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Success Secrets and Stories
Realistic Optimism: Navigating Leadership Challenges
Can optimism truly be a leader's superpower in our unpredictable VUCA world? Join us for an insightful conversation with leadership coach Kelly Frazier Cox as we uncover how realistic optimism can transform challenges into opportunities. Drawing on our own stories and experiences, Greg Powell and I, John Wandolowski, explore the power of saying "yes" to possibilities, even in the face of adversity. We unpack the concept of realistic optimism, where acknowledging difficulties goes hand in hand with believing in the potential for improvement, creating a proactive leadership style that fuels teams with hope and purpose.
From contrasting the mindsets of optimistic and pessimistic leaders to sharing anecdotes from my career in human resources, we highlight how adopting a positive outlook can lead to beneficial outcomes, even in typically pessimistic environments like facilities management. Through personal reflections, we examine how past encounters with leaders of varying attitudes have shaped our own approaches to leadership. Whether you're navigating the volatile waters of a VUCA world or seeking to inspire those around you, this episode promises valuable insights into how optimism can not only transform leaders but also entire organizations.
Presented by John Wandolowski and Greg Powell
You.
Speaker 2:Well, hello everyone and welcome to our podcast Success Secrets and Stories. I'm your host, john Winoleski, and I'm here with my co-host and friend, greg Powell, greg.
Speaker 1:Hey everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we wanted to talk about something that I think is timely for what's going on in our world, around us. We wanted to talk about optimism and I thought it was kind of interesting, and we'll talk about what we found as we went through this little trail of bringing you to the subject of optimism. But how many people are only seeing the dark side of life is very dangerous, and we have a lot of people that are dealing with depression and just dread, and there's so much more to life that's around us. Sometimes you can't smell the flowers and you can't hear the birds. You need to step back. So I want to talk about optimism and I thought it was a great subject that we both think we need more of.
Speaker 2:In the process, I was trying to find articles that I thought would do a very good job of presenting the concepts, and the first one I came across that I thought was interesting was from a digital magazine from the AESC group. It's an electronic magazine, if you wish, about executive talent, and the article was Optimism, the Leadership's Superpower. And what I really liked was the very beginning of the article and they talked about a term VUCA world, VOCA world. It's volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity and from the context that we encounter change and every day we wake from these new regulations quickly advancing technologies, political changes, global events and so much more, each having far-reaching implications across the business world. And okay, At this point I'm thinking about, really, this is an article about optimism like okay, Um, but the context is actually pretty good and the way leaders and how they organize their views and respond to this Volca environment has a direct impact on their business future and their success.
Speaker 2:They either see threats or they see opportunities. They can either ignore the changing world around them or forge ahead with pre-planning strategies and to address the realities head-on, Harness the power of adaptability, agility, resilience and to challenge those in terms of being an opportunity. So when this article talked about conflicting views of the future and how the VUCA world actually works, it was really an opportunity for them to come up with. In the article, Paul Pullman, from Unilever, from 2009 to 2019, talked about how to have different strategies, not just to identify the problem, but how to address it. Greg, maybe you can help us Absolutely.
Speaker 1:John and, as John and I were talking earlier, I used to work for Unilever before Mr Pullman was there, but they were an international organization known for training and development, leadership skills et cetera. So companies need to develop their own VUCA for success, the volatility they need to develop a roadmap that will require vision. Second item is uncertainty. You need strategic understanding of the changes underway. That's essential. Complexity the planning process and it is complex requires clarity over implementation. Right, you don't want to just slam it down and implement it really quickly. It needs to be clear. And then an ambiguity those unforeseen events that will place a premium on agility, ability to recover. Recap, to move things forward again.
Speaker 2:So when we were going through this, we found another article that I thought was a little bit more direct to the subject of being an optimist, and it really started off with success. Go get it and, greg, maybe you can set us up with, I think, a better description of optimism from our discussion.
Speaker 1:Thanks, sean. We're going to call it embracing realistic optimism. A woman by the name of Kelly Frazier Cox. She's a leadership coach, a keynote speaker. She's an accomplished CCO general manager, global head board co-chair, and she's actually been on the Ford Coaches Council. This comes from December 27th 2024.
Speaker 1:Embracing realistic optimism. So, heading into the new year, we were filled with hope and eager to set new goals. Right, that's what we do. The clock starts over. We get excited as we capitalize on the powerful energy to build a better life, career and relationships. We have to remember it is a challenging situation to change. A few weeks in, right January 1, and then now you're in the second, third week of January.
Speaker 1:We're often overwhelmed with the inevitable obstacles that come with attempting to change. So that fast start that you had planned now is slowing down. Well, you're not alone. The art of leading through adversity isn't for the faint of heart, but there's a little secret that's changed this person's approach and might just reshape yours too, becoming a realistic optimist. So what is realistic optimism? It's your leadership superpower.
Speaker 1:Realistic optimism isn't about pretending that challenges don't exist or some fantasy world. It's about seeing things as they are, but with a twist, believing we can make them better. It's that sweet spot between the dreamers and the doers is where hope actually meets action. In our leadership journeys, this mindset shifts our focus from merely reacting to proactively creating solutions. It acknowledges the storm, but also trusts in our ability to sail through that storm. It's about facing the facts, those cold, hard facts, however tough they are, but also lighting that candle instead of cursing the darkness. So why does it matter?
Speaker 1:Let's get down to business here. Imagine leading a team through a project that hit a snag right, that little uh-oh bump in the road we like to call it. A realistic, optimist leader doesn't just throw up their hands in despair or pretend that everything is fine. What do they do? Instead, they assess what went wrong. They rally their team and say we've got this, let's figure it out together. This approach doesn't just solve the problem. It builds trust and inspires your team to believe in you and their abilities as your team, to believe in you and their abilities. So let's talk a little bit about cultivating realistic optimism.
Speaker 1:I've got five points here. The first one acknowledge the tough stuff right. Don't hide behind some words. If it's tough, it's tough. Start by accepting that reality of the situation. Be honest with yourself and the team, and it's okay to recognize when things are challenging. Succinctly summarize the problem and then that's the first step to getting things better.
Speaker 1:What do you do next? Number two anticipate challenges. Build resilience by stating potential future obstacles. You're looking ahead there. Be proactive in acknowledging things won't go smoothly. Don't lie to folks. Walk through potential pitfalls right. Open up our eyes right now what could happen? But express confidence we'll make it through, as long as we work together. When obstacles happen, it's not a shock, it's just easier to see a path moving forward. Number three plan with positivity, not negativity. Plan with positivity. Once you've named the current challenges, switch gears to the solutions mode. Ask yourself what's one step I can take right now to improve the situation? It's about finding actionable steps that are within your control that move you and your team forward. Step four celebrate every little victory. We used to call it wins. Every little win adds up towards a big win. So go through a tough meeting, just get through it. Solve a small part of a bigger problem, right, hopefully. Celebrate it. Celebrate that little win, that success. These little wins add up and keep the momentum going. Don't wait a year to highlight them, but do them now, john.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's like one of the lines that I used whenever we were trying to do this is every step forward is a positive, but you have to take that first step, you have to take that second step. You don't have the end tape at the end of the conversation. It's your first day, your first meeting, your first week. It's all progression and as much as the pessimists that are in the room telling you that you're never going to get it done, it's that first step, that's the most important, not the last step, that's right.
Speaker 1:And you can have team meetings. Build it into your culture about celebrating those little victories, but stay focused, though, because things are still tough times. And then number five, the fifth element here spread the optimism. Again. You're a leader, right? Share your hopeful outlook with your team, including the challenges you've overcome, so celebrate those successes. We got through this. We're still moving forward. Your optimism is contagious and it can transform that energy into your entire group, right? Everybody becomes charged up when they see you leading with a balance of realism and positivity. They're likely to mirror that in their own work, because they believe John.
Speaker 2:So she went on to talk about showing examples of realistic optimism in action, and there's nothing worse than a leader pretending that everything is okay. That isolates the leader from finding the solution and it isolates the teams and the team members who think is it just me or is everybody experiencing this difficulty? Me or is everybody experiencing this difficulty? These are the important moments to be honest, to live your values, to show your vision and to rally your team to get to work together During these challenges. Let's take an example like COVID, where we were in a complete major restructure or the 2008 recession or a CEO change. The first step is usually competing. Those five steps is what she was using as a tool. It was clear that the situation was out of their control and it's the process of how do you actually change and remind yourself of achieving things. During these difficult times, what team members and colleagues and a broader network of people can bring to a potential solution is really the important part of action. She goes on to say that she armed herself with personal confidence and drafted a plan and then she would go to her team. There was a challenge and the potential of a path, that the outcome would be stronger than the situation that they were in. The key is the conversation doesn't stop there. She would bring the questions to the group, ask what's missing, to see what they've seen in their experience and where do we start, how do we proceed Collectively? They developed a final plan and when they had gone through all the potential obstacles and would see in terms of who was going to address it, how it was going to be addressed and that would happen over several meetings, but it was an ongoing process and over several meetings, but it was an ongoing process Armed with a plan. She felt that it was a distinctive role in terms of how to collectively work as a group for success and to celebrate that process. I think the celebration part is something that's missing in other people's descriptions that you have to build that optimism every step of the way. It isn't something that you wait for the end. You want to try to grow in that situation.
Speaker 2:As she was wrapping up this article, I think it was very interesting to take it from her point of view and I'll read it verbatim being a real optimist has transformed how she leads and how she lives her life. It taught her how to understand that she can't control everything and she had the opportunity to choose her responses. By embracing that approach, you can navigate through adversity, you can learn through growth and lead the ways that are best for yourself and those around you. So, when you're facing various leadership challenges, let's choose to be realistic optimists, to let and choose the approach to be a leader that not only strives to improve our slice of the world, but to inspire others to believe that they can do the same. Here it is in terms of developing hope grounded in reality, and to propel the belief that the best is yet to come, and to mean it to stay positive, to be proactive. Proactive and we had a little image of an optimist and I think it's kind of funny. Greg, you want to describe our image for this concept, absolutely.
Speaker 1:John. So we've got two characters here. One is an optimist and one is a pessimist. Now the optimist looks like sunshine, right, almost a halo around their head, yellow smile on their face, and this individual thinks that this is the best possible world to be in. Right, that's how they're looking at life. They got their foot out, they're kicking, they're like dancing, but the pessimist literally has a cloud, a rain cloud, over their head. They're wearing a frown, they're wearing dark clothing and they're saying their fear is that the negativity is true, that bad things are going on, just a terrible situation to be in. So who do you want to be as a leader? Do you want to be a reasonable optimist or do you want to be a negative pessimist?
Speaker 2:And what I thought was kind of funny is that the description is like the person that's the optimist is so excited that it is like going perfectly, and the other person is like, yeah, what you think is the perfect world is like the worst thing I can think of. It's like, oh, tell me, it isn't true, please. So, greg, maybe we can talk about our own examples of optimism.
Speaker 1:Thank you, john. You know I would say that in my career I was an optimistic leader and in the world of human resources, a significant amount of interactions are wrapped up in optimism. So let me describe somebody coming into my office. No matter what level of HR leadership I was in, some employees would say gosh, I'm so hopeful, greg, that I'm going to get promoted next week or the next cycle. Gosh, I think I'm up for a pay increase. That's going to happen right. Or, you know, I'm overdue for a plum job.
Speaker 1:You think I'll ever get a great assignment? You know, greg, I did this great thing and I was told on the side but I never got really any recognition for it. You know what's going on here. You know I got my performance review and, as John and I talked about those folks that are doing them very rarely, it makes it really difficult because a person's hanging their hopes on a positive review and if it happens once a year and it's not positive, despair sets in, and then things like even internal investigations and on and on and on.
Speaker 1:So people come in wanting a great outcome. Right, that's what they're hopeful. Well, my personal philosophy has always been I generally believe the glass is half full and I believe that the liquid inside is clear. That's just how I'm wired, okay, I also absolutely believe that hope not also, but that hope is a good thing, right? So instead of automatically saying, in an HR situation, no to an HR-related request, I would say yes, sometimes it was yes, but yes, sometimes it was yes, and, and what that meant was we can investigate, through inquiry, the opportunity they put in front of us and see where it takes us.
Speaker 1:So, unless it's absurd or unlawful, yeah, there's a chance. We're saying that something that let's just give it a look. It might be good for the organization. So let's take a chance. I've said before many times it's good to say three good things about an idea before you shoot it down right, show that you're really listening, provide some level of optimism. So I've mentioned an absurd situation.
Speaker 1:So I had an employee come to me and actually a manager. I said, greg, we're doing great this year the company goals. We're going to max out on bonus. Can I get in?
Speaker 1:And this was like in late November, early December, getting ready for the holidays. He said can I get an advance on my bonus? I said I hear what you're saying and, yes, things are trending well, but by policy and by the way the program's structured, we can't pay it out until it's been approved and it's got a retention piece on it as well. So you have to stay here until March to get it. And he was like furious. He's like, of course this company makes all this money. We're going to have all this bonus money. Certainly you could carve out a check for me for a couple of thousand dollars advance on my bonus.
Speaker 1:That's what I mean when I say absurd. That doesn't make sense. Don't have any hope for that, don't do that. But in that same vein, we had bonus goals where we were kind of getting close. We're running out of time. People worked a little harder and pushed it over the threshold. That's great. We had reasonable hope, we had great leadership, we had optimism, we worked hard and we were able to turn something that wasn't looking as good into something that was very, very good and that ended up being a great payout for everyone when the bonuses were distributed. So in my line of work, optimism is extremely important, because we're dealing with human beings and they've got their fingers crossed, john. Because we're dealing with human beings and they've got their fingers crossed, john.
Speaker 2:And I think you know when I think back, we both had a common example of a leader who was a department head that was talking about everything is rosy, everything is great, everything was a party and there was no meat on the bone. He was nothing more than flash and awe. There was no context and a wonderful example of somebody that I didn't want to emulate and, like yourself, I always looked at it. Everything was half full, mostly because you know we're lucky that we're alive and the people that we have in our lives. But the people that I was working with, especially in in a facilities environment, there's there's a fear of being replaced. They always think that a third party can do it better, especially when I worked for a third party, which made it really interesting that the double whammy that happens whenever you're in that kind of environment and pessimism is like everywhere, and you have to be an optimist in that kind of environment to show that there's progress, to show that the things that we're doing are actually great examples of leadership, things as simple as work orders. And then the humor that I would always have is the pessimism of people replacing these people that are hard workers, and I would talk about you know you have this wonderful tool. I can tell you that my success rate on this is very, very low. But I would say that you have work orders and if you have enough work orders in a given week and I know you all work and at the end of the week I see 40 hours of work being done every week. There's no way in the world people would not understand how much work you do. But I know how you get caught in the hallway and they, you know, button hook you and you end up doing another 30 minute job that isn't on paper but then you didn't write it down. So you know a little bit about helping them to understand that I'm trying to help you in the long run and there's a lot of great things that you do. So it's always that coaching. There was always that encouraging. And then I think the most fun that I've had as being a leader was when I would turn around and say, well, what would you do?
Speaker 2:And a facilities perspective not a lot of the facility staff were given the authority to act, even doing their own task, that they were looking for direction to that level. It's like no, tell me how you would want to address it, put together an action plan, pass it by me and let's get working on it. That empowerment was an amazing tool and the optimism and the ownership, all those things kind of fall into place. So being an optimistic leader was a kind of a very important skill set to have, especially from a facilities perspective. So you have, you know, greg, talking to somebody who should know that a bonus is like related to a bonus and a timing is kind of important. A bonus is like related to a bonus and a timing is kind of important. My conversation about being an optimist is trying to help people who are very pessimistic within their environment, within their trade, by their own nature, and you're trying to save them from themselves.
Speaker 2:No-transcript. So, if you like what you've heard, my book on leadership called Building your Leadership Toolbox is available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Sorry, they have. We have it in book form paperback, hardcover. The part that is kind of fun is that we just did an audio book and I'd strongly recommend it. It's kind of fun and give it a listen. Thank you for listening to Success Secrets and Stories on the platform that you have. It's also available on Apple and Google and Spotify and other platforms. A lot of what Greg and I talk about is from Dr Durst and his MBR program. You can see more on successgrowthacademycom, if you'd like to contact us. Our website is authorjawcom and the music is brought to you by my grandson, so we want to hear from you. Give us a shout, help us to build the content and the podcast that you would like to hear. So thanks, greg. Thanks.
Speaker 1:John, as always.
Speaker 2:Next time yeah.