People Leaders are Positive and Constructive
The best people leaders are positive and constructive through their interactions with others. People leaders believe in the capacity of their work teams to create successful outcomes for their organization. As a result, they encourage others and appreciate their efforts.
Positive leadership expresses a “can do” attitude. Leaders believe their employees will make something good happen. This is an optimistic perspective; one that is positive about possibilities for accomplishment. “Let’s make it happen, I know we can, we will succeed.” It is also a realistic awareness that only great work will pull off a challenging enterprise.
People leaders are constructive in that they believe people can learn, grow, and do what needs to be done. They are squarely behind their team. So when they see opportunities they participate as one of the team.
And when they do see something going wrong, they want it fixed. They want to learn from problems and do better. They are not personally critical, attacking or judgmental of others or themselves. It is all about objective problem-solving.
Leaders know how to let the organizational structure impersonally address problematic performance. So, through performance reviews, everyone is aware of how they are doing in meeting expectations. When the system of performance guidelines catches problems, then leaders can encourage and cheer on improvement.
Great leaders build structure so that high performance can occur. The structure both rewards successful performance and catches inadequate performance. Leaders are intuitively personal about backing the successes of their team members. They show excitement both for the person and the contribution to the organization. Of course, it also helps greatly if leaders can arrange material rewards in addition to the personal ones.
Tom DeMaio, PhD
Business Management Consultant Tips 