How Negative Leaders Become Positive Today
The immediate environment around you is your complete responsibility.
Become positive:
#1. Imagine you’re a positive leader. Go do that.
Behave your way into positive leadership.
#2. Stop saying, “Yes, but….”
One reason you’re stuck in negativity is you’re saying, “Yes, but …,” after reading #1 above.
#3. Ride ponies you can control. Set the rest free.
One of the great decisions of life is choosing to focus your energy on things within your control.
#4. Think influence, not control.
Trying to control people is maddening and stressful. It’s manipulation when threat or coercion are necessary.
Frustration is your inner control freak screaming to get out.
Most leaders wrestle an inner control freak, even you. One way to identify your inner control freak is to monitor your frustration today.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “The people upstairs demand results. So I have to demand results.”
Ask yourself, “How might I influence people to serve organizational and personal interests?”
How might you influence your team to deliver results without pressure or threat? Think of things like:
- Transparency with the challenges ahead.
- Confidence in others.
- Candor and feedback regarding performance.
- Cooperation to multiply results.
- Challenge to reach high together.
- Ownership and responsibility to each other. How might you offer ownership, rather than demand it?
- Respect for passion, skill, and accomplishment in others.
#5. Take care of others.
You can’t do everything, but you can care. Taking care of people isn’t doing their job for them. It’s treating them with honesty, respect, courtesy, and optimism.
The people around you are in your care. If you can’t take care of the people on your team, you can’t lead in a positive way.
How might negative leaders be positive today?
You nailed this one, Dan! I believe that concerning yourself with that which only you can control is a major factor in overall positivity. In any situation I am doing the best I can with the best information I have available at the time. As being a Christian, understanding that I am responsible for the input and I trust God with the rest allows me to ease my mind.
The best we can do is the best we can do, as long as it is the BEST we can do.
Thanks Josh. We become harsh with ourselves when we try to control things outside our control. If we don’t become harsh, we get discouraged, angry, blaming and/or we disconnect. In all cases, trying to control things that we can’t control doesn’t end well.
Good stuff! This really hit home for me because our admin was literally upstairs and they were often referred to as “Upstairs” when us below were speaking of them; “The people upstairs demand results. So I have to demand results.” I liked this statement because it can be easily be transformed into a fill-in-the-blank type of approach to leadership when “upstairs” is managing negatively. For example; 1) The people upstairs are insensitive to the needs of the organization so I will be sensitive, 2) The people upstairs don’t care about the people on the front lines so I will care, 3) The people upstairs aren’t honest with our people so I will be honest, 4) The people upstairs isolate themselves from the front line employees so I will integrate myself amongst the work force, etc. These affirmations don’t equate to rebellion if the overall goal is success and the betterment of the organization by practicing a more positive approach. Thanks, Dan.
Thanks SGT. Brilliant! If we don’t follow you’re suggestions, we end up being like the people we don’t like. That doesn’t sound very fulfilling.
I like how you turn a potential complaint into a positive behavior. Very powerful.
Dan, what do you do when the things you can control have no impact on the things you’re going to get crucified for?
When the “betterment of the organisation” is only measured in terms of money and widgets made, is whether you care or not relevant?
Thanks Mitch. I thought about this while writing today’s post. Nothing is worse than a no win situation. I remember packing my office one time because I felt like I was in a no win situation. I went to my boss and asked her if she thought I could succeed. I didn’t threaten to leave. But I was at the end of my rope. I ended up staying, but looking back, I probably should have started looking for something else.
We always have to deliver on widgets and the bottom line. If someone is convinced that they are going to lose their job for missing the numbers, why wait. Start looking now.
Another option is to put the responsibility on upper management. Figure out what you believe you can achieve and let them know that’s where you’re at. Draw a line in the sand. Why prolong the agony.
What do you think?
By the way, the basic challenge of imagining what a positive leader would do, and doing that still applies. But we can’t do anything that we can’t first imagine.
Dan, I think that in most of these situations, the choices run between simple ways of committing job suicide and complicated ways of committing job suicide. My experience of many “positive leaders” in situations like this is having heard them say “Right, I’ll fire the whole lot of them. There’s plenty of warm bodies out there”.
I can imagine quite a lot, but as somebody said “all the imagination in the world won’t make a real dragon”.
Thanks for circling back. You are so right, imagination is only the first part of the equation. The other part is, “Go do that.” If you can’t complete the equation, why not find another job?
Dan, the contract scientific research field (where I work) is riven with this outlook. It’s a highly incestuous field, and the attitudes are pervasive because the same people drag them around the whole industry as they move from gig to gig. Add in the iron grip of a regulatory environment (GXP) which stifles innovation and means that it is NEVER better to beg forgiveness than ask permission.
Sounds like being strangled. How are you navigating this?