Is your team's exhaustion contagious?

A recent study confirms that the more empathic you are as a leader the more susceptible you are to 'catching' your team's emotional exhaustion. 

This is called the crossover, according to the paper What About the Leader: Crossover of Emotional Exhaustion and Work Engagement From Followers to Leaders?

"Leaders’ who consider themselves to be particularly competent in the emotional area pay more attention to emotional expressions of their staff, are more likely to detect negative emotions, and are, in turn, more likely to experience negative emotions themselves. "*

These findings remind us of the complex emotional and psychological feedback loops that exist within our teams. We know that leaders influence the wellness and engagement of their teams and, in turn, team members can affect a leaders' wellbeing at work.

This report builds the case for strengthening your people's coping skills and emotional fortitude, as...

Many seasoned leaders rely on their 'gut feeling' when making high-risk, high stakes decisions. Contemporary science now understands that there is a 'hidden sense' behind this intuition. Leadium's Sharon Longridge interviewed Dr Kelly Mahler on how the 'embodied mind' impacts many facets of leadership, including decision making. 

The modern world is impressively uncertain and complex. While we might have "prediction addiction" as Margaret Heffernan says in her latest book Unchartered: How to Map the Future Together we can't rely on exhaustive data analysis, AI or machine learning to accurately forecast the future¹. The reality is that history doesn't always repeat itself so decision-making can't rely solely on logic, analysis, modelling or past events. 

Fortunately, we are equipped with an ever-present, yet little discussed sensory tool to help us navigate life's complexity. Research, author and Occupational Therapist Dr Kelly Mahler says...