LAUGHTER AND THE OPEN LOOP

Emotions may spread like viruses, but not all emotions spread with the same ease. A study at the Yale University School of Management found that among working groups, cheerfulness and warmth spread most easily, while irritability is less contagious and depression spreads hardly at all.²⁴ This greater diffusion rate for good moods has direct implications for business results. Moods, the Yale study found, influence how effectively people work; upbeat moods boost cooperation, fairness, and business performance.

Laughter, in particular, demonstrates the power of the open loop in operation – and therefore the contagious nature of all emotion. Hearing laughter, we automatically smile or laugh too, creating a spontaneous chain reaction that sweeps through a group. Glee spreads so readily because our brain includes open-loop circuits, designed specifically for detecting smiles and laughter that make us laugh in response. The result is a positive emotional hijack.

Similarly, of all emotional signals, smiles are the most contagious; they have an almost irresistible power to make others smile in return.²⁵ Smiles may be so potent because of the beneficial role they played in evolution: Smiles and laughter, scientists speculate, evolved as a nonverbal way to cement alliances, signifying that an individual is relaxed and friendly rather than guarded or hostile.

Laughter offers a uniquely trustworthy sign of this friendliness. Unlike other emotional signals – especially a smile, which can be feigned – laughter involves highly complex neural systems that are largely involuntary: It’s harder to fake.²⁶ So whereas a false smile might easily slip through our emotional radar, a forced laugh has a hollow ring.

In a neurological sense, laughing represents the shortest distance between two people because it instantly interlocks limbic systems. This immediate, involuntary reaction, as one researcher puts it, involves “the most direct communication possible between people – brain to brain – with our intellect just going along for the ride, in what might be called a “limbic lock.”²⁷ No surprise, then, that people who relish each other’s company laugh easily and often; those who distrust or dislike each other, or who are otherwise at odds, laugh little together, if at all.

In any work setting, therefore, the sound of laughter signals the group’s emotional temperature, offering one sure sign that people’s hearts as well as their minds are engaged. Moreover, laughter at work has little to do with someone telling a canned joke: In a study of 1,200 episodes of laughter during social interactions, the laugh almost always came as a friendly response to some ordinary remark like “nice meeting you,” not to a punchline.²⁸ A good laugh sends a reassuring message: We’re on the same wavelength, we get along. It signals trust, comfort, and a shared sense of the world; as a rhythm in a conversation, laughing signals that all is well for the moment.

How easily we catch leaders’ emotional states, then, has to do with how expressively their faces, voices, and gestures convey their feelings. The greater a leader’s skill at transmitting emotions, the more forcefully the emotions will spread. Such transmission does not depend on theatrics, of course; since people pay close attention to a leader, even subtle expressions of emotion can have great impact. Even so, the more open leaders are – how well they express their own enthusiasm, for example – the more readily others will feel that same contagious passion.

Leaders with that kind of talent are emotional magnets; people naturally gravitate to them. If you think about the leaders with whom people most want to work in an organization, they probably have this ability to exude upbeat feelings. It’s one reason emotionally intelligent leaders attract talented people – for the pleasure of working in their presence. Conversely, leaders who emit the negative register – who are irritable, touchy, domineering, cold – repel people. No one wants to work for a grouch. Research has proven it: Optimistic, enthusiastic leaders more easily retain their people, compared with those bosses who tend toward negative moods.²⁹

Let’s now take the impact of primal leadership one step further, to examine just how much emotions determine job effectiveness.