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Negativity costs our economy $500 billion dollars a year in lost productivity.  Disengaged workers lose customers, drive up healthcare costs, and contribute to absenteeism and turnover rates.

In contrast, positivity at work is associated with better organizational behavior, better relationships with colleagues, better customer evaluations, less absenteeism, and less turnover.  So happiness doesn’t just feel good – it is good for you, your employees, customers, and the organization’s bottom line.

The goal of positive leadership is to create workplaces that foster high satisfaction and high productivity.  How can you become a more positive leader?  These 4 strategies will help you transform your organization from the inside out:

  1. Foster positive communication
    Replace negative and critical language with affirmative and supportive language.  At your next staff meeting, pay close attention to the comments that are being made.  Are you being pessimistic or are you fostering enthusiasm and engagement with optimistic language?Research shows that high performing organizations have different communication patterns than low performing ones.  In a recent study, 60 work teams were observed from behind a one-way mirror while they crafted their annual plans.  Each statement was coded and then the company was evaluated based on three success indicators: profitability, customer satisfaction and 360° feedback evaluations.  Only 15 teams were categorized as “high performing.”  The single most important factor in predicting their performance – which was more than twice as powerful than any other factor – was the ratio of positive to negative statements on those teams.  In the highest performing teams, that ratio was 5:1.  That means that for every one negative comment, there were five positive ones made by the team members.
  2. Facilitate positive relationships
    Leaders who foster positive relationships emphasize strengths, recognize small victories, and use positive imagery with team members as opposed to focusing on errors, mistakes or problems.  Telling people what not to do is less helpful than identifying what they should do.  Addressing weaknesses in your staff is damage control; not development.  It can help people achieve a level of competence, but building on strengths helps people achieve excellence.Positive leaders model positive energy.  They begin interactions and meetings with a celebration of what is going right.  The impact of positive relationships on emotional health, life expectancy, and extraordinary performance in teams is often unrecognized.  Relationships that help people contribute to the benefit of others, rather than merely get support from them, are the most valuable.
  3. Associate the work being done with positive meaning
    Positive leaders highlight the value and significance associated with their organization’s outcomes — beyond the personal benefit of individual employees.  How is your company making a difference in the world?  Reinforce the benefits of your product or service for others, connect your work outcomes with the core values of your employees, and identify the long-term impact created by your work.When people feel they are pursuing a purpose or engaging in work that is personally important they are likely to experience less stress, absenteeism, and turnover, as well as experience greater engagement, commitment and satisfaction.
  4. Encourage a positive climate
    A positive climate is one where positive emotions predominate over negative emotions.  Employees are optimistic and hopeful as opposed to feeling fearful, anxious, and suspicious.As a leader, you have an extraordinary degree of impact on the climate.  You can significantly influence your organizational culture as you personally display positive emotions, model compassion, and express gratitude.  Leaders who exhibit these virtues create a climate in which people are cared for, supported, and encouraged to flourish.Research confirms that a positive work climate can enhance decision-making and creativity.  People are able to take in more information and learn more readily when they experience positive emotions.  A positive climate has also been found to enhance productivity, engagement, and prosocial behaviors.

IN THE ABSENCE OF A POSITIVE FOCUS,

A NEGATIVE CLIMATE WILL BE THE NORM

Humans are hardwired to pay attention to problems and danger.  This makes sense as ignoring a negative threat could be lethal.  Ignoring something positive only results in regret – it is not life threatening.

Negative events, mistakes, and disapproving feedback are much more influential and longer lasting in individuals.  We have all experienced those days when 99% goes right, but we find ourselves concentrating on the 1% that goes wrong.

Without intentional effort to focus on the positive, negativity will receive much more attention.  Positive leaders are unique in that they choose to emphasize the inspiring side of organizational life, even in the face of difficulty.  Leaders have to solve problems and can’t ignore obstacles, but you should strive to counter the tendency toward the negative with an abundance of positivity.  In the absence of this emphasis, the negative can overwhelm the positive and become the default.

NEXT STEPS

I would like to introduce you to some brand-new strategies to fix this problem — strategies that are not familiar to most leaders today. Positive organizations can be created. Google is not on top of the list of best places to work by accident.

There are certain companies, certain teams, and certain leaders that have engagement numbers double and triple the national average. With the training that I share in this coaching intensive, you can too!

If you would like further training on positive leadership,

check out this coaching intensive: 4 Pillars of Positive Leadership 

This groundbreaking training is for business leaders, managers, and human resource professionals who want to increase engagement, productivity, and profits.  I share simple but powerful tools from the cutting-edge field of Positive Psychology that you can start applying today.

In this coaching intensive, you will learn how to:

  • avoid the 5 mistakes that most managers make that destroy their team’s engagement
  • energize, inspire, and motivate your team effectively
  • develop a highly engaged team that goes above and beyond expectations
  • set the bar high without micromanaging or draining your team’s energy
  • establish credibility as a respected and promotable people leader

positive leadership, leadership development, leadership training

Resource:  Cameron, K. (2008).  Positive Leadership.  San Francisco:  Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Dr. Stefani Yorges

I am a psychologist and professional leadership coach. I partner with people who want to rise to their full potential so they can have an increasingly greater impact on others.

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