Most executives who are managing significant stress believe they are managing it privately. They have learned to maintain a composed presentation — measured tone, appropriate facial expression, controlled body language — and they interpret the absence of explicit comment from their team as evidence that the management is working. The research on emotional contagion suggests a different interpretation: the team is not commenting because they do not have language for what they are picking up, not because they are not picking it up. They are picking it up through a mechanism that bypasses conscious awareness in both the sender and the receiver.