Part 6 of the Cultural Alchemy series
Have you ever noticed how cynicism spreads faster than optimism in organizations? How one toxic person can poison an entire team while one positive person struggles to lift the mood? Or how a single "that's not how we do things here" comment can kill innovation attempts for months?
There's actual science behind why some cultural patterns are more contagious than others. And understanding this science is crucial for anyone trying to foster positive change.
In my previous articles, we've explored how invisible scripts drive behavior, why culture defeats frameworks, how culture operates as a living system with pace layers, how to work with those layers for evolution, and how organizations get trapped in cognitive dissonance. But there's still a missing piece: How do cultural patterns actually spread from person to person, team to team, throughout an organization?
The answer lies in what researchers call "social contagion"—and it operates by rules that most leaders don't understand.
The Infection Model of Culture
Most culture change efforts operate on what I call the "broadcast model." Leadership decides on new values, announces them broadly, and expects them to take hold through repetition and reinforcement.
But culture doesn't actually spread like a broadcast signal. It spreads like a virus.
Dr. Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler discovered something remarkable about human social networks: when someone experiences a significant shift—whether it's becoming happier, more stressed, or changing their attitudes—they unconsciously transmit social cues through their body language, tone, word choice, and energy level. The people around them pick up these cues and begin to mirror them without realizing it.
Their research revealed the precise mathematics of this contagion: a person's likelihood of adopting a new behavior or emotional state increases by 15% if a direct connection changes, by 10% if a friend of a friend changes, and by 6% if a friend of a friend of a friend changes. These effects ripple through social networks up to three degrees of separation.
I witnessed this principle in action at a tech company where one senior engineer's frustration with a new code review process spread through his immediate team, then to the engineers they collaborated with on other projects, and eventually infected the entire engineering culture with a persistent negativity about feedback. No formal announcement created this shift—it spread organically through the network of professional relationships, one conversation and interaction at a time.
When researchers began applying these insights to workplace dynamics, they found the same contagion mechanisms at play in organizations. That cynicism spreading through your team? It likely started with someone two or three relationships away from you—perhaps triggered by a casual hallway conversation or a frustrated comment in Slack. That sudden shift in team energy after the quarterly meeting? It might have less to do with what leadership announced and more to do with how three key influencers interpreted and discussed it in the hours and days that followed.
Why Negative Patterns Spread Faster
Here's what makes cultural contagion particularly challenging: negative patterns spread faster and farther than positive ones.
Psychologists call this "negativity bias"—our brains are wired to pay more attention to negative information because it might signal danger. In organizational contexts, this means:
- Bad news travels faster than good news. The layoff rumors spread instantly, but the successful product launch barely generates conversation.
- Cynical interpretations spread faster than optimistic ones. "They're just trying to manipulate us" goes viral, while "They're genuinely trying to improve things" stays localized.
- Toxic behaviors spread faster than healthy ones. One person's habit of interrupting in meetings can infect the entire team, while one person's habit of thoughtful listening struggles to take hold.
This isn't because people are inherently negative. It's because our survival instincts make us hyper-attuned to potential threats. In the modern workplace, psychological threats (loss of status, job security, belonging) trigger the same neurological responses as physical ones.
The Anatomy of Cultural Contagion
Not all cultural patterns spread the same way. Through my work with organizations, I've identified four distinct types of contagion:
Emotional Contagion
This is the fastest and most primitive form. Emotions literally spread from person to person through unconscious mimicry of facial expressions, tone of voice, and body language. Within minutes of entering a room, you can feel whether the energy is tense, excited, or deflated.
I once worked with a leadership team where the CEO's anxiety was so palpable that it infected every meeting. People would arrive calm and leave stressed, without anything particularly stressful being discussed. The CEO's emotional state was literally contagious.
Behavioral Contagion
This is how practices spread through observation and imitation. One person starts working late, others follow suit. One person stops contributing ideas in meetings, others begin holding back too.
The key insight: People don't just copy behaviors—they copy the underlying assumptions about what those behaviors mean. Working late becomes "showing commitment." Staying quiet becomes "being strategic."
Narrative Contagion
This is how stories and interpretations spread. Someone coins a phrase or creates a story that explains what's happening, and it spreads throughout the organization, shaping how people make sense of their experience.
"They don't really care about work-life balance" becomes the lens through which every leadership decision gets interpreted. "We're a family here" becomes the story that excuses unhealthy boundaries.
Attention Contagion
This is how focus spreads through networks. What captures one person's attention begins to capture others'. What one person treats as important becomes important to their connections.
If leadership constantly talks about metrics, metrics become what everyone focuses on. If informal leaders obsess over office politics, politics begin to dominate conversations.
The Network Effect
Here's what most leaders miss: the formal org chart and the actual influence network are completely different systems.
The org chart shows who reports to whom. The influence network shows who actually affects whom. And cultural contagion follows the influence network, not the hierarchy.
The Super-Spreaders: Some people have outsized influence on cultural patterns because of their network position. They might not be senior leaders, but they're well-connected, trusted, and pay attention to social dynamics.
The Bridges: Some people connect different parts of the organization that wouldn't otherwise interact. They're the ones who carry patterns between departments, teams, or levels.
The Immune: Some people seem resistant to negative contagion and can help contain toxic patterns. They have what researchers call "emotional immunity"—the ability to maintain their own state regardless of what's happening around them.
The Amplifiers: Some people intensify whatever patterns they encounter. They make good patterns better and bad patterns worse.
Understanding your organization's influence network is crucial for cultural change. You need to know who the super-spreaders are, who bridges different groups, who has immunity, and who amplifies.
The Threshold Effect
One of the most important discoveries in contagion research is the concept of "threshold effects." Not everyone is equally susceptible to adopting new behaviors or beliefs. Some people need to see only one other person doing something before they'll try it. Others need to see 50% of their network engaged before they'll participate.
This explains why some cultural changes seem to happen overnight while others never take hold. It's not about the quality of the idea—it's about whether enough people in the right network positions cross their personal threshold at roughly the same time.
The Early Adopters (low threshold): They try new things readily. Essential for getting patterns started.
The Pragmatic Majority (medium threshold): They wait to see how things work out. Essential for patterns to spread widely.
The Skeptics (high threshold): They resist change until it's clearly established. Essential for pattern stability.
Successful cultural change requires a strategy for each group, not a one-size-fits-all approach.
Working with Contagion Instead of Against It
Most culture change efforts fight against contagion dynamics instead of working with them. Here's how to align with the science:
Start Small and Local
Instead of organization-wide rollouts, begin with small groups of well-connected early adopters. Let patterns spread naturally through networks rather than forcing them through formal channels.
Focus on Super-Spreaders
Identify the people who have disproportionate influence on cultural patterns—not necessarily the most senior people, but the most connected and trusted ones. Invest in changing their experience first.
Design for Visibility
Make positive patterns easy to observe and copy. Create opportunities for people to see new behaviors in action, not just hear about them in presentations.
Address Negative Contagion Directly
Don't ignore toxic patterns hoping they'll fade. Negative contagion is more powerful than positive, so it requires active intervention. Sometimes this means difficult conversations with super-spreaders of toxic patterns.
Use Narrative Strategically
Help people create stories that make sense of positive changes. Don't just implement new practices—help people understand what those practices mean and why they matter.
The Patience for Organic Spread
Perhaps the most important insight from contagion research is that genuine cultural change takes time to spread organically through networks. It can't be rushed through mandates or accelerated through communication campaigns.
But it can be supported. You can create conditions where positive patterns are more likely to spread and negative patterns are less likely to take hold.
You can identify the people who serve as cultural bridge-builders and invest in their experience. You can pay attention to the stories spreading through informal networks and help shape healthier narratives.
Most importantly, you can stop trying to control cultural contagion and start working with its natural dynamics.
Because culture doesn't change through broadcast. It changes through connection. One relationship, one conversation, one shared experience at a time.
The question isn't whether patterns will spread through your organization—they're spreading right now, with or without your awareness. The question is whether you'll learn to recognize the patterns and work with the science of how they move.
In the next article, we'll explore what it takes to lead during periods of cultural transition—when old patterns are dying but new ones haven't yet emerged. We'll look at the unique challenges of leading in "liminal space" and examine how the most successful culture changes happen when leaders learn to navigate uncertainty rather than eliminate it.
If this changes how you think about cultural change, share it with someone else who's trying to foster positive patterns in their organization.