Hunt the good stuff: A Resiliency Tactic with Broader Benefits
Many leaders are seen as critical of people and processes. Many more are described that way by their employees.
And you know what? That's a fair depiction.
Leaders are trained and rewarded for spotting problems. It's often how our performance is assessed.
But there is a risk that comes along with that. We get so focused on finding problems that we often forget to praise, recognize and celebrate our teams. This leaves people feeling unappreciated and less motivated over time.
As leaders, we need to balance our negativity bias with more positive reinforcement.
I know an operations leader who used a strategy from the military to overcome that negativity bias. "Hunt the Good Stuff" comes from the Army's Master Resilience Training. It involves intentionally looking for positive things in order to build resiliency and optimism.
Today, I'll share some tips for using this approach to help further develop trust, resiliency and morale within your team.
Be intentional
Just adopting the mindset of seeking positive things in and around your team will go a long way. It helps create a mindset shift to fight that bias for negativity.
When you start, it might be difficult to do if you're used to a mindset of finding things that need fixing. Keep at it. If you find that you aren't naturally coming across opportunities, go look for them. Consider walking the floor in the morning to notice and recognize all the good things your team is doing.
Name it
When you do identify something, don't keep it to yourself. Call it out in the moment. Doing so will make it more tangible. It's also an opportunity for impromptu recognition which is going to help boost optimism and morale across the team.
Sweat the small stuff
A mistake many leaders make is only recognizing the really huge wins and achievements. With this exercise, nothing is too small. Catch someone wiping down the counter in the break room? Notice a collaborative moment in a meeting? Did someone provide you with their deliverable one day early? All of that is worth recognizing.
Yes, you still want to celebrate the major victories. But we especially want to appreciate the smaller ones that happen countless times throughout the day. This is the recognition that many of our folks keep telling us they don't get enough of.
Be sincere
Whatever you're recognizing, make sure it's sincere. You don't want this to become a check-the-box activity where you are naming things just for the sake of naming them. We're simply trying to shift our mindset to notice the things we truly do appreciate but have been taking for granted just a little.
This also doesn’t mean that we are going to ignore or sweep away things that need addressed. We're just trying to balance out those things with a recognition of things that are going well.
Leverage strength
This is a slightly more advanced tip for those who are able to implement everything above on a consistent basis. Once you've built the habit of genuine recognition, you'll start to notice patterns. you'll get a really great feel for your team's natural strengths. From there, you can start to be strategic about how you use those same strengths to solve new projects, challenges and opportunities.
This Week's Action Items:
Adopt the shift in mindset to look for things that need celebrating rather than things that need fixing. Get out of your office and try to spot these things.
Call out the good behaviors when you notice them.
Look out for both big and small moments.
Be sincere. Only name the things that you truly appreciate.
Over time, start leveraging these natural strengths from your team to solve bigger and more complex challenges.
