1. Radical Optimism Redux
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About 7 years ago I came to the conclusion that the secret sauce to success in life - however you define it - is radical optimism. Since then I’ve touched on the topic repeatedly - in my professional life, speaking about it at conferences and on podcasts, and bringing it up in my blog posts. But I’m yet to complete the book I planned on it, mostly because I let life get in the way: the pandemic, a series of intense jobs and projects, divorce and other family challenges, and perimenopause brain.
That stops today.
I’d like to ask a favour, if I may? I want to test an overarching structure with you.
As I set out in my SDinGov talk, I think optimism gets a bad rap. Say the word in a room full of senior leaders and you can practically hear eyes rolling at the perceived naïvité.
I know why: we've all worked with the relentlessly positive leader who responds to genuine concerns with "let's focus on the positives!" as if naming a problem is a character flaw. But that’s not optimism, it’s toxic positivity, and it drives good people up the wall.
But pessimism and cynicism don't work either. Cynicism might feel intellectually rigorous — and in some organisations it's practically a badge of honour — but it doesn't actually help you get anything done. It just gives you a very articulate reason for not trying.
I have faith we can do better. So I'm writing the book I want to read, in the belief that others will find it useful too. My draft skeleton, right now, is in three sections, just like my talk was — the optimistic self, the optimistic team, and the optimistic organisation. Each one has different implications at each level, and each one comes with practical tools.
The thing I’d like your help with is structure within these sections - I’m playing with splitting it into four lenses, based on the behavioural science behind it all. This is the framework I want to stress-test with you — so read them with a critical eye.
The four lenses
What you believe
Your explanatory style — how you account for setbacks. Do you treat failure as permanent ("this always happens"), pervasive ("it ruins everything"), and personal ("I'm useless")? Or as temporary, specific, and something you can influence? Psychologist Martin Seligman's foundational work on learned helplessness and learned optimism found that some people simply couldn’t be made to feel helpless, no matter what he did. The difference wasn't personality — it was how they explained events to themselves.
But it's also about agency. Your confidence that what you do actually matters. The difference between what I think of as planners (who focus on what they can do to influence the situation) and spanners (who spend their energy worrying about the things they can't control). Both are responding to the same reality. Only one of them is moving forward.
And for those of you thinking "well that's fine for naturally optimistic people" — this isn't a personality trait. Your explanatory style was shaped by experience, including childhood: what you heard, what you were taught to believe, the words spoken around you as you grew up. That conditioning runs deep. But if it was learned, it can be relearned. Seligman's research with school children showed teaching them optimistic explanatory style cut their rate of depression nearly in half - because it’s a skill, not a temperament.
There's a useful distinction from innovation researcher Hila Lifshitz-Assaf: problem solvers believe that if they can't fix it, it can't be fixed. Solution seekers believe a solution exists somewhere, and they keep looking. The solution seekers are the optimists — and their belief keeps them searching long after the problem solvers have given up.
What you see
Where you put your attention shapes everything. Eye-tracking research shows that pessimists literally spend more time looking at unpleasant cues. Realistic optimists don't ignore the bad stuff — they see it, reflect on it, and then choose not to stew on it.
But this lens goes deeper than just noticing. It's about the meaning you make from what you observe, and the stories you tell about it. Two people can watch the same situation unfold and construct entirely different narratives. One sees evidence that nothing ever changes; the other sees a problem being surfaced for the first time — which means it can finally be addressed.
Self-talk, reframing, and the stories we tell about our experience - it all makes a difference. And it scales. At team level, it's about what gets airtime in your meetings — do you spend 90% of your standup on blockers and 10% on progress, or the other way round? At organisational level, it's about what stories get repeated in the corridor, in onboarding, in the pub. Are they stories of what went wrong and who's to blame? Or stories of what people overcame and what they learned? Most organisations have no idea how lopsided their storytelling is.
What you expect
The big thing to know in the expectation space is the Pygmalion effect (first noticed in experiments, again with schoolchildren, in the 1960s). What you expect of people shapes what they deliver — reliably, measurably, and often without you realising you're doing it. Leaders who believe their teams are capable get better performance than leaders who don't, even when the teams are equally talented. And it works in reverse: low expectations become self-fulfilling prophecies too.
This lens also covers psychological safety — the expectation that it's safe to take risks and raise problems without punishment. And growth mindset — the expectation that ability can develop, that failure is information rather than a label. What your culture teaches people to expect when things go wrong is one of the most powerful levers you have as a leader.
There's a quieter dimension here too: how you see the people who seem to be standing in your way. Realistic optimism includes the expectation that people who appear to be blocking are also trying to do the right thing, with their own motivations and constraints. Starting from that assumption — rather than from cynicism about their intent — changes how you engage with them. It's another way of avoiding the cynicism trap.
What you do
The final lens is what you do. Realistic optimism is not a passive state. You feel like you're going to succeed because you have a plan, a roadmap and a refusal to yield — not because you've wished it hard enough. It's believing you'll run that marathon because you did the training.
Don't visualise success — visualise the steps you need to take to make it happen. Tools in here include mental contrasting, pre-mortems, banded mastery, iteration. The habit of taking action, especially when things are uncertain. Collecting the "yeah-buts" and using them to clarify your goals and manage your risks, rather than letting them stop you in your tracks.
And it's not just about professional effectiveness. The health evidence is hard to argue with: optimists have a 35% lower risk of heart disease, recover faster from surgery, and report significantly less anxiety. This stuff doesn't just help you lead better — it helps you feel better and live longer.
Where you come in
I think this framing works - but I’d love to stress test it with you.
Think about the most realistically optimistic leader you've worked with. The one who could name the hard truth and still make you believe things could get better. Which of these four lenses were they strongest on? Are there lenses I'm missing? Does this framework match your experience — or does it feel like it's straining to fit?
I'd genuinely love to hear. I'm at the stage where my ideas are still quite loosely held - conversations are more valuable than convictions. Drop me a message, leave a comment, or grab me for a coffee.