How to Motivate Your Team and Keep Positive

Thinking Positive

Research shows that too much chat about problems can lead to further depressive thoughts and de-motivate people. Continuing thoughts about negative issues tend to eliminate positive thought.

The research conducted by a UK university (ref: The Scientist American Mind, July August 2009 issue) reinforces what we observe with people in business is exactly the same.

If the mood of the business owner or manager is down we constantly see the mood of the whole company being affected.

If we are under stress our mood and behaviour will change and unknowingly have an adverse affect on others around us.

Keeping yourself motivated has a big impact on those around you. People will pick up on your positivity and enthusiasm. They look to leaders to inspire and motivate and often sub consciously follow the behaviour of those role models around them.

The way we approach problems is very important is how we keep ourselves motivated.

“Only negative thoughts lead to negative actions. Only positive thoughts lead to positive actions".

Examples

An example may be falling sales. If my sales are falling I can choose to think about the negative implications such as falling profit or even company failure, or I can choose to think about the opportunities such as buying a competitor in a weaker position, getting rid of less capable sales staff, rationalising unprofitable product lines and unprofitable customers

Another example may be handling a customer complaint, where we see the fixing of the problem as enhancing the trust between you and the customer and creating more opportunities for further sales of our products and services.

We can choose the way we think about problems. Either positively (optimism – “great, where's the opportunity?”) or negatively (pessimism – “oh, woe is me…!”) The way we initially approach a problem is determined by habit and habits can be changed. We must do this consciously however.

Thinking style is a habit and you can control the way we react by making a conscious choice about our approach. When there is a problem we start to think about the positives that can arise from the situation. Be proactive by putting your on your ‘Optimist Hat' (like Edward de Bono's yellow thinking hat). Only optimitistic thoughts are allowed!

Visualize yourself with the hat on and see how it changes your thinking immediately.

Another tip is to put yourself in a different space or room and think about what is in that space that may affect the problem. There are many techniques to retrain our thinking styles.

It can make a big difference to our business and personal lives.