Last week I explored the attributes of optimistic and pessimistic people in my article Learn to be more optimistic PART 1 and how to identify them through their explanatory style. The fact that optimism can be learned and actively applied through some tried and tested techniques is something we can all embrace in our personal and work lives, regardless of exactly where on the scale our natural levels of optimism lie. ..

Are you an optimist or a pessimist? You may not always see the world through rose-coloured glasses, but chances are you are an optimist. Research indicates that up to 80% of us are. Being optimistic is vitally important in determining how you bounce back from setbacks, how you perceive the world around you and how persistent you are to achieve the things you want to achieve, both in the workplace and in your personal life. But if you fall in the category of 20% of people who are pessimists, there’s some good news. Optimism can be learned.  ..

Human beings are motivated to assign causes to their actions and behaviours. Attribution is the process by which individuals explain the causes of behaviour and events. You may have heard of Weiner’s attribution theory; one which assumes that we try to determine why people do what they do, or the way in which we interpret causes to an event or behaviour. ..

In an ideal world, all emerging leaders should receive many years of coaching, formal training and mentoring to prepare them for the powerful and challenging role they are destined to step into. By the time they move into their first leadership role they should be 100% ready to tackle the day to day challenges that arise, leading their team with great confidence and ease. In reality, this rarely happens. Most leaders receive very little leadership training before stepping into their first leadership role. More often than not, first-time leaders jump straight into the deep end and have to bumble their way through, learning the ropes as they go.    ..

All too often, when a new leader joins an organisation they jump in feet first and are eager to make an impact straight away. Some of this comes down to our culture of busyness or our ‘cult of speed’ that I wrote about in my previous blog. We don’t want to be seen to be wasting time, we feel the need and the pressure to get things done and make changes quickly and efficiently. New leaders know that all eyes are on them and everyone is holding their breadth to see what their next move is going to be. To be seen to do nothing, straight away, can be misconstrued as a sign of weakness, a sign of failure. The new leader joining a business may be highly anticipated, with the employees expecting to see changes and improvements made quickly. The pressure is on for the new leader to perform. ..

Being busy seems to be part of our way of being these days. I constantly hear people saying they “don’t have enough hours in the day”, they’re “pressed for time” or are “running out of time”. As a society, we are described as “time poor” and are in the midst of a “culture of busyness”. It has become a badge of honour to be “too busy” to fit everything into our lives and in fact if you aren’t busy, this is often seen as a weakness or a problem, particularly in the workplace.  ..

Chances are you have experienced the negative impact of doing something that leaves you with a black mark against your name. No matter what you do thereafter, it seems, you simply can’t shake it. You don’t get that promotion, you have responsibility taken from you, you could even be demoted or worse ‘let go’. Is it possible to turn things around? The answer isn’t simple. Of course, it depends on the individuals you are working with, how forgiving they are, what you did in the first place and how you handled it. ..

Creativity and innovation happen when there is an inversion of what came before. An inversion of the status quo. Think of the great artists and musicians of our time. They dare to break the rules and go against the current standard to create new ones and the results are compelling. Inversion is the key to innovative thinking and is also a particularly useful problem-solving technique when used in the workplace. ..

Twenty years ago, we did not have the abundance of communication mediums we have in the workplace today. If you needed to tell someone something, you walked to their desk to tell them, picked up the landline, left them a memo or put a good old post-it note on their desk.  ..

Leading through change. It’s something all leaders and managers have to do. And yet navigating their team effectively through change and uncertainty continues to be one of the most challenging aspects of their jobs. Your ability to effectively lead your team through change can make or break you, as a leader. Luckily, there are some great management tools available to help you effectively tackle leading your team through change. In this article I outline one of many ways to lead through uncertainty, stay on top of your game and to keep things moving forward in a positive way. It’s about perspective and looking through four different types of ‘lenses’. I find it to be a practical and useful framework that you can readily and easily use throughout the process of leading through change. ..