Entrepreneurs and change managers may ultimately be selling a dream, but that’s not what stakeholders are buying. To obtain the money to build their dreams, founders must solicit the very people who can least afford the luxury of dreaming: high-stakes investors. Investors are not the sole stakeholders who require continual convincing. Founders must repeatedly replenish their employees’ faith in the future value of stock options or risk losing top talent to competitors offering more money and job security. In new ventures, the general psychological tendency toward emotional contagion does not apply. Founders may believe they are selling a dream, but that’s not what their investors are buying. Ultimately, these patterns of behavior serve as a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop. Innovative managers use emotional self-regulation to curate their attention and maintain emotional equanimity. As a result, they won points for being, “very, very tough in business dealings”.  Read More >>