Question

The most important characteristic of a leader is optimism. Explain, What does this mean and how does it apply to managing?

Being positive won't guarantee you'll succeed but being negative will guarantee you won't.​​ Explain what this means, how is it possible that being negative will guarantee you won’t be successful?

Answer 1

Answer: Optimism is a positive feeling of being hopeful for success no matter how tough the situation is. An optimistic person always hopes that best will happen to him. This is also one of the important conditions that are required for becoming a successful manager. A manager has to lead and motivate his team in all types of circumstances. Often there is a great amount of uncertainty in the situations that the managers manage. Hence optimism helps a manager in keeping his confidence and focuses on the task and motivates his team to work hard. It is the positive hope generated through optimism that keeps a manager going even in tough scenarios.

The meaning of the phrase that “Being positive won’t guarantee you will succeed but being negative will guarantee you won’t” is that if a person is positive in his attitude then he may or may not succeed just because he is positive but a negative attitude is a sure ingredient of failure. This means that if a person is negative he is bound to fail and negativity is in itself sufficient to case failure. Though being positive just not guarantee success as success requires much more than just being positive. Negativity guarantee failures as it eliminate the ability of the person to look for solutions. It destroys confidence of a person and as both these factors are essential for success hence a person fails as he lacks them.