Ever experience the struggle where your boss just doesn’t understand where you are coming from? Or your employee just doesn’t seem to “get it” and spends his or her time complaining rather than coming up with solutions or action to get the job done? Or maybe you have so much work to do that you just don’t know how you’ll get it done and it’s stressing you out. Most of us have faced these or other frustrations in our work. And guess what? The things that you focus on become the things that you notice – it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. And when you focus on what’s wrong, you miss seeing the positive and more possibilities and choices for action, slowing you and your team down on the path to success.

Through science, we know that the brain’s default mode is to notice the bad more often than the good – it’s how people process automatically. But science also shows that putting the emphasis on the positive yields significantly better results for you and others around you. And, as we shift our focus and habits, your brain physically changes – rewiring itself to your new, positive and resilient outlook.

I worked in a corporate environment for ten years, and knew these challenges all too well. Through my experience, and my study of the work of well-recognized leadership thinkers and researchers, I have come to understand the powerful effect positivity and resilience can have on a person, both professionally and personally, and within organizations.

Here are six ways positivity and resilience can make a real difference in your work:

More control and influence. In a world of stress, demanding workloads, and constant change, positivity and resilience are key in developing awareness of more factors you can control. Positivity puts focus on what you want and what’s good, opening your mind to see more of what you can control or influence. And it’s not about getting rid of the negative; by being resilient you can better handle your response when bad things do happen to you. Positivity also gives you the energy to tackle whatever happens in your day – when we are in a negative mindset, everything seems harder than it actually is.

Change your focus = change your reality. Research shows that our realities are shaped by the lens through which we see the world. So if we can change that lens, we can change not only our own happiness and behaviors, we can affect every single business outcome at the same time – such as engagement, sales, satisfaction, retention, productivity. Everything we do in business and rest of life is largely determined by our mindset and how it affects our interpretation of ourselves, other people and situations.

More choices and possibilities. Positive emotions broaden our thinking, while negative emotions narrow it. This helps to explain why some people are able to make positive change and others get stuck. Why some people are energized by challenges and others freeze or withdraw when things get tough. Why some people more happy and successful than others. Understanding the role positivity and resilience plays in how we function helps not only see more possibilities, but also find the most positive and optimal path forward that’s often missed.

Ripple effect. When you shift your thinking and behaviors to be more positive and resilient it benefits you directly and those around you. Engaged and happy leaders are more likely to lead engaged and happy teams – when leaders are rejuvenated, it affects employees positively even if you are not teaching them these skills directly. This is huge in improving an organization’s culture and engagement. The most important action of any leader is to model the behaviors they wish to see others exhibit, and positivity and resilience are crucial to model at the senior and mid-level levels to create that ripple effect.

Better performance. Positive and resilient people see problems as challenges or opportunities (rather than threats). These people tend to be higher performers because they:

• seek out and appreciate the positive aspects in situations and others
• ask for information and are more likely to ask for help and get support
• are more likely to take purposeful action
• calm down more quickly to handle situations effectively
• exert greater effort to achieve their goals.

Increase bottom-line results. Everything above reinforces how positivity and resilience directly impacts bottom-line results. How you think and the lens through which you see people, situations and yourself, directly influences your behavior and, thus, business outcomes.

What Next?

You can sign up for Stacey’s masterclass, The Confident “No” here.

Stacey L. Olson is a Leadership and Certified Positive Psychology Coach, has 15 years of corporate experience and has gone through her own transformational change from burning out to balanced in life while performing at a high level (both in her corporate career and own business). She works with professionals who want to work less, live more and be their best even with all the demands, high expectations and messiness of everyday life. Stacey is the founder of The Balanced Leader™ program and offers executive and leadership coaching, workshops, and speaking.