“Optimism” – a simple word and yet oh, so powerful. Optimism can increase productivity, enhance employee morale, reduce conflict and have a positive impact on the bottom line.

Optimism is vital when leading organizations. Leaders who set themselves apart are optimists. They have a good understanding and high level of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and they are able to convince others about possibilities and opportunities, which transforms how people around them see the world – “how you frame it, gives it perspective”.

If you want positive results – you have to start with a positive outlook.

Along with optimism comes innovation and creativity. To be innovative, you need to be open to new ideas, possibilities, willing to take risks and able to encourage others to take risks. If you tend to have more of a pessimistic outlook, you tend to respond to new ideas and possibilities with “it will never work”, “we tried it before”.

Optimism affects the bottom line, for example –

• A study showed that new sales personnel at Metropolitan Life who scored high on a test on optimism sold 37 percent more life insurance in their first two years than pessimists (Seligman, 1990).
• Technical programmers demonstrating the top 10 percent of emotional intelligence competency were developing software three times faster than those with lower competency.
• A Dallas-based corporation indicated that productivity was 20 times greater among workers with higher emotional intelligence scores as compared with those scoring low in emotional intelligence
• A large hospital reduced turnover of critical-care nurses from 65 to 15 percent within 18 months of instituting an emotional intelligence screening assessment  (Poskey 2005)

Perhaps more significant are the countless studies that have shown that people with an optimistic outlook have healthier relationships, enjoy better mental and physical health and live longer.

So, are we born optimists or pessimists or can it be learned? Some of it comes naturally – according to leading psychologist Sonya Lyubormirsky, genetics accounts for about 50% of the variation in happiness across populations, 10% is affected by gender, ethnicity and the environment you are born into and the good news is the remaining 40% of how you view the world can be changed by differences in thought patterns and behaviors. By changing the way you see the world, you can become more productive, happy and healthier in life.

What helps increase your level of optimism is understanding perspective. Looking at problems and setbacks and putting things into perspective. Identify what you can change and proactivity find ways to do something about it. If you have no control over something, there is no point in worrying about it. Benjamin Franklin said, “While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us.”

It is also important to look for the possibilities and opportunities that present themselves in every adverse situation. We will be remembered not for the problems we faced, but for the decisions we made. The ‘silver lining’ does exist, if you look for it.

Encourage others to succeed, to be creative and to dream. We are often afraid to talk about our dreams, for fear of what others might say. We need to dream, we need to be innovative and not be afraid of new ideas. With creativity and innovation comes spontaneity – embrace it. Sometimes getting out of your comfort zone and being spontaneous can help develop an increased level of optimism.

Of course it is important to sometimes think negative thoughts, especially when there is a risk of serious negative consequences. It is not helpful for a pilot whose engines are failing to think “no worries, we’ll be fine”. It’s also not helpful for the same pilot to think “aargh, we are all going to crash” without exploring possibilities first.

Winston Churchill said: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

How do you see the world?

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When an obstacle or unexpected event jumps up and ‘slaps you in the face’, do you see it as a problem, a hassle? Does your life stop in its tracks? Of course! Most people will answer ‘yes’ because we are creatures who can think, plan and reason. But do we keep our eyes open for any opportunities that this obstacle or unexpected event might pose? Sorry, most of us don’t. We are too focused on the negative implications of the obstacle or event to remotely consider that anything positive might come of it – and that is where we need to change the way we think.

Opportunities present themselves regularly and although we are often faced with ‘mountains’ that loom up unexpectedly, we need to keep things in perspective and see possibilities in front of us.

How we frame the way we view our lives, gives it perspective. How we frame our problems, or tragic events, will give it perspective.

So I want you to do a small exercise – think about a current problem in your life – a reasonably large one. You are either worrying about it, trying to find a solution or decision or you have just been stopped in your tracks.

Now…

In order to put that problem in perspective, lets get ourselves into perspective. Think of the problem and when you are ready, click on the link here and see how your problem relates to the world around us.

Sure, your problem still exists, and it is affecting your life – but for a moment, just a moment, when you viewed the link, your problem appeared insignificant. Amazing wasn’t it!

Ok, that was a little light relief, but now it’s about getting the perspective right in your world. Only you can do that, by changing the way you think.

Did you know that we have on average 50,000 thoughts a day – and 80% of those a negative. With viewing the world slightly differently, viewing our problems slightly differently, we can reduce the number of negative thoughts a day and become, believe it or not, better performers. Research clearly shows that positive people have more fulfilled and happier lives and perform better in whatever they choose.

And guess what – if you just said “I can’t change the way I am” or you said “Oh, this is baloney” – that is a negative thought!!

Control those marbles!

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Sir Ken Robinson, who has to be one of my favourite speakers, gives his views on education and creativity, and when you hear him, you can’t help but agree with him – especially if you have children, because what he talks about – you see in your own children.

Have you seen how creative children are, compared to adults? But as they get older, they start to lose some of that creativity and divergent thinking. I agree with the idea that creativity is actually educated out of us as we get older, because the current education system model is designed to create ‘sameness’. I have always been a creative person, I am strongly a ‘red marble’ person – creative, innovative, full of ideas and easily distracted. I wanted to be an artist, from a very young age – but my father didn’t believe you could make a career out of it and never encouraged me.

As I once again pick up my paints, and sit at my easel, I realise how much harder it is for me to be as creative and innovative as I once was. I still have remnants of my creative self lurking somewhere in my brain and that is why I like being an ideas person – I love brainstorming ideas, mind mapping and exploring possibilities – but just like the red marble that I am – I also get easily distracted, and that is often not helpful.

A Painting I did in 2009

We are all creative and innovative. Whether it is fixing something, creating a recipe, finding a short cut or being an artist – we are creative and innovative beings.

So I urge all leaders, of teams, businesses, communities – to encourage your people to dream, look at possibilities, don’t be afraid of what other people will say, put the ideas on the table and see where it will take you. Imagine what we could achieve, if we all learned to once again be the creative creatures we were when we were little – anything was possible then – and it still could be.

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They surveyed 1,000 people in America – employees and bosses to find out what makes a “best boss”.

What I found very interesting is that those people surveyed were ask who, out of a pool of well-known people and celebrities, would they consider to be their ideal boss.

Well, number one was Oprah Winfrey 37%, followed by Barack Obama 35%.

Then take a look at some of the others in the group in order of the most popular –
Donald Trump – 28%
Michelle Obama – 26%
George W Bush – 19%
Arnold Schwarzenegger – 16%
Sarah Palin – 15%
Martha Stewart – 14%

with Simon Cowell even collecting 8% of the votes.

I am not sure what people consider the ‘traits’ of a good boss are!!

Is it being a ‘talk-show host’ type person, a leader, a billionaire who has done jail time or an entrepreneur renowned for his blunt, and controversial criticisms (this could be Donald Trump or Simon Cowell!).

1 out of 3 employees also thought they were smarter than their bosses but didn’t want their bosses jobs.

With the age of social media, although 61% of employees considered their boss as a friend, this didn’t extend to connecting with them on Facebook.  I personally don’t think connecting with your boss as a friend on Facebook is a wise idea.

The Adecco report goes further and explores the difference between what style of leadership employers think they demonstrate, compared to what style of leadership most employees think their managers demonstrate and then what style of leadership do employees most want.

Visionary, democratic and coaching came out high in the ‘want’ list, but lower in the ‘actual’ findings with many bosses believing they demonstrate a coaching style 29% whilst only 20% of employees actually witnessing this. Similarly, only 11 percent of bosses felt they exhibited a commanding leadership style while double that number – 23 percent – reported that was the style their boss most exhibited. In fact, more employees thought their bosses demonstrated commanding styles than any other leadership style. Bosses, on the other hand, thought they were being better coaches than they actually were.

If you are interested, read the report here.  This will take you to the Adecco Group site, click on ‘News’ and then “What Makes a Best Boss”.

What well-known personality, celebrity do you think would  make a good boss?

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New Zealand maintained its privileged position, ranked 5 out of 134 countries. The UK was ranked 15, USA 19 and Australia 23. New Zealand was ranked 5th behind Iceland who lead the way, then Norway, Finland and Sweden. Interesting that Scandanavia takes out the top placings followed by NZ.

NZ has maintained its 5th ranking over the last 4 years, improving its ranking from 7th in 2006.

In the main areas surveyed –

• Economic Participation and Opportunity – 9th
• Educational Attainment – 1st equal with 22 countries
• Health and Survival – 91
• Political Empowerment – 8

When looking at the Female to Male ratio in Economic Participation and Opportunity, we didn’t fare so well when comparing females to males in work as legislators, senior officials and managers, but high in work such as professional and technical workers.

NZ has a high female to male ratio in enrolment in Tertiary education.

In Health and Survival there were 37 countries ranked 1st equal. We were just under the equality score for female to male sex ratio and just on the equality score for life expectancy.

The interesting part was Political Empowerment because although we were ranked 8th in the world, we scored very low with female to male ratios in parliament, in ministerial positions and low scoring in years of having a female head of state (over the last 50), helped by having had 2 female PM’s as opposed to countries having none. But the gender gap is still very wide in this area, in NZ.

If we look at the ability of women to rise to positions of enterprise leadership in NZ, with 1 being the worst score and 7 the best, NZ scored 5.39

A very interesting report and a reminder that NZ should not be complacent. We ranked well overall, but had areas that definitely need improvement.

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Time and time again I have seen managers respond like c). They don’t want reprisals, they are pleased to get rid of that employee and so they don’t see it as necessary, to tell the truth.

Aren’t we then just passing on our problem to someone else. What happens if this person is a workplace bully? We know what destruction can be caused, we know the cost to a workplace – why do we ignore it?

I think many managers, especially in smaller organisations, avoid conflict and a difficult reference check can be seen as a form of conflict. They have to ‘tell it like it is’ and for many people, this is hard to do.

I believe that in order to be able to call yourself a ‘manager’ you need to understand the basic management principles, you need to be able to be firm but fair, consistent and approachable. Above all, you need to know how to ‘manage’ staff and that includes dealing with conflict, dealing with difficult employees and dealing with reference checks that also may be difficult.

What about that big question that is often asked – “would you hire this person again”. Why do so many managers say “Yes” when they mean “NO!”

I wonder how much we really can rely on reference checks – how can we get to the truth, how can we make sure our businesses don’t employ bullies or difficult staff.

Good reference checks, good interviewing techniques will help. Asking behavioural questions, asking for clarification if there is any doubt and asking for examples to help clarify – all this will help.

Identify and state what the issues were with that employee, and suggest to the prospective new employer what skill development would help this person succeed in a new environment.

Above all, we should be clear that if we are going to be asked to be a referee and give a reference check, we will be giving honest feedback.

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