The Problem with Optimism

I’ve been want­i­ng to write this post for awhile. It’s not at all that I think pes­simism, or pes­simis­m’s dis­guised cousin, cyn­i­cism, are good things. Nor is this about rose-cov­ered glass­es, per se. It’s actu­al­ly about the more impor­tant top­ic of tru­ly feel­ing that you can be your­self with oth­ers and don’t have to pre­tend that you are feel­ing bet­ter or worse than you real­ly do — and what comes of that. Let me share an example.

I was doing some brief work with a new­ly form­ing, high-pow­ered group of expe­ri­enced man­agers and con­sul­tants. Their project was worth mil­lions and they would be work­ing for at least a year togeth­er in order to com­plete it on-time and in bud­get. I used the team trust sur­vey I devel­oped to help them think about their idea of what a good team might be and where they saw the group as it got start­ed. Most of the play­ers knew each oth­er and there had been a few pre­lim­i­nary meet­ings. The sur­vey sug­gest­ed that one of the group mem­bers had an extreme­ly pos­i­tive view of the group while most oth­ers saw it in a form­ing stage, a good team on an impor­tant devel­op­men­tal incline. Explor­ing this dif­fer­ence in scores with the high rater she com­ment­ed, “Well, I don’t want to get bogged down in too many dis­cus­sions about prob­lems. I just want to focus on the work.”

In essence, I believe the high rat­ing was her way of say­ing, “I don’t want to talk about the team.” Too messy — and maybe a lit­tle too far out of control.

Giv­en a strong per­son­al­i­ty, oth­ers can be beat up for “pulling the group down.” But guess what? As a con­se­quence of being berat­ed in this way, they often feel worse about the team, and about themselves.

The most chal­leng­ing sce­nario, how­ev­er, is the one in which I try to bul­ly myself in this way, often becom­ing excep­tion­al­ly pre­scrip­tive to oth­ers. It’s easy to find these self-esteem ori­ent­ed, “buck up and be ter­rif­ic” mes­sages on the net. Don’t be down, whin­ing, or self-pity­ing. Things are not so bad! We become so good at under­min­ing neg­a­tiv­i­ty in oth­ers by claim­ing it is their prob­lem, that we may not notice how much it’s also become ours.

A few years ago I worked with a senior health care team. The cen­sus (num­ber of beds in use) kept slid­ing each month. In fact, each month it was low­er than had been pre­dict­ed the pre­vi­ous month. Yet the senior group kept argu­ing with­in itself, divid­ed between the opti­mists and the naysay­ers. The opti­mists kept win­ning right up until the Board stepped in, requir­ing the CEO to fix the sit­u­a­tion in a way that left a third of the man­agers out of work, includ­ing sev­er­al mem­bers of the senior team itself! There were real­ly two prob­lems, as I’m sure you can notice: the cen­sus and the argument.

You see what I’m say­ing here — opti­mism for opti­mis­m’s sake can be a cov­er-up, a form of denial, and also a form of con­trol. I don’t want to hear the prob­lems can be the moth­er of all prob­lems — all by itself.

Now it’s cer­tain­ly true that a con­stant focus on the prob­lems also can be a big drag. And pes­simism for pes­simis­m’s sake can also be a form of con­trol. There have been many times when I’ve stepped into a group’s exchange to observe how very dark things seem to be get­ting and to encour­age peo­ple to look at their stuck­ness from oth­er van­tage points.

The real prob­lem is want­i­ng things to be sim­ple. And my point here is that opti­mism can be just as guilty of want­i­ng things sim­ple and in our pow­er as the down­side view. Nei­ther is real.

At an event late­ly I sat with two oth­er peo­ple as we talked about sem­i­nal moments in our sep­a­rate lives; moments when just a slight change of direc­tion result­ed in a major shift in des­ti­na­tion over time. Two of the sto­ries had to do with sig­nif­i­cant adjust­ments in work or career; one had to do with lifestyle. And what was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing is that each of these lit­tle changes that became big ones start­ed from an uncom­fort­able expe­ri­ence. In one case, it was a con­ver­sa­tion that seemed par­tic­u­lar­ly emp­ty; in anoth­er frus­tra­tion with being able to car­ry out tech­ni­cal projects effec­tive­ly; in a third, mine, a sense of dis­may and sor­row. Each launched a renew­ing, trans­form­ing change in our lives. 

Huh? You mean the acknowl­edg­ment of dif­fi­cul­ty was also the start­ing point for trans­for­ma­tion? No big sur­prise there — let’s see, I think that one’s been going on from the begin­ning of time. Yet maybe we should be care­ful in assum­ing trans­for­ma­tion is a desired thing — and maybe the deal about unwa­ver­ing opti­mism and pes­simism, both those sides of our­selves, is exact­ly the reluc­tance to trans­form, to deeply trust and live in con­tin­u­ing transformation.

Not all prob­lems have solu­tions, or at least easy ones. Not all solu­tions have prob­lems, or at least major ones. We live in the gray space in between, and just so, there are so many beau­ti­ful shades of gray we may miss the very image that is form­ing, per­haps some­thing we’ve nev­er expe­ri­enced before, paint­ed as skill­ful­ly as an unfold­ing flower or a ran­dom splash of ink.

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