Daniel Goleman's fascinating book Primal Leadership explains what we have all known for years... the more the players on the team get along, the better their performance will be.

Primal Leadership explains that because the brain is open-loop we rely on connections with other people for our emotional stability. "Scientists describe the open-loop system as "Interpersonal-limbic-regulation," whereby one person transmits signals that can alter hormone levels, cardiovascular function, sleep rhythms and even immune function inside the body of another. Other people can change our very physiology and our emotions.

The continual interplay of limbic open lops among members of a group creates a kind of emotional soup, with everyone adding his or her flavor to the mix. Negative emotions, especially chronic anger, anxiety or a sense of futility, powerfully disrupt work, hijacking attentions from the task at hand.

On the other hand, when people feel good, they work at their best. A study of 62 CEOs and their top management shows just how important mood is. The CEOs and their management team members were assessed on how upbeat- energetic, enthusiastic and determined- they were. They were also asked how much conflict the top team experienced.

• The study found that the more positive the overall moods of the people in the top management team, the more cooperatively they worked together and the better the company's results.
• The longer a company was run by a management team that did not get along, the poorer the company's market return.

I have been involved with teams and leading teams all of my life. The above information really confirms what many of us have come to understand intuitively: "the more fun you have the better you individually and culturally perform!"

Kahlil Gibran pointedly said, "If you can't work with joy, you should leave your work and go sit at the gate of the temple and beg for alms from those who can." An easy indicator of whether you are adding or subtracting from the TEAM open-loop soup is by answering this simple question: what kind of energy generation station are you? Are you a user or a source? In other words, do you...suck or supply energy?