BookNotes: Resilient Optimism: Lead With Realism, Not Fake Positivity

WEBVTT
00:00:00.361 --> 00:00:03.757
Only about one in five employees is engaged at work right now,
00:00:03.943 --> 00:00:09.347
and most managers are answering that with the worst possible tool, forced positivity.
00:00:09.997 --> 00:00:13.797
What if the most optimistic thing you could do for your team on Monday was cancel
00:00:13.797 --> 00:00:15.773
a meeting and take the day off?
00:00:24.294 --> 00:00:28.026
Welcome to the Manager Lab, where we take the big ideas and turn them into things
00:00:28.026 --> 00:00:30.639
that you can actually do on Monday morning.
00:00:30.883 --> 00:00:34.139
I'm Greg Gillum, your host and CEO of Human Fusion.
00:00:34.726 --> 00:00:39.766
Today's book is brand new. It's Resilient Optimism, the Science of Sustaining
00:00:39.766 --> 00:00:41.907
a Positive Mindset in Tough Times.
00:00:42.348 --> 00:00:46.368
It's by Michelle Geelan, out now from Harvard Business Review Press.
00:00:46.855 --> 00:00:51.006
Geelan is a positive psychology researcher who has worked with thousands of
00:00:51.006 --> 00:00:54.158
leaders, and this book shows up at just the right time.
00:00:54.553 --> 00:00:59.980
Teams are dealing with AI disruption, economic uncertainty, and a lot of change fatigue.
00:01:00.642 --> 00:01:05.316
That line I opened with comes straight from her core idea. Optimism is not a
00:01:05.316 --> 00:01:07.515
feeling, it's a behavior.
00:01:08.084 --> 00:01:12.294
That matters for managers because you can't order people to feel better,
00:01:12.689 --> 00:01:15.469
but you can build behaviors. So let's get into it.
00:01:15.968 --> 00:01:21.472
What resilient optimism is and isn't. First, let's clear something up.
00:01:22.029 --> 00:01:24.984
This is not a, quote, good vibes only book.
00:01:25.146 --> 00:01:30.306
Geelan openly rejects toxic positivity, the fake it till you make it approach
00:01:30.306 --> 00:01:32.501
that pretends problems aren't there.
00:01:33.169 --> 00:01:37.536
Resilient optimism is different. It means seeing the challenge clearly and still
00:01:37.536 --> 00:01:39.084
believing your actions matter.
00:01:39.554 --> 00:01:43.849
She describes it as training your attention, your habits, and your responses
00:01:44.104 --> 00:01:46.780
so that hope has a place to land.
00:01:47.413 --> 00:01:50.153
Here's why it's your business as a manager.
00:01:50.924 --> 00:01:55.202
Your team takes its cue from you. When you walk into a meeting after bad news,
00:01:55.469 --> 00:01:58.203
people read your face before they read your words.
00:01:58.494 --> 00:02:03.654
If you panic, they panic. If you pretend everything is fine, they stop trusting you.
00:02:03.968 --> 00:02:06.429
Resilient optimism is the middle path.
00:02:06.847 --> 00:02:11.124
Honest about the problem, confident about the next step. And.
00:02:13.364 --> 00:02:16.785
The good news is it's a skill. It's not a personality trait.
00:02:17.064 --> 00:02:21.494
And Geelan lays out five behaviors and I'll take them one at a time and give
00:02:21.494 --> 00:02:23.124
you a manager move for each.
00:02:23.501 --> 00:02:26.752
Okay, number one, recalibrate your mindset.
00:02:27.262 --> 00:02:32.602
Geelan's advice here is to track small wins and be deliberate about the information that you take in.
00:02:33.049 --> 00:02:38.007
Your brain notices what you train it to notice. If all you consume is bad news
00:02:38.239 --> 00:02:41.889
and all you review is what went wrong, that becomes your reality.
00:02:42.295 --> 00:02:47.520
So the manager move here is to start your next team meeting with a two-minute wins round.
00:02:48.042 --> 00:02:52.175
Each person shares one thing that moved forward this week, however small.
00:02:52.767 --> 00:02:56.668
That feels minor, but it retrains the whole team to look for progress.
00:02:57.202 --> 00:03:01.334
Then check your own inputs. If the first thing you read every morning is a doom
00:03:01.334 --> 00:03:04.238
headline or a messy inbox, change the order.
00:03:04.881 --> 00:03:09.136
Two, transform your stress response. This one is a mindset shift.
00:03:09.414 --> 00:03:13.884
Geelan suggests reading stress as a sign that something meaningful is happening.
00:03:14.912 --> 00:03:16.340
Not as proof that you're failing.
00:03:16.671 --> 00:03:19.213
We only stress about things we care about.
00:03:19.608 --> 00:03:22.725
So the manager move here is to change how you talk about pressure.
00:03:23.184 --> 00:03:24.934
So instead of this deadline is
00:03:24.934 --> 00:03:30.521
killing us, try this is hard because it matters. Here's what we control.
00:03:31.128 --> 00:03:34.837
Same situation, different story, and very different energy in the room.
00:03:35.481 --> 00:03:39.615
All right, number three is to triage your commitments. When things get tough,
00:03:39.615 --> 00:03:41.354
most of us try to do everything.
00:03:41.940 --> 00:03:47.025
The author says resilient optimists move from handling everything to putting
00:03:47.025 --> 00:03:50.503
their energy where it counts, and that includes delegating well.
00:03:51.037 --> 00:03:55.445
So the manager move here is that this week, list everything on your plate and
00:03:55.445 --> 00:03:57.695
your team's plate, and then mark each item.
00:03:58.084 --> 00:04:05.764
Must do, delegate, delay, or drop. Then say out loud to your team what you're dropping.
00:04:06.193 --> 00:04:11.174
Nothing builds morale faster than a leader who takes work off of people's lists.
00:04:11.828 --> 00:04:13.953
4. Recharge Smarter.
00:04:14.696 --> 00:04:18.423
This is my favorite one because it goes against how most workplaces operate.
00:04:18.928 --> 00:04:22.718
Geelan treats rest as part of the strategy for avoiding burnout,
00:04:23.003 --> 00:04:25.725
not a reward for you earning after burning out.
00:04:26.224 --> 00:04:29.939
She points to research showing that people who took more than 10 vacation days
00:04:29.939 --> 00:04:35.356
a year were significantly more likely to get a promotion than people who didn't use their time.
00:04:35.855 --> 00:04:39.295
Rest doesn't hurt performance, it supports it.
00:04:39.748 --> 00:04:44.972
So the manager move here is to model that. Take your time off and actually unplug.
00:04:45.367 --> 00:04:49.233
Don't send emails at 10 p.m. If your people see you skip vacation,
00:04:49.460 --> 00:04:51.416
they'll assume that that's the unwritten rule.
00:04:51.822 --> 00:04:55.642
And when someone on your team hasn't taken a day off in months, bring it up.
00:04:56.083 --> 00:05:00.483
Hey, I noticed you haven't taken time off lately. Let's put something on the calendar.
00:05:01.167 --> 00:05:05.741
Number five, connect the dots. The last behavior is about spotting patterns.
00:05:06.142 --> 00:05:12.005
Small moments of meaning, momentum, and positive action that break the feeling of helplessness.
00:05:12.435 --> 00:05:15.546
When people feel nothing they do matters, they check out.
00:05:16.116 --> 00:05:20.597
When they can see the line between their effort and a result, then they lean in.
00:05:21.056 --> 00:05:25.050
So the manager move is to close that loop. When a project lands,
00:05:25.253 --> 00:05:27.952
tell the person how their piece contributed.
00:05:28.411 --> 00:05:32.659
That report you built, the client renewed it, renewed their contract because
00:05:32.659 --> 00:05:34.453
of that. So fantastic job.
00:05:34.796 --> 00:05:41.384
So one specific sentence like that does more for resilience than a dozen generic great jobs.
00:05:42.063 --> 00:05:46.559
Now, why does this book matter now? Gallup's most recent data puts employee
00:05:46.559 --> 00:05:50.823
engagement at about 20%, alongside high levels of stress.
00:05:51.293 --> 00:05:56.163
That means roughly four out of five people on your average team are just getting through their day.
00:05:56.763 --> 00:06:00.217
You can't fix the economy, and you can't stop the next reorg,
00:06:00.519 --> 00:06:02.626
but you can control the climate on your team.
00:06:03.244 --> 00:06:06.059
Geelan's research gives you a practical toolkit for that.
00:06:06.361 --> 00:06:10.071
It isn't about being cheerful. It's about being the steady person in the room
00:06:10.291 --> 00:06:12.416
who keeps pointing to what's possible.
00:06:13.304 --> 00:06:17.582
Here's your manager lab challenge for this week. Pick one of the five behaviors,
00:06:17.739 --> 00:06:19.898
just one, and try it with your team.
00:06:20.537 --> 00:06:26.661
Start a wins round where everyone just produces one win of the week.
00:06:27.631 --> 00:06:32.790
Reframe one stressful moment out loud. Drop one thing from the team's plate.
00:06:33.492 --> 00:06:39.381
Put your own time off on the calendar and connect one person's work to a real result.
00:06:39.845 --> 00:06:41.726
Then come back and tell us what happened.
00:06:42.365 --> 00:06:45.418
The book is Resilient Optimism by Michelle Geelan.
00:06:46.062 --> 00:06:50.997
If you lead people through tough times, and right now that's all of us, it's worth your time.
00:06:51.717 --> 00:06:54.972
I'm Greg Gillum. Thanks for spending time in the Manager Lab.
00:06:54.972 --> 00:06:58.032
And until next time we meet, do good work.