You’ve heard me mention the overwhelming impact positivity and happiness can have on your personal and professional success. Yes, there’s a business case for bliss and I’m bubbling over with excitement to tell you about how to make it work for you!
Tip #1 Responding or Reacting? Let’s start by asking yourself an incredibly important question that can set you up for success (or not) when it comes to leading your teams, partner, peers, customers, and even your kids and pets.
When it comes to how you deal with just about anyone in your life, are you intentionally responding or instinctively reacting––especially in times of crisis or challenge?
*Alex Theis, best selling author had this to say about the importance of bliss/happiness/ positive psychology in the workplace:
“How you feel, your attitude, how you start and go about your day––it all reflects on how you deal with people and your business dealings. At the end of the day it’s all about relationships. If you’re in your zone, smiling and having a good time, you’re responding instead of reacting. Customers, clients, business dealings are all going to reflect that back to you.”
In other words, how you respond to others has everything to do with building trust based relationships. When your employees, teams, customers, etc. trust that you’re going to thoughtfully respond to challenging news or situations they learn to trust in your ability to lead them out to the other side. However, if your reactions look like the blueprint for an award-winning roller coaster, they have no idea what to expect––and you leave them no choice but to question their trust in your leadership abilities!
But don’t beat yourself up if you fall more frequently to the knee-jerk reactive side––few of us (myself included) were taught about the holy-cow impact of our response (via in person, on the phone, through social media, and through others who will share what we’ve said) and how it can make or break whether others will want to follow us as the leader. The good news is, we can teach ourselves (at any age) to change our response, and in turn change our outcomes.
So yes, think before you speak. And yes, be careful what you put in writing (even and especially on twitter, FB, email, etc.). And a resounding YES––find ways to keep yourself cool so you can thoughtfully craft your response to any situation.