(Revised from a previous post – July, 2014)
A positive attitude goes right to the core of leadership – motivation. Great leaders, at all levels, lead by motivating and you can’t motivate without a positive attitude. If you do not have a positive attitude, you can’t lead. No one will follow you or at least they will tire of you pretty quickly.
Is it easy? No.
I have seen many leaders get pulled into the darkness by negative results, bad performances, rough business patches and more – sometimes slowly and others very quickly. The true sign of a great leader is the ability to avoid these falls. A leader must look ahead of the bad quarter or the rough days and see the brighter side or brighter days ahead. This is the key to leadership. Stay positive. Stay up. Smile.
As I have said on many of my blog posts, your people are watching. If you go dark on them, they will read right through it for the right and wrong reasons and make decisions based on that reading.
When the bad times hit, you need to stay positive.
I found an article on lifestyleezine.com called ‘Successful Leaders Start with a Positive Attitude’.
The author says ”…you will need more than a miracle to make certain things happen. As long as you have the right attitude of looking at things, and on how they have to be done, you can eliminate the miracle wishing part.”
He/she goes on to suggest that it is our attitude towards obstacles, problems and issues that will drive our success.
“Why don’t we see these problems as challenges…as something to spice our journey up? Not all roads to success are smooth. Often, there are bumps and humps. If we miss our turn, we might get lost and end up starting all over again. See the big picture. Look beyond the problem. A positive leader will not dwell on a difficult situation and be discouraged by it, but will believe that he can and he ought to surpass it, in order to reach his goals. With positive attitude, he never accepts defeat. Instead, he fights the noble battle until the very end.”
With a positive attitude, he (she) never accepts defeat. Never. And your team needs this.
Images provided compliments of FreeDigitalPhotos.com.
1 thought on “Do You Have a Positive Attitude?”
Another layer to leadership… not necessarily one BIG thing but a confluence of little things leading to the right “leadership soup recipe”. I am also reminded of a phrase Dr. Mikel Harry (Six Sigma Academy fame) once shared with me… “You can’t Six Sigma your way out of a bad strategy”, so I guess the same applies to positive attitudes. There is a scene from Monte Python’s “Life of Brian”… Always look on the bright side of life? I just posted an article, (2002 Harvard Business Review, believe it or not), on this “newfangled thing” called disruptive innovation. Well, maybe not so new? I suspect the “discovery” of fire was disruptive, and it just went on from there. Thanks for sharing, David. Always a pleasure to read your articles. cheers, Rod.