Enlist The Power of Negative Thinking for Rising Leadership
- By Robert Pater
- May 01, 2022
Strength through negativity! Right. Now before you get the idea that I’m proposing leaders become more woe-is-me, cynical, “nothing-will-change,” “the-world-is-hopeless” or otherwise Eeyore-depressed—please negate that assumption. I’m actually suggesting that strategic leaders can tap significant advantages from noting and incorporating at least two countervailing viewpoints. Both 1. a yin of assessing potential downsides along with 2. a yang of enthusiastically progressing towards further improvement. These should be woven together into all planning and execution.
Because the world of leadership advice overflows with “be your best,” “look on the bright side,” “emphasize the good” (and I’m not at all downplaying nor mocking this—I’ve seen the power of Ted Lasso-like optimism and sincerely conveying belief in others’ capabilities that may be hidden even to them), I want to offer a balancing approach: the power of negative thinking.
This is NOT about “being negative,” but it is about scoping out negatives/what might be blocking potential improvements in order to then reduce or even eliminate them. Similarly to how, in mathematics, subtracting a negative turns into a positive (as in paying off a financial debt raises your fiscal standing). Or in communication, how a double-negative is actually a positive (“I’m not unconvinced many will get this point”). And, in personnel decisions, the addition by subtraction of separating from an ardent anti-safety supervisor.
I’m basing the power of negative thinking on the work of changemaster Kurt Lewin, renowned for his ability to plan then achieve improvements in a wide host of difficult scenarios.
He applied “Field Theory” from physics as his inspiration; this states that any status quo condition tends to be caused by the combined interaction of all the forces acting on it. In other words, a magnetic particle resting on a table isn’t stationary because there aren’t any push-pull forces affecting it. Just the opposite. It actually stays in place because of the resultant of forces from all directions, some of which magnetically attract it, others that repel it. There is no such thing as stasis, Lewin contended. Rather, everything is in a state of “dynamic equilibrium.” And this balance of forces can change at any time. By circumstance or when directed by an expert changemaster.
This article originally appeared in the May 2022 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.