Self Esteem: Emphasizing Positive Thoughts & Projecting Confidence Within Your Company

A winning thought pattern of magnetic and confident people is their propensity to express positive thoughts when it is appropriate to do so. Being grumpy limits a person's inspirational appeal. Changing a tendency toward being negative requires considerable discipline. This is true because people appear to have a biologically based predisposition to seeing either the positive or negative content in their lives. People are therefore apt to look at situations positively or negatively. Nevertheless, even if you are a natural pessimist, you can learn to express optimism in the presence of others whom you want to influence positively. A few suggestions for the aspiring positive thinker are as follows:

1. Frame negative messages in positive terms. Suppose you are a retail store executive and you discover that your turnover rate is 40 percent per year. Your analysis is that such high turnover is too costly and creates customer service problems. You tell your store managers, "If we can reduce our turnover rate by just 10 percent we will beat the industry average, reduce costs, and improve customer satisfaction."

2. Phrase scenarios in terms of what can be done or what will be done. Similar to the suggestion just made, tell people how conditions can or will be improved. A confident leader-type would make a pronouncement such as, "If we can develop one new successful product this year, we can avoid a downsizing."

3. Provide a clear-cut course of action. In the example just mentioned, explain the action plan for developing a successful new product, new activity, or a new set of goals.

4. Substitute positive terms for negative ones when feasible. Examples include using the word challenge for problem, major investment instead of major cost, developmental opportunity for personal weakness, and the phrase best suited for yesterday's challenges when you want to avoid obsolete.

The most dynamic person must at times point out the true negatives in a situation. Yet even during the worst adversity, the magnetic individual will deliver a positive message about working out of this situation. For example, a firm that counts coins for supermarkets and transit companies had filed for bankruptcy. Surrounding its bankruptcy was a question of approximately $1 million that appeared not to have been deposited in the customers' bank accounts. The president told workers, "We have hit rock bottom, and I'm sure the newspaper accounts of what happened will not be rosy. Please do not despair. All the missing funds can be accounted for. We are going to stay in business, and we do not intend to lay off anyone. I'm as upset as anybody in this room. Let's stick together, and work our way back to health." Now that is the mark of a confident and positive leader.