12 Key Attitudes for Success: Attitudes to Others

8 – Attitudes to Others

Your attitude to others is probably one of the most powerful attitudes for success.

We are all leaders of some sort or other. We don’t need to have a senior position to be a leader. We lead others positively or negatively simply by how we are with others. Ultimately, our attitude to those other people will determine the leadership we offer them.

Being a Hope Bringer

If leadership is influence, the people with the most influence are those with the most hope. How often have you been in an organisation where the negativity of just a few people drags everybody down? How often have you been in an environment where the hope and positivity of one or two people shine as a beacon and make you want to be around them? Where does that positivity come from? It comes from how you see the world and how you see other people.

My mother was somebody who always believed in the best in everybody. Even when they let her down, disappointed her, or betrayed her trust, although she would recognise the betrayal, she would continue to find the positive in them. This wasn’t naive; it was a foundational belief about human potential.?

It meant that those around her enormously loved her. It meant that people couldn’t wait to help, assist, or advise her. It meant she had a rich network of friends, supporters and helpers. She could do things that, on her own, she could never have done. Fundamentally, that was because of her attitude to others.

Adopting an Expectation of Disappointment

If an expectation of disappointment underpins your attitude toward others, you start believing that everybody’s out to get you. You expect people to let you down. You just can’t wait until somebody fails. You already carry disappointment in advance of the reality of what has happened. Not only are you limiting, indeed cursing, the contributions of others, but you are also carrying that negativity into your attitudes toward your future.

The Power of Encouragement

I have been in environments where mutual encouragement is so embedded in the culture that people are enabled to do things they could never believe they could do. This culture looks explicitly for the treasure, the gems, the strengths, and the wonderful aspects of the people in that environment and then focuses on encouraging those good things to be even better. Often, you can see good in others that they cannot see for themselves, and as this culture reinforces with more and more positivity, extraordinary things start to happen. Suppose you are looking for success in your environment. In that case, whatever role you have, you will find that positivity and seeing the best in others will enable extraordinary things to happen. It’ll also create a reinforcing effect where people will feed that back to you. You will start to see things in you that you hadn’t realised were there. You will begin to see the best of who you are. Stepping more and more into your strengths will enable you to be more and more successful.

Conclusion

Your attitude toward others reflects your ability to have the right attitude toward yourself. Hold the right attitude toward others, reinforcing the right attitude toward yourself. Get your attitude right, and you will engage in a powerful, supportive, motivating and success-generating environment. The right attitude to others will create an attitude for success.