Leadership - Be positive - attitude
Be positive - attitude
Reaching your potential
The right attitude will have a big impact on anything that you do.
If you think of any friend that you have and consider what it is about them that you admire it is a fair be that you will come up with a characteristic that reflects their attitude to things.
Throughout life there will be many ups and downs. In general, your path in life will depend about 10% on what events happen to you and about 90% on how you react to them. A positive attitude can get you over a lot of disappointments in life.
Becoming a leader requires many attributes and a positive attitude is a must. Without this you will be unlikely to achieve any worthwhile vision.
You may be clever, you may have a lot of experience but without the right attitude you will not use these skills to reach your full potential.
Some of the leading reasons for dismissals are down to poor attitude.
As a leader you can improve results by having a positive attitude to your workforce.
If you instil belief in your team then it is very likely they will raise their own performance and produce results better then they may have expected otherwise.
If people believe they are the best they will often perform like the best.
Responsibility
It is not up to someone else to instil a good attitude in you.
Only you can consider the way you approach problems and improve if necessary.
As a leader a good attitude from yourself will spread to your followers and a bad attitude will spread even more rapidly.
You will need to consider your attitude in several areas:
- Your career and general ambition.
- Your work colleagues.
- How you coach and work with people.
- Time management (see ‘The Complete Time management package’).
- Company procedures.
Its very easy to adopt wrong attitudes based upon life’s experiences.
As a leader you have a responsibility to the people who follow you.
Many spend a lot of time on cultivating their external image rather than their internal attitudes.
Plan your approach
Attitudes derive from particular behaviours and in turn from particular feelings.
If you are angry your response may be to shout. This will lead to a negative attitude.
Once you can identify the route cause of a problem you can consider the correct behaviour by thinking through to a desired outcome.
As a leader you want to influence people in a particular direction.
You want them to go in that direction willingly.
Before anyone will carry out a task they must have the skill and they must have the correct attitude.
For the latter timing is important.
For success you must be able to instil a positive attitude.
It is well known that a positive attitude will greatly help the chances of success.
Motivation of people is often a critical issue [see The Complete Motivation package].
Sometimes you can overwork a problem.
It is often best to just ‘have a go’ at something and see how it turns out rather than trying to over analyse a situation.
Many issues are not as bad as they seem once you have started on resolving them.
This is particularly true of ‘tasks’ that we know we don’t like.
Basically, we look for excuses for putting them off.
Good attitudes are acquired by carrying out correct actions repeatedly.
A single occurrence of an action is not really an expression of attitude.
Until it is repeated and becomes a habit it does not translate into an attitude.
Attitudes need cultivation.
Over a period of time you can modify negative attitudes with positive ones.
You must think constantly about the way you approach your actions.