Strong Leadership Needs Attitude

By Mark Fulton

In my last column, I wrote about the importance of cultivating a positive mental attitude if you want to harvest a bumper crop of appreciation, admiration and affection from your colleagues. While a PMA is a valuable virtue for anyone who earns a paycheck, it is particularly indispensable to individuals who are responsible for leading others.

It seems obvious that a leader should exude cheerfulness, confidence, enthusiasm and expectancy. Corporate captains are expected to stick their chins into the wind, look for fair skies and smile in the face of foul weather. No one wants to set sail with a sourpuss; Captain Ahab need not apply. Yet many people in leadership positions fail to recognize the impact their attitude has on everyone aboard.

The following tips are offered to those who now or someday expect to take the helm of a department, division or company and boldly go where no group has gone before.

• “Assume a virtue, if you have it not,” Hamlet says in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Not that Hamlet’s fate is one you’d want to emulate, but the principle he articulates is sound. Think about a leader whose attitude you admire. Assume the attitude that leader would exhibit if he or she were leading your group. Simulating the positive outlook and demeanor of a person you esteem will help you make those habits part of your management style.
• Let your words lead the way to your goals. In his book Love and Profit: The Art of Caring Leadership, James Autry shows that positive comments have a powerful effect on co-workers. “In the workplace, words are our most frequent tool,” he writes, “and the leader’s words can work magic, can change the environment, the work and the morale, and can create a whole new way of thinking.” Upbeat, caring and encouraging words promote enthusiasm, initiative and loyalty among your people.
• Treat every person with whom you come in contact as the most important person on the planet at that moment. “You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you,” wrote Dale Carnegie. Although your goal is not necessarily to make friends with your staff, show a genuine concern for their lives and give them the full measure of your attention when you are interacting with them. In other words, give the people who work for you the same attention that you would like them to give you.
• Cultivate empathy toward others. “Empathy represents the foundation skill for all the social competencies important for work,” writes Daniel Goleman in his book Working with Emotional Intelligence. He defines empathy as sensing what others feel without their saying so. Leaders must be examples of empathy if they expect to see it in others. Coupled with a PMA, empathy engenders a compassionate workplace where people seek first to understand before trying to be understood. One of the big payoffs of empathy in the office is that it often spills over into relationships with customers and vendors. Nobody loses when empathy is the cornerstone of your corporate style.
• Celebrate regularly. Why do people look forward to office parties with such eagerness? I believe it’s because they get a chance to share a spirit of celebration, joy and camaraderie that makes a department of co-workers seem more like a family. Unfortunately, we often relegate celebration to employee birthday luncheons and company picnics rather than looking for opportunities to kick up our heels on a regular basis. Staff meetings are excellent occasions for recognizing and showing appreciation for attitudes and behaviors that build team spirit. Bob Nelson’s book, 1001 Ways to Reward Employees, is an excellent book for finding ways to celebrate accomplishments large and small.

Effective leaders should not only exhibit a positive mental attitude, they also should look for it in others. In fact, I think it should be one of the criteria for employee advancement. Someone who is cheerful, confident, enthusiastic and expectant will naturally attract success the way Jerry Springer attracts weirdos.

Positive self-starters typically make teams more productive. They bring an energy to their work that automatically sets a high standard for everyone else. Find one and promote him or her - and watch what happens.

You may be thinking that it just isn’t your nature to be positive. Maybe you’re a graduate of the Ebenezer Scrooge School of Personnel Management. Or perhaps you make Woody Allen look like a raving optimist. Don’t despair. Even famously negative people have their moments of PMA.

Soon we’ll be bidding a sad farewell to one of America’s most beloved worrywarts, Charles Schultz’s Charlie Brown. But even the perennially pessimistic Charlie Brown has taken a stab at PMA: “I’ve developed a new philosophy,” he says in one comic strip. “I only dread one day at a time.”

Beginning is half way to winning. If Charlie Brown can do it, so can you.

Copyright 1999 © Mark S. Fulton