100 Ways to Motivate Others

104. Learn How to Help a Pessimist

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

—William James

Throughout the years when we have coached people or gone into organizations and trained people, we have found that the fastest way to convert someone from being a pessimist to being a optimist is through inspiration. Victims and pessimists hate to be fixed, hate to be corrected, and even hate to be taught things, because their whole position is defensive.

When managers have team members with victim mindsets, they often make the mistake of trying to correct it by making it wrong. They may say, “Well, you know you are kind of a victim—you are very pessimistic about this project,” and the person then becomes even more defensive and will then try to ...