Prepare Your Leadership: Positive Leadership

Hello, everyone. Happy Monday. Hope you're having a great start to your week so far. Give everybody about a minute here to join and then we can get started. Start with the three things of three and then we'll jump in with talk about positive leadership in that construct. So I'll give about one more minute here. Hello, welcome. Happy Monday. Okay, we'll get started. So before we jump into the research on positive leadership, I want to start with one thing I always start with is three things of three.

So first, I want you to take a few seconds here to reflect on how you're feeling in this moment right now. This could be emotions, physical sensations, kind of just anything. What is, what is going on for you right now. So think about, you know, if you are feeling excited, maybe tired, focused, maybe perhaps there's a certain sensation that you're noticing in your body, like maybe there's tension or you're just tired from something, maybe from a long weekend, busy weekend. Hello, Michelle, Welcome.

Just kind of take a moment to reflect. Half about halfway through the day. Just take a moment to reflect. Now, step two, let's jump into intentions. So what are three intentions that you have for the rest of the day? This could be something on your to do list, something that you want to get done. This could be some how you want to come across. Maybe you have a meeting this afternoon and you want to come across a certain way. Like you want to listen really well or be friendly, be energized. What are three intentions that you have for the rest of the day?

Think about that. And then the last one is what are three gratitudes that you have could be going forward with the week, could be from this morning or the last the past couple days. So what are three things that you are currently grateful for at this moment? So how are you feeling? What are your intentions? How are you maybe gonna shift some way you're feeling. So maybe you're feeling sluggish and then you want to shift that just getting a cup of coffee. Intentions, getting a cup of coffee. Then you're grateful for that cup of coffee.

So it's kind of a way to ground yourself halfway through the day. Kind of hit the reset button today. So now I want to jump in on some research that I came across on positive leadership. So before I jump in, but a little bit about me. I'm a graduate student in industrial organizational psychology and my main focus is on leadership and mindfulness and a lot of emotional labor aspects as well. So I came across this article on positive leadership. The title is Stay Positive keep them committed. Extending the link between positive leadership and affective commitment.

This is by Stephanie Kalm and Margaret Borchett, both out of Germany. So this is a European article, kind of where a lot of positive leadership aspects come in. Americans don't write a lot about positive workplaces, surprisingly, but in Europe they do. So basically they argued that positive leadership isn't just being nice to people, but it's actually making. It's a whole specific approach that comes from positive psychology. So Seligman, as a psychologist in the 90s, was kind of the head of psychology in the 90s and really wanted to shift the focus into positive psychology.

So this positive leadership kind of came out of that and it focuses on spotting and building people's strengths, creating a supportive work environment and then helping employees grow personally. So all the researchers surveyed 282 working people in Germany in a finance and insurance company and they found that positive leadership genuinely makes people feel more emotionally connected to where they work. So this is called affective commitment in the research. So it's all about making you more emotionally connected to the place you work.

So this is kind of that positive emotional connection to the place. You know, maybe you love the value of the mission, maybe you love that your company helps people. So that's, that's affect commitment. And having a positive leader can increase that. So first, this leadership style helps satisfy people's basic needs. So feeling competent at work because you're highlighting their strengths, they're going to feel more competent in their job, connected to their colleagues and then having control over their work.

So it's creating kind of a whole positive environment through the leader satisfying their employees basic needs. So when these needs are met, it boosts overall well being. And that well being makes you feel more committed to that organization, helps with the engagement with the organization and reducing burnout. They actually prove that this is a whole chain reaction to where positive leadership goes to psychological needs which improves well being and then stronger commitment. So then, and so what other kind of the real world takeaways is that leaders who focus on employee strengths.

So this could be done during, just throughout the day, you know, seeing an employee doing a good job, giving them positive feedback and it really signifying why that is a good job. Not to saying hey, good job with this, but hey, that persistence you put in was, was great. So highlighting exactly what that strength is that showed during that positive incident that they had. Sorry, I'm trying to think of the word. And I kept coming up with critical incident, which is a psychology term. But giving that positive feedback on specific events where that employee shows that strength, creating a positive environment.

Similarly, just positive emotions can boost that environment. Especially for a leader. It's called emotional contagion where leaders, leaders emotions tend to fall downwards through the organizational change. So if a leader has negative emotion, it's likely that that manager is going to have negative emotions and then employees below that will have negative emotions, it'll be passed through. So having passing on positive emotions, creating a positive environment. And then the third thing they talk about is caring about the emotional well being of their employees.

So managers should correctly recognize and respond to employees emotions. And that might take some training but can be important. And an important time during this can be during performance evaluations. I know likely a lot of organizations might have gone through that just recently, but maybe preparing for next year if you do it biannually, you know, leaders can in that performance evaluation say here's a specific event where you showed the strength and you know, can boost that strength. And then also during the performance evaluation acknowledging that this might be an emotional time, you know, this constructive feedback can lead to negative emotions that can be tough.

So empathizing with that employee can help with that reaction as well and help with this positive leadership. So overall positive leadership can boost employee loyalty to that organization, to that leader. Which I mean I don't want to say that just like hey it's let's boost loyalty but it's can improve that well being as well that emotional well being. Looks like Katie had. How do you feel about a manager who is toxic playing, playing one employee off of the other, putting them against each other, but they are positive in other aspects.

And I don't exactly know the specific event but you know, a lot of times when we compare it's a lot of comparing it sounds like to each other when we talk about positive leadership that's highlighting the individual strengths and a lot of positive psychology. I was talking about what does each employee bring to the organization. So acknowledging you know, strengths and weaknesses and how one employee's strengths could maybe help another employee's weaknesses. So maybe not comparing them against each other negatively, but you could compare them say hey this person's, you know, you're very good in researching in this area and they're really good at communicating this could work together on this, on this project in this way.

So maybe not comparing them but showing how their differences can, you know, improve the whole team. But good question. And that's all I've got on positive leadership. I hope you have a great rest of your Monday. I'll be back next week, so I'll see you then. Have a good rest of your week. Bye.