Leaders must be held to a higher standard than anyone else. Sometimes they don’t realize that personal attitudes and behaviors are leaching their credibility and effectiveness. If you are a leader or if you aspire to be one, avoid these unconscious and conscious habits.

1) Exhibiting immature behavior.
I know a leader in a larger firm whose eyes constantly stray to any female chest in the room. Being the owner of a chest, I have experienced this myself. Several other women have commented on it to me. We laugh about it because he does not have any other behaviors that cause alarm. However, it limits his credibility. If a younger attorney did this, it would still be bad but would not be so noticeable! When you are the leader, you have to have a few close confidantes who will tell you the truth about unconscious habit —picking, scratching or eye roaming, for example. Then you can work on correcting them.

2) Sucking up all the air.
Since everyone stops politely when the leader starts to speak, it is easy to monopolize the floor. The downside of this is that it stifles your people and costs you a lot of money. Check this one yourself and give everyone the enjoyment of contributing by listening intently. You’ll always learn something.

3) Showing personal favoritism.
If you play your team off each other they will not be a team. Showing a lot of favoritism toward one person eventually makes the others bitter. This is not to say that you do not reward, train and mentor your best performers. Sometimes the lesser people get less attention and that is a good thing. I have never yet seen a good office stay good when the leader is playing favorites, or much worse—having an affair with someone on the team. Yikes.

4) Not sharing personal struggles.
While no one likes the constant whining of people who will not get on with their lives, people who never share their personal stuff lose their team’s empathy. A leader going through hard times at home should at least briefly share what is going on. Otherwise your team will take your stress or upsets personally and think that they are the cause. People always attribute the moods of others to something. Giving them a heads up in a professional way lets others step in and help you.

5) Assuming they know everything.
One of the coolest concepts around is “mentoring up.” It is when a younger staff person gets to be a leader’s mentor. They may know all about social networking—Facebook and LinkedIn and all that—or have connections that can provide unexpected advantages to the firm. Take advantage of their knowledge. While your younger team doesn’t have the experience you do, there are spaces where they should be given the lead. Ask their opinion on issues of importance to the firm to find their unique strengths.

6) Hubris.
This one is so difficult. You should be proud of what you have accomplished, but a leader who is too proud may not be open to the truth and wisdom of others. Share your “meaculpa” moments—mistakes you have made and things you are working on to improve your leadership. Make risk-taking and failing normal by admitting to your own failings.

Take stock of your leadership skills as the year draws to a close. Work on just one of these challenges and I promise that your effectiveness and influence will increase.

Imagine this: A client or prospect has agreed to meet with you over some business concerns. It’s after lunch and the person is tired, worried, overwhelmed and dreading what you’re going to tell them. Given that, what is the best service you can provide?

A good mood.

Over the last two decades, scientific studies have shown that we do pass moods and emotions from one person to another. As the famous psychologist C.G. Jung observed, “Emotions are contagious.”

In one study, two people sat silently in a room together for a few minutes waiting for a researcher to return. During that time, the more receptive person picked up the expressive person’s mood and, when questioned later, reported the expressive person’s emotions as the way they were feeling themselves.

Enthusiasm doesn’t mean that you’re grinning from ear to ear and chatting a mile a minute. The word comes from the Greek “entheous” which means, “having a god within.” Before you think I’m getting religious on you, remember that the Greeks had gods for all manner of arts and sciences. Basically, enthusiasm means being filled up inside by anything uplifting. You can be enthusiastic and completely silent. What’s important is that you come to other people already filled up with something they’d want to catch from you.

For some of us, enthusiasm looks like a broad smile and an open posture. For others it might be the confident tone in your voice or even the way that you listen. If you’re interested in sharing your enthusiasm, there are two great ways to do this, but before you can share a good mood, you have to practice being in one.

Creating a Good Mood
A lot of times in the middle of our workday, for whatever reason, we may be bored, annoyed, dull, impatient or any number of unpleasant feelings. Being able to move the feeling of a meeting out of that state and into a pleasant state is a kindness for everyone involved.

How can you change your own mood? Here are some easy techniques. Pick one or two that suit your personality:

Smile
Studies have shown that people who force themselves to smile actually improve their moods. Better than the forced smile is to think of something that genuinely makes you smile—whether that’s your family, a pet, a project that went exceptionally well or a funny scene from a movie. Hold that image in your mind for a few seconds and smile naturally; your mood will lift.

Put Personal Concerns Aside
Maybe you had a fight before work or the dog threw up on your shoes. Whatever is on your mind that isn’t relevant to the meeting can be bundled up and put to the side until the meeting is over. If you’re ruminating about how you’re going to handle some other issue, that’s going to come through in your mood. If you like visualization, you can picture yourself putting your other concerns into a very nice piece of luggage and leaving it outside the meeting room. If you want, you can pick it up on your way out.

Breathe Into Your Belly
Whenever we’re nervous, we constrict our lungs and breathe into the upper chest. Short, quick breaths are great if you’re running from a bear, but awful for a long meeting. Put your hands over your lower belly (under your belly button) and breathe so that your hands are pushed outward. If you practice that a few times when you’re not stressed, you can use it to relax yourself when you are. Being relaxed is itself a positive emotion you can share and it creates a canvas on which to paint other emotional states. (If you love to multi-task, practice this lower belly breathing while working out or falling asleep at night.)

Picture the Positive
Visualization sounds New Agey, but our powers of imagination can be a great help when creating enthusiasm. If imagining a positive outcome to a meeting inspires you, by all means use that. I find that I do better when I imagine something fun I’m going to do that evening accompanied by a sense of satisfaction that the meeting went well. If I’m really nervous about the meeting, just imagining that it’s over makes me smile and lighten up.

Sharing Your Mood: For the Socially Connected
If you’re someone who relates easily and naturally with people, you’re probably already sharing your enthusiasm whenever you’re in a good mood. The studies on emotional contagion found that the more expressive participants were the ones transmitting their moods. The bad news is that you’re sharing all your moods.

Your challenge is first to recognize what mood you’re in and use the points listed above to get positive. Then you can look for the ways that you’re already subtly synchronizing your body posture with the other person or people in the room. Become aware of their posture and the tone in the room and if you’re seeing closed bodies and dull faces, raise your own energy level and open your posture.

You can contribute to the mood of the room even if you’re not leading the meeting or talking at all. If you’re relaxed and open, that shows in your posture and your face. In fact this is a great way to get through a meeting that might otherwise seem boring: practice keeping yourself relaxed, open and light-hearted. If you watch the other people’s postures and expressions, you’ll be surprised to see how much impact you can have without even opening your mouth.

Sharing Your Mood: For Intellectuals
If you tend to spend much more time in your head than connecting with other people, the idea of sharing your enthusiasm might seem like another one of those “make friends and influence people” techniques that isn’t natural for you. You probably pick up on other people’s moods often and as a result avoid people when you have serious work to do.

The good news is that you’re already very adept at using your mind any way you want. Your path to creating enthusiasm in others is to maintain it in yourself in a disciplined way. Disciplined enthusiasm? Yes. If you’re the kind of person who can focus your mind on a tough strategic problem for hours at a time, you know everything you need to know to keep yourself enthusiastic during a meeting.

Instead of trying to read the room, keep your attention on your own body and emotional state. If you’re in a long meeting and your energy drops, find a way to raise it again—using one of the points above or steering the topic of conversation in a more exciting direction. If you include putting yourself in a positive emotional state as one of your required preparatory steps for meetings, you’ll find that you enjoy meetings more and people will feel more connected with you.

Happy All the Time?
Does this mean you’re supposed to go around smiling and bubbly all the time? Absolutely not. When you’re alone you can be as cranky and ill-tempered as you like. Being enthusiastic doesn’t mean altering who you are, rather it means that you fill up your existing positive moods and manage them in contact with others.

However, practicing enthusiasm will likely result in fewer cranky episodes and a more thoughtful and energetic view of your work and the people you serve. You do control your mood after all!