The Energy You Bring Is the Culture You Create

In any high-stakes environment such as the boardroom, on stage, or during a crisis, what you project emotionally doesn’t stay confined to you. It affects everyone around you in ways that you might not notice. It dictates how others feel, think, and ultimately perform. As much as leaders love to talk about strategy, innovation, or transformation, very few truly understand the weight their emotional presence carries in shaping everything from performance to trust. The energy you bring is the culture you will create.

If you're in a leadership role, your energy is being studied, mirrored, and absorbed by everyone around you. As human beings, we are biologically wired to attune to the dominant emotional signals of the people we spend time with such as parents, spouses or bosses. Whether you like it or not, you are often that signal.

The Science Behind "The Energy You Bring Is the Culture You Create"

A revealing example comes from social psychology research on behavioral contagion. One study found that if someone’s close friend begins a diet, their own likelihood of beginning one increases by 5%. The interesting thing is that if it’s a particularly close friend, someone trusted and respected, the probability jumps to 58%. The implication is clear: people are not just influenced by information, they are influenced by emotional and behavioral modeling. When someone they trust takes meaningful action with conviction, it creates permission, motivation, and often unconscious alignment. c

In corporate environments, this is not merely a theory to be considered but a force that operates constantly beneath the surface. If a leader carries emotional clarity, decisiveness, and calm in moments of ambiguity, they create conditions in which others can access the same states. If instead they transmit anxiety, scattered focus, or passive aggression, it doesn’t matter how polished their presentations are, their teams will mirror their behavior.

The Competitive Edge of Emotional Authority: A Lesson from Judo

Consider the example of Oren Smadja, a legendary Israeli judo coach who trains world-class athletes. In recounting his experience during an international competition, he described a situation in which one of his athletes was disqualified due to a technical error - an emotional blow that occurred just before a team event. Rather than regaining composure and supporting his teammates, the athlete remained withdrawn, consumed by his own disappointment.

Smadja’s commentary was surgical in its insight: the true test was not in the match that had been lost but in how the athlete managed himself after the loss. Would he find a way to reset and support those still competing, or would he allow his frustration to contaminate the collective focus of the team? In Smadja’s words, “This is where we see who can truly lead.”

That principle translates with brutal clarity into corporate leadership. The moment when your project fails, your metrics dip or your investors pressure you - that's when your team watches you most closely. They aren't looking for explanations, but for an emotional signal that tells them if you are you remain steady, or start to spiral.

The Myth of the Rational Workplace

Organizations love to describe themselves as data-driven, logic-oriented, and high-performing. And yet, the number of critical business decisions influenced by unspoken emotional undercurrents as power dynamics, fear of failure, resentment, or ego, is staggering. The biggest myth still circulating in boardrooms is that emotional states are secondary to outcomes. The truth is, they shape the outcomes. If a leader doesn’t know how to monitor and manage their own energy, they are inadvertently creating friction in every room they enter.

What’s more dangerous is when leaders assume their intentions override their impact. A well-meaning executive who believes they are being “transparent” may, in reality, be radiating panic. A CEO trying to “rally the troops” while carrying hidden exhaustion or indecision may unintentionally trigger collective disengagement. This is not about faking positivity or being performative but about cultivating inner alignment, so that what you transmit is congruent, grounded, and constructive.

Leadership Presence Is Your Power Skill

During the pandemic, I observed leaders in vastly different industries respond to the same crisis with wildly different emotional postures. Some remained composed, made tough calls without theatrics, and reinforced a sense of direction amidst chaos. Others collapsed inward, masking uncertainty with vague optimism or worse, disappearing behind a flurry of tasks while their teams drifted in confusion.

In both cases, the downstream impact was immediate. In organizations where leadership was emotionally coherent, morale held and the company emerged from the crisis a much stronger one. Even when the outcomes were tough, teams were able to recover quickly. In companies where leaders were reactive or emotionally absent, talent disengaged, middle management fractured, and recovery took far longer, if it happened at all.

This isn’t accidental. In moments of pressure, people don't look to the org chart. They look at their leader's energy. They look to leadership not for perfect answers, but for a sense of reassurance that things are being handled.

A Closing Challenge for Leaders

If you're serious about performance, don’t just audit your strategies. Audit your emotional footprint.

Ask yourself:

• In your last five high-pressure moments, what did your team feel from you?

• When you walk into a room, do you amplify clarity or confusion?

• Are you a regulator of stress or a transmitter of it?

• Do you unconsciously offload your anxiety, or do you process and translate it into grounded action?

These are not abstract questions. They are the real diagnostics of leadership influence.

You don't need to be perfect, always calm, or endlessly positive. But you do need to own the reality that your energy travels and what you feel impacts others immediately.

If you want to change your culture, start by managing your inner self. Start by taking our executive assessment to see if your leadership team is truly aligned - https://quiz.bhz-group.com