Why Some Leaders Leave People Energised and Others Drain Them
A leader catches someone after a meeting.
The exchange only takes two minutes. A question is asked, a concern is raised, a next step is clarified.
The conversation is brief enough that neither person would describe it as significant.
Yet one person walks away sharper. They know what to do next. They feel trusted enough to keep going.
Another version of the same moment feels quite different. The leader is rushed. The answer is clipped.
The concern is brushed aside. The team member leaves with less confidence and more caution.
Much of leadership works like this. It happens in the residue of everyday interactions.
Researchers describe this effect as relational energy. Owens, Baker, Sumpter and Cameron define it as a
psychological resource generated through interaction.
Their research links relational energy with job engagement and job performance.
In practical terms, some interactions increase a person’s capacity for the work. Others take capacity away.
This makes relational energy worth taking seriously.
It asks leaders to notice whether contact with them helps people think, act and recover well enough to keep doing good work.
The small exchange that changes the work
Most leaders know their formal decisions matter. They spend time on strategy, targets, structures and priorities.
These are visible parts of the role.
The less visible part is the effect they have in ordinary contact.
A short exchange after a meeting can clarify the next step or make someone question whether they should have spoken.
A response to an unfinished idea can help the person improve it, or teach them to bring only safe, polished thinking next time.
A comment made under pressure can stay with a team member longer than the leader intends.
Relational energy accumulates through these moments.
A single interaction may not change the whole team. Repeated patterns do.
When people usually leave conversations with a leader clearer and more capable, the team gains energy over time.
When they leave guarded, second-guessing or deflated, the cost may show up later in slower decisions,
weaker contribution and lower persistence.
The effect is often indirect. A drained team may still attend the meeting, meet the deadline and say the right things.
What changes is the amount of discretionary effort left for the next problem.
Why discouraging interactions travel further
Discouraging interactions can carry more weight than leaders expect.
Baumeister and Tierney's work on the negativity effect points to a familiar human pattern.
Bad experiences often have a stronger psychological impact than good ones.
At work, this helps explain why one dismissive exchange can linger.
A leader may think they were simply busy. A team member may experience the same moment as a signal.
That signal can change behaviour quietly. The person brings fewer unfinished ideas. They wait longer before raising a concern.
They check the mood of the room before offering a different view.
The leader may never see the lost contribution. They only see a team that appears less proactive, less confident or less open.
Relational energy affects the usable attention, confidence and effort people bring back into the work.
What energising leadership looks like
Energising leadership is often practical.
A leader takes a concern seriously without turning the conversation into a crisis. Someone acknowledges effort before improving the work.
A calm response when a mistake is raised can keep people engaged with the issue.
Leaving enough space for another person to complete their thinking also changes the tone of the exchange.
A branch manager reviewing a difficult customer issue, for example, has a choice in tone.
The conversation can become a search for who got it wrong.
It can also become a clearer look at what happened, what made the issue harder to handle and what should change next time.
The same facts are discussed. The energy left behind is different.
In one version, people protect themselves. In the other, they are more likely to stay engaged with the problem.
Energising leaders can still be direct. They still hold standards. Their directness leaves people clearer, rather than smaller.
The team effects build over time
Owens and colleagues link relational energy with focus, persistence and proactive behaviour.
That matters because teams rarely struggle only through lack of knowledge.
They often struggle because attention, confidence or willingness to contribute has been reduced over time.
Energising interactions help people stay with difficult work for longer.
They make it easier for colleagues to help one another.
They also support recovery after setbacks because the team is not spending as much energy managing the emotional cost of the workplace.
Communication shifts as well.
In teams where interactions are constructive, people are more likely to offer early thinking and
bring problems forward before they are fully formed. In draining environments, messages become more careful.
Concerns are delayed. People wait until they feel certain enough to speak.
Learning follows the same path. When people expect steadiness, they are more willing to examine what happened and try a different approach.
When they expect impatience or criticism, familiar methods become safer.
The consequence may be subtle at first.
Over time, the team becomes slower to learn, slower to recover and less willing to use the intelligence already inside the group.
What leaders can do
A useful starting question is simple:
After interacting with me, do people usually leave with more capacity for the work, or less?
The answer will not come from intention alone. A leader may value openness and still interrupt too quickly.
Development can matter deeply to them, yet their feedback may leave people unsure about the next step.
They may want initiative, while their response to early thinking makes initiative feel risky.
A few practical habits help.
Before correcting work, name what has been understood or done well. This gives the person something stable to build from.
When a concern is raised, slow the first response. A few seconds of attention can prevent the concern being read as inconvenient.
After difficult feedback, check whether the next step is clear.
People can handle direct feedback more constructively when they know what to do with it.
During pressure, watch the tone of small exchanges.
Stress often leaks into the team through pace, interruption and facial expression before it appears in any formal decision.
These behaviours are not complicated. Their value comes from consistency.
A quiet performance factor
Leadership energy is easy to underestimate because it does not sit neatly on a dashboard.
Yet it shapes how people approach the next conversation, the next problem and the next difficult decision.
Across weeks and months, those small shifts affect the capability of the team.
A leader who leaves people clearer and more capable builds more than morale. They increase the usable energy available for the work.
Draining leadership can still produce activity and compliance.
The losses are harder to see: confidence, initiative, early warning signs and the willingness to stay engaged when the work becomes difficult.
Relational energy gives leaders a useful lens for the everyday part of leadership. Each interaction leaves something behind.
The question is whether that residue helps people do better work.
References
Baumeister, R. F., and Tierney, J. (2019). The power of bad. How the negativity effect rules us and how we can rule it. Penguin Press.
Owens, B. P., Baker, W. E., Sumpter, D. M., and Cameron, K. S. (2016).
Relational energy at work. Implications for job engagement and job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(1), 35–49.