Practice Winning Behaviors:
Optimism is a Competitive Advantage
by Debra Russell, Executive Coach

Optimism is a winning behavior and a true competitive advantage for leaders in today’s environment. Leaders have tremendous impact on their organization – whether positive or negative.  Highly effective leaders however, have the ability to convince others of his or her capacity to achieve levels of performance beyond what he or she thought possible. They inspire the people in their organization to believe in an optimistic and attainable view of the future; they move others from the status quo to creating greater possibilities.

An optimistic leader versus a pessimistic leader - it's simply not a fair fight. Optimists tend to outperform pessimists in all respects.

Martin Seligman, Fox Leadership Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, is known as the father of the positive psychology movement. It is the groundbreaking research that he and his team have done in this arena that is very much shaping our world.

Over the last 30-40 years psychologists have studied the impact of our thoughts, expectations and beliefs on our behavior and research shows that people with an optimistic view tend to outperform pessimists in all respects.

Pessimists are up to 8 times more likely to become depressed when bad events occur; they do worse at school, sports, and most jobs than their talents would suggest; they have worse physical health and shorter lives; they have rockier relationships. Pessimists don't persist in the face of challenges, and therefore fail more frequently.

In The Leadership Advantage, an essay from the Drucker Foundation's Leader to Leader Guide, Warren Bennis tells us that optimism is one of the key things people need from their leaders in order to achieve positive results. Every "exemplary leader that I have met," writes Bennis, "has what seems to be an unwarranted degree of optimism - and that helps generate the energy and commitment necessary to achieve results."

Optimism or pessimism is not generally something a leader is born with – it’s a learned behavior and one you can practice and master.

ShareThis