Why this is so important?
When coaching a senior leader recently, I challenged him to think about his colleagues on the leadership team at his mid-sized company. They have been in business for over a decade, and by most business measures, are very successful.
When he rated himself and his fellow leaders on a one to ten scale for leadership, management and success in each of their current roles, he only gave out only eight. Every other score was considerably lower, with most in the three to five range. Keep in mind, this is a successful organization. How could he rate them so low?
My client suffers from having a huge negativity bias. He looks at things through such a negative lens that he is dragging down himself and his colleagues.
One of the principles of Emotional Intelligence is positivity. Being positive, especially as a leader, has an out-sized impact on your organization.
#WiseWords
“The POSITIVE THINKER sees the INVISIBLE, feels the INTANGIBLE, and achieves the IMPOSSIBLE.“
Worth the Share
After that meeting, I wanted to better understand the power of positivity in leadership and was grateful to find this article, The Best Leaders Have a Contagious Positive Energy It brings to life the importance of positivity, stating that it is a key determinant for success in leaders, beating out things like charisma, innovative genius and power.
Authors Emma Seppälä and Kim Cameron state: “The one thing that supersedes all these factors is positive relational energy: the energy exchanged between people that helps uplift, enthuse, and renew them.”
With authentic, values-based leadership, these leaders uplift themselves and their organizations. Positive energizers are themselves high performers and positively impact others.
When it comes to their companies, the positive energizer as a leader also generates greater innovation, teamwork, financial performance and workplace cohesion, according to the authors. How can we argue with that?
Take a moment and read this article or pick up their book, Positively Energizing Leadership.
And Finally...
I want to build on what I talked about last time, Quiet Quitting. In this article from Gallup, they say that about 50% of the workforce today falls into the “quiet quitting” category. People who are disengaged at work and doing the bare minimum to get by. This is especially true for younger workers.
How can we combat quiet quitting? Gallup suggests to re-skill your managers to manage a hybrid or remote work force, actively have managers manage their teams, make sure managers have a minimum of one 1:1 meaningful conversation with each team member each week, create accountability metrics for team members, help them understand the “why” of their work, and their organization’s greater purpose.
I would add to that: lead with positivity and a healthy dose of empathy.
Have a great week,
Mary Jo