What’s Wrong with Optimistic Leaders? (Balanced Leadership Series).

Obviously, we all intuitively know that quality leaders are optimistic. Without optimism it is easy to dishearten your team and create a bleak workplace climate that detracts from employee engagement and innovative outcomes. Effective optimism enables people to dream big and take calculated risks.  We would all agree that it is critical for healthy team functioning and creating a culture that minimises a fear of failure, so what could go wrong with optimistic leaders?

The key is to get the balance right so that a leader is not operating with a blind optimism. Blind optimism occurs when high optimism in a leader is not complemented with the ability to analyse the potential pitfalls in a plan or strategy.  It is not about diminishing optimism to fix the problem, but more about balancing it out with due diligence in planning and decision-making.  If this balance is not achieved either through personal leadership growth or through other collaborative team members whose strengths are in this area, eventually the organisation will be led into serious trouble.

The negative impact of this imbalance not only puts an organisation at fiscal risk, causes stress on the leader, but it also creates other human collateral damage.  So, let’s examine these.  Imbalanced optimism impedes quality leadership results, because it hinders leaders from being persistent in playing the long game toward success.  Instead, they tend to overcommit to too many new things by jumping at many exciting shiny objects that come across their path. This can only produce mediocre outcomes.  They seldom take the time to explore whether the newly presented path before them is merely another possibility or a genuine opportunity.

Not only does blind optimism cause poor organisational outcomes, but blindly optimistic leaders inadvertently detract from their team’s growth within their organisation.  They have a laser quick reactionary response to want to remove any negative issues that arise, because they feel too uncomfortable with it.  This decreases the real opportunity for their team to both notice and take initiative to address issues independently.  It diminishes employees’ sense of ownership of the organisation’s mission, along with creating an unhealthy dependence on the leader.  It is understandable that a few critical issues may arise and need to be dealt with immediately, however some issues can be left for a day or two. This gives time for the team to take some of the weight off the leader and grow in their ability to handle their areas of delegated responsibility. 

One highly negative effect that blind optimism has on a leader is a loss of credibility. In a short space of time employees can see the unrealistic approaches that a leader is taking, and they soon lose trust in the capacity of their manager.  The trouble is that most leaders in this situation don’t see it happening and can’t work out why there is a lack of commitment. Think about it; if you were asked to perform work that you didn’t believe would work, how committed would you be to that work?

Another mistake is when a leader insists that all staff take on their ‘blind optimism’ perspective. It is a demand that all employees must exude the same cheery exterior the leader does. The desire to keep a positive atmosphere in this fake manner undermines the genuine sharing of true feelings, which ironically is the only way to a genuine positive workplace culture.  The leader inadvertently creates an unsafe space for employees to share their true emotions creating a distance between themself and their staff.  The leader then will never know what is truly going on within their own organisation, because employees are too intimidated to share the truth.  This can cause staff to hide their mistakes and lie about their involvement obstructing true personal and relational growth. Unfortunately, this will also often create the undesirable space for people to talk behind the leader’s back. 

We need optimistic leaders, but it is also clear that without complementing optimism with due diligence, it causes a whole mix if unwanted issues for a leader and their employees. Most leaders are intuitively aware of the imbalances within their leadership traits but can’t accurately articulate what imbalances they have. If this is you and you would like to know what yours are, feel free to connect with me. I am a Harrison Assessment (HA) Consultant and can use HA psychometric assessments to measure your specific mix of leadership traits, so you can understand your tendencies and grow into a more balanced and effective leader.