Three books that inspire positivityness

There’s nothing like a walk in the shop to offer leaders the opportunity to look beyond their own lives.  Mostly we don’t have time for it, but the best CEOs I ever met knew the names of almost all their key workers, and they weren’t afraid to step around among the machines.  I once worked in a booming electronics company whose cafeteria still offered $.35 lunches, a LEFTOVER from hard times when workers’ lunches, sometimes their biggest meals, were subsidized by the company.  The Mac and cheese and peas were a reminder that we have been through tough times and that we could come out the other side.  Lopez’s book is a jolt, another opportunity to enlarge your world.  One would not expect this type of human story coming from a Gallup senior scientist, but the author makes us realize that leaders are about hope.  Good leaders concentrate the ideal of winning, getting better, doing well, coming out the other side, in their very position.  What they should do is give us a future.   Think Steve Jobs, Franklin Roosevelt,  Dr. Toussaint.  We so want to believe in them.

And hope is what The Mill Girl has come to love, a dose of positivityness that transcends bad news TV 24/ 7 and screw-ups that send us back to the pre-walking stage.  Although hope may be a warm intangible, we need it to put the foot on the first step and push up the stairs; I needed it to swing my legs off the bed and try walking again. 

As one would expect from a Gallup Poll scientist, Lopez presents his argument for hope couched in encouraging statistics:

·          Other conditions being equal, hope leads to a 14% bump in workplace outcomes.  Put another way, a group of high-hope salespeople sells as much product in six days as their low-hope colleagues do in seven days

·         Hopeful employees show up for work.  Lopez quotes a recent study showing that high-hope engineer in a high tech firm missed an average of less than three days of work in a 12-month period.  Low-hope engineers missed more than 10 days of work each, on average, costing the firm nearly four times as much as their high-hope colleagues in lost productivity.  No other workplace measure (including job satisfaction, company commitment, and confidence to do the job) counted more than hope in determining whether an employee would show up.

·         Hopeful workers are more productive. Executives at a top financial services group were given two weeks to come up with as many high-quality solutions as possible to a complex problem.  The more hopeful executives produced better solutions, and more of them, even some they knew were not viable. 

·         Hope can have real impact on companies and organizations.  Hopeful salespeople reach their quotas more often; hopeful mortgage brokers process and close more loans; hopeful managing executives meet their quarterly goals more often.  Lopez also claims that high=hope people are more resilient in adversity, and therefore extremely valuable in organizations experiencing uncertainty or leadership or market shifts.

Lopez choice of hope-filled individuals is inspiring    Andrew DeVries at six feet six inches tall was a seasoned athlete.  At age 55 he tried out for the Michigan Senior Olympics volleyball team.  But just weeks after the event, he was struck by a car while riding his motorcycle in Grand Rapids.  It set him back, way back. 

The accident crushed part of his leg.  Doctors finally told him after several surgeries that they would have to amputate his left leg at mid-thigh – they drew a black line with a Sharpie to show him where.  Chilling.  Suddenly a physician’s assistant, Sarah Scholl, stepped up and reminded him how to futurecast, saying “Andy, what kind of gold ball do you play?”  The next morning, in the midst of get well cards and flowers in his hospital room, was a twelve-pack of Titleist Pro V1 balls.  That was hope.

But the story gets better:

When Andy woke up in the recovery room, he still could feel ten toes.  It seems the surgeons had discovered a little bit of blood flow and decided not to amputate after all.

And still better:

When Andy was transferred to the rehab center, a call came in from the Senior Olympic volleyball coach John Wilder.  “Hey Andy, you made the team!”  Well yeah, okay, but…

The spot was his, warned coach, on one condition – he had to get better.  “I’ll play you if you can just stand up,” he said.  Stand up. Stand up.   Seven months later Andy showed up.  Although he could barely stand, the coach kept his word and put him in the game.  “I collected myself enough to serve.  We won that game and the next.   As the competition intensified, the coach had to take me out, but our team went on to win the gold medal.”

I have to say this story had me weepy.  I understand it too well.  I’m working on ordinary walking, and then I want to hit against the ball machine – I figure I can stand in one place and hit left, hit right.  And when the snow melts, I want to take my hybrid bike across the field.  I’m going to get Doug to run alongside me on the left, and Mike on the right.  It should work.  And then I’m going to go to New York and walk two blocks on city sidewalks, fast, just like everybody else.  I just know it.

How to Save the World on $5 a day, A Parable of Personal Philanthropy, by Fred Lawrence Feldman, Argo 2012                 Well, this is a different kind of hope.  It’s about giving and what happens to the giver – regardless of the amount -  when we give.  Fred Lawrence Feldman, a fundraising communications specialist, says that giving is a way to sky-rocket your sense of self-worth.  I’ll buy it!  Which way?

Feldman offers ten benefits of mindful giving, and they are as much personal, with great value to an individual, as they are linked to changing the world:

·          Connecting to the world

·         Making a difference

·         Receiving recognition

·         Fulfilling moral and religious aspirations

·         Strengthening the social fabric

·         Investing in the future

·         Combating hopelessness

·         Feeling good about yourself

·         Self-awareness

·         Realizing how good you have it…. No matter what “it” is.