Bart Starr, the Packers’ Hall of Fame quarterback, recounted legendary coach Vince Lombardi’s first meeting with the team in 1959, where the new coach told the players they would succeed because they would “have confidence in me and my system”.

Starr described how the team “caught his enthusiasm” and that Lombardi brought out in him a contagious kind of confidence. The phrase “confidence is contagious. So is the lack of confidence” was first spoken in the film “Second Effort” and the idea reflects Lombardi’s well-attested belief in the infectious nature of a leader’s confidence. Lombardi plays a coach teaching his “Second Effort” philosophy to a struggling salesman, and the line appears as one of the aphorisms he delivers on camera. The film was designed to motivate salesmen, applying Lombardi’s football principles to the business world.

Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter points to what should be obvious but is often taken for granted:  Confidence is infectious.

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