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Guest: Scott White, a coach at CEO Coaching International. Scott is a seasoned CEO, Chairman, and entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience building and leading high-growth companies in the real estate and finance industries. He is also a bestselling author and a sought-after motivational speaker on happiness, positivity, and performance culture. His insights help executives build thriving teams, enhance workplace fulfillment, and unlock their personal and professional potential.
Quick Background: At the start of every day, CEOs have a choice. They can bring all their personal and professional baggage into the office and lead from a place of fear and frustration. Or they can choose to lead from a place of positivity and rally the troops around an inspiring vision for success.
On today’s show, Scott White explains why the perspective we choose isn’t a soft skill — it’s a leadership superpower that’s essential to Making BIG Happen.
Keys to Harnessing the Power of Perspective from Scott White
1. Reframe Your Reality
On a dreary February day in the frigid northeast, with COVID still keeping his teams apart, Scott White sent a company-wide email:
“It’s really cold. It’s dreary and miserable. It’s the middle of winter. The days are short. The temperatures are low. Not much daylight, a long way from the fall season and what seems like a very long way to spring. We’re homeless. We don’t have an office. We haven’t seen each other in person in months. We’re dealing with a number of meaningful challenges in our portfolio and in our industry. COVID lingers and lingers. Every day seems like a new fire to fight. At times it feels hopeless and draining. This just sucks, and I’m tired.”
Ten minutes later, he sent a follow-up:
“Today is the best day of my life. The sun is shining. I work with an amazing team. I’m truly inspired by and appreciate each of you. I am grateful for our company and for you being a part of it. I am truly grateful to be alive and healthy and smiling. I’m fired up. I’m motivated to conquer the opportunities we have ahead of us. I love the intellectual stimulation of working with you to win. We’re making considerable progress on many fronts. We made so much progress in 2021 and our plan for 2022 is robust. Our new office is going to be amazing. I anxiously await our arrival there and the relaunch of our company life couldn’t possibly be better.”
The same difficult situation. The same method of sharing the same message. Scott even made sure the emails had the same word count. But the difference in tone changed the story that Scott was telling his people about the company. And because he didn’t distort the facts or set unrealistic expectations Scott was able to reframe the company’s reality while building trust and credibility.
“The language I used was, ‘We made so much progress in 2021, and our plan for 2022 is robust,'” Scott points out. “I didn’t say, ‘Our plan for 2022 will make us the number one company in the world.’ If you’re too Pollyannaish, or if you are not reasonable in setting expectations, then you lose credibility. You lose your audience. So you do have to be reasonable and balance that, but you can do it through a positive lens.”
2. Invest Your Leadership Capital in Optimism
”If your leader hasn’t bought into the power of positivity and bought into a positive leadership culture, then I think it’s very difficult to have an organization that is going to make that a priority,” Scott White says. “You have to make that vision clear. So I think every successful company has a clear vision that everyone is heading in the same direction.”
That positivity that you’re trying to cultivate should inform every major decision you make around your people and how you manage them:
- Prioritize culture fit in your hiring process. You can coach up a promising, naturally optimistic go-getter. You’re going to have a much harder time turning around someone who could be a drag on the office’s energy, no matter how shiny their resume is.
- Reward and retain based on how well people exibit all of your company’s values.
- Create alignment around culture not by dictating from on high but by making team members feel included in key decisions and valuable for the work they do every day.
“It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of ‘You want to see growth, you want to succeed, we’re all in this together,’ as opposed to an us versus them culture,” Scott White says. “You get everyone on the same page, working together to get greater efficiency, to get greater profitability. There’ve been ample studies that demonstrate that positive work cultures have a 4X ROI over negative workplace cultures. Positive workplace cultures have greater longevity in terms of retention. Long-term retention is often tied to working with people you enjoy working with. So when you think about the power of positivity, the power of a positive culture, you attract talented candidates, you retain them longer, and you generate greater profitability. That’s powerful.”
3. Exercise Your Positivity Muscles
Positivity is a muscle that CEOs need to exercise, especially if you’re not a natural optimist.
Here are four positivity exercises Scott White recommends that all CEO can start practicing tomorrow:
- Put On Your Glasses: “ Very first thing in the morning, you open your eyes, you shut off your alarm, reach out and put your glasses on. If you don’t have glasses, make a little circle with your fingers and put on pretend glasses. And instead of putting on ‘blurry’ glasses or ‘muddy’ glasses, put on those crystal clear, bright glasses. Why not set the roadmap for the day as one of positivity, gratefulness, and moving in a positive direction? I can’t control everything in my life and throughout the day, but I can control my first thought.”
- Smile: “The simplest tool I tell people is, smile. It has been demonstrated through various empirical evidence and studies that the mere act of smiling can make you up to 20% happier. When you show up in the office in the morning, smile. When you walk into somebody’s office, smile. When you’re at lunch, smile. When you’re grabbing a cup of coffee, smile. When you get home and you walk in the door, instead of starting with what a challenging day you may have had, smile.”
- Celebrate: “Celebrate wins. Call out and recognize people that have demonstrated success. Celebrate wins with your family, celebrate wins with your team, celebrate wins with your company. Celebrate wins every day.”
- Practice Random Acts of Kindness: “When was the last time you performed a random act of kindness within your organization? With a friend? Family? It’s not only about business. I really like people to think about their lives holistically because happy people at home, happy people in clubs, in religious organizations, in hobbies, in whatever it is you do in your life — if you embrace it with a sense of positivity, you bring that to the workplace.
CEOs know it’s lonely at the top. But a workplace where negativity has taken root is lonely for everyone. A change in perspective might be just the change your company needs to bring everyone together and Make BIG Happen.
“You can’t make it alone,” says Scott White. “ We live in an interconnected society where we have epidemic numbers of loneliness. We have people that haven’t developed the strength and depth of a social network that’s vitally important to long-term success, vitally important to happiness and health. And when you extract that and take it into the company, think about the power of the people you surround yourself with. Develop relationships, get to know people on your team personally and professionally, and create that culture where we’re all going to win together.”
Top Takeaways
1. Change your perspective and you’ll change how you approach every challenge, and every day.
2. Leadership takes practice. Work on high-EQ skills that will help you connect with your people and motivate them to do BIG things.
3. Celebrate your team and help them appreciate the amazing work you’re all doing together.
About CEO Coaching International
CEO Coaching International works with CEOs and their leadership teams to achieve extraordinary results quarter after quarter, year after year. Known globally for its success in coaching growth-focused entrepreneurs to meaningful exits, the firm has coached more than 1,500+ CEOs and entrepreneurs across 100+ industries and 60 countries. Its coaches—former CEOs, presidents, and executives—have led businesses ranging from startups to over $10 billion, driving double-digit sales and profit growth, many culminating in eight, nine, or ten-figure exits.
Companies that have worked with CEO Coaching International for two years or more have achieved an average revenue CAGR of 25.9%, nearly 3X the U.S. average, and an average EBITDA CAGR of 39.2%, more than 4X the national benchmark.
Discover how coaching can transform your leadership journey at ceocoachinginternational.com.
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