Mindset Matters – cultivating a Positive Attitude for personal and professional growth
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”
Small steps lead to big changes
Challenges and competition are just the way of life, especially if there is ambition to continue progressing our career, whether it’s sales targets, climbing the corporate ladder or launching a new business.
Is it as simple as expect the best and the best will come? Is it as simple as continuously being optimistic and happy? Being happy helps, but it doesn’t guarantee results.
It’s more about being realistically optimistic, not getting deluded with their own potential and the potential of the situation. Secondly, it’s having the resilience to bounce back if things go badly.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst, learn from mistakes and celebrate small victories enough to recognise them but not to leave you with a hangover tomorrow.
What is the science between professional optimisation and a positive attitude?
The science of a positive attitude on optimised performance
Investigating positive attitudes and physiological effects highlights real connection and interesting opportunities for optimizing professional performance.
Here’s some key takeaways detailing how positive thinking influences our physiology, neurotransmitters, neuroplasticity, and overall health, each underlining the importance of a positive outlook in enhancing workplace productivity.
Creating a learning culture
One of the great contradictions in life is we are mostly at our happiest when we are learning new things and putting them into practice. Yet kids hate school! More so, as adults, we stop doing new things and our rate of development slows.
In practice? The willingness to try, fail and not be fussed.
“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
Nelson Mandela
We need a continuous learning culture for ourselves, our teams and the organisations we work in.
For individuals, we need to make time and resources available for learning. The most important skill they need to learn? How to learn. Not just the content hand, but how to absorb it and apply it. Don’t give them a fish, show them how to catch one.
Organisations may amplify this by building in personal development plans as part of performance review systems and ideologies. Helping staff improve their resumes will keep then the in the organisation, not drive them away. Meanwhile, they do better work.
Psychological safety is a big part of learning. Most learning happens through reflections of our mistakes, but no one wants to make a mistake in front of the boss.
For the boss – when they see a mistake, can the first response be “okay, this has happened, what are you going to do with it?” and help support the remediation effort.
High-Performance Mindset: Foundation for Success
A high-performance mindset ,be it individual or collective organisational, is characterized by goal setting, resilience, and a positive outlook, even when faced with challenges. Best results are achieved through an integrated approach where CEOs and leaders align personal achievement and organizational growth.
“Under the sword lifted high, there is hell making you tremble. But go ahead, and you have the land of bliss”
But remember that results or reactions only come with action. We have to do things, even if we are a bit scared. Until we do, its all talk.
Role models for reality
It’s essential that business owners look for role models not just for themselves, but their team and their company. Why can’t a company aspire to be as good as another one?
Sports teams do it all the time. Another term for it: gap analysis. Find who’s doing it better and see what they are doing differently.
Role models can help us in numerous ways to stay positive and achieve our potential :-
When our role models are true to their goals, it highlights that our own practice should align to our vision and values.
Role models with open minds, resilience and a forward thinking approach show us the way to innovation.
Aspirational moral models, whether they are our higher self or the sage, ignite and ignore inspire the individual dreams the greatness.
Positive role models not only give encouragement and support, but they regularly seek it. It’s a two-way street of guidance, advice, and feedback.
Organisational optimism enhancers
Optimising professional and organisational performance needs to foster realistic optimism, stimulate creative thinking and have flexibility around notions of success and progress.
aim for progress
By weaving this into the organisational fabric, leaders can pave the way for both personal and professional growth across the organization.
But in the end, it’s all about kaizen
Kaizen is an idea that it’s been deconstructed and reconstructed endlessly over the ages. Put simply it means a philosophy of continuous, incremental and change for the better.
But organisations focus on big wins, and very seldom speak about “how about we aim to be just a little bit better tomorrow than we are today”.
Yet it’s simpler, cheaper and easier to grasp then big picture initiatives. In this context, it encourages employees to look for ways to enhance their own performances and processes constantly, and if they are correctly incentivised with connection to organisational improvement, the winds will be massive.
Through a mechanism of regular reflection, kaizen facilitates a culture at all levels of an organisation where feedback is valued, mistakes are taken as opportunities for growth. Kaizen and a growth mindset go hand-in-hand.
Imagine if you created an environment where every employee improved by only 1% every month? What would that do for your top, middle and bottom line?