Struggling to Get a Positive Perspective? See Inside and Be Encouraged
Struggling to get a positive perspective in a situation? Need an attitude adjustment? Here’s an excerpt from Lee’s book, Leading with Honor, on staying positive –
“POWs are not alone in facing hardships. All leaders face difficulties and challenges every day. None of us can control what the next day will bring, but there is one thing we all can control: our attitude. Attitude is crucial for success in any endeavor, and no one influences organizational and individual attitudes more than the leader.
Leaders Face Adversity with a Positive Attitude
Although it’s not easy to turn lemons into lemonade, leaders must strive to do just that by maintaining a positive attitude. We have to expect that we’re going to be handed lemons, sour grapes, rotten deals, and unfair decisions. How we deal with them is the true test of our leadership. Because leaders have such a powerful influence on others, they don’t have the luxury of wallowing in negativity and self-pity. Attitude was not a problem for me as a POW. I believed that someday we would return and things would be okay. Actually, I had more difficulty with attitude after I returned home to the “real world,” because I expected everything to run smoothly all the time. Of course, that was not the case, and I had to learn to adjust.
As a young flying squadron commander, I had the privilege of leading a select group of T-38 instructor pilots (IPs), all of whom had one thousand or more hours of instructor time in the aircraft. They were mostly the cream of the crop, and they helped us garner a reputation of excellence. One day in the midst of our normal flying operations, two officers from the Inspector General (IG) team arrived and set up shop in one of our offices. It turned out that they were conducting a follow-up investigation on an accident that had occurred at another base. The instructors responsible for the accident had been trained in our squadron three years prior. They were flying an unauthorized maneuver at the time of the accident, so the investigators were looking for a thread of deviancy that might trace back to our unit, even though their training had occurred before any of my guys had arrived on station.
Because the IG was involved, as opposed to the accident board, the investigation had the feel of a hunting expedition that was looking for a scapegoat. Moreover, I felt that their approach of interrogating our instructor pilots under oath would hurt morale and interfere with our focus on flight operations. (It didn’t occur to me at the time, but in retrospect I can see that my anger might have been aroused by my emotional memory of abuses in interrogations I experienced as a POW.) When I complained to my boss, he gave me a frustrated look and said, “Lee, anyone can steer the ship through the calm waters. The real captains take it through the storms.” His powerful statement hit me like a sledgehammer. It was a great lesson that inspires me to this day. Leaders take others through the difficult times, and to do that they must engage even negative and “unfair” situations with a positive attitude. On the way back to the squadron, I revamped my attitude and accepted the challenge. We sailed through that little storm with ease.”
Learn More about Leading with Honor.
