Are you contagious or toxic?

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.  ~John Quincy Adams

One of my recent posts commented on work from Shawn Achor's book The Happiness Advantage and I was very intrigued by another study that Shawn quotes.

Recent research exploring the role of social networks in shaping human behavior has proven that much of our behavior is literally contagious; that our habits, attitudes, and actions spread through a complicated web of connections to infect those around us.  In their groundbreaking book Connected, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler draw on years of research to show how our actions are constantly cascading and bouncing off each other in every which way and direction.  This theory holds that our attitudes and behaviors don't only infect the people we interact with directly—like our colleagues, friends, and families—but that each individual's influence actually appears to extend to people within three degrees. So when you make positive changes in your own life, you are unconsciously shaping the behavior of an incredible number of people.  This influence adds up; Fowler and Christakis estimate that there are nearly 1,000 people within three degrees of most of us.

Daniel Goleman couldn't have said it better: "like secondhand smoke, the leakage of emotions can make a bystander an innocent casualty of someone else's toxic state."  This means that when we feel anxious or adopt an overtly negative mindset, these feelings will start to seep into every interaction we have, whether we like it or not.

One thousand people!  Sounds both humbling and daunting, doesn't it?  Knowing that number—1,000—brings an entirely new perspective to Jack Welch's philosophy of eliminating toxic employees without hesitation and with great speed.  Jack has said, even if an employee has great technical skills, if their attitude and behavior is toxic, you need to get rid of them, immediately. 

I can think of more than several instances where a client had a toxic employee who had great (or at least good) technical skills and because of their technical skills the CEO chose to keep them on their team.  In a number of cases, those toxic employees eventually left on their own.  After they were gone, many layers of the onion started to be peeled back and, unfortunately, revealed the breadth and depth of their toxic behavior throughout the organization.  Daniel Goleman's analogy of secondhand smoke was all too real in these organizations.  The number of bystanders who were innocent causalities was baffling.

All leaders in an organization should mirror John Quincy Adams' description of someone whose actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more.  Now that sounds contagious!  Imagine for a moment a leadership team in an organization who is collectively contagious.  Now layer on top of that image 1,000 people within three degrees of that leadership team.

The feelings and behaviors we exhibit will seep into every interaction we have, whether we like it or not.  Will those behaviors be toxic or contagious?