Good news not only works but is required…

Recently Facebook ‘fessed’ up to to manipulating some 689,000 users emotions in the name of science.  Facebook’s data scientists manipulated the news feeds of 689,003 users, removing either all of the positive posts or all of the negative posts to see how it affected their moods.  They wanted to see what effect the presence or absence of positive news had on people’s moods as registered via their posts and status updates.  Adam Kramer, the lead data scientist, said ““When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred.  These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks.”

I think this confirms something we know intuitively, that people who are in a positive environment feel better, and perform better.  This means that one of the key jobs of a leader is to ensure that his messages are delivered in a positive fashion.  This does not mean ignoring problems or not addressing issues but suggests that the team will learn more and succeed more, if instead of asking “Who c*cked this one up?!”, they asks “What did we learn from that and how can we ensure that we don’t repeat it?”  This isn’t rocket science and I don’t doubt many of you know this, but the question isn’t “Do you know it?”, rather “Do you do it?” 

We all want to be successful and Change is inherently threatening; by communicating in a positive fashion, by not blaming, by focusing on the benefits of the goal to all, the leader can make the journey quicker, slicker and make arrival more assured.

Resources:

1. The Guardian

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2014 at 09:35 and is filed under Business Change, Communication, General, Hints, Tips & Techniques, Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.