Are you regularly feeling appreciated at work? Do you have the chance to do what you do best every day? Do you know what is expected of you at work? Does your manager know you and focus you? Fully engaged people at work can answer these questions with a resounding yes!


Most of us start a job motivated to perform our best, but sometimes working for a poor manager can be de-motivating or worse. Positive leaders provide leadership to help people unleash their innovative spirit, improve performance and fully engage. Optimistic leaders rally people to a better future. They have a strong sense of significance. Who do you serve?



Develop a Caring Work Environment




You've heard it said, “They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Not only are the people the most important asset of your business, but people are also completely emotional. People perform to the degree to which they feel that their superiors care about them as individuals. In today's tight labor markets, your ability to attract and keep good people is vital to your success. And the better your people, the more they expect to be treated with kindness, courtesy, respect, and openness.




Develop and Maintain High Levels of Commitment




Hire and keep only people who are willing to put their whole hearts into the job and into making your business successful. Your very best people will always be those with the highest level of personal commitment to you and to getting results. Your biggest problems will always come from people who are uncommitted in some way, for some reason.



That's why Margaret Greenberg and Dana Arakawa put the theory of positive leadership to the test. Greenberg is president of The Greenberg Group, an executive coaching/consulting practice in Andover, CT. Arakawa is a program associate at the John Templeton Foundation of West Conshohocken, PA. Both are graduates of the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania.



Focus on What Works



Too many managers assume that employees need to be good at many things, rather than excellent in key areas — a decidedly negative view of human capital.



More recent studies in behavioral sciences and organizational performance have firmly established that focusing on what works, followed by a program to scale it to greater levels, is a more practical and efficient approach to developing people and performance.



Managers who take a strengths-based approach help employees identify strengths and align talents with their work. These managers don't ignore employee weaknesses, but fixing them isn't their primary focus.



Instead, positive managers focus more on the areas in which an employee excels and how his or her strengths can be leveraged to benefit the employee, team and organization.



Greenberg and Arakawa measured the degree to which managers used strength-based behaviors by asking employees to rate their level of agreement with a series of statements, such as:



• "My project manager matches my talents to the tasks that need to be accomplished."

• "My project manager encourages high performance by building on my strengths."



They found that managers who focused on strengths enjoyed superior team performance, as opposed to managers who focused on weaknesses.



Their study surveyed more than 100 information technology professionals in different managerial roles at The Hanover Insurance Group. Managers were asked about how well projects met budget, schedule and quality standards.



Using the employee responses, Greenberg and Arakawa ranked the extent to which managers focused on strengths and found that those in the top quartile had much higher project performance results.
Based on retrospective project performance results from 2005, managers in the top quartile achieved an average project performance score of 10.6 on a 20-point scale, while managers in the bottom quartile achieved an average score of 7.09. In 2006, the average score for top-quartile managers was 17.91, compared to an average score of 11.55 for managers in the bottom quartile.



Good managers won't be surprised to find a correlation between their behavior and employee performance. But even Hanover's leaders were surprised at how much the two factors correlated.



Are you working in a professional services firm or other organization where executive coaches are hired to provide emotional intelligence skills and positive leadership development for organizational leaders? Does your organization provide executive coaching to help leaders improve their ability to appreciate people in the moment? Leaders at all levels need to improve their emotional intelligence and social intelligence skills.



One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Do you focus on what works to support full engagement at work?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching for positive leaders who help their employees to be fully engaged and happy at work.



What actions can you take today to be a more positive leader? What activities unleash your people’s strengths? Companies need more great managers and leaders.



Working with a seasoned executive coach and leadership consultant trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i CPI 260 and Denison Culture Survey can help you leverage people's strengths and ensure sustainable business success. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision, mission and strategy of your company or law firm.