You know how damaging this can be to a team: someone who is always critical, unsupportive, unacknowledging. It’s no surprise that people avoid them.

But here’s today’s challenge: What if YOU are that person? When you’re the leader, you set the tone for everyone’s attitude. Including how they view other organizations and the larger goals.

Yet you think of your role as keeping people on track, noticing problems and assigning jobs. Those are good and necessary things, for sure.

But if that’s where your role stops, people will view you as bitter and critical. If every conversation with you is about a problem you noticed, then they’ll cringe when they see you coming.

But how to shift this? It’s about consciously looking for the good, even the small things. “I appreciate how you handled that.” “I heard something good from a customer today!” “That was going in the right direction.”

And it’s about having compassion. “How’s your dog doing?” “That traffic was a bear today, wasn’t it?” “I really appreciate the effort you’ve been putting into this.”

It’s about not following good feedback with bad. Find something positive, then say it and be done. Criticism can wait until a different time.

Be generous with your authentic appreciation. Say thank you – for general things and specific. That’s a critical part of helping your folks to have a positive outlook.

Don’t you want people to appreciate what you do as well?