JoAnna Brandi | 5-Step System for Creating A Culture of Positivity, Productivity, and Profitability

Step 1: Positive leadership.

• The first step to being a positive energizer is to know who you are.
  • Emotional intelligence.
  • Self-awareness.
  • Self-management.

• Understanding what you want to be, who you want to be, and how you want to be as a leader.
• Tips on uncovering your leadership style:
  • Know your values.
  • Know the things that are important to you.
  • Reflect and try to know who you are, how you treat people, and how you treat yourself.

• This step is a self-reflective process by sitting back and asking the previous questions to yourself.
• Look at how you show up to the world.
  • Be sure that you are living to your values.
  • It’s a continuous process and it keeps you aligned to your core values.
    • Are you building trust?
    • Are you showing respect?
    • Are you giving appreciation?
    • Are you communicating without blame, judgement, or criticism?
    • Are you communicating frequently so people understand what you need?

• Your state of being is connected to the climate of your organization.
  • 30% of your financial results come from the climate that you set in your organization.
  • Do not create a climate of fear, shame, or toxicity, but create a climate of positivity.

Step 2: Create positive meaning.

• How do you create positive meaning?
  • Make the people in your organization know how important their jobs are.
  • Let your people know the importance of their jobs to the organization, to the environment, to society, and to the world, in general.

• When people are connected from meaning, they start working with their heart, and not just with their head.
• Make your employees realize how they contribute to the good of the whole.
  • Turn something negative into positive to motivate your people.

Step 3: Create a positive climate.

• Create a positive climate in your organization by creating a safe emotional space.
  • Make your people feel free to express themselves without fear of incrimination or humiliation.

• Dismissing this step will produce some disengaged employees.
  • Close engagement is key to the happiness of your employees.
  • If you want engaged employees, let them feel free to speak up and fail.

• Practice having hope and optimism.
  • It gives you the ability to forgive, to be resilient, and to be compassionate.

• Build psychological capital on your business.
  • When you have this, you can do anything by building up an emotional reservoir of people wanting to do whatever needs to be done.

• Honour each other.
  • Always look at the positive intent whenever an employee walks to you.
  • Look for time and place to appreciate.

• When you take these steps, you’ll make your employees have fun in the workplace because they feel safe in it.
• JoAnna suggests doing these two rituals to create a positive climate:
  • At the beginning of the meeting, have everyone express gratitude for something.
    • It can be something personal or business-related.

• • At the end of the meeting, close it by doing the circle of appreciation.
    • If the meeting is in person, stand up, circle around, look at everybody in the room, and state your appreciation sentence.

Step 4: Create positive relationships.

• This goes out not just towards your internal organization, but also to the clients that your business serves.
• Listen and recognize other people’s strengths.
  • It takes a lot of practice.
  • Once you’ve discovered somebody’s strengths, you have the opportunity as the leader to acknowledge, appreciate, affirm, and anchor those strong points.
  • This lets people know that you hear who your employees are when they are at their best.
  • The more you do this, the stronger your team becomes.

• Use the strengths of your employees to tackle issues in your business.

Step 5: Create positive communication.

• Communicating frequently and positively is important as it creates context.
  • It also instils commitment and builds trust.

• Make people know what’s going on in your business.
  • This keeps people from getting surprised whenever there’s something bad happening in the business.

• Provide your best self-feedback.
  • A best self-feedback statement should say that you’re noticing your people doing what they do best along the lines of why that matters.
  • It’s also a great way that you’re noticing people’s strengths.
  • Practice doing it 3-5 times during the day.

• Share the good news.

System Notes

• The five steps in this process are all interwoven. It is impossible to separate one from the rest.
• Employees will start going the extra mile when they see their leader doing the same.
• The more you do the process, the easier it gets and the better the results you get.
• When we value people in the business, they go home and spread that positivity to their families.