Do you ever go to work and ask yourself, “How can I perform my very best today?” If you are asking that question, have you ever asked, “What do I need to do to perform to my full potential?” As a leader you not only need to be self-aware but you need to be self-evaluating constantly for individual and organizational performance improvement. The day you stop continuing to learn, to grow, and to develop is the day you start dying an inevitable slow death. Rest assured your competitors will not stop improving if you become comfortable with your status quo.
A key element in performance improvement is evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the organization. Think of yourself as the captain of an old sailing ship. As the captain you would survey your vessel assessing how well your ship is prepared to weather a storm or any other form of catastrophe the ship may encounter. As captain, you know that crisis is inevitable, so you plan to ensure your vessel is prepared as possible to withstand catastrophe. Like our metaphorical ship captain, the best companies don’t just weather storms or crisis, they deliberately plan and plow through them. They thrive in the natural chaos of the business world in which we live.
So why is this? Simply put, they are built for a crisis by creating a human response capacity to crisis and chaos that will then produce optimal outcomes no matter the magnitude of the external events. Great leaders do not learn from a crisis. They learn from how they choose to respond to a crisis. Great leaders continue to focus on achievement in the crisis while lesser leaders focus on the crisis itself.
Great leaders know the necessity of the skill of Positive Presence. How you respond to any life event (positive or negative) is a choice, and at any point you have the opportunity to respond to the event in either a positive, or a negative, manner. It’s been proven that a positive response will lead to a more positive outcome, and likewise, a negative response will lead to a more negative outcome.
Implementing the skill of Positive Presence throughout your organization prepares you and your people to automatically select the most positive response to a crisis situation. Implementing the skill of Positive Presence will create the necessary thought and behaviour habits that will weather a crisis while maintaining a flow of positive emotional energy to drive the most optimum outcome.
