Last night, I took a tour through the German online media landscape.

Last night, I took a tour through the German online media landscape. Here is a selection of headlines I found: “Supply bottlenecks in retail likely to continue for some time”, “The fourth wave has us firmly in its grip”, “One in three suffers psychologically while working from home”, “Markets recover from coronavirus, but new worries emerge”, “Gazprom keeps Germany’s gas consumers waiting”, and so on and so forth.

Somebody has even decided that being COVID-19 positive is a negative thing. :-)

We are showered with negative headlines every day!

Working life often looks no different. “We need to cut costs”, “Customer XY has cancelled the contract”, “Project Z is taking much longer than planned”, “Productivity is well behind plan”, and so on.

I think it is time occasionally to bring positive headlines deliberately into view!

One question I therefore repeatedly ask at the start of workshops is:

What has gone really, really well for me personally or for us as a team this year? What am I—or are we—proud of?

But beware: deliberately noticing positive headlines can sometimes create a really good mood! Just last week, asking this at the start of a client’s #Strategy workshop generated more than fifteen positive headlines from six participants.

The result: spirits soared! Afterwards, I could not bring the mood back down during the rest of the workshop. :-)

Give it a try, whether in your next team meeting, one-to-one conversation, workshop or quiet self-reflection!

Share your experiences in the comments.