Make It, Don't Fake It

To me, the only thing more taxing than working with others while in a bad mood is pretending that you are actually in a good mood. You can understand my surprise when my professor mentioned that a viable option for leading people while in a bad mood is to fake being happy.

I can certainly understand that the mood of a leader affects the mood of his or her group. That being said, aside from being in a perpetually bad mood (crushing depression or severe anger issues, for example), does it matter to the group what the mood of the leader is? Does the mood of the group as a whole matter?

I’ll believe you if you told me that I’m envisioning this scenario in ideal circumstances. I have the advantage in my life that I am surrounded by people who care as much as I do about getting done what needs to get done. This drive supersedes our moods or our relationships with each other; in the end the only thing that matters is that we get our tasks done and get them done to the best of our ability.

I therefore see no merit in my life to deny if I’m in a bad mood. I would rather pour that energy into every other aspect of leadership- communication, guidance and efficiency to name a few.

This may even be more effective in the long run than pretending to be happy. If someone who I am leading always sees me in a good mood, he or she might be confused and frustrated because I appear “superhuman,” always being able to maintain a good mood. Or he or she might think that I simply do not communicate with people when I am not in a good mood (because I am never seen angry) and therefore avoiding people when in a bad mood is acceptable. What might happen instead is my example will show them that they can contain their emotions and keep working through, which is ultimately what needs to happen to succeed.

It is entirely plausible that interactions between leadership and followers may transition from transformational to transactional while a leader is in a bad mood, but I assert that less- effective leadership (transactional is widely considered less effective than transformational) is a fair price to pay for energy that would be wasted faking a good mood.