Leaders Create an Atmosphere of Optimism

"If you have a great plan, act like it"

It's hard to get people to rally behind you if you believe the situation is hopeless. If anyone has to be convinced the best is yet to come, it has to be you.

Your attitude and demeanor has an enormous effect on your staff. You have probably observed this by watching people around you. Ever notice the person who hates everything on a particular day? Other people give that person a wide berth and want to have little contact. Probably only having contact when they are forced to.

Some people are like that all the time and employees plan their day to avoid having any contact.

Those may be extreme cases, but it illustrates the point that ones attitude has a direct affect on others. The attitudes of leaders go deeper into the organization and have a far greater effect.

What do people want? They want to believe that tomorrow is going to better then today. That tomorrow they will be richer, happier and live a more enriched life.

That is the hope you want to hold out. That no matter the situation today, tomorrow is going to be better.

Thus the importance of optimism as one of the qualities leadership uses to turn-around underperforming companies.

Just as a bad attitude can have a negative effect on employees and the work atmosphere, an optimistic attitude can have a very positive effect. Which you hope is amplified, multiplied and works it way through the company.

Optimism is one of those intangible assets that is hard to put a price tag on, but it is clearly so important to building positive attitudes and one of the qualities leadership requires. One thing we do know is the cost is cheap. How much does it cost the company for you to be optimistic? Unless you need some specialized therapy, the cost is probably zero.

Of course there needs to be some basis for optimism, otherwise you look like a simpleton.

Having a practical, logical plan for success is always helpful. But even without that, if you can convince everyone that there may not be a plan now but we are more then capable of developing an effective strategy that is all you need to get started.

Since people naturally overestimate their abilities and capabilities, this can be used to the companies benefit. Let everyone have some input during the research and plan development process. By doing so, people start becoming more optimistic about their future. When this happens, is when you start to see change and the start of a turnaround.

What needs to happen next is to prepare everyone for the next few months and the next year. It is important to manage expectations at this point. We are going to see some successes, some failures. We are also going to see some success we didn't expect and some unforeseen problems. In any event we are prepared and capable to take advantage of the opportunities we will have, and deal with about any issue that confronts us.

If we are lucky, we should start to see some small victories to feed everyone's optimism.

Optimistic attitudes are essential to a turn-around. The team has to feel, if we can do this we can win. During World War II, when everything looked its worse, Churchill gave the country hope. And at that time, that is all they had. But it led to some small victories, which lead to bigger victories and the tide eventually turned. It all started with a flicker of hope. That is all you need to start a turn-around.