An Entire Team of Opportunity Finders!

Originally shared in A Daily Dose Of Leadership on July 9, 2020.

Napoleon Hill once said, “I have also discovered that there comes with every experience of temporary defeat, and every failure and every form of adversity, the seed of an equivalent benefit. Mind you, I did not say the full blown flower of success, but the seed from which that flower may be made to germinate and grow!”

Just a few days ago, a friend of mine shared a post on social media that said something about everyone having the potential to brighten a room. Jokingly, I responded that there are always a few folks we run into who contribute to a delayed reaction; the room gets brighter when they leave… 

So all jokes aside, have you encountered the person who has an uncanny ability to find a problem in every solution rather than the opposite? Yep, that’s meant to be rhetorical! We’ve all seen it… For that matter, I’ll bet you’re picturing that person as you read this!

With such a tremendous focus the media and society as a whole seems to put on all that’s wrong with the world, as well as any potential for anything else to go wrong, should it really be a surprise that so many people fall into the trap seeing those negatives?

Not so long ago in a Leading At The Next Level lesson called Find YOUR Seed and Make It Grow, we looked at some of the how’s and why’s each of us can apply on an individual basis to be more intentional about looking for those seeds of opportunity in each challenge we face. And while that’s absolutely critical for us to do within our own scope of work, it has an even bigger impact when we’re leading an organization!

So here’s my question for you as someone who sets the example for the team around you: how are you setting the tone for your entire team to be focused on finding the opportunities in each challenge they face on a daily basis?

Walking the walk on a daily basis, providing an example that each of our team members can see and hear with regards to how we handle the challenges that come our way is definitely a starting point, but that alone won’t be enough to truly build an entire team of opportunity finders! How do you encourage your team members to avoid getting caught up in the negative that can swirl around in a work group any time the bus seems to be veering toward the ditch for one reason or another? What are you saying and doing in these situations that challenges their thinking and encourages them to focus on the real seeds of opportunity that are very likely to be hidden by the challenge that most people tend to get caught up in?

Guiding our team to be opportunity finders is a significant step toward creating a culture that finds those seeds, plants them in fertile soil, then takes the necessary steps for those seeds to germinate and grow, but we still have to protect against Round-Up drifting over onto them… In order to take full responsibility for leading our teams and creating a culture when the organization can reproduce opportunity finders, we also need to be very alert to situations where someone is, intentionally or unintentionally, trying to kill our seeds before they have a chance to grow!

At times, this may be as simple as redirecting a conversation that’s taken a wrong turn; that can certainly happen even with the best of intentions. There may also be times where we need to circle back and have a one on one conversation with a person who seems to be squashing each seed a team member tries to plant before it has a chance of bearing fruit. And there will be some scenarios where we’re left with no other option but to get a poisonous vine out of the garden before it can overtake what we’re really trying to grow…

Ultimately, it all really rests on us if we want to build an organization where everyone becomes engaged in identifying opportunities rather than becoming overwhelmed each time a challenge arises. There will definitely be times where that’s easier than others… And there will also be situations where we’re tempting to make a rash decision on taking a specific action because every other company in the world seems to be doing it. But if we’re really leading our teams like they depend on us to, sometimes our best course of action will be sticking with the course we’re already on… We’ll take a look at that in the next blog.