Warning! This post takes Herculean discipline to consistently follow.
it is written primarily for anyone in a team leadership role but the approach is easily transferable to personal or other work situations.
Imagine this is your current situation…..
- You have been tasked with achieving an objective
- You have been clear with your team what needs to be achieved
- You have asked the team if they need any support and they have said they are fine
- You feel as though You have done your part of the job
- In fact you might even feel You can do no more
After the above is embedded, the first results arrive and they are as impressive as Darth Vadar advertising a new asthma inhaler
- You are now under increased pressure
- You are now more emotional / even angry
- After all You could not have done any more
- You now decide to get the team together with an agenda to ‘rattle some cages’
You deliver your JFDI message and leave the team to get it sorted……
- Holy Cheese! you start to see immediate progress that very day….. Strong words, fighting talk and rattling cages must work – This is simple and brilliant
- A few days later the performance drops again so you rattle again – After all past evidence points to it being the wonder cure for all 1st world problems
- This cycle continues usually with the cage being rattled by you harder and harder
- Long term you start to burn out and over time people gravitate into 4 default overidding behaviours usually related to their confidence and commitment levels
- Here are the 4 behaviours – Demotivated, Defensive, Confrontational and Immune
I have put this into a simple grid so you can visualise the 4 behaviours….
I have coined it Silly’s Big Balls Give a Shit-ometer
Trust you agree the 4 behaviours mentioned above are usually not attributed to long term successful and happy teams…..
In addition, can’t see people chanting the mantra…. ‘I strive to be defensive’ catching on
So as the title of this post states How can being more positive rattle more cages?
- Conversely, positivity within the whole team actually makes people take more responsibility. If the team is doing well and I am not, it must be me! What do I need to do? Who do I need to help? How do I contribute more?
- Negativity kills commitment and confidence, Positivity grows commitment and confidence. I’m not aware of the superhero Captain Crap!
- Positivity is easier to find than you think. Even if it is where you have gone from mega cac to cac – Celebrate the progress
- If you are negative all the time and there is actually a big issue, there is no frame of reference to connect the team when the real moments of truth arise
- Resist the temptation when you have a challenge and are emotional to tar everyone with the same brush. You must go into the detail and assess where the biggest opportunity lies
- Whilst I am an advocate of creating strong positivity at group level this is complemented by looking specifically at performance and contacting individuals who are off the pace to support and challenge
it’s easy to say don’t get stressed or emotional/ As an added extra, here is what I do when I am frustrated with team performance or under pressure…
Final thought! I was shown this at a recent training event and it really stuck with me. Look at the picture below and answer the question
Most people point out with a smug grin that 4×4 =16, not 15!
They are absolutely right. What they fail to miss is that 75% of the sums above are actually correct. This is because most people are conditioned to look for what is wrong not what is right. It is much easier to mine for positivity than yu thank (deliberate lol)… You just have to start looking for it!
