What’s going right

This video is all about what’s going right. Imagine that. It’s a fun topic that sometimes leaders don’t really think too much about what’s going right. But the point of this video is to explain to you how this is actually an essential ability for leaders. And it’s more than about just like, “Oh, you want to have this happy, fun workplace where everything’s perfect.” No, no, no, no. It’s not about that. I’m actually going to explain the psychology behind why we need to intentionally, at times, remind ourselves or prime ourselves to look for things that are going right and look for opportunities, as opposed to just focusing on threats or weaknesses.

A little bit of the science behind this has to do with priming and this idea that the brain, more than anything, is a pattern recognition machine. And when you prime it to look for a certain pattern, it’s really good at finding it. So, as you are listening to this video, what I want you to do right now is go ahead and just close your eyes for a second. Close your eyes and think about all the things you can see that are red. Don’t open your eyes. What red objects are in the room? How many can you think of? Maybe name them or just in your mind think of how many. Pick a number. Now, when I tell you to open your eyes, I’m going to have you look for everything you see that’s red. Okay, so open your eyes. Look around. Take it all in. How many things do you see that are red?

What do you see? Now, when I do this in my trainings, often people are looking all around and they see, I don’t know, 10 different things that are red. You know, a fire alarm, a light on a computer, someone’s t-shirt, someone’s dress shirt, someone’s socks, whatever it is. There’s a million different things that are red and you didn’t even see them. But what changed is kind of that thing you were primed to look for. And now, our default setting as humans, we are primed to look for what is going wrong, what are the threats. And there’s a great saying that says leaders see things as they are, but not worse than they are. But often the way we’re wired is to see things as worse than they are. And there’s actually a logical reason for this.

When you think about how we evolved to survive, and it’s that you should be vigilant looking for dangers. Before we made fire and spears and all these wonderful things, swords and guns, we were prey more than we were predators. So it was prey. We’re always looking here, what’s going to go wrong, when do I need to attack, when do I need to run away from something? And so often, we’re primed and wired to look for that pattern, what’s wrong, what’s wrong with me, what’s wrong with the world around me, and what are the threats? And what I’ll say is that’s important. You should have that capacity as a leader, as a friend, as partners, or whatever. It’s valuable. But the problem is we need to offset that a little bit intentionally to balance it out.

As I said, it’s best to see things as they are, not worse than they are. And in order to see things as they are, we often need to intentionally prime ourselves to look for what’s going right, what are the opportunities. And so that’s what I want to challenge you to do. In the same way, you just did that little color experiment, you look for the color red. I mean, imagine how you saw that huge shift. Probably you saw maybe a couple of things and then all of a sudden, there’s red everywhere. Imagine if you were to do that to say, “Well, you know what are the things that are going right in your life, things you have to be grateful for? What are the things going right in your work, in your organization? Actually, probably going to be a lot of them.”

So, that is the purpose of this assignment. You’re going to get into small groups of anywhere from three to six people, whatever works for the group you have watching this. And you are simply going to answer those questions of, you know, “What’s going right anyway?” So first, as a group, you’re going to think about in your own individual life and share that with the group, “What’s going right for me?” Maybe go for about two minutes, two or three minutes. And then you’re going to say, “Well, what’s going right in my work? Victories, processes, habits, things that are just going really well.” And then finally, you’ll do this as a team, a kind of your smaller unit, “What’s going right?” And then maybe it’s the organization as a whole, the whole thing, big picture, “What’s going right?”

And again, it’s not to say that there are not things going wrong and there are not problems to be solved. But at the end of the day, your performance, my performance, performance for everyone is about solutions, not just problems. It’s about opportunities, not just threats. And it’s about identifying strengths and leveraging them and not just identifying weaknesses. So there is your assignment: What is going right?