The Cure for Sad Organizations
Vibrant organizations build on positives.
Sad organizations are led by leaders who focus on what’s wrong.
Not so bad after all:
Those who focus on ugliness become ugly themselves.
I listened to a negative leader speaking negatively of an employee. After listening to complaints and disappointments for a few minutes, I asked, “What good things are they doing?”
“Well…”
He was so comfortable with a negative focus that a positive focus felt like tight shoes. Then, he began telling me about the good things the employee was doing.
After a few minutes, he said, “Maybe he isn’t so bad after all.”
Improvement:
Is there room for improvement? Of course! But, improvement is joyful. Correction and complaining, on the other hand, hurt.
Is there ever a time to correct or confront? Of course! Just don’t make a career of it.
Correction in a positive light:
Focus less on what went wrong and more on making things better.
“How can we make this better,” sounds better than, “You screwed up.”
Addicted to sadness:
Sadness is safe because weakness and sadness are bedfellows.
The sadder you feel the weaker you feel. When you feel blue, for example, you want to lay around. As long as you feel weak, you don’t have to improve your world. You can blame lousy employees and negative circumstances.
The cousin of happiness is strength.
Happiness challenge:
Those who focus on beauty become beautiful themselves.
Focus on beauty and excellence more than ugliness and imperfection. The shift may be hard to take. Start slowly.
Take a daily “happiness walkabout.” Dedicate 15 minutes a day to walking around looking for things that are beautiful and excellent. When you spot something, praise it right then.
How might leaders raise the happiness level in their organizations?
Take responsibility for their actions. Accentuate the positives, coach the negatives to become positives. Guide the company in the sense it reflects on everyone, not a selected few. Encourage people to be proud of their accomplishments and continue down the road so all can prosper.
Thanks Tim. Great list of suggestions. There is a sense of inclusion in your comment. I find that feeling excluded makes for sadness.
Not so much sadness more like unappreciated. . People have been pushed down to much and need up lifted to greater heights.
We language is important I believe…so that people have the sense and feeling they belong to a bigger thing, a community…If I have negative people in my team, I’d include her/him in my conversations as ‘we can do that’ and ‘we can improve this’ and I’ll help you with this. What can we do to help you to view things in a brighter way…can I help!
Thanks
Thanks Dennis. We’re in this together sure feels better than you’re on your own. Nice.
Can’t pass on the walkabout of 15 minutes daily and see beauty outside the work environment. And I praise you for your leadership.
Thanks Seeker. Here’s to seeing more beauty.
Excellent, Dan: The “wellness and happiness challenge” for “organizational sadness” is so simple–it is profound. And from your thesis we have to ask ourselves: When and why did we ever get so weak, sad and sick? Great work, Dan.
Thanks Books. You have a way with words. “so simple it’s profound.” Thanks again
I see this one from another angle. I value diversity in organizations – especially including a balance of opinions and observations. I’m undoubtedly on the “gets excited very easily and spreads it around” side of the spectrum (red+yellow very high in Insights colors) and I welcome, or even more I really need the opposites (the people looking for what’s broken, what’s bad in my approach) to both keep me in check and make me comfortable to have them be the guards, so I can push my excitement further. In my experience 1-2 guards per a team of ~10 is the right mix.
Thanks Daniel. Like you, I’m thankful for people who help me anticipate problems. AS LONG AS they are working to find the path forward as well.
Thanks for your insights. They fit in nicely with this theme. It seems that in this case you are the “guard” person. 🙂
This is such a powerful post, because momentum can be such a great asset. In my experience one of the greatest things that a leader can do for a team that is struggling is to find a way to start getting some small wins. Like in sports, these small wins build momentum, and with momentum the team can overcome ever increasing obstacles. Without that momentum, even the smallest obstacles or mistakes can bring the team to their knees. Every team and organization will make mistakes, but I guarantee that there are good things that can be celebrated and used to build huge momentum.
Thanks Jay. I couldn’t agree more. Momentum is a series of small wins. It’s the leader’s job to design projects and initiatives in such a way that success in large wins is the result of a series of small ones.
Winning makes people happy.
If two people are peers, and one is “negative” and the other “positive,” over time the one who is strongest will pull the other one into their world. However, if a leader or manager is the negative one, it’s a rare team member that can overcome that toxicity.
If only leaders would do this simple thing you recommend:
Take a daily “happiness walkabout.” Dedicate 15 minutes a day to walking around looking for things that are beautiful and excellent. When you spot something, praise it right then.
Thanks Alan. I believe negative is stronger than positive. That indicates that the positive one must be much stronger than the negative one. I lean toward the position that negative overcomes positive. Think of a team with one negative person on it.
It sure sounds like I’m negative about being negative. 🙂
Dan, would you say more about why you believe negative is stronger than positive?
Alan, Thanks for asking. Here is a post that has the basic idea – Bad is stronger than good.
The pull and power of negatives to capture our attention and impact our attitude and behavior is stronger than positives. Negative feedback sticks with us longer than positive, for example.
I think it is also important to look at organizational negatives so that we as a team can learn our lessons from them. I think the key lies in the clear focus on the negative result rather than finding fault with people.
Negativity is there for a reason and ignoring the reason will only mask it and not correct it.. What do you think Dan?
Thanks Mukesh. Ignoring problems or negatives only gives them space to expand. My hope with this post is that we take a positive approach to negatives. The idea that focusing on results vs. people makes sense.
Taking a hard look at poor performance can be personal. But, keeping a firm eye on the future seems to help.
what a wonderful tool – a 15 minute happiness walkabout – ill be using that one!
Thanks Lynn. Enjoy! 🙂
I have a manager who gets it right. I work offsite, and I send weekly reports to him. Still, at least once a week I get an instant message or a call from him–often just as simple as “How is it going? Everything OK?” or to cheer me on after some success or new project I reported on. Any negative feedback I get comes with grace and guidance on how to move forward. When he says “Keep up the great work,” there is never reason to doubt that he really means it.
Working in an organization that goes through period of sadness I will definitely use some of the new angles of pointing out things! There’s a lot of bad mouth present.
The way of expressing things at home in your relationship can also learn from the cures for sadness.
Dan, I have seen so much of this over a long career. Hopefully, this post will save someone from this fate.
Vibrant organizations create an environment where people know how their work delivers value, people are developed through improving the work processes, and customer satisfaction is improved – at the end of the day, members feel that they are becoming more capable and take the initiative to improve more things (by the way, the organization ultimately benefits and is able to grow). It feels good to solve problems in the right environment and recognition/positive behavior comes naturally – members see how satisfying an appropriately challenging work environment can be. Mediocre organizations don’t know who the customer is, have no idea what their process is to deliver value, and spend so much time celebrating that everyone thinks there are no problems. They eventually go out of business in a competitive environment. Don’t be the latter. 🙂