The power of being positive — a fairy story

When we focus on gloom and what is going wrong, we create gloom and feel hopeless and things do go wrong. It does not have to be that way.

The story

There were hospitals caring for people in the land. The King decided he would like them to do even better. His wise men visited the hospitals and found out which ones were doing well and which were doing less well. A radio presenter interviewed the leader of the very best hospital and asked her why it was so good. She was delighted to be interviewed, and went into great detail about the superb training her staff received, the support they got from the health care community and the way all the people in the hospital worked as a team.

People in the other hospitals were inspired by the broadcast. They decided if one hospital could be that good then so could they. They learned from what the excellent hospital had done. A year later the King was very pleased about the progress all the hospitals were making and decided he would do the same with schools and prisons.

This is a fairy story, unfortunately

In real life, the Government did produce a list of hospitals (league table) that showed that some were doing much better in some aspects of care than others. The radio presenter interviewed the manager of the worst hospital and asked him why it was so bad and what he was going to do about it. The manager got very defensive and said the figures were out of date and there were lots of special circumstances to explain their poor results. The presenter got more and more aggressive. As a result many listeners felt depressed about the state of health care, the defensiveness of hospital managers, the bureaucracy of the system and the inability of two professionals to have a civil conversation.

It does not have to be like this!

The moral

A fairy story always has a moral. If you look for positive feelings, growth, learning and success you will find them. People are more willing to engage and be open about success and positive things. Positive energy generates positive energy.

Finally, there are over 300 other articles and developmental resources on my Practical Developmental Ideas site; they are all free for anyone to access, use and adapt. Please help yourself.