Leadership Actions that Inspire Optimism at Work
Today's work environments are characterized by poor interaction, the belief of employees in the senior leadership teams is also very low, and work time is combined with private life time, so employees work on their own time after work is over. It wouldn't be surprising if you asked employees how they felt about working at your company and their answers were disappointing. This unfortunate reality negatively affects workforce turnover and the company's ability to attract and find the best talent, innovation, profits and growth. People cannot do their job perfectly when they are in a poor workplace climate and culture. in short, work environments need to be improved.
Optimistic work environment:
An optimistic workplace is an environment in which people hope and believe that good things will result from their hard work. It happens when we look for what is right in the work environment and what is possible, but we tend to focus well on what is wrong in our workplace and overlook the good things that make a difference. When we do that, it's hard to see optimism in the workplace.
Employees' view of the work environment is what gives them a sense of optimism or pessimism. Both the Hay Group and Gallup survey companies have reached the same conclusion about the work environment, which is that the leader's style is responsible for up to 70% of employees' feelings about the workplace environment. In other words, the climate in the work environment depends on the leader’s actions.
Achieving optimism in the workplace:
So, what can a leader do to create an optimistic environment? Here is a list of active actions to help you positively impact the work environment:
1. Clarity:
Clarity removes obstacles to achieve great results. There are four main areas of clarity that should be at the center of your leadership actions which are goals, priorities, feedback, and organizational purpose.
These four elements should be part of your regular conversation - daily, weekly, and monthly - with everyone in your team, whether individual or group. Without clarity, optimism cannot be achieved in the workplace. So, how can people feel hopeful and believe that good things are possible if they don't know why their work is important, what is expected of them, or what their level of performance is?
2. Enhancing connectivity:
In his book "Social: Why Our Brains are Wired to Connect", the social neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman explains that our brains are connected to others, and what is amazing about Lieberman's work is his observations that constantly make us understand our world through evaluating our relationships with others. Our brains are naturally designed in this way of thinking, and we crave connection.
Connection is achieved when we have satisfying and trusting relationships with others. We empathize with them more easily, and this helps us build positive relationships. The researchers concluded that positive relationships help people manage stress levels more effectively.
Feeling connected helps us collaborate and contribute to a connected community. One easy way to strengthen connectivity is by having regular meetings with your team to reflect on the group's progress toward its goals, and this conversation helps people express what works and what doesn't work at the right time, as these meetings lead to dependence on each other.
3. Enhancing positive identity:
Work shapes your identity. It affects how you feel about yourself, and how you don't when most of us spend a third of our lives at work. However, the question is why should you care about employees who develop a positive identity?
In sum, this will affect results, increase participation, morale and satisfaction, and help employees achieve professional and personal achievement.
You can focus on four areas to promote positive identity among employees, which are:
Independence, Values, Strengths, and Personal Purpose:
1. We all want to control our lives and our work:
Independence helps meet this need. Researchers Richard Ryan and Edward Deci define independence as "Being motivated to work actively toward a specific purpose". Independence is an internal motivation, as it motivates us to want to contribute to something greater than ourselves.
2. Identifying and defining your personal values:
Identifying and defining your personal values enhances clarity about who you are and what you stand for:
As the saying goes, “If you don't know what you stand for, you'll settle for anything”.
3. It is common to identify strengths as something you are good at:
The strengths I am referring to are those activities and skills that give you energy. By knowing your strengths, you can align your work with them in a meaningful way. It is important to know your employees' strengths and align your work tasks with them.
4. Personal goal is key to promoting positive identity:
Spend time with employees to learn what is important to them, and help them discover the scope of the purpose of their work; in my book ("The Optimistic Workplace"), there are coaching questions to help employees discover your purpose, and here are a few of them:
- What obstacles positively identified your lifestyle? Consider examples even if you didn't think they were positive at the time.
- What values do you see in your examples?
- Has a life event caused you to reevaluate what is important to you? And if that happened to you, what would change for you? And how did this event affect your goal?
While culture is key to creating an attractive workplace, it is not the only impact; the workplace environment greatly influences desired organizational results such as engagement, and today leaders can change the workplace environment by focusing on providing optimism in the workplace; a collaborative effort with employees can be rewarding when leaders choose to grow it.