Kashbox Coach Note: Leadership Development
Nothing is more detrimental to an organization than a leader with a negative mindset. In their view, efforts are rarely good enough, things just don’t seem to go right, plans will likely fail, people are unreliable, or problems are beyond fixing.
Do you work with or report to someone like this? Or, more importantly, are you known for being such a person? If so, there are ways to address it.
Negative thinking, sometimes seen as pessimism, can be a pervasive handicap, not only for a leader but also for everyone down the line. According to John Maxwell, author of Attitude 101: What Every Leader Needs to Know (2003, Thomas Nelson), organizations with a negative attitude at the top will end up in ruin.
Negative and positive thoughts can fulfill themselves since our beliefs, hopes, fears, plans, responses, and abilities are shaped by how we think. Of all people, the leader’s mindset has the greatest impact, making this the most critical area to be addressed for the benefit of all.
A negative mindset needs to be worked on because the leader’s attitude affects their ability for promotions and success. Leadership development programs can help leaders adjust their attitudes by exploring the items below.
Effects of Negativity
Negative thinking is generally caused by anxieties, which in turn have their roots in emotionally damaging experiences, either in childhood or adulthood. Continual disappointments, stresses, or pain tend to lead to a negative mentality over time, and this would be tough enough if only one person were affected.
However, the greatest tragedy of a leader’s negativity is that it affects everything and everyone. Attitudes spread quickly, often leaving no trace of a source. They go unnoticed as a subtle, silent killer.
Teamwork is destroyed when negativity causes people to dislike each other, find fault with each other, and resist each other. Performance and progress are inevitably slashed. Productivity, quality, and delivery follow a similar demise. Turnover and burnout are inevitable.
In short, bad thinking generates more bad thinking, leading to more bad responses. The cliff can’t be avoided if it isn’t dealt with promptly.
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Assess Your Thoughts
Try to step back and sense what’s happening as situations impact you. What kinds of thoughts come to mind? Are they negative?
A tougher challenge is to determine the legitimacy of your perspective. Are your thoughts based on the facts of past experiences or just your impressions of them? Are you letting stories replay themselves in your head to influence your viewpoint? It’s easy to do. Ask yourself if what you’re experiencing is that bad. It rarely is.
Recognize that past negative outcomes seem more prominent than positive ones. Thus, people tend to emphasize the negative more heavily. Realize that you are just as vulnerable to this trait as everyone else.
This can help you question the validity of negative thoughts or impressions. Maybe they’re flawed. Try setting them off at a distance, just for a moment, and giving them a subjective evaluation. Seek a true sense of reality.
Many leaders don’t make the effort to do this. It’s simply easier to complain or brood. Rather, work through the issue. Let an experienced coach help you. You can become consistently conscious of your thought process, allowing you to step back and assess.
Take a Look at Your Responses
Think back to similar circumstances and try to see a pattern of how you responded. Does this issue always set you off or make you feel defeated? Did every attempt to follow a similar plan result in failure? Did you get blamed every time things like this didn’t work out? This review can help you realize that the answer is no.
Psychologist and author Martin Seligman, known for his work in positive psychology, pioneered this approach. Once identified, a pattern of negative behavior can be challenged. Injecting realism, especially with the insight of others, will help with a fair comparison of past negative and positive experiences.
Exposing negative thoughts as invalid reduces their power. Positive viewpoints are credited more, resulting in a broader, balanced perspective. There is no need to automatically fall back on a negative mentality, as it certainly does no good.
Reframe Your Thinking
Positive thoughts can fill the gap by rationally exposing some negative thinking as false. With enough practice, negative thinking can be disconnected from the routine. You can acknowledge that it’s detrimental to you (and everyone else), and it should raise a red flag.
Your review of the past proved that good things did happen, and they can happen again. Your past difficulties don’t necessarily impact your future challenges. It may seem like another trial is coming your way, and it smells familiar. But strive for a positive way to look at it. Put to work what you learned in the past to forge a better viewpoint.
Dwelling on the negative will never help you overcome any trial. Let the negative angst go. Trying to wrestle with it only invites it to jab at you.
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A Leader’s Responsibility
As a leader, your role is to rally your people to a common vision by helping them attain their goals. You can’t do this with a negative mindset. You owe them the most positive experience possible so everyone can succeed together.
Think not only of yourself in your mission to overturn negative thinking. Think of them. They’re looking to you to lead them well. That’s a big calling. It can only be fulfilled effectively from a positive frame of mind, which is contagious.
With a more realistic perspective and the valuable input of others, you can adjust your viewpoint, approach, and actions. You no longer need to assume that things will always be painful; you legitimately believe they can and will get better. A leadership development program can help you evolve as a leader.
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.
