You See What You Look For

You want to buy a vehicle. You go to the dealer’s lot and look at a white Honda CRV. You test-drive it. You really like it, but the salesperson won’t get the price right.

As you turn out of the dealer’s lot and drive down the street, guess what you see? A white Honda CRV.  

You pull out onto the expressway and merge into traffic right behind . . . a white Honda CRV.

You look across the median at the traffic and a white Honda CRV passes you.

You think, “There are white Honda CRVs everywhere!”

But are there really?

Or, is your mind focused on the white Honda CRV you just drove? 

You saw what you chose to see.

You focus your mind every minute of every day and night on something.

The question is, “Where is your focus?”

One of the keys to creating a positive work culture that grows people and profits is developing and implementing strategies that equip them to focus on the positive instead of the negative. What strategies do you facilitate in your company’s culture?

Here are three strategies that empower everyone in your work culture to focus on the positive:

Begin Grateful

How might your team meetings transform if managers started by asking, “What’s a win you experienced since our last meeting?”

Focusing their minds on at least one positive work experience sets the meeting polarity on positive. At first, the challenge is who will go first. Wait them out until they discover something positive.

Make gratitude a company culture habit. Prompt it in all internal communications. Ask in conversations, “Hey, what’s something good that happened recently?”

Shawn Achor in The Happiness Advantage provides research that indicates gratitude is a prime factor in happiness. Employees’ happiness level determines the extent to which they engage fully

You see what you look for. Begin each day grateful. That’s how everyone sees and creates more work experiences for which to be grateful.

Bright Spot Up

Second, you can start your workday with gratitude, encounter adversity, and sink mentally. You look for more adversity which, of course, means you see it. Your focus becomes, “What else can go wrong?”

Instead, empower managers and their teams to look for what Chip and Dan Heath in Switch call “bright spots.” It’s more than a denial of the adversity as if it didn’t happen. That’s delusional. And it’s far more than some Ninja mind trick of “om’ing” your way into a new state of consciousness.  

It’s as simple as scratching your ear when it itches. Do you think, “Oh, my right ear itches. I shall raise my right hand and scratch it with my right index finger?” Of course not. What do you do? Unconsciously, the ear itch switch flips. You scratch. The itch dissipates to a point of comfort.

Same thing with the itch of adversity. At first, train your brain to respond rather than react, i.e., to recognize the adversity, scratch it, and pivot to another thought to focus on. Something like, “That sucks. What can I do about it? Next!” The polarity of focus transforms quickly.

Acknowledge. Act. Move on.

Your company culture can foster this “bright spot up” focus. Invite managers to acknowledge the mental struggle adversity brings. Suggest this technique. Ask for meeting updates on how it works.

Before You Leave

Third, set a “before you leave” focus to conclude each day. All of our to-do lists are dynamic. Fires erupt. Everything takes longer and costs more than we expect. Finish a day captive to this reality and employees leave with a sense of incompleteness which casts a negative shadow that lingers until the next morning.

Develop the “before you leave” focus with your managers first. Suggest they complete one easy task before calling it a day. Send an email of appreciation. Fire off a “job well-done” Slack message. Hand-write a thank-you note.

As James Clear teaches us in Atomic Habits, tiny changes bring remarkable results.

Encourage them to put it in their calendars: “Before I Leave.” Empower them to teach this simple technique to their team. The sense of well-being created in their outlook by completing one task as they exit positively welcomes them the next morning.

How can your company culture grow people to choose what they see and grow profits? Since we see what we look for, use these three strategies to see the positive at work daily:

• Begin Grateful
• Bright Spot Up
• Before You Leave

That’s three more ways you create a Work Positive culture!

What’s your question about how to create a positive work culture? Ask Dr. Joey here.