Your First Leadership Standard: How You Show Up Sets the Tone

Leadership presence basics: how you show up as a leader sets the tone for your team’s performance and culture. Learn practical leadership standards that harness emotional contagion in leadership and build real psychological safety at work. Walk away with simple, repeatable behaviors to strengthen your leadership identity and create a positive leadership style every day.

What You'll Learn:

• How your facial expression, tone of voice, body language, and punctuality instantly signal “what’s normal” on your team
• How emotional contagion in leadership quietly amplifies your mood—positive or negative—throughout the group
• A simple method to define your first clear leadership standard so you’re not “winging it” day to day
• How to use body language for leaders to increase psychological safety at work (even under high pressure)
• How tone setting leadership shapes performance norms, accountability, and collaboration
• A step-by-step reflection exercise to capture the key ideas from this episode so you actually remember and use them
• How to identify one specific situation where your leadership behavior matters most right now
• A practical plan to take one small action this week to strengthen how you show up as a leader

Episode Content:

• 00:00 - Introduction: Why how you show up as a leader always sets the tone
• 04:02 - Leadership presence basics: what your team really sees and feels
• 09:27 - Emotional contagion in leadership: how your mood and energy spread
• 15:18 - Defining your first leadership standard: a simple behavior statement
• 21:45 - Using body language for leaders to create psychological safety at work
• 27:03 - Common misconceptions about leadership presence (and what actually works)
• 33:16 - Reflection prompts: capturing your key insights in writing
• 38:40 - Choosing one real situation to apply this leadership standard
• 43:05 - One small action this week: turning insight into leadership identity
• 47:22 - Closing thoughts and next steps