The Power Of Positive Leadership: How and Why Positive Leaders Transform Teams and Organizations and Change the World

“We are not positive because life is easy. We are positive because life can be hard.”

Gordon consistently juxtaposes his definition of positivity against what he calls “Pollyanna positivity,” or the attempt to find something to be optimistic about in every situation, good or bad. Rather, his positivity includes resilience in the face of adversity, along with vision, belief, purpose, and other characteristics that help the positive leader overcome challenges. Here, Gordon concisely expresses his vision of positivity via a paradox—that hardship not only necessitates but also facilitates positivity.

“Culture is not just one thing; it’s everything.”

Chapter 3 explicitly establishes one of Gordon’s major themes—the idea that culture is everything. The most important job of an organization’s leader is to establish a positive culture. This will energize and encourage team members, foster relationships among them, and give them a chance to grow. In addition, the culture will drive the expectations and beliefs of the team. Here, Gordon suggests all of this by playing on the meaning of “everything”; his point is not simply that culture is hard to define because it encompasses so many things but rather that culture is therefore the most important thing.

“Alan Mulally, the former CEO of Ford, led one of the most incredible corporate turnarounds in history.”

Mulally is one of three key figures to whom Gordon returns over and over as an example of a positive leader. A former CEO of Ford, Mulally transformed the company’s profitability; in three years (2006 to 2009), the company went from losing billions of dollars to seeing profits. Having established Mulally as one of history’s best examples of positive leadership, Gordon will share the former CEO’s management system throughout the book.

“You might be wondering where to start when driving and building a culture. I believe it starts with two questions: 1) What do we stand for? 2) What do we want to be known for?”

According to Gordon, building a culture is all about knowing and sharing the organization’s core values. His example is the culture found at two businesses—a car dealership and an auto-racing group—owned by Rick Hendrick, another of his key figures. Hendrick’s leaders all believe that they stand for servant leadership, or putting team members and customers first, and they have a passion for winning.

“If you want the fruit, you must invest in the root.”

Gordon uses several metaphors throughout the book, including this one, to emphasize his points. The “fruit” represents measurable results, such as sales, while the “root” is the organization’s culture, suggesting that if leaders want to obtain measurable results, they must invest in the culture of the organization. The sentence’s use of rhyme is intended to make the precept even easier to remember, in keeping with Gordon’s promise of delivering a simple framework for success.

“The vision a positive leader creates and shares serves as a North Star that points and moves everyone in an organization in the right direction.”

The north star is another of Gordon’s metaphors, representing the organization’s mission statement. It serves to point the group in the right direction and lead the way. The leader must communicate it very clearly to every team member so that the team works as one to achieve the goal. Communication might take the form of sharing the vision before every meeting and reinforcing it visually—for example, with laminated cards or T-shirts.

“Matt asks Bubba who wins the fight, to which Bubba replies, ‘The one you feed the most, so feed the positive dog.’”

Gordon often draws on ideas from his general work in the field of positivity, including his previous books, and tailors them to fit his framework for positive leadership. In this case, he references his 2012 book The Positive Dog to show that everyone has a negative and a positive side—the negative or positive “dog”—and to suggest that the side that will win is determined by which one a person cultivates. Gordon says that people can choose to view experiences as positive or negative every day and urges them to choose the positive view.

“Let your experience be a blessing, not a curse.”

Gordon shares an anecdote about the recession, explaining that it was often the rookies in real estate who won sales awards because they had no past experience to compare their circumstances to. The experienced realtors, in contrast, felt fear because of the state of the economy. Here, Gordon clarifies that his point is not that experience is itself negative but rather that experience should provide one with expertise, not fear.

“You have the power to distort reality.”

Reality distortion is a concept closely associated with Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple. He believed so strongly in his own vision that he was able to convince his employees that his ideas were possible. This was the case even when ideas, such as accelerated project deadlines, seemed impossible. The diction echoes Gordon’s overall point, transforming a word that typically has negative connotations (“distort”) into a positive one.

“Positive leadership is not just about feeding the positive, but weeding out the negative.”

Eliminating negativity is related to two major themes: the importance of culture and The Importance of Connected and Accountable Teams. Confronting negativity and “energy vampires,” people who drain positivity, is one aspect of creating a positive culture. While Gordon suggests that leaders first try listening to and understanding energy vampires, he also says that the leader sometimes has to weed those people out by firing them. This is in keeping with his belief that people in an organization must be accountable for their own actions, including committing to positivity.

“Lead by example and lead from where you are.”

To preempt criticism, Gordon readily acknowledges difficult truths about leadership, such as the existence of burnout and the fact that no one leader has all the positive traits he describes in the book. Here, he acknowledges that emerging leaders may not have the power to hire and fire energy vampires. He tells those people to “lead from where [they] are”—that is, to set an example of positivity in order to grow as a person and leader.

“The more united and connected a team and organization is, the more they are able to accomplish together.”

Gordon describes a leader’s ability to unite and connect people as the key to creating truly great teams and organizations. A team does its best work when it is united. Not only is everyone working toward a single goal, but each member is also committed to the goal. The leader must therefore make sure that team members are connected to one another and that the leader is connected to the members.

“Team beats talent when talent isn’t a team.”

Gordon gives the example of a university basketball team that couldn’t get beyond the Elite Eight to the Final Four because the team members weren’t connected. Although no single player on the team had the talent to be drafted to the NBA, after the coach worked to connect the team, they were able to beat more talented teams. He summarizes his point with a pithy statement that relies heavily on alliteration—another example of Gordon using rhetoric to make his precepts memorable.

“Don’t let your reptile eat your positive dog.”

Gordon has previously given the example of “feeding” positivity rather than negativity, with each side metaphorically represented as a dog. He points out that stress activates the reptilian part of the brain that only considers survival, a process known as cortical inhibition. Under stress, one’s “reptile” brain therefore figuratively eats the positive dog. The way to prevent this is to find something to be thankful for, as a person can’t be both stressed and thankful at the same time.

“The two questions that the people you lead are asking are, ‘Can I trust you?’ and ‘Do you care about me?’”

Gordon makes this statement to support his principle that positive leaders build great relationships and teams. Not only must leaders be trustworthy, but they also have to genuinely care about—and even love—their team members. He cites numerous anecdotes of leaders who succeeded in a variety of fields, including education and sports, because they cared deeply about the individual members of the team and the team members knew this.

“Communication serves as the initial foundation in building a great relationship.”

Gordon maintains that relationships are the foundation on which great organizations are built and that the ability to communicate effectively underlies those relationships. It builds trust, which generates commitment, fostering teamwork that leads to results. The corollary for Gordon is that when relationships and teams break down, it is usually because of poor communication. A void in communication creates negativity, but frequent communication can reverse negativity’s effects.

“Positive leaders know that their job is to serve their teams.”

Gordon argues that positive leaders put the needs of the team before their own, as service to the team helps both the members and the leader grow. He describes such leaders as “servant-leaders,” offering Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Mother Teresa as examples. In keeping with his overall emphasis on positivity, Gordon also urges leaders who are frustrated with their team and wish that it were different to reframe the situation, arguing that leaders have the team they have in order to become better leaders.

“Love and accountability. That is how great teams, organizations, relationships, and results are created.”

Gordon describes the part of Chapter 9 subtitled “Love and Accountability” as the most important section of the book. It isn’t enough to create a connected team and genuinely care for its members; leaders must combine love and respect with the expectation of accountability, though he is careful to clarify that failure is not the same as unwillingness to follow the organization’s processes and goals. Failure can be addressed, but a team member who violates the company’s plan is not committed, and neither is the team’s leader.

“Instead of tough love, it needs to be love tough.”

Accountability is important because culture is everything: Team members cannot do things that are detrimental to the group’s focus and vision. However, Gordon doesn’t believe in “tough love” to the extent that this involves someone in power enforcing rules to improve behavior. Rather, he reworks the cliché as “love tough,” a practice that puts love first and emphasizes the desire to help the other person be their best.

“We get burned out because we forget why we do it.”

Gordon often remarks that positivity is not the same as optimism, which tries to find hope even in the darkest circumstances. Rather, he acknowledges the stresses that leaders face personally, including burnout. His solution for burnout is purpose—both the organization’s purpose and the leader’s desire to lead others. By tacitly including himself among those who experience burnout, Gordon seeks to forge a connection with readers, echoing his broader point about the importance of communication and relationships.

“As a leader you want to remind your team that you don’t have to go on a mission trip to be on a mission.”

In his discussion of why it is important for leaders to have a greater purpose for work, Gordon stresses the importance of sharing the purpose. He says that many people believe that they have to do volunteer work or go on a mission trip to find meaning in their actions. In reality, people can bring mission, passion, and purpose to their everyday work by focusing on the opportunities they are creating through their work. They can also make a point of nurturing the lives of those with whom they work.

“It’s grit, the ability to work hard for a long period of time towards a goal; to persevere, overcome, and keep moving forward in the face of adversity, failure, rejection, and obstacles.”

Gordon quotes researcher Angela Duckworth, author of Grit, as saying that persistence in the face of adversity is the number-one predictor of success. He provides numerous examples of future leaders who only obtained success after repeated failures or years of hard work. Having vision and purpose are both a part of grit. Gordon’s syntax echoes his point, piling up verbs and nouns to suggest the process of pushing through multiple challenges.

“Love powers grit, and it also powers you over fear.”

Gordon frequently describes the possibility of fear and offers suggestions on how to overcome it. He stresses that love is more powerful than fear, adding that “love casts out fear” (172)—an allusion to John 4:18, which states, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” Gordon is not appealing to a higher power here, though his use of scripture buttresses his point that practically anything can be a source of meaning; rather, he is discussing a love of work, craft, and competition, which is more powerful than the fear of failure.