Why Optimistic Teams Win

Why optimistic teams win

Martin Seligman, who is the founding father of positive psychology, did some interesting research and he shares this in his book ‘Learned Optimism’, which I highly recommend. It's a great book.

He shares his research that he did of NBA and Major League Baseball teams. What he did was he researched the interviews that they would do after a game.

Sometimes they won, sometimes they lost, So what he found really significant was what the players were saying after they lost. And they looked at it from 3 different lenses.

One is personalization.

So when they lost was the loss all about them or did it just happen and they're going to respond. They didn't take the blame too seriously. It wasn't all about them.

Two was the permanence.

Did this loss, or this defeat, mean that they're going to be losing the rest of the games all season? Or was it possible during the rest of the season to pull out more victories? And was their language geared around “Hey, we can do this. We're going to get better. We're going to grow through this”.

And last is pervasiveness.

Did the loss of one game impact the whole season? And maybe even other parts and all the players.

Was it pervasive in the organization? Or was it more just a one off and we're going to come back and we're going to fight through this.

So you can see how this language indicates a more optimistic perspective. Or a more pessimistic perspective

And what he found was that the teams that used the more optimistic language in those three criteria were far more likely to have a better record and an overall better season.

So what does this mean to your team?

Well you, and your team as the leader, you get to craft how you respond to situations like a crisis. You're going to talk to them from a personalization standpoint.

In this crisis situation, was this something that we just should have been prepared for and we messed up because we weren't prepared. We didn’t cash in the bank. We didn't have the right client mix etc. etc. etc. Or is this pandemic out of your control? And now it's just your job to respond.

The second piece of this is the permanence.

Is this crisis going to stick around for a long long time, or is it going to be a blip and we're going to get through this and we're going to succeed.

And then the last one is around the pervasiveness. Is everything going under in the crisis or are there glimmers of hope emerging.

And you as a leader… Are you the person that's actually highlighting those for your team so they can have a much more optimistic perspective.

Apply this criteria to your team communications and notice how this can help your team win.

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