COMMENTARY
Create Leaders: Avoid the "Negativity Trap"
April 2004
By Donald J. Pfundstein*
for New
Hampshire Business Review
 Business leaders like describing themselves as eternal optimists. They focus on the positive. They encourage others to grow by exercising increasing levels of responsibility. Someone once told me that great business leaders build other leaders from those around them. True leadership is about maximizing the strengths of others, not projecting your own.
Creating leaders from the people around you is not a simple undertaking. However, it is critically important to your organization. This is particularly true as your business grows and you age or move on to other interests. Just what does it take? First, you need to know what your customers want. What your people do. What it takes to excel in meeting your customers’ needs. Then you look internally at your organization.
Emphasize and leverage your people’s strengths. Focusing on their weaknesses will get in the way of achieving your goals. Always having three reasons why you are the smartest person in the organization and the only one who could possibly serve the customer is a dangerous trait. It will create a death spiral that will soon spin out of control. You’ll never build the talent and leaders your organization needs, not just to survive but thrive.
Being the only talented genius in an empty room is not going to satisfy any of your economic or human needs. An enterprise full of stars will go a long way toward achieving both.
So how do you avoid the negativity trap? How do you create an enterprise full of stars?
- Opportunity: Provide your people
with the opportunity to demonstrate their strengths.
Give people meaningful projects, exciting challenges
and tell them what they do well. Task specific assignments
are suitable for lower level or less experienced personnel.
However, there must be a meaningful opportunity to
contribute in a challenging way for the leader in
training.
- Accountability and feedback: People
actually want to be held accountable. They want regular
feedback. Tell your people what you expect. What do
they do well? Explain what they can improve and tell
them again what they do well. It is difficult to provide
constructive criticism. It takes time. It requires
thoughtfulness and discipline. However, it is the
best way to teach people to step up to leadership
positions.
- Reward and advancement: People
need to be rewarded for a job well done. This does
not necessarily require money. Often the most successful
reward in terms of motivating people is a genuine
“thank you” or “well done.”
Acknowledgement of worthy achievements keeps people
invested. An opportunity to advance within the organization
is usually welcome. However, increasingly more difficult
and exciting projects may be all the advancement that
is available. The good news is this advancement, so
long as the other important factors of the relationship
are in place, may be all that is necessary to continue
to motivate individuals.
Building an enterprise of stars takes time. It requires
you to focus on people’s strengths, not dwell
on their weaknesses. It requires you to invest in people.
Help them learn — teach them everything you think
you know. Holding back to maintain control or mask insecurities
is common but disastrous.
A positive focus is not a substitute for good hiring. Being positive does not mean you carry all employees from cradle to grave irrespective of their contributions. New blood and cutting dead wood are both necessary. But before you cut, explore leveraging the strengths that attracted you to the person in the first instance.
I wish I could say I follow these rules every day. Perhaps you do. If so, you will have avoided the negativity trap. You may even build the leaders who will fund your next great idea!
*Donald J. Pfundstein is admitted in New Hampshire.
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