The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful gesture. Cool thought from Ken Langone. We are all very aware of the impact of a positive attitude at work on the performance of employees. Don’t you often want to know or refresh the secrets of building and sustaining employees positive attitude at work?
Before I give you the ways to build and sustain employees positive attitude, let me tell you a story about the attitude of a friend of mine.
He desired that his role in life was to do work to make a difference in people’s lives. For the first 20 years, he worked in television news, believing in the people’s right to know.
For the past six years, he has been in the field of education, helping teachers and their students.
He recognized he realized he had solid problem-solving skills and the strong belief in a positive attitude during his freshmen year after he went to the soup kitchen in Parkersburg to serve food to the less fortunate.
He felt that he needed to do something more, so he implemented his idea that when everybody moved out of perishable food away, students could put it in a box, and he would take it to the local food bank so it could feed the poor.
He ended up gathering about six carloads of canned and dry food help feed the poor that would have otherwise been thrown away. This reinforced his belief and desire to make a difference and continually focus on his outgoing attitude.
His leadership skills were called into question by his first evaluation as a district manager and he was rated much lower than ever been before. This taught him that after having been promoted to a new position, he needed to learn a lot more.
Determined to never again get a low rating, he learned as much as he possibly could, and this quest for knowledge, continuous learning, and a sustained positive attitude became the driving force behind his overall career.
Related post: Building Collaboration and Sharing Skills in your Staff
Here is one more very short story to illustrate the importance of a person’s positive attitude and influence. You will perhaps have heard this very old story illustrating the difference between positive thinking and negative thinking:
Many years ago two salesmen were sent by a British shoe manufacturer to Africa to investigate and report back on market potential.
The first salesman reported back, “There is no potential here – nobody wears shoes.”
The second salesman reported back, “There is massive potential here – nobody wears shoes.”
This simple short story provides one of the best examples of how a single situation may be viewed in two quite different ways – negatively or positively.
We could explain this also in terms of seeing a situation’s problems and disadvantages, instead of its opportunities and benefits.
When telling this story its impact is increased by using exactly the same form of words (e.g., “nobody wears shoes”) in each salesman’s report. This emphasizes that two quite different interpretations are made of a single situation.
If you are in a business where you deal with people on a regular basis, like we are, your motivation and attitude need to be in ‘top gear’ (as it will usually impact most issues of the day).
By spending 5-10 minute at the beginning of each work day reading and thinking of the items in the following simple checklist, we find our employees are the best they can be for the day’s activities:
Listen … before speaking and listen more than you speak.
You can only help people … who want to be helped.
Appreciate and respect … differences in others.
Don’t waste your energy … on negative people or situations.
You can’t predict the future … so why think that you can.
You won’t please everyone … don’t worry about those you don’t.
Not everyone you meet … is going to like you.
Only YOU … control your destiny. Take initiative on your own behalf.
It is not always worth it … to get the last word.
Smiles … matter
Employees positive attitude … strangers … are friends in waiting
And most important … just breathe.
Remember … the pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. By focusing on a positive daily attitude we are much more inclined to be the optimist and find the opportunity, aren’t we?
