Leadership Hormones And Their Effects

Everybody in a corporate leadership position wants to achieve the best in meeting the organization’s goals and having a great team. While the environment, educational status, and experience play a significant role in determining who will become a great leader, hormones are internal factors that also play an essential part.

How Hormones Impact Corporate Culture

When people think of good leaders, they think of resilient, strong, caring, confident, and capable people. While many may think these characteristics develop solely by a person’s previous exposure and environment, hormones also play a significant role.

Hormones affect how aggressive people can be towards achieving goals and how understanding they can be with colleagues, team members, and subordinates. They also determine how ethical and level-headed leaders can be, plus how much they are willing to take.

What Are The Success Hormones?

The body produces numerous hormones from different places to help with various biological and emotional functions. Success hormones are those that help leaders become more effective in their jobs. The following are the success hormones and how they affect leaders.

• Dopamine

Also known as the feel-good hormone or pleasure chemical, dopamine is an essential part of the reward system associated with learning, pleasurable sensations, memory, attention span, etc. Dopamine contributes to feeling elated and accomplished after finishing a task, completing a sale, or winning a challenge.

One of the ways it helps leaders is that it helps them remain focused. However, if unbalanced, it could become dangerous and cause addictive behaviors like gambling.

Leaders can stimulate dopamine production in employees and team members by having achievement or progress scoreboards and setting clear goals.

• Growth hormone

Also known as somatotropin, GH is produced in the pituitary gland. It is essential in human growth and helps build and repair tissues like muscle tissues and collagen.

Having the right amount of GH has been seen to improve intelligence, social competence, academic performance, and behavior.

The growth hormone-releasing hormone is a molecule that controls the GH by releasing the correct amounts into the bloodstream. People with low hormone levels can get a prescription for a synthetic GHRH known as sermorelin.

It has been seen to help increase lean body mass, general well-being, libido, and insulin sensitivity. However, you might suffer some side effects of sermorelin, like itching, irritation, sensitivity, sleepiness, pain, redness, swelling, difficulty swallowing, nausea, dizziness, rash, trouble sitting still, headaches, and taste changes.

• Serotonin

Often referred to as the mood booster, it helps improve human bonds. It helps regulate mood, appetite, sleep, learning ability, digestion, and memory. It also supports a sense of status, pride, and gratitude. It is produced in high levels when people are admired, respected, and given preferential treatment, boosting people’s confidence.

While it makes leaders feel good, it also plays an essential part for the employees. Once employees feel that their leader trusts them and has their back, serotonin boosts their confidence, making them work harder and improving productivity.

Very high levels of serotonin, however, could make leaders overconfident, making it easier to mess up and lose the trust of their team.

• Testosterone

This is the primary male hormone but is also present in females. When there is a spike in testosterone levels, leaders become more aggressive.

This mostly means they become more determined and assertive in all their leadership decisions, but others might interpret it as rage and violence. It also affects confidence, dominance, concentration, competition, energy, and mood.

Much research on how testosterone affects leadership finds that testosterone and cortisol, the stress hormone, are related because testosterone usually has buffering effects on cortisol.

This means it neutralizes the fear, cognitive dissonance, and anxiety that cortisol brings. The higher the testosterone levels compared to cortisol, the calmer and more collected the leader is in crisis.

• Endorphins

Frequently referred to as pain blockers, endorphins help mask physical pain and increase the feelings of happiness. Endorphins help leaders push themselves out of their comfort zones and increase their engagement in reward-producing activities.

• Oxytocin

Oxytocin is sometimes called the hug hormone, and it helps leaders serve others better and invokes feelings of loyalty and love. High oxytocin levels are associated with increased trust, physical contact, and cooperation.

Among leaders, being trustworthy, transparent, and authentic helps increase oxytocin production, promoting loyalty and admiration among subordinates and fellow leaders.

How Else Can You Keep Hormone Levels In Balance?

While these hormones are vital drivers in good behaviors among leaders and other employees, too much production could result in chaos. One of the things you can do to balance the production of these leadership hormones is exercise. It helps produce testosterone, growth hormones, serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins.

Other things include getting enough sunlight exposure, connecting with friends and loved ones, participating in fulfilling activities, having a healthy diet, listening to music, meditating, having enough sleep, and playing with pets. You can try supplements or hormone therapy treatments if these don’t work.

Things You Can Do To Strengthen Your Team

Having leadership hormones among employees is also essential because it puts everyone on the same page. Leaders can organize trips, parties, or retreats for their employees, reward them according to merit, have a gym on the work premises, and support them when they have personal problems.

Conclusion

In the past, good leadership has been associated with external factors like gender, experience, training, and education. Research has indicated that the endocrine system also plays an important role, and leaders should focus more on that.

Hormones bring out the leader from within, but it is essential to regulate the hormones. Fill out the form on our website to book an appointment for GH checks and therapy.