Three ways to burst the "positivity delusion"

Might your leadership benefit by not "blowing sunshine" (aka: "success theatre")"

Excerpt: "As a young CEO, I felt the pressure —­ the pressure of employees depending on me, the pressure of not really knowing what I was doing, the pressure of being responsible for tens of millions of dollars of other people’s money. As a consequence of this pressure, I took losses extremely hard. If we failed to win a customer or slipped a date or shipped a product that wasn’t quite right, it weighed heavily on me. I thought that I would make the problem worse by transferring that burden to my employees. Instead, I thought I should project a positive, sunny demeanor and rally the unburdened troops to victory. I was completely wrong. 

I realized my error during a conversation with my brother-in-­law, Cartheu. At the time, Cartheu worked for AT&T as a telephone lineman (he is one of those guys who climb the poles). I had just met a senior executive at AT&T, whom I’ll call Fred, and I was excited to find out if Cartheu knew him. Cartheu said, “Yeah, I know Fred. He comes by about once a quarter to blow a little sunshine up my ass.” At that moment, I knew that I’d been screwing up my company by being too positive."