In our last blog we began to look at positive leadership. This is a relatively new area in leadership development. It derives from the positive psychology field and much of it is based on the work of Professor Kim Cameron at the University of Michigan. Their website https://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/ is an excellent resource and well worth browsing as many of their concepts fit well in a church environment.
Marcella Bremer, https://www.ocai-online.com/blog/positive-leadership-why-its-crucial-for-organizational-change, defines positive leadership as having an open eye for “positive possibilities.” In this mindset, you “enjoy the challenge to perform beyond expectations” to live up to your greatest potential.
There is an excellent article on the Michigan website that succinctly looks at 4 strategies of positive leadership. https://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/Glance-Leading-Positively.pdf. We will attempt to begin to summarize that work in this blog.
The four strategies are: enabling a positive climate, enabling positive relationships, enabling positive meaning, and enabling positive meaning. Let’s look at these in a bit more detail.
Positive Relationships
Your energy as a leader is critical to the energy of your team. People’s behaviors tend to emulate their leader. They will pick up on your energy and reflect it to others as well. If you are negative, they will assume a negative behavior is expected and that will permeate the environment and become the culture. Obviously, you cannot be “up” all the time but in general you should be a positive force. You should also seek out positive team members and support their efforts. Place them on visible tasks or in visible roles so others can see that is the behavior that should be imitated and will be rewarded.
Positive Communication
Research has shown that one factor in an organization is more than twice as powerful as any other factor. That factor is the ratio of positive to negative comments. There will be times when a negative comment is required to address certain issues, but the best performing groups hear on average 5.6 positive comments for every negative one. When that ratio drops to 1.85 to 1, the group drops to medium levels of performance. In poor performing organizations, there was 1 positive comment for every 3 negative ones.
Positive feedback strengthens relationships and results in higher levels of team cohesion. It emphasizes individual’s talents and positive attributes which leads to higher capabilities and performance. Supportive communication is a means by which one can deliver negative feedback in a constructive manner. This includes authentic feedback that is not judgmental. Comments should be focused on the problem, not the person. Examples of specific problematic behavior should be provided to help communicate the concern. Finally, as in all good communication, active listening is essential so that a productive exchange can occur.
Our next blog will continue in this area, and we will focus on enabling positive meaning. We will then see how these actions and behaviors collectively create an overall positive climate which will result in optimal performance and productivity. This is not necessarily simple to accomplish especially if you tend to be a more negative person naturally, but the rewards will far outweigh the effort required.