STOP MOANING! If you or your team wants to succeed, the message is clear.
OK, The fun (and the stress!) of Christmas has passed. We start 2012 with all our hopes and aspirations before us and then the dark days hang around, it’s cold (& about to get much colder!) and after the New Year celebrations, the social calendar is looking a bit forlorn. Then this or that issue arises and next thing you know, you’re having a good old moan being reciprocated in the same way, which reinforces your point exactly! And to top it all, there’s minimal opportunity to improve the situation as there’s nothing out there… Really?
Let me let you into a little secret, if you carry on thinking this way, then it’s a sure fire way of making sure YOU MISS those opportunities to succeed.
Research shows that those who continue in a downtrodden thought process or even a serious frame of mind do not have the same ‘Breakthrough’ moments of sudden inspiration as those with a more light-hearted disposition. Think about it, have a thought about something that may or may not work and do this with a smile. How does it feel, even if there are some rough edges that need to be worked on, these aren’t so insurmountable, now, do this again with a frown and let your body sink and see if you’re as positive.
Have a look at the studies of Karuna Subramaniam, a psychologist at Northwest University across the pond in USA, who found that those being studied expressed a delight on finding new ideas (didn’t Archimedes have an expression when he proved that an object plunged into liquid becomes lighter by an amount equal to the weight of liquid it displaces… I’ll leave you to think on that one) after having watched a comedy film and did much better at finding solutions than another group who was subjected to a ‘technical talk’ that wasn’t, shall we say, as interesting.
So let’s have a look at businesses today. The climate may not be good out there, individuals may not be feeling as secure in their roles as they were a few years ago, the news is constantly giving us doom & gloom and I’m not going to mention the weather again! As a company, savings have to be made, ideas on how to squeeze more profit from reduced resources, possibly even for survival and new revenue streams must be developed.
New ideas are required, New inspiration is needed and how do leaders address this? Is it a case of sticking the team in front of someone (possibly themself) and giving a ‘technical talk’ or at least announcing the doom and gloom of the scenario scaring them witless or, are they encouraging an environment where staff, to coin the text talk, LMAO (laughing my ‘something’ off!) to find solutions?
So what’s the ‘logical’ way to solve this, what’s the ‘norm’? Unfortunately, it’s the former. Let us lay it on the table, what is the problem and what (the scary bit) is the potential consequence if it’s not resolved! The result is exactly as indicated before, people shut in on themselves and have another good old moan about the disastrous situation they find themselves in and take the spiral down instead of lifting the hatch open to all the possibilities they would otherwise miss.
As an individual or leader in a business… which route are you going to take?
