Practice Relentless Optimism: Part 5 of High Performance Teams
Build Relentless Optimism is the ability to turn any event or experience into an opportunity to learn and get better. It allows teams to stay optimistic about what the future can be and what they can build in it. Leaders and teams who build Relentless Optimism view setbacks, adversity, and failures as opportunities to learn, and are open and honest about mistakes.
As adversity is an unavoidable part of business (and life), uncertainty, stress, and hardship can strike at any time. Whether it’s lost clients, new working relationships, difficult team members, lay-offs, or the most recent challenge, a pandemic, businesses are constantly facing new and difficult challenges. Relentless Optimism however, reframes these challenges into actions you can thrive off of. It is the ongoing practice of learning to frame your point of view to adapt to adversity and build resilience. It focuses on progress while facing adversity, failure, or stress. Instead of dwelling on the negative outcomes, a person begins to change their perspective on an issue. This includes focusing on future-oriented work for not only your employees but for you and the company. Leaders and teams who practice Relentless Optimism might ask themselves during a crisis: what opportunities are we being given to learn right now that we otherwise wouldn’t have got to learn? And how can we use these learnings to progress and move toward a better future?
In a team environment it’s essential to build in a structure that removes permanence. If an employee is pitching for a big client, and it doesn’t go well, there are two ways to handle the situation. One might be for their boss to say “this person can’t handle assignments like that”, you might even say this to yourself “I guess I’m not cut out for this”, but these are permanent assessments that are only based on one or two experiences (data points). Instead, a Relentless Optimist would see the lost client not as a failure, but as a lesson. A person with this mindset might ask themselves “What did I miss?” and or “How can we support this person better so that it doesn’t happen next time.” It is easy to call something a failure, but it’s not very productive. Re-shaping our mindset to pursue growth allows us to learn and better ourselves from almost every situation, as the old saying goes “smooth seas don’t make for skilled sailors.” and that includes removing our self-imposed limits as well.
Without this mindset you might also notice other consequences that start to hinder the team’s performance such as high stress, frustration and/or a lack of resilience. Your employees will become less receptive to feedback, or possibly even defensive, blaming others or external circumstances for a lack of performance or undesirable behaviour. This will result in an inability to pivot quickly or effectively, which will hinder any hints of innovation and create a complete lack of growth for the company and the people inside it.
But how do you start on developing Relentless Optimism? A great first step is to focus on being flexible to new ways of working. Invite your team to review strategies and plans even though they still might be working they might not be the only or the best way forward. Seeking open and honest feedback, and being willing to truly listen, is the mark of a leader who displays Relentless Optimism.