Positive Leadership

Cynicism is everywhere is many organizations. There are many cynical Junior and middle managers who are going to stay that way: cynical and junior. The most effective leaders have a positive outlook on their work, themselves and their lives.

Positive leadership is a frame of mind where leaders:

• Look to the future, not to the past;
• Focus on actions, not on analysis;
• See possibilities, not just problems;
• take control versus being controlled;
• create options versus accept the status quo.

Some people behave like this naturally. For the rest of us, the good news is that these habits can be learned.

The first steps to becoming a positive leader is to become a professional leader.

Professionalism in today's business starts with respect. Respecting your people and other managers. Its important to figure out what the accepted standard for professionalism is in your organization and what falls below the line. Below are some typical traps that fall below the line:

• Mobile phones use in meetings;
• being ate for meetings
• bad-mouthing customers or colleges.
• talking about business or customers in public spaces.
• failing to follow up on promises
• ignoring dress code.

Look within yourself and your team. what do you see that could be perceived as unprofessional. Run a exercise with your team and create a list of actions and behaviors that are regarded as unprofessional. Pick a number of area for improvement and hold each other accountable. Don't make your list to large, this will become nightmare for you. Everyone can work on a few key area's to improve there professional behavior. Once you have established these new behaviors over a few months, you can move on to the next steps.