What Optimists Know about Success

Great leaders know that optimism is more than just being cheerful: it’s the basis for becoming wildly successful. Here’s how.

This week marks our first month of “focus topics” each week, starting with Leading Yourself in this week’s Coaching Call #18. Leaders take personal behaviors seriously - like ethics, commitment, emotional intelligence, and integrity. Let’s take a closer look at the one trait that research shows both feels good and produces terrific returns: Optimism.

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Always look on the bright side of life

Sometimes, the best advice is the simplest - and the brightest.

Of all the things that go into great leadership, what’s the most important? Knowledge, emotional intelligence, commitment, drive and a dozen more come to mind. But almost nothing has done more for me over the years than a consistent desire to see the bright side of life.

Even during the most difficult of times.

Optimism gets you where you want to be

As I said in this week’s call, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being pollyannaish about life: After all, an extra dose of pessimism is an awful alternative! Nor is there any evidence that being overly optimistic leads to naivety or impracticality. I’ve found that negativity is more likely to lead to paralysis and defeat, for those who emphasize risks over rewards.

So, where do you want to go, as a leader? Or a better question to ask is:

Who do you want to be every day?

The seeds of success

After our call, I was reflecting on optimism as a leadership super-power, especially for explaining difficult moments. Pessimists are at a serious disadvantage: They see problems as persistent, pervasive, and even personal in nature - leaving themselves powerless and drained. Optimists, on the other hand, treat problems as occasional happenstances, mostly beyond their control or fault, and almost always out of the ordinary. Optimists enjoy an inclination to believe troubles will be quickly overcome and set aside.

Such an optimistic superpower helps leaders face hurdles like change, competition, innovation, and setbacks as little more than slight delays on their manifest road to success.

Optimism can be replicated, too

Interestingly, optimism isn’t just a lucky trait in our heads. It can be taught to others, too. A recent article on leadership characteristics found measurable business effects when managers actively nurtured desirable character traits in others around them, including:

Integrity
Self-awareness
Determination
Empathy
Courage
Optimism
Curiosity/open-mindedness

Researchers found evidence that while such traits made a significant difference in a leader’s ability to make decisions and drive strategic outcomes, they mattered equally to people performing at every level of an organization.

In other words, the more these powerful traits were spread around, the stronger the entire group’s performance.

Making optimism a multiplier

It turns out that nurturing optimism in others - teaching them optimistic ways to solve problems and conduct themselves - is an amplifier of the leader’s own virtues.

“Leaders can do far more than just make their own behavior more ethical. Because they are responsible for the decisions of others as well as their own, they can dramatically multiply the amount of good they do by encouraging others to be better.” (Emphasis added) —Max H. Bazerman, Harvard Business School, A New Model for Ethical Leadership

Turning optimism into a replicable set of intentional success skills is as powerful as teaching people additional skills, information, or new technology.

Especially when the Boss is away

In fact, optimism may matter most when dealing with organizations of highly empowered people working at a distance from the leader. Sound familiar? It should, because that’s exactly the model of today’s real estate brokerage: groups of independent salespeople making real-time decisions from their homes, cars, coffee shops, and on the road.

But can you teach optimism?

Definitely! But it will take more than a video clip and laminated job-aid to make it stick. Optimism is taught on the job, not in the classroom. It’s cultural, not computational - so don’t expect an algorithm to do it for you, either.

That’s because optimism is a trait, not a skill:
You don’t memorize it. You internalize it.

Teaching optimism, then, requires the same approach to passing your culture on to new hires and clients: through feedback, practice, and coaching. This means leaders must create an environment in which optimism becomes people’s default behavior by doing these three things:

1. Normalize optimism as a way of working. Bring optimism into the ordinary language of your organization. Make it natural for people to “apply” optimism in conversation, like,

   How does optimism apply here?
   What can an optimistic view of the data tell us?
   What would an optimistic response look like to this situation?

   Turn it into a diagnostic and productivity tool, like other desirable processes. Make it a best practice to apply it, as in,

   Let’s address this customer’s feedback honestly and optimistically.

   What optimistic outcomes of making a change produce? and so on.

2. Praise and reinforce optimism in daily life. Consistently recognize and reward optimistic behaviors to send the signal that it’s not just nice, but profitable. Praise external events as well, to highlight a wider context for positivity. Watch for ways people solve problems, collaborate, and interact with clients. Amplify optimistic feedback in personnel reviews and from customer testimonials. Position optimism in your marketing to turn it into an expectation for clients, too.

3. Integrate optimism into systems and culture. Build optimism into everyday activities like meetings and recruiting interviews. Use assessments (like the Learned Optimism Test) to objectively measure levels of optimism and identify ways to improve it. For example, one New England firm measured the relationship between their managers’ optimism and salespeople’s engagement: higher optimism drove increased collaboration, with a positive impact on talent retention and productivity. Add optimism surveys and self-assessments to recruiting, onboarding, training, and coaching systems. Even an “optimism bias” in internal communications and social media posts will ripple across your results.

How will you know optimism is making a difference?

Here are six ways to see the results of optimism in action.