Leadership Thought: Are You a Can Do or a Can't Do Kind of Person.

Dear Friends,

I love being around positive people, people like the ones who go fishing for Moby Dick and take the tartar sauce with them.

I don’t know if they still produce the “Master Teacher,” booklets,  but I still have one of their pamphlets from my teaching days.  It was titled  "Eight Ways to Create a Positive Climate." Although meant for teachers, it could just as well be directed to those in other walks of life.

These wise words caught my attention. “The teacher action vital to high productivity is maintaining a consistently positive attitude and using ‘can,’ and ‘do’ words or phrases. Conversely it is wise to use three words sparingly: ‘can’t,’ ‘don't’  and ‘no.’ These three words actually undermine a productive climate and stop creativity and individual initiative cold.”

When I was coaching basketball and my players would tell me why they couldn't do something, I would tell them the story of the bumblebee. The tiny bumblebee has a small wingspan and a heavy body structure which makes it aerodynamically impossible to fly. However, the bumblebee ignores this scientific truth and chooses to fly anyway.

Whenever I would hear one of my players use the “I can’t” phrase, I would correct and admonish him saying, “Change your language or change your team.”

If we were to be a team of winners and not whiners, I needed to cultivate a “can do” and not a “can’t do” attitude amongst our team.

One of my favorite stories involves  identical twins. One was a hope filled optimist, always seeing the good in every situation. The other was a doom filled pessimist who perceived a problem lurking around every corner. The worried parents brought the boys to the local psychologist.

He suggested to the parents a plan to balance the twins’ personalities. On their next birthday, put them in separate rooms to open their gifts. Give the pessimist the best toys you can afford and give the optimist a box of manure. The parents carefully followed these instructions and then observed the results.

When they peeked in on the pessimist, they heard him audibly complaining,  “I don’t like the color of this computer…I’ll bet this calculator is going to break…I don’t like this game…I know someone who’s got a bigger toy car than this.

Tip toeing across the corridor, the parents peeked in and saw their little optimist gleefully throwing the manure up in the air. He was giggling as he was talking to himself saying. “You can’t fool me. I know there has got to be a pony in here somewhere.”

Wherever I am, I hope I am hanging with hopeful and optimistic people like this little manure slinger. I want to associate with the Calebs and the Joshuas of this world. When the other spies were finding reasons why they couldn’t  enter the Promise Land, Caleb and Joshua were ready to claim what God had promised. Surrounded by naysayers who were convinced that they were only grasshoppers in the face of their enemy, they were taking up arms and ready to claim what God had promised them.  

“We should by all means go up and take possession of (the land), for we shall surely overcome” (Numbers 13:30).

I love the courageous words found in the opening lines of Psalm 27.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear?

The Lord is the defense of my life, whom shall I dread?

When evildoers came upon me to devour my flesh,

Though a host encamp against me, my heart will not fear;

Though war arise against me, in spite of this I shall be confident” (vv. 1-3).

Brothers and sisters, it’s time to march against the enemy, look him in straight in the eye, and like Caleb and Joshua proclaim 'I gottcha.' 

And while the crowd may be shouting, “you are wrong,” “you are foolish,” “you'll never win,” you just keep on smiling as you remind them that you are a “Can Do” kind of person with a bottle of tartar sauce in your back pocket.

Action Point. What will you do today that the world might suggest is impossible?

Yours in faith and friendship,

Tom