“If you don’t think every day is a good day, just try missing one.” – Cavett Robert
Being a leader is difficult. You get bombarded with questions and requests and complaints. You’re asked to make decisions that no one else wants to make. You’re responsible for organizational outcomes, even if you didn’t necessarily have any direct involvement in whatever was going on. And no matter how you handle all of those things, some segment of your population – employees, customers, you name it – isn’t going to be happy.
One of the results of that is that a lot of leaders seem to be perpetually “down”. They rarely smile, they seem exhausted, they’re maybe even a little prickly to be around. They can seem defensive, and a lot of them can get very negative about the environment they’re dealing with or even the organization they lead.
All of that is totally understandable – and not acceptable. As a leader, you cannot allow yourself to be a pessimist. You cannot be the person who grumbles, who complains all the time, who always has some kind of negative or sarcastic comment.
I’m not suggesting you ignore difficult realities. You have to be very clear and very honest about whatever challenges you and your organization are facing, whether they involve people, markets, competitors, whatever. You can’t put your head in the sand and act like those challenges aren’t there.
But when you talk about those challenges, you need to talk about them from the perspective of success. Yes, we have this difficult thing to deal with – how are we going to handle it in the most constructive way possible? How are we going to take a difficult situation and make it turn out to our benefit? How are we going to leap over this hurdle and hit the ground running on the other side?
Think about how you speak to others inside (and outside) your organization. Are you the person who’s always complaining? Are you the person who always points out everything that’s wrong or difficult? Are you the person who sees a difficult situation and announces that there’s just nothing that can be done so why bother?
If that sounds even a little bit like you, then you’ve got work to do. Real leaders cannot think or act or speak that way. No matter how difficult it is, no matter how much you want to go down the negativity rabbit hole, you need to have the strength and the discipline to stop yourself.
Everyone in your organization feeds off of your energy. If that energy is negative and pessimistic, the rest of the organization will be the same way. Be the leader that lifts everyone up, not the one that drags everyone down.
