“Mom, are you angry with me?” my daughter asked as she came out of her taekwondo class.
I was completely caught off guard. I wasn’t angry at all. I was distracted because I needed to use the bathroom. I wasn’t upset; I was trying to hold it together for the seven minutes it would take to get home.
I had no idea that my jaw was set. I looked distracted. I was rigid with focus and discomfort.
I can’t tell you how many times this happens at work.
Leaders think they are being focused. But really, they are showing anger and unintentionally worrying their teams. And it’s all because they are preoccupied with something else and don’t even realize how they come across.
A leader doesn’t just set the direction; they set the tone.
Anyone who likes to host parties knows that they are responsible not just for the date and the location. They are the source of the ambiance, the feeling that guests have when they walk into the room.
It’s in the details, the music, the scent, the food, the lighting. But it’s also in the emotion and the energy of the people in the room.
Unsurprisingly, if the host is agitated or anxious, it permeates everything.
That’s why great hosts don’t just emphasize the physical elements; they take the time to show up as they want and make their guests feel how they want them to feel.
Leaders are the hosts of their workplaces.
When a leader is off-kilter, it’s unsurprising if their team feels it. Even if someone on their team is level-headed and stays calm, the leader’s energy and perspective will permeate, distract, and even drain that person and those around them.
The cues you give aren’t always visible to you.
Most of us, unless we are trained actors or models, aren’t aware of the subtle cues we give.
Narrowed eyes. A furrowed brow. A stiff stance. These can all suggest that something isn’t right. That you are worried or disappointed. Perhaps you are simply uncomfortable, like I was, but your team doesn’t know that.
It’s human nature to assume that when someone engages with you and shows signs of discomfort, you are the cause. That’s exactly the calculus your team is making every day.
But it’s not what is actually happening.
Too many leaders are living in another reality. A past meeting that didn’t go well. A future conversation they are dreading. A budget they are still trying to negotiate. It might have nothing to do with work at all, like I was with my daughter.
Sadly, it’s rare for a leader to be fully present, even if they want to be. It’s even rarer for a leader to notice the signals they are giving off.
When a leader is relaxed, joking, and smiling, their team assumes that all is well in their work and their relationship with them. When someone isn’t worrying about what their leader thinks, they’re more likely to reveal what is actually happening, share concerns, ask for help, and be creative.
Risk-taking is less risky when a boss feels more ready to receive and support their thoughts.
What sets the tone for your team.
If you’re trying to create the conditions for your team to be fully engaged, the first and most important condition is you.
Even if the rest of the industry or company is going to pot, you are the person who can most influence how your team is feeling. I’m not saying you can manage your team’s feelings. Just that you can either be a source of productive conditions or a source of negative ones.
If you want to be a productive source, how do you do that when so many of the signals are things you might not even be aware of?
Like hosting a party, below are the ones that I’ve found mattered most in my career as a follower and as a leader, and how I calibrated them intentionally instead of letting them sneak up on me and sabotage my ability to lead.
Attention - Am I fully with the present conversation, topic, and person?
Pace - How do I feel about our speed, and what do I want the team to do?
Facial expressions - Do I know what my mouth, eyes, and brow are doing? Are they communicating what I actually want to convey?
Physical posture - Am I open or closed? Tight or loose? Upright, hunched?
Tone - What is the pitch, the emphasis, and tenor of my voice?
Language - The words I use.
The order above matters.
For example, I put language last because people overemphasize it. Being eloquent is great, but it’s not what people remember most.
My style is rather casual, but I’m often remembered for being diplomatic or having gravitas. It’s not my words that do that. It’s that I’m fully attentive and have taken the time to proactively tune the rest. Once your facial expressions, posture, and tone are in a good place, choosing your words naturally becomes the next focus.
I once worked for a leader who was regularly distressed and would speak loudly, turn red with agitation, and use clipped, staccato sentences. He wasn’t always annoyed with his team, but that’s what he conveyed. Whatever was causing him distress, he passed directly to his team.
When he wanted more innovation, he got more caution. When he pushed everyone to move faster, they panicked and made more mistakes. When he asked for better documentation, people wasted hours trying to perfect capturing systems that didn’t actually matter because they didn’t want to face his ire.
He regularly stood with his arms crossed and his eyes narrowed. He rarely smiled, and he was often on his phone during meetings. It signaled deep disrespect and meant he missed much of what his team tried to share.
He had no idea what he was signaling. Most of us don’t. That’s the work.
Choosing the emotional temperature you want to convey.
As a leader, your team looks to you to understand how to react. Your team can be in a steady state flow, intensely fixing a critical problem, wildly testing as part of a wave of innovation, or calmly recovering from a big launch. You need to choose.
When you both anticipate where they should be emotionally and convey your energy in alignment, that’s how a team works best.
A great team doesn’t lack friction, but it also isn’t constantly stressed or split between what the leader is signaling and how the team needs to respond.
I was often highly conscious of the team’s emotional needs when things weren’t going well, but I would forget to pause when things were going well.
After a layoff or other cost-cutting measure, I took time to compose myself and be highly intentional about how I showed up in meetings and conversations. From what conversations were happening to when they took place to the words I used, I choreographed it all.
But when things were going well, I wasn’t always conscious that perhaps my team needed more acknowledgment, more pacing, or critical feedback that wasn’t all positive. When the numbers were going up and to the right, I overlooked those elements and took for granted that a simply positive demeanor might not best serve my team.
The most painful example of this was when our sales were growing rapidly. But our sales playbook and process weren’t in great shape. We were benefiting from a star seller carrying the numbers and an untapped market that didn’t require rigor to capture. It was smooth sailing on the outside, but underneath was a mess that would rear its head six months later once the initial honeymoon period passed.
Instead of having the hard conversations and lowering the mood, I wanted the team to persist in the high of the moment and avoided the harder work of asking key members of the team to dissect our process and build it from the ground up.
It would have required more time, budget, and new tools and processes. Naming it might have killed the high we were all basking in. I should have, but I didn’t.
Take action.
If you want to improve how you are setting the emotional temperature for your team, start with what your team needs emotionally.
Maybe it’s acknowledgment, or it’s recalibration, or perhaps a motivated push. Whatever it is, it might vary by person or sub-team. Get specific. Without goals, you are just winging it and likely to make the wrong call.
Be present in every interaction. This is perhaps one of the highest-ROI actions and yet the hardest to execute. If you’re like the leaders I coach, you are juggling a multitude of important things.
The only solution is to give yourself permission to be human and not keep all the balls in the air all the time. You don’t have to drop them; you have to put them down in order to give each the attention they need.
Give yourself time to transition between meetings and put away your distractions. When you are focused on the person or people in front of you, they can feel it. And what you’re signaling is far more likely to land.
Lastly, assess your actual behaviors. Until you truly see yourself in action, you won’t know what to adjust.
I once worked with an incredible technology leader who people often felt came across as robotic. Even though he was saying the right words, something about his gestures and tone made it feel not genuine. When I asked him more about his approach, he revealed he was an introvert and struggled with human interaction.
His solution wasn’t to shy away. It was to practice. He recorded himself multiple times and practiced his speaking in front of a mirror. He learned the importance of smiling, pausing, and relaxing his body while keeping an upright posture.
Even though he wasn’t the most charismatic leader, he more than made up for it with his analytical and strategic thinking, his care for his people, and his ability to set his team’s emotional tone; he created some of the strongest teams I’d ever worked with.
Borrow this leader’s playbook. Record yourself, practice in front of a mirror. Note what you’re signaling, not just what you’re saying. Study the features, postures, inflections, and words of other leaders whom you find effective. Practice one element for a week or two. And ask for feedback. You won’t know how it’s going unless someone tells you.
If you’d like to get even more formal feedback, consider working with a coach or ask HR for support. You don’t have to do this alone.
Setting the emotional temperature isn’t just about performance. The most skilled leaders do it in a way that’s real and relatable. That doesn’t mean sharing everything you feel. We are all a bundle of emotions and thoughts. Filter them to what the team needs while fully embodying the emotion because you feel it, too.
Choose just one of the actions above and try it out. And if you’re open to it, tell your team you want to improve in this area and would love their feedback.
It’s amazing what happens when we share vulnerably what we’re working on and how we might stumble. We show our teams not only that we are committed to growing as leaders for their benefit, but we also give them permission to do the same.
You’re already setting the temperature. Now you can do so intentionally.
May you lead without limits,
Kathy
If this post resonated, give it a ❤️ so that more leaders can find it. And if you know a leader who needs a reminder that they can reset their team’s temperature, share this with them.
Practice this live, and with support.
Reading about this is the easy part. Watching yourself is harder, and most leaders won’t do it alone.
That’s why I built the paid tier of Lead Without Limits. Each month, paid subscribers get a mini-guide drawn from the processes I use with my coaching clients, plus a live group Ask Me Anything video call.
Need help practicing setting the temperature? Let’s do it together: how you walk into a tense meeting, how you deliver hard news, how you read the room while you’re doing it. Bring a real situation.
Our first session is Friday, October 9th at 11am ET. And if temperature setting isn’t where you need help, bring what’s top of mind for you.
This is for leaders who’d rather practice than read about it. And ones who want to grow alongside others, not alone.
$20/month or $200/year. Founding members keep that rate for life.
Work with me 1:1
I also work 1:1 with a small number of senior leaders who are stepping into a bigger role, deciding what’s next, or leading through a hard stretch.
I bring two decades of leadership experience, more than half of it in the C-suite. Very little of what happens at work matches the textbook, so neither does my coaching.
I have two spots open this fall. Book a free strategy call to see if we’re a fit.
Several of my clients found me because someone who reads this newsletter sent them my way. If someone came to mind while you were reading, forwarding this post is the easiest introduction there is.
Really liked this, especially the distinction between what we think we’re communicating and what everyone else is actually busy decoding.
One thought it sparked for me.. perhaps the ultimate job of a leader isn’t just to set the emotional temperature, but eventually to make the room a little less dependent on their thermostat. Because teams read leaders for data constantly. A shorter Slack message, a weird face in a meeting, suddenly everyone is doing amateur Kremlinology before lunch. “She used a full stop. Are we being restructured?”
So yes, leaders absolutely set the temperature. But maybe mature cultures also develop some insulation: enough trust, context and psychological safety that one tired face doesn’t send the whole building into winter.
Really thoughtful piece.