By Gene Russell, Manex President & CEO
A positive approach can be vital to running a company, managing a team and working with others. When you find yourself in a challenging situation, consider using one of the five strategies below to create a positive outcome from a negative experience.
1. Take 10 & Stay Calm
The best advice comes from our youth, our parents or our teachers who often said, “If you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all.” Negativity needs fuel to maintain itself – don’t add fuel to the fire.
2. Don’t Hide From Your Own Mistakes
Nothing puts out the fire of negativity faster than admitting our own mistakes and moving on. It creates a sense of maturity and leadership with your boss or board and sets an example for your peers. In addition, it goes a long way in developing or furthering your personal brand with the all-important “ethical” person.
3. Continue to Grow
Don’t let a situation control you. Grow as a manager to the point of seeing any situation either highly positive or highly negative as an opportunity to learn. Use your energies to make any situation better for your team.
4. Maintain a Positive Outlook
Changing your mindset is difficult and even more so when your company has a large group of negative players. It can be done through conscious efforts and continuous focus on maintaining a positive outlook. Have you ever noticed how most movie “good guys” survive and make it to the end to live another day due to positive attitude and never giving up? That’s what you must do every day even in a horrible culture or market, or with difficult clients. Find positive sources of energy through your outside life and at work. Redirecting conversations to the positive at work can make amazing experiences. Pepper your water cooler talks with positive affirmations about team members and watch it spread just as fast as negative gossip. You will reap the rewards long term.
5. Underscore the Positive
Words, and actions mean everything. Emphasize your positive attitude by your actions and in your words. Seek affirmations from your environment. Don’t allow yourself to react, or dwell on the negative. Read biographies about winners. Read positive attitude books. Remember garbage in – garbage out. Put in the positive and the positive will come out of you.
Implement Positivity Throughout Your Workplace
Manex’s unique Entrepreneurial Workshop Training Series helps provide your leaders and managers the leadership tools to dramatically enhance employee ownership and empowerment within your organization. These tools can help banish negativity throughout the workplace.
For dynamic companies who know ongoing change and continuous improvement is critical to their success, this leadership workshop series will not only help your employees embrace change, it will teach them how to lead it through positive energy and knowledge building.
This leadership training focuses on the skills your leaders and managers will need to create this environment. They will learn how to greatly enhance communication functionally and cross-functionality. They will gain an understanding of what makes great leaders successful and how to emulate them.
Each workshop is designed to help ensure the participants take what they learn and apply it in the workplace. Within each workshop, action plans are developed, shared by the participants and then executed between workshops.
This powerful methodology helps the participants build their leadership skills culminating with the “Creating an Entrepreneurial Workplace” workshop. The participants get the opportunity to lead critical company initiatives with the buy-in and support of the executive team. Each person becomes part of the solution to help take your company to the next level building self-esteem, critical skill sets and positive outlook on the future.
Creating An Entrepreneurial Workplace Workshop Modules
- Creating an Entrepreneurial Workplace
- Influencing and Communication Skills for Leaders
- The 12 Attributes and Behaviors of Highly Successful Leaders and Managers
- Critical Listening Skills: How to Effectively Gather and Secure Employee Input
- How To Provide Highly Effective Coaching And Feedback
- 12 Steps to Effective Delegation
- The 10 Steps to On-Boarding First Time Managers
- Understanding the Needs of the Employee and Employer: Creating Change in the Workplace
- Presenting with Impact and Influence
- Highly Effective Meetings and E-Mail Etiquette
- Internal and External Networking
Manex trainer and bestselling author Michael Levin leads your team through the workshop series at your office or facility. Contact Michael Shabaka, Ph.D. at mshabaka@manexconsulting.com for more information.
About the Author
Gene Russell is President and CEO of Manex and has over 30 years of senior executive strategic planning, operational management, and consulting experience in the manufacturing and technology sectors. With his extensive knowledge of manufacturing operations, he has developed and implemented key strategic initiatives for companies, allowing them to improve performance and achieve profitable growth.
