, and the employees' resulting happiness, as a key reason it was named the number one company to work for in South Carolina by Charleston Business magazine. It is also listed among the Inc. 5000 fastest-growing companies in the nation.