Become a POSITIVE leader

This post is neither about "positive psychology" nor about "positive thinking", it's about your capacity to manage your people and business through positive leadership.

In fact, one of the most challenging modules of our leadership behavioral trainings comes as early as the first morning and it deals with our natural tendency to look for the negative first and it's disastrous impact on our teams and business.

Let's take an everyday example: a project team update meeting. Usually, (in other companies not in ours), the project leader focuses the discussion on the problems to be solved, on the issues and obstacles to overcome. The Project Team members that attend the meeting know that, if they are involved with one of the problem, their responsibility will be at stake.

Then, a typical reaction is to switch to a defensive mode of communication, more emotional, where (not our company of course) the "Yes But" becomes the best way to justify and to avoid having to be blamed for being the "reason why we have a problem to deal with".

When you think about it, you remember how much those meetings usually deliver poor results on top of being demotivating. In the hand, we rarely come out of such meetings with concrete solutions but with more problems or...another meeting!

One of the leadership habit that encourages the above vicious circle comes from our recurring  question on failures and problems: WHY?. By asking WHY? to our teams when they fail, we encourage negativity, we kill meetings efficiency, we demotivate our people and consequently don't find solutions.

The questions is actually great but it should rather be asked when there is a success or something good happening in the organization. WHY DID WE SUCCEED? is a much more valuable question.

• It helps our people and teams to become aware of their strength.
• It is the essence of "Best Practice Sharing", giving great recipes to the other people in the team/meeting that they can follow and repeat.
• It gives us more occasions to value their work, their results and efforts.
• It reinforces Emotional Intelligence in the team/organization as Self Awareness is one of the first keys to a better emotional intelligence with self conscious and self confidence.

 DIG THE POSITIVE, NOT THE NEGATIVE!

Wait, that does not mean that you should stop taking care of the negative, certainly not. You will find out that, by re-educating your people to investigate the "reasons for which we succeed", you will generate a culture of the solution.

This culture of the solution is the best demonstration of POSITIVE LEADERS' impact on their teams. How does it work under this kind of culture?

1. Meetings start with he positive: "What went well? What did we do well?" What can we be proud of?" "Where did perform better?"
2. We then investigate the reasons why it went well: "Tell me, what did you do to achieve this?" "What was your recipe for success?" "How can others benefit form your ideas?" "In which other project/situation do you suggest we could use this idea/solution?" "What does this tell us about our strengths?"
3. We close our meetings with what still needs to be improved: "Now, what needs to be improved?" "Where can we get better?"
4. And how we can improve: "OK guys, I agree, this needs improvement, now, tell me, what do you propose?" What solutions do you suggest to get a better results next time?" "What should we do differently next time to make sure we don't have this problem anymore?"

 Bottom line, leadership is about helping our people and organization to give their best, to develop the most out of their potential. If we don't educate them with positive leadership, digging the positive instead of the negative, we will not show them the way towards a solution culture.

I had a boss once who had this sticker on his door: 

It is indeed a bit confrontational nut I can assure you that you would think twice before bringing him a problem without a solution. 

It is our duty as leaders, as managers, to educate everyday our people, our teams and the whole organization to develop those habits and to build a more positive place to work at.

I wish ou all a POSITIVE 2016!!

Laurent Poujol, CEO @People & Performance