The Power of Positive Leadership. Gordon Jon
know that if he can change, and they can change, the world can change.” Her words brought tears to my eyes because I realized that my one decision to be a positive leader not only impacted my life but also my marriage, my children, my team at work, and everyone around me. My hope is that you too will discover the power of positive leadership in your own life. I know that being a positive leader doesn't just make you better; it makes everyone around you better. You can start today!
CHAPTER 2
REAL POSITIVE
We are not positive because life is easy. We are positive because life can be hard.
It takes a lot of work to create a world-class organization. It's hard to develop a successful team. It's not easy to build a great culture. It's challenging to work toward a vision and create a positive future. It's difficult to change the world. As a leader, you will face all kinds of challenges, adversity, negativity, and tests. There will be times when it seems as if everything in the world is conspiring against you. There will be moments you'll want to give up. There will be days when your vision seems more like a fantasy than a reality. That's why positive leadership is so essential. When some people hear the term positive leadership they roll their eyes because they think I'm talking about Pollyanna positivity, where life is full of unicorns and rainbows. But the truth is that we are not positive because life is easy. We are positive because life can be hard. Positive leadership is not about fake positivity. It is the real stuff that makes great leaders great. Pessimists don't change the world. Critics write words but they don't write the future. Naysayers talk about problems but they don't solve them. Throughout history we see that it's the optimists, the believers, the dreamers, the doers, and the positive leaders who change the world. The future belongs to those who believe in it and have the belief, resilience, positivity, and optimism to overcome all the challenges in order to create it.
Research by Manju Puri and David Robinson, business professors at Duke University, shows that optimistic people work harder, get paid more, are elected to office more often, and win at sports more regularly.1 Research by psychologist Martin Seligman also shows that optimistic salespeople perform better than their pessimistic counterparts.2 And psychologist Barbara Fredrickson's research demonstrates that people who experience more positive emotions than negative ones are more likely to see the bigger picture, build relationships, and thrive in their work and career, whereas people who experience mostly negative emotions are more likely to have a narrower perspective and tend to focus more on problems.3 Daniel Goleman's research demonstrates that positive teams perform at higher levels than negative teams.4 John Gottman's pioneering research on relationships found that marriages are much more likely to succeed when the couple experiences a five-to-one ratio of positive to negative interactions; when the ratio approaches a one-to-one ratio, marriages are more likely to end in divorce.5 Additional research also shows that workgroups with positive-to-negative interaction ratios greater than three to one are significantly more productive than teams that do not reach this ratio. Teams with more negative interactions are more likely to be stagnant and unproductive. The positive energy you share with your team is significant. According to Wayne Baker, the research he and Robert Cross conducted shows that “the more you energize people in your workplace, the higher your work performance.” Baker says that this occurs because people want to be around you. You attract talent and people are more likely to devote their discretionary time to your projects. They'll offer new ideas, information, and opportunities to you before others.
Baker adds that the opposite is also true. If you de-energize others, people won't go out of their way to work with or help you.6 Gallup estimates that negativity costs the economy $250–$300 billion a year and affects the morale, performance, and productivity of teams.
The research is clear. Positivity is about more than having a positive state of mind. It's also a life changer and gives people a competitive advantage in business, sports, and politics. While the pessimists are complaining about the future, the energy vampires are sabotaging it, and the realists are talking about it, the optimists are working hard with others to create it. Puri and Robinson's research shows that our attitude helps create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because optimists believe in a positive future, they actually delude themselves into working more to make it possible. Their belief makes them willing to take actions to achieve it. As a result, positive leaders invest their time and energy in driving a positive culture. They create and share the vision for the road ahead. They lead with optimism and belief and address and transform the negativity that too often sabotages teams and organizations. They take on the battle, overcome the negativity, face the adversity, and keep moving forward. They devote all their energy and effort to uniting and connecting their organization and invest in relationships that truly build great teams. They believe in their principles. They believe in their people. They believe in teamwork. They believe in the future. They believe in what's possible, so they act and do, connect and create, build and transform their team and organization – and change the world.
In the following chapters I'm going to take you through a simple, powerful model and framework you can utilize and implement to enhance your leadership capabilities and put your positive leadership into action.
CHAPTER 3
POSITIVE LEADERS DRIVE POSITIVE CULTURES
Culture is not just one thing. It's everything.
Positive leaders drive positive cultures. I use the word drive here because as a leader you are the driver of your bus and you have a big role and responsibility in creating the kind of journey you and your team will experience. One year I spoke at a school district and talked with all their leaders, mostly school principals. I shared the same principles and strategies with everyone. At the end of the year, I heard from two principals from the district. One principal had given every member of her staff The Energy Bus to read and followed up with staff meetings where she discussed and reinforced the principles each month. She focused all of her energy on creating a positive culture, one meeting, one conversation, one interaction, one positive message, one teacher, and one student at a time. She completely transformed the morale, engagement, energy, and culture of her school. The other principal I heard from was very disappointed and told me that she had handed a copy of The Energy Bus to all her teachers, encouraged them to read it, and wondered why it didn't have much of an impact on her school and culture. I realized in that moment that you can give a team a bus, but unless you have drivers, it doesn't move. It's not a book that makes a difference. It's not a lecture or a keynote. It's the leader that makes the difference. It's the leader that must drive the culture.
Your most important job as a leader is to drive the culture – and not just any culture. You must create a positive culture that energizes and encourages people, fosters connected relationships and great teamwork, empowers and enables people to learn and grow, and provides an opportunity for people to do their best work. Culture is not just one thing; it's everything. Culture drives expectation and beliefs. Expectations and beliefs drive behaviors. Behaviors drive habits. And habits create the future. It all starts with the culture you create and drive throughout the organization. That's where all success and great results begin.
Driving your culture is not something you can delegate. You are the leader and you must spend your time, energy, and effort creating and building the culture of your team and organization. Nancy Koeper, the retired president of UPS for the Northwest Region, made culture her number-one priority as she drove a positive culture through an organization that was, literally, full of drivers. She wanted to improve engagement and morale, so she rolled out The Energy Bus to the 1,000 leaders she led with the intent of enhancing positive leadership, positive interactions, and improved relationships with the UPS drivers. Her leaders all read the book, then discussed ways to implement the ideas. They then rolled out The Energy Bus to their 11,000 drivers in the district by simply focusing on positivity, positive interactions,
Puri, M. & Robinson, D. (2007). Optimism and economic choice.
Seligman, M.E. & Schulman, P. (1986). Explanatory style as a predictor of productivity and quitting among life insurance sales agents.
Fredrickson, B. (2001). The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.
Goleman, D. (2011).
Gottman, J. (1994).
Baker, W., Cross, R., & Wooten, M. (2003). Positive organizational network analysis and energizing relationships. In J. Cameron, J.E. Dutton, & R. Quinn (Eds.),