This week’s leadership attribute is a given: positive attitude. If the leader isn’t positive, no one follows voluntarily. Oh sure, there are negative bosses out there, but very few follow a negative leader. A boss isn’t always a leader. The whole reason we follow a leader is to accomplish something. If the leader doesn’t believe we can do it, we’re not accomplishing anything.

    Negativity makes people uncomfortable. Nobody wants to hear all the reasons something won’t work. Oddly enough, people following positive leaders sometimes don’t necessarily believe the leaders can accomplish all they desire to, but they are willing to help try.  And the inability to accomplish everything is forgiven because at least they gave it the old college try!

    I ask my students at speech competitions to go watch their classmates perform. I tell them to send positive vibes up to the performer. It always works! The speakers always feel the support. It’s amazing the power we have with just positive thinking!

  Athletes are taught to visualize themselves successfully making free throws or field goals or penalty kicks, and psychologists say that visualization is nearly as helpful as actually practicing the skill.

    Gifted kids are naturally positive in elementary. They are excelling in classes and they’re feeling good. Gifted teens become very cynical and negative. This is because they cannot solve many of the problems they’d like to: global warming, litter, abortion, etc. Worse, they don’t think people even care. All of this jades the gifted youth.

    So how do you keep your gifted high schooler from becoming negative? You cannot completely. But you can help there be positive points in his life. The key is to take the time to point out what is good. Got a chronic complainer? Employ the pharmaceutical ads’ policy: for every good thing they say about the drug, they have to tell one bad side effect. Make your child tell a positive thing about whatever he’s being negative about.

    The most important thing you can do, though, is to be positive yourself. If you can’t think of anything positive, start with the fact that you woke up this morning!

              Michelle