The importance of being positive

Automotive Design & Production, Oct, 2004 by Ted Pollock

How you view yourself, your colleagues and your company can help or hinder your career. If, for example, you cannot respect the other person's point of view, your chances of working together harmoniously are substantially reduced.

If you are reluctant to give, or share, credit with others, they will not be anxious to work with you.

In short, positive attitudes are crucial to personal success. Four of the most important are:

1. A realistic outlook.

2. A positive approach to problems.

3. The habit of questioning the status quo.

4. Flexibility.

So important are these, they deserve some examination.

A REALISTIC OUTLOOK. As in life itself, in business it can be exceedingly dangerous to avoid reality. Problems do not disappear simply because we ignore them. Promotions do not materialize out of the blue through wishful thinking.

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Although occasionally it is good strategy to emphasize the positive aspects of an essentially negative situation, don't accept only rosy interpretations of harsh facts. The more you allow yourself to stray from reality, the harder it is to see things as they truly are. And if you build your work on faulty premises, your work product is bound to suffer.

A POSITIVE APPROACH. If you are convinced that you cannot do something, it's 10 to 1 that you will fail. It doesn't follow that the reverse is always true--that if you simply believe you can do something, you will succeed. But self-confidence certainly helps.

Given two employees of similar abilities--one who always finds reasons why something cannot possibly be done and one who approaches a project or a problem positively--managers will be more inclined to give the tougher assignments and ultimately greater responsibility to the "tryer," not the "cryer."

THE HABIT OF QUESTIONING THE STATUS QUO. Unless you question the way things are done today, you are unlikely to devise ways of doing them better tomorrow. It's as simple as that.

Employees who do what is expected of them--but no more--are quickly identified as merely competent, not contenders for any dramatic upward movement. Senior management is not looking for acceptance of Things-As-They Are in their people. They are looking for individuals with critical and experimental attitudes, who are in the habit of questioning old policies and are constantly alert to better ways. If you do not habitually examine your work environment with a view toward improving it, you will never be given the opportunity to try.

FLEXIBILITY. Employees, supervisors or managers who formed specific attitudes early in their careers and still live by them are frequently admired for having the courage of their convictions. But if they cannot revise their ideas under changing conditions, they are probably murdering other people's good ideas and morale in general.

Dealing successfully with changing business conditions requires, above all, flexibility. That is, we must keep our minds open and receptive to new ideas and trends. Problems are always changing. Why shouldn't solutions as well?

Of course, it's important to differentiate between flexibility and wishy-washiness. The inability to reach a conclusion after hearing both sides of a story is not flexibility. It's indecisiveness. Your best safeguard is to keep yourself up-to-date and informed on issues. Listen carefully and critically to others' ideas. Read widely, both inside and outside your field. And police the tendency to jump to conclusions.

Getting Through Those "Summer-Is-Over" Blues

You've put the last of the vacation snapshots into your album ... stored the outdoor grill ... and noticed that the days are growing shorter. You feel all right, but something is wrong.

It's not you. It's the turning of the seasons. Of all the changes we experience annually, the change from summer to fall is probably the most difficult to get through, for it is then that we have to gear back up for the "real world."

To minimize the trauma:

Recognize the problem. Understand that, while some make the transition more easily than others, there is a period of adjustment for everybody.

See the year as a continuum, with one season paving the way for the next. In a sense, although summer is over, it is also on its way back.

Consider the joys of fall. Brisk weather, crystal clear nights, Thanksgiving--these are just a few of autumn's delights. Every season has its charms and if it's time to rake the leaves, this also marks the end of having to mow the lawn.

Get involved in some project at work that will absorb you so completely that you won't have time to mope over the departure of summer.

When Rumors Sweep Your Company

"They're going to automate the whole plant."

"That foreign outfit is buying us out and closing this facility."

"They're cutting out all bonuses."

It's been said that a lie can race around the world while the truth is still lacing its boots.

Rumors can be created by the misinterpretation of facts by employees, or by boredom, anxiety, wish-fulfillment, frustration, etc.--almost any human frailty. And some can be extremely costly. What can you do about them?