Kashbox Coach Note: Leadership Coaching
Negativity and discord have reached historic levels in our culture. Worsening attitudes, constant complaints, and pessimistic mindsets affect most aspects of our lives. Like a virus, they spread easily, even when unwarranted.
Negativity impacts families, communities, institutions, and workplaces. Leaders see the results firsthand, regardless of whether they recognize the causes. Turnover rises, projects fail to hit their goals, and productivity falls short of expectations. Leaders receive poor financial reports or drops in market share. Studies confirm the American economy suffers financially each year, to $300 billion, when corporate cultures turn negative.
Leaders miss negativity issues unless they’re close to day-to-day operations. They fail to appreciate the draining negativity causes—and when they finally take notice, they often implement the wrong remedies. This response cascade is guaranteed to make matters worse.
The Power of Positivity
The most powerful truths are often the simplest. Just as negativity causes myriad organizational troubles, positivity has the opposite effect. Logic tells us that a positive approach has to be better than a negative one. We glean this from our experiences and the common sense we’ve acquired. Corporate performance and culture evaluations affirm that positivity is a powerful yet often overlooked force that can determine whether an organization will thrive or take a dive.
Over the years, studies of corporate performance reveal that a positive culture:
- Inspires people to have better ideas and find better solutions
- Yields more realistic visions and more feasible plans to attain them
- Inspires higher levels of employee engagement, initiative, and productivity
- Sees more projects succeed and goals reached
- Does better at overcoming adversity and building unity
- Boosts levels of employee hope and security
- Outperforms competitors with negative cultures (and takes their market share)
- It is more innovative and quicker to market with new products
- Experiences improved communication and collaboration
- Has more employees committed to success
A positive culture drives performance, which translates into greater prosperity for everyone. Only when leaders embrace this concept can they make cultural changes that profoundly benefit their organizations.
Culture is established by only one person: the leader. You cannot rely on others or circumstances to set your workplace tone. You must determine, initiate, maintain, and enhance your organizational culture using your character and leadership traits as primary tools. Leaders with a deficit should hire leadership coaching to build missing leadership skills.
Many leaders dismiss positivity as simplistic, but it’s one of their arsenal’s most powerful tools and costs you nothing. Nonetheless, many intransigent leaders refuse to take the first critical step toward experiencing all the benefits of a positively empowered company.
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Making the Crucial Decisions
Leaders fashion a positive culture by first seeing a need for improvement. A qualified leadership coach can help spot the telltale signs of negativity. Once problem areas are recognized, it’s time to take the next crucial step: deciding to do something.
Positive results require a positive approach. Leaders must decide that positivity will be the company’s charter and that conscious changes will be well worth the effort. Leadership consultant Jon Gordon notes that life is difficult and negative enough in The Power of Positive Leadership: How and Why Positive Leaders Transform Teams and Organizations and Change the World (Wiley, 2017). The only true remedy is to be positive.
But Gordon realizes that simple positivity is insufficient. Being positive and effective is the perfect combination to overcome negativity’s obstacles. Effectiveness is the blending of reality with a better mindset. One must see things for what they are and implement potent methods to turn around problems.
Leaders must also adopt a positive character—not a superficial positivity, but a genuinely encouraging mindset and determination to see the good in things (and pursue and accentuate them to create a better reality for all).
So, exactly what do these positive leaders look like?
For some, it may mean stepping out of their comfort zone. Those historically influenced by negative environments and people may be overtaken by pessimism and critical nature. Their challenge is to reject this pervasive mindset and set a new course that may initially feel foreign. It may be necessary to start fresh. Leadership coaching empowers their clients to effect positive culture changes.
Leaders, however, cannot succeed without a fundamental desire to overcome obstacles and create an environment that inspires positivity in those around them. As Gordon instructs: Develop a passion to be the best at what you do and be a winner. Motivating your organization with that philosophy will start to change the culture. Your winning attitude requires personal investment for you and your team. With your determination and optimism, the environment will transform. Making these important decisions sets the leader in motion to influence the mindsets around them, lead the way, and pursue a positive path forward.
Enhancing Your Character
When leaders have a more positive character, their thoughts, behavior, instincts, and responses are more receptive to organizational needs. They see a brighter future in which problems become opportunities.
Start building positivity by working to overcome your own negativity, Gordon advises. Reject negative behaviors like complaining, gossiping, selfishness, apathy, and untruthfulness. You’ll push negative elements aside where they belong by placing a higher value on integrity, honor, service to others, caring, and truthfulness. You’ll enjoy greater satisfaction and experience personal and professional benefits. The more you practice positivity, the more natural it will become—and the less desirable your old ways will seem.
A positive mindset eliminates the need for ego or pride. Fulfillment comes from the joy of positivity and self-worth. Pursuing excellence with your employees fosters the enjoyment that negativity blocks.
Minimizing the negative influences around you also increases your ability to transition to positivity while simultaneously reshaping the culture. When leadership no longer tolerates negative behavior, your employees will experience their own character shifts. Negative people around you become uncomfortable when behaviors and comments are met with disapproval. Your encouragement makes positivity more appealing to them.
Direct reports support and appreciate leaders whose positive character inspires transformation. As people choose to follow you, your care for them and your spirit of service will grow.
By diligently building a more positive character and persisting in pursuing it, you and your people will ultimately refuse to live any other way.
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Leading by Positive Example
An organization’s culture is an extension of its leader’s philosophy. Gordon says that leaders need to let people feel their walk, sense their mindset, and be compelled to follow it. This sets a positive example. Put it out there for all to experience and get used to. Gathering employees to inspire a culture shift has benefits, but nothing influences a following like living positively and loving it. People seeing how their coworkers’ lives have improved is your most powerful teaching tool.
If your culture encourages acceptance and discourages disinterest, positivity becomes the norm. As with leaders, they will buy in once people taste the benefits and rewards of a positive mentality. They’ll set their own examples and encourage each other to do the same. They may even correct each other with reminders, taking their cue from you. They understand that you’ve established the goal of working positivity into every operational aspect.
The transition may be slow. Backsliding may occur after frustrations or crises arise. Your leadership coach can help you maintain your focus and hold you accountable. Good outcomes are great motivators when positive approaches are used. Rely on this, especially in tough times.
Sometimes, the example set by positive leaders requires difficult decisions that protect the organization from negative influences. Ineffective products or services may need to be discontinued. Negative, damage-inflicting clients may need to be dismissed. Stricter policies may need to be implemented to deal with conflict or detrimental behavior. Toxic employees deserve the chance to be converted to positivity with the appropriate oversight and counseling. If they choose to remain negative, they may need to be replaced.
Your passion for positivity gives you several hats: role model, cheerleader, guardian, leadership coach, enforcer, and rewarded.
Leadership Coaching: Building on a Firm Foundation
Great leaders expand their efforts to solidify a collective perspective and build upon the culture they’ve initiated. They continue to battle negativity and reinforce the expectation of a positive workplace. They work with a leadership coach to promote one spirit: one united front to raise the bar.
A solid, positive culture is undergirded by trust. You earn trust by caring about your people and developing relationships with them. Make this happen by:
- Listening to them and providing for their needs. Applying active listening skills helps people feel valued, which improves positivity.
- Encouraging and inspiring your people to think, respond, and apply themselves positively.
- Communicate about everything. Provide people with information and inform them of the plans to fulfill your vision. Make them feel worthy of being included in what’s going on in the organization.
- Getting to know your people, their interests, lives, and aspirations. Let them know who you are by sharing the same. This offers a sense of family and unity, which prompts a positive feeling about the workplace.
- Trusting people to make more decisions and be ambassadors of positivity. Letting your people take ownership of their culture strengthens it.
- Inviting people into problem-solving activities and allowing them to inject their expertise to make a difference. Celebrating positive outcomes also reinforces a positive mindset.
- Provide leadership coaching and mentoring resources to help people gain skills and become valuable contributors.
- Creating a safe environment through transparency and security, where politics, favoritism, and deception are rejected, will minimize people’s fear and anxiety.
In a community of trust, people know each other well enough to think the best of their coworkers instead of criticizing or grumbling. If your employees sense greater optimism, your clients and customers will follow suit. Positivity is visible, indicating that a good fundamental culture is at work. Companies that exude positivity draw customers because they know their needs will be met. Your people and your operation thereby prosper.
Creator of the KASHBOX: Knowledge, Attitude, Skills, Habits
Helping You Realize Your Potential
I help people discover their potential, expand and develop the skills and attitudes necessary to achieve a higher degree of personal and professional success and create a plan that enables them to balance the profit motives of their business with the personal motives of their lives.
