You’re setting the tone whether you mean to or not.
Every leader leaves a wake. Few of us ever turn around to look at it.
Jason Kaplan’s LinkedIn post, the Ripple Effect of Leadership, crossed my feed and lingered. He described leadership the way you’d describe a stone dropped in water. Every decision, every word, every gesture sends ripples outward. A carelessly dropped stone and a thoughtfully thrown stone both make ripples. Only one of them makes the kind you’d want to own.
I learned that lesson unexpectedly, on a Monday morning, early in my career.
The Monday the Room Went Quiet
In Be the Thermometer, not the Thermostat, I shared a story that illustrated how we, as leaders, set the emotional tone for our teams. I’m retelling it here to make an additional point for emphasis.
I was a newly appointed manager leading people who’d been doing the work longer than I had. We picked up a special project on top of the regular load. More deadlines. More pressure. I felt every bit of it.
Most mornings I walked fast to my desk and dove straight into the work. Friendly enough. Not much more than that.
Then came a Monday when I heard talking and laughter as I walked down the hall to the office. When I entered, the room went quiet. People turned back to their screens.
That stayed with me all week. I’d never once considered that I was setting the tone. I was all business, so the team was all business. And I thought about what that meant for them on a Sunday night.
The next Monday I slowed down. Made eye contact. Grabbed a coffee, then made the rounds. Not to check on the work. To check on them.
Nothing changed overnight. People stayed guarded for a while. Over time, though, the talking and laughter continued when I walked in. And I joined it.
The Ripple You Can See
There’s research behind what I stumbled into. In 2002, Sigal Barsade published a study in Administrative Science Quarterly with a title I wish I’d read twenty years earlier: “The Ripple Effect.” Working groups in a managerial simulation caught the mood of a single planted member.
Where the mood was positive, cooperation rose, conflict dropped, and people rated their own group’s performance higher.
Mood travels. You don’t get a vote on whether you transmit yours.
That’s the ripple you can see, if you’re paying attention and a little lucky. Most of us aren’t. Which brings me to the harder part.
The Ripple You May Never See
When I left my last company, colleagues put together a book. They called it “Al’s Ripple Effect at Cox.” A leader I’d reported to suggested the title. She knew I have an affinity for water and thought it fit.
I read it in one sitting. Then I read it again, slower, because something in it sparked curiosity. Not the kind words. The specifics.
A mentee wrote that before a big interview I’d told her to do a super hero pose. She did it. She got the role. She’s done it before every interview since, and she’s taught it to friends. I vaguely remember that conversation. Thirty seconds of a conversation, still out there, working on people I’ll never meet.
Two others opened almost identically. No single moment stood out, they said. What stood out was the consistency. That’s the part most of us get backwards about influence. We wait for the big moment, the speech, the crisis we handle well. But the ripple is the sum of a hundred ordinary Mondays.
And then came the entry that stopped me.
Years ago, I added a note to my email signature asking people to protect their personal time, and I closed it with a passage in mice type:
Please know that I honor and respect boundaries around personal time, wellbeing, caretaking and rest. Should you receive a message from me during a time that you’re engaging in any of the above, please protect your time and wait to respond until you’re next working. Prioritize joy, not email, when and where you can.
One colleague wrote that she took the line during the pandemic and has used it ever since, and that people keep thanking her for it. Another wrote that she shared it with her department and watched everyone adopt a version of it. She ended her entry with a sentence I keep returning to: “He has touched far more people than he realizes.”
She’s right. And here’s the honest part.
When I went looking for where I first encountered that idea, I couldn’t find it. I remember crafting the wording to say something I believed. I can’t tell you where the seed came from. I make a practice of crediting my sources, and in this case there’s no one to credit, because I’m the product of everything I’ve read and everyone I’ve worked beside.
So, the signature rippled out from me to people I’ve never met. It also rippled into me from someone whose name I’ll never know.
That’s the whole thing, right there. The ripple starts with you. At the same time, it isn’t about you.
You Don’t Need a Title to Start One
Simon Sinek tells young professionals not to quit when they’re stuck under a leader they don’t believe in. Stay, he says, and practice leadership from wherever you sit, even as the most junior person on the team. Be the leader you wish you had.
That instruction never asks about your headcount. Large team, small team, no team at all, the ripple works the same way.
You already know the leadership qualities you admire, because you’ve felt them. You know what it’s like to work for someone who made you better. You know what the other thing feels like, too. Start there.
Then work to surround yourself with principled, action-oriented people of character who are genuinely fun to be around. They bring out the best in you. They pull you higher than you’d ever climb alone.
Where This Meets the Framework
The third movement of Lead with Light™ is Illuminate the Path. Say it clearly. Repeat it consistently. Model it visibly. One signal tells you it’s working: your words start showing up in other people’s mouths.
The book taught me something the framework couldn’t, though. You almost never get the report. Your ripples arrive in rooms you’ll never stand in, on days you’ll never hear about, and they don’t check back with you first.
How we do what we do — how we lead — is as important as what we achieve. The ripple is the proof. It usually shows up long after you’ve left the room.
Parting Thoughts
I received a book as a gift. Most people don’t, but that’s no reason to be careless with the stone in your hand.
You’re already making ripples. You made some this morning, in how you drove to work, how you walked past someone’s desk, in the tone you set before you said a word.
The difference is whether the stone gets dropped or cast. A dropped stone still makes a wake. A cast stone intends the ripple it makes.
That intention has a name: service. You cast the stone for someone else’s good, whether or not it ever comes back to you. That’s virtue-driven action, and it’s how you become the leader you were born to be.
Be clear. Be kind. Lead with Light! ✨
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