Mourning, arousing joy : A process of social sharing of positive emotions - Lessons from the integration of people with disabilities in terms of team cohesion[Faire son deuil, susciter de la joie : un processus de partage social d'émotions positives - Les leçons de l'intégration de personnes handicapées en matière de cohésion d'équipe]

In the last two decades, research into management techniques, more specifically, into team management has looked at team cohesion and the positive emotions which reinforce such cohesion, in particular the emotion of joy. Research has made considerable use of the concept of emotional intelligence: if a team leader has this quality, he or she is supposed to be able to govern the atmosphere reigning in his or her team through a process of emotional contagion. This approach can stimulate the group psychology by taking into account the process of emotional contagion which underpins any group dynamic. But we can also take into account the other dimension of the social sharing of emotions: reevaluation of representations. And then we can wonder about the initiator of such a sharing. From our reading, we learn that people who have got over previous, or idealized, situations, are better able to radiate positive emotions through both the cognitive channel and the usual contagion channel. We build up a model of the social sharing of emotions by which, through getting over the past, team players are able to trigger joy amongst the members of a team. We select the case of the integration of handicapped people because they prove that, if a person has come to terms with the past and with his situation, he or she is indeed able to radiate joy. We draw up a content analysis based on experiences reported by the Agefiph. The model is illustrated and a discussion of the information gathered make it possible to highlight the potential of those individuals who have managed to get over the past in terms of positive emotional contagion and team cohesion.