Positivity is a super-power. Your attitude can affect everyone around you. If you are in a bad mood, that can make those around you apprehensive to engage with you. A positive attitude makes you approachable and can put those around you in a better mood as well. When translated into a work setting, attitude is incredibly important in creating a positive and healthy work culture.
As a leader, positive attitude is crucial. Your employees will look to you to set the tone in response to major events and occurrences at work. When there is a setback, your reaction will largely shape the mood of the entire staff. If you are positive and optimistic, this will reassure your employees that the company will bounce back from the setback. If you do not display this positive attitude during troubling times it can set off unrest within your employees that could have a rippling effect impacting other areas of business and internal relationships.
Positive attitude is crucial to good leadership, but so many of our future leaders lack this trait. If you look at our younger generations, Millennials and Generation Z are characterized by depression, anxiety, and dark humor as a coping mechanism. I have seen this type of person in a leadership position, and it does not go well. This attitude seeps into the rest of the staff and is internalized and manifested into other areas of work. If your boss openly criticizes the company, its partners, and its output, this opens the door for the staff to criticize these things as well. The result of that is not positive or productive.
Our younger generations have pulled back the veil on mental illness, depression, and anxiety. This is healthy for de-stigmatizing therapy and other coping mechanisms. However, we have lost the idea that you need to put on a brave face for work. I don’t mean that 100% of the time you have to be the cheeriest person in the office, but I do believe that an effort should be made to be at the least, neutral for the majority of the time spent in the office. When we allow our emotions to enter our work, we make reckless decisions and act based on our feelings rather than reality. This is something that is incredibly hard to overcome.
So how do we help these young people? Well, unfortunately for Millennials, we are adults now that need to figure this out on our own. But Gen Z and Gen Alpha (7 years and younger) can still be helped. If you notice that your child is struggling with depression, do not hesitate to take him to therapy and get him the help he needs. This is the time of his life where he can go through these emotions in a safe environment without any major effects to his career trajectory. Let him work through these emotions with a trained professional while he is still developing his personality.
Childhood is a safe time for major changes in attitude and outlook. Take this time while they are still in your house to help them conquer some of what is bothering them. If you are a parent of a child who is not experiencing these emotions, foster his positivity. Educate him about how important it is to be positive in his career. Adolescence is a time in which we are developing our children; use that time wisely to help correct things like attitude problems before it affects their future development.
- Bria