Baboon or Bonobo - what's your leadership style and how does it effect your team?

Passion has the potential to be a powerful strength. When harnessed positively it is demonstrated in enthusiasm, productivity, influence and collaboration.  But, if passion is triggered negatively, the effects can be far more damaging. Negative emotion at that level of intensity will have a physiological effect on the host and an emotional consequence for anyone standing in their way.

As a "passionate" person myself I am prone to extremes of emotion and, despite my best efforts, I don't always manage to protect the by-standers.  As a child at home or a junior consultant the only consequences I faced were reduced pocket money or a lower feedback score, but now I find myself in a different position and therefore need to be even more mindful of the fallout of my unharnessed passion.

I was interested to watch a film by Dr Robert Sapolsky that explored the effect of hierarchy on stress levels in baboon troupes. Over 30 years, his research demonstrated that the higher up the structure the male baboons ranked, the lower their stress hormones.  But the females and junior males in the troupe who bore the brunt of their aggression experienced much higher stress levels, high blood pressure and reduced immune efficiency.  He also recounts the experience of one troupe who lost all of their alpha males and as a result the group as a whole became much less aggressive and experienced much lower stress levels.

In another species, Bonobos use their passion only for good. Physical contact is used to resolve conflict, calm aggression and increase inclusion.

Dr Robert got me thinking about humans and how we exhibit stress in the work place and the impact that expression has on others around us.  I don't think it can be true that Leaders in an organisation experience lower stress levels than recent graduates. However, I find it easy to believe that the impact of one's mood on others has a much greater impact downwards than upwards (in terms of years' experience, not hierarchy!)

How can we protect against this?  How can organisational culture prevent stress negatively impacting more junior members of staff?

We are each responsible for our own behaviour towards others, but we cannot control how others will react to our behaviour.  The baboons saw a chain reaction of negativity within the troupe, from one baboon to the next throughout the hierarchy.  As Leaders at ANDigital, where we intentionally want to create a culture of low stress and high collaboration, we need to learn to anticipate how others will react to out behaviour and work hard to put the good of the team before ourselves. It isn't easy. We won't always get it right. But having the humility to accept our mistakes and learn from them is a good starting place.

After all, we're only anthropoids.