Joe is a senior executive; he has been in and out of many companies. Exchanging with him, one quickly notices his aversion towards other people. Whenever something doesn’t work, people don’t step in, people don’t show up, he will know that it is because of them. He will hold a long monologue of how they don’t have the energy he has, how they lack the right mindset, or something else they do isn’t appropriate.

For an outside observer, much of what he says corresponds to what they see.

What they rarely consider is the relationship that develops between such an executive and his team. The executive’s behavior can have a lot of impact on his team, and that’s because he is at risk of constantly moving faster than his team. Thus, creating a situation where instead of inviting his team to act he starts doing instead of them. For such a team, this creates a situation in which they start seeing their leader’s behavior as one that frees them of their responsibility. And given the leader’s perception of people, they will gladly accept this situation. They too start to perceive the relationship as a negative one and prefer to avoid the consequences of his negativity.

It becomes a system of self-fulfilling prophecy.

There are occasions when others make errors or don’t perform as expected. But it’s rarely always. Thus, whenever the perception becomes that people never do something or always do something, one can expect it to not be true.

Maybe that’s the better start to see what to do. And maybe to be more optimistic.