Good News

I just had a conversation with a great client of mine, who heads up the technology group in a mid-size company. And the challenge he's having is morale within the technology organization.

Now, you see, he has the same problem a lot of technology organizations have is that they tend to hear it when things aren't going well. But when things do go, well, it's expected of them.

So if you're in a company or in a department where at times it feels kind of thankless, this is something you really need to hear.

Because morale is not great in this organization. They have been beat up sometimes for good reason, sometimes not so much.

But they've been beat up for a number of years now only hearing about what's not going well, when the company is not doing well. Sometimes it's blamed on the technology.

So one of the pieces of advice I gave him was to start focusing on the good news. And he said to me, Mike, I've done that like you do, Mike, I start all of my meetings with good news. I tried it. And people are just not very good in my area of sharing good news, they don't have good news to share.

So I challenged him further. And I want to challenge all of you further as leaders.

It's not up to your team to find the good news. It's up to you.

I want to challenge you, when you're working with your team. When you're starting a meeting with your team, start them off with good news. Don't wait until this big, good news. Find these small things.

I do journaling myself, personally. And one of the things I journal every day is my wins. And the win could be something really big, like I got a great new client, or I helped a client break through and create some amazing new revenue goal for themselves. But sometimes my good news is I reconnected with someone I haven't talked to in a while. I had a great conversation with my daughter. I kept up with my meditation and exercise that day. It doesn't have to be big, good news.

So I challenge you find good news for your team, even when it's hard, start a meeting and say hey, I just want to let you know you guys did a great job yesterday on X. I got a phone call from someone yesterday who said that, you know they were really pleased with the work we did you know on Y. Find something the more you help your team to focus on good news, the more they're going to feel like they're winning the game and by the way, you get more of what you focus on.

So the more you focus on good news, the more you and your team are going to look for good news, even in obstacles, you will start to look for the opportunities.

So what are you doing for you and for your team to focus on that good news. Find that good news big and small, every day.