Positive energy is one of the keys to naturally achieving massive success while sustaining success individually and collectively. When I talk about positive energy, I’m not talking about the high bounce-off-the-walls energy — the type of positive energy I am talking about is sincere and genuine enthusiasm. This idea of energy plays directly in my views on how to show positive leadership.
We all know people with positive energy when they walk into the conference room or walk into a locker room; they just lift the spirits of everybody around. People with positive energy offer hope and allow others to access their positivity. Don’t be the leader who walks around under a raincloud only concerned about spotting the organization’s problems. Be someone that your team is eager to be around because of your enthusiastic attitude towards seeking solutions.
It starts in the morning when you wake up; your first choice every single day is ‘what is my attitude going to be?’ You are deciding whether to allow your circumstances today to define you or whether to control where you focus your mind and your attention. People often think they’re in their own little world, but you affect everybody you come into contact with that day — and your energy, whether positive or negative, impacts and influences others.
My favorite saying by self-development expert Dr. Wayne Dyer is ‘when I changed the way I looked at things, the things I looked at began to change.’ So, when you wake up in the morning, what is the attitude you’re going to choose? Are you going to see obstacles or opportunities? Because your choice contributes to whether you project that positive energy critical for elite leaders.
Servant Leadership Mindset
One of the things that helps tremendously with fostering positive leadership is having a servant mindset, which goes right back to positive energy. Because at the very heart of positive energy lie;
- Empathy
- Caring
- Sincerity
As a servant leader, when you go into a team meeting, you should be listening to understand because in doing so, you’re conveying a positive message to the people that work with you that you really do care about what they’re saying. You’re sending out a message that you appreciate the value that your team adds with the positive energy that you share.
Something that helped me sustain success, regardless of what industry I was in, was the resiliency I built up alongside my team. We achieved it through our commitment to having a positive attitude and operating with positive energy day in and day out to the best of our ability.
When you’re conscious of your purpose, and you live that purpose out every day, it allows you to keep dialing into that positive energy. None of us have an excuse as to why we cannot live each and every day providing positive energy to everybody involved in our world. It is so crucial to creating the environment and the culture that you want within your organization and to maximizing the contribution that you can make to your team and in all your relationships.
As we get older, we start to understand the difference between resume virtues and eulogy. Virtues, which I read about in a phenomenal book called The Road to Character by David Brooks, are defined as the things that really matter in life. Your resume virtues are your title, your roles, your accomplishments, the metrics that you hit, and the great positions that you had. But your eulogy, virtues are the relationships, the impact, the influence, and the legacy you’ve built.
Positive Leadership in the Face of Adversity
We all have a choice in terms of our attitude, but we also have a choice when adversity strikes us, or we fail, or something unexpected happens. And that’s how we are going to respond in a way that demonstrates personal resilience and positive leadership. It is critical to react positively to challenges and look towards a solution rather than dwelling on the problems. I promise you if you attack if you run to the fight every single day with each challenge that you have, with positive energy, your outcome is going to be much better.
You’re going to experience more incredible success than you would if you just approached things with nonchalance, or even worse, with a negative attitude.
How to show positive leadership is a critical point to understand when times are challenging, so for further information and advice on honing your leadership skills, check out the rest of the blog series or tune in to The Athletics of Business podcast, where I discuss all aspects of leadership with a variety of inspiring leaders from the world of sports and business.
