#Mood, Part 2

This is the second part of a two-part article on moods.
You’ll find part one [here].

“Moods are basic determinants of what we can and cannot achieve in the domains of work, learning, relationships, etc.”
- On Moods and Emotions by Rafael Echeverria Ph.D.

We live in moods, moods generate the music of our lives.

We don’t talk about it much but we can quickly identify a mood of a city (think New York compared to Barcelona) or the mood of a company, our department or our team. We take them for granted like background music. We talk about them over lunches and happy hours.

As a leader, you have an opportunity design moods (especially now).

As leader, you may not have personally created the mood but, ultimately, we are responsible for choosing to stay in it (or move out) once you’re aware. Since your team looks to you for signals about mood, this is important information to understand. This is true especially now as so many folks are facing unique challenges.

It’s natural to want to give a team pep talk of some sort, then expect a shift and new results. However, if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a tone-deaf pep talk, you know that generally doesn’t work.

So, how can you change someone else’s mood? It’s wise to start with yourself.

Recognize your own mood.

What mood are you living in? Be honest. Not what you would like to feel, but what do you feel, really? And how is that impacting your actions?

In one of my very early jobs, I lived in a mood of anxiety (not a great experience) and that mood kept me very reactive. I kept myself incredibly busy, hoping I’d be seen as effective. As you can imagine, my reactive mood wasn’t appropriate for being seen as a leader. Early in our careers, it’s pretty common to live in moods of uncertainty or anxiety.

Later in my career, at one point, I can look back and identify a mood of resignation. I perceived that my efforts would not work out, which caused me to 1. look for supporting evidence and 2. let myself off the hook from “trying”. Why bother? Things would never change. Again, not a mood of leadership. In this case, it would have helped to talk about this mood with my manager who could probably have provided some perspective and support.

Certainly, we like to identify with moods like ambition and excitement. I’ve experienced those as well, but negative moods can be subtle or harder for us to acknowledge. Instead, we tend to blame circumstances and others. We cover our mood with inauthentic bravado hoping others just won’t notice.

So, once you’ve identified your mood, what can you do to shift unproductive moods?

1. Find a mood-squad — Moods are contagious. Find peers who aren’t in the drift but actively designing/aware of their moods. Alliances are great support networks as folks cycle through different situations.
2. Develop a habit of actions — we fall into the same cycles of moods frequently, so having a simple “go to” helps. If you know Mondays are tough, plan.
3. Environment— create an environment for mood. Art, music, smell, a sense of orderliness. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to be part of an environment designed to enhance your mood, you know it’s a gift (and effective).
4. Deconstruct your mood and speak up — negative moods limit your possible actions. If you are feeling resigned, ask yourself why and see if you can ask for help. For example, if I’m resigned because things aren’t happening quickly enough and my manager shares that my timeline is too optimistic, I can move out of resignation and reset my personal expectations.

Take a look at where the team mood lands

Once you have some practice under your belt, notice the mood of the team. Notice where you’re operating in a prevailing drift of a mood.

Managers that are blind to mood can damage their leadership potential further by:

1. Using tone deaf communication. Pasting a smiley sticker on top of a bad mood doesn’t change much and further alienates you and erodes trust
2. Leading through control, which may be appropriate for a short amount of time, but will never grow and engage a team
3. Missing opportunities to further develop nuanced leadership skills for yourself and for leaders on your team. You’re modeling what your most talented team members will imitate.
4. Missing the valuable feedback from a team that may feel resigned or resentful.

Conversations can create or influence conditions for moods to take root. Building the skills to open conversations to address and shift mood is incredibly important for leaders to be effective and authentic.

Authentic leaders build trust and diehard fans and employees.

1. With your team, have a conversation and acknowledge the reality of the current mood and what you’ve learned — with empathy. This kind of conversation is designed to open further conversation about what we need to talk about. This isn’t talk for talk’s sake but conversation for understanding, building trust, and creating a platform for different moods.
   “In recent conversations, I’ve really understood that folks feel resentful about short deadlines with little flexibility. I understand how frustrating that can be. In fact, many of you shared how upsetting it was to get new deadlines with little notice. I appreciate your honestly and I want to work to make this better.”
2. Brainstorm a vision for a better ways. What would the team like to feel?
   “I’d like you all to feel more control and visibility into your pipeline.”
3. Support your vision with concrete changes you can commit to making.
   “We’ve been under tight deadlines for reasons that I will be more transparent about whenever possible. You deserve to have more context.”
4. Start with the changes you can personally control.
   “I will also work with project managers to gather feedback about more realistic timelines or reducing scope of my requests, and I will do what I can to make the situation more manageable whenever possible.”
5. Follow up by asking for feedback about your changes over the coming weeks and months.
   “I’ve been working to get a better sense of bandwidth and provide more context about my requests since our last conversations. Has this improved things? Are there other things we could try?”

We want to work on teams that care. We want to work on things that matter. We want to feel a sense of ambition, accomplishment, pride, and impact. Leaders need to ensure that’s happening.

If you have no recognition of mood because you believe “feelings” or “mood” aren’t the point of a professional environment — you’re missing a big piece of the teams’ management that is impacting performance whether you acknowledge it or not.

Being tapped into the group’s mood is an ongoing project and something that is always shifting. And it makes sense that a group moves through different moods in changing times. Losing clients, a failed launch, key team members leaving, new leadership with new leadership styles can all impact the mood of the team. However, once these conversations are on the table, it is easier to keep tabs on a team’s wellbeing.

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As a coach, Courtney Kaplan partners with leaders to support them in building strong teams with clear vision and communication.

Courtney founded the Design Operations team at Facebook and spent 6 years building the discipline into an impactful team key to creating design operations excellence. Before Facebook, Courtney was Principal of Program Planning and Principal of Client Development at Hot Studio working to build a team that could scope, manage and deliver complex digital engagements.

For more about moods, refer to the Institute for Generative Leadership, Newfield Network where many of these concepts are discussed at length.