What can the Olympics teach you about Leadership?
 "Wow, I can't believe I fell in that competition, I never fall like that," so said Olympic Gold Medalist, Paul Hamm when he fell off the vault during the All-Around Men's Gymnastics final and moved to 12th place. Here's an athlete who does not give up in the face of a setback. He lets his misfortune motivate him to greatness.
Athletes are conditioned to think optimistically. This means they are trained to see bad events as temporary and therefore changeable. Good events are seen by optimists as permanent. While an optimist describes a specific aspect of a bad event, pessimists tend to generalize making the events universally bad.
After the men's gymnastics team qualifying meet where they scored low, Katie Couric of NBC Today Show asked if they were worried about their problems on the pommel horse. The response, "Not at all, it motivates us to achieve tomorrow night." The bad event is temporary, and in fact is reframed into a positive. The difference between optimism and pessimism is that of hope or despair.
| Analyze your own language. An optimistic explanatory style should be used for both adverse and positive events. For example, "We are all washed up," sends a pessimistic permanent message. It's over. |
The importance of this lesson to leaders is substantial. Leaders who leverage optimism to achieve results bring their followers a sense of inspiration and hope. This can increase loyalty, trust and profitability.
Analyze your own language. An optimistic explanatory style should be used for both adverse and positive events. For example, "We are all washed up," sends a pessimistic permanent message. It's over. "We always have trouble getting things through the FDA." This statement uses universal language which again leaves little hope. Instead, try "We're all exhausted. Let's try to figure out later why the FDA did not approve this thing and get them the information they need."
The number one reason people give up is they believe in the permanence of the bad event. People who resist helplessness believe bad events are merely temporary setbacks or challenges to overcome.
For good events just the opposite approach should be taken by leaders. Where the universal statement is a negative in a bad event it is a positive in a good event. Don't discount an effort by describing your team as "lucky" or having a "good day" rather talk in general, universal terms. "With a team like ours, I knew we would succeed."
Optimists believe good events will enhance everything they do while pessimists think good events relate to specific factors.
As a leader try to find permanent and universal causes for good events and temporary, specific causes for misfortune. Recently I coached a leader through a 360 feedback report that was fairly critical. She felt overwhelmed and generalized, "Maybe I am in the wrong career, maybe I should quit." By analyzing the data and coaching the leader we determined there were two or three specific things that people were upset about and reframed the feedback. It became a motivator. By our next meeting, she was totally optimistic and challenged to tackle the changes she had to make.
Whether your challenges are Olympic proportion or on a smaller scale, Leadership Solutions can coach based on positive psychology so you can gain the advantages of a world-class athlete.
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