Positive_blogPositive thinking. There’s a dedicated section for it in our local bookstore. Well, not just a section, more of a wall. It’s inevitable. We’re now fully immersed in the age of the self-help. Everyone can be his/her own psychiatrist and turn around a situation, a business, a life, and come out bigger, better, wealthier, more fulfilled or (my personal favourite), more ‘at one with the beauty of now’. There’s certainly a lot of theory around. It’s easy to pour scorn on those motivational quotations, but perhaps it’s time to turn them into something practical for your business.

American self-help writer, Guy Finley suggests, “if you want light to come into your life, you need to stand where it is shining”. An advocate for sunbathing you may think. Well, actually, he’s on to something there. It just makes common sense in business that if your office is filled with positive, upbeat employees, the atmosphere they create can not be anything but uplifting. If most of your people are ‘cup half full’ sort of people, then the work they produce, the way they speak to potential customers, and even the way they interact with other colleagues, will result in a positive experience for all concerned.

Recruitment

How exactly do you achieve that, though? Should you include ‘positive mental attitude’ as a requirement on your next job advert? More often than not, it’s something that can be weeded out at interview stage. How do your potential employees respond to small talk in an interview? Are their responses generally positive or negative? You can gain a good picture of someone’s attitude to life in the way they talk about even the most mundane of experiences. However you go about it, watch out for a positive attitude and steer clear from any negativity you come across. Add it to your tick list next time you’re interviewing for a post.

Day to day

When you’ve recruited what you believe to be a positive group of people, it’s your job to make sure they stay that way and there are a number of things you can do to encourage this.

Set a clear vision with achievable objectives for the team and each individual. Everyone needs to know what’s expected of him/her. All team members need to know that what they are doing means something. Set SMART targets and make sure that those targets are aligned to the company’s objectives. Striving to meet these meaningful and fair objectives can’t help but encourage positivity.

Give clear feedback. Everyone on your team needs to know how he or she is doing. If they are performing well, tell them. If they are not quite cutting it, tell them that too. Feedback needs to be clear, with an objective to securing a commitment to improve. When supported by a realistic and helpful development plan, your teams will see you as a supportive manager, helping them maintain a positive attitude even when they feel they’re not quite succeeding.

Celebrate frequently. It’s so important to celebrate team and individual successes as often as possible as it gives everyone a huge motivational boost, which, in turn, drives positivity. A team that feels like it’s winning will be more ambitious, creative and driven.

The rotten apples

What about negativity? Despite your best efforts, you may discover that some people with a negative outlook are on your team (perhaps you inherited them from your predecessor). You may hope that the rest of the team’s positivity will compensate for any moaning or whining. Sadly, the opposite happens. Negative individuals can soon bring down the others, making them doubt themselves and possibly making them doubt you too. You have to act!

Start by speaking candidly with your negative employees. Identify specific examples of when they demonstrated negativity and ask them to describe how they felt on those occasions. Having listened carefully, offer them a different, positive way of approaching a similar situation. Try to share some principles and actions that could help them too.

When negativity starts, encourage your team members to:

1. stop and understand how they are feeling
2. identify why they feel like that
3. think about three things they could do to make the situation better
4. if the above fail, speak with you to help them to see things positively and take positive action.

Hopefully, rotten apples will be determined to change. However, if they aren’t, consider that the best and fairest option may be to part ways (consulting with your HR team for advice and support on this).

Those help books are great, in theory, but if they’re not influencing action, then they’re not worth the paper they’re written on. You need to demonstrate positivity yourself, and encourage a strong sense of it in your team. In the words of novelist Edith Wharton, “there are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it”. Now, there’s a quote for your wall.