On every battery there’s a positive and negative side. Energy gets transferred when the electrons are pulled from the negative over to the positive.
The concept felt oddly familiar. I quickly realized: It mirrors every team and organization on the planet.
The thing is, there’s no such thing as a perfect culture, a perfect team or even a perfect individual. We can’t be 100 percent optimistic every minute of every day. And that’s OK.
You will always have positive and negative energy within your organization. But you can build a resilient culture by intentionally developing leaders to act as conduits, pulling negative team energy over to the positive.
Now, if anyone has ever told you to “cheer up” or “calm down”—you might be thinking this approach will never work for your team.
Well, no. It definitely won’t work if we just tell people to look on the bright side. That’s not enough. We have to show them.
Better yet, we have to lead the way and inspire our team members to follow. We do that by actively listening and allowing a small space for negativity, while making positive thinking and constructive solutions the norm.
We might not always realize it, but our teams are taking cues from our behavior and our attitudes. They take note when we redirect negative talk or when we won’t indulge office gossip. They recognize how we calmly respond to confrontation. And they value when we discover innovative ways to resolve their issues.
When we lead by example, we build a culture everyone can enjoy.
In what way is your team intentionally building the culture you want? And how are you working to transfer negative energy over to the positive?
Jason V. Barger is a globally celebrated keynote speaker, leadership coach and author of Thermostat Cultures, Step Back from the Baggage Claim and ReMember. He is founder of Step Back Leadership Consulting, a Columbus-based company that works with businesses and organizations worldwide. Connect via email at jason@JasonVBarger.com or on social media at @JasonVBarger.
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