Chapter 3 Optimism & Reality

This chapter mainly talks about how to acquire optimistic thoughts even when one is facing adversity. He talks about that talking to oneself, sharing the optimistic view, creating optimistic environment. However the most important thing to notice, I think, is after you get the optimistic perspective: how you apply them to find solution to the problem. In this post I would like to focus on what specific optimism style is required as leader.

   Optimism that we might come up in our daily life are quite different form what is required in the leadership. In our daily life, the word "optimistic or optimism" is used to represent a person who take every thing  as good, only care about the bright side, thoughtless or someone like him(see the figure below).

   However, the one that is required in leadership is "Optimism that Stay Grounded in Reality": who have optimistic view and bring optimistic idea or proposals, but they are based on reality as well. Now the questions goes to "Why they have to stay in the ground?"
   That is simply because, being "super optimists",happiest when he/she is facing the most hardship, won't bring any solution to change the situation on fix the problem. Even such people have a plan, if that is out of reality, then it won't be shared by others and more over fail to collaborate, because their idea or perspective is exceeded most people's understanding and value. As the authors says "Optimism is important leadership quality, but denial is deadly", Optimism with exceeded reality is only harm to the organization.

To the conclusion, although as the author says the duality of Optimism and reality is difficult, we need to use this "optimism" carefully and wisely to fight back even the disastrous situation.