I hope you’ve had a fantastic few days over the Christmas break. Did Santa bring what you wanted, assuming you had been nice all year and not naughty, of course? How full up have you been after all that turkey and mince pies?
My Christmas week started differently from most. I went to the funeral of a friend who died rather suddenly a couple of weeks ago. It was still a shock, even though he’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer a year back. When I told people I was going to a funeral, there were universal responses of “what a dreadful thing to happen right before Christmas”. Yet, I have to report that the funeral was a lovely experience. We laughed about the incidents we’d all been involved in with our friend, Dave. Everyone had a funny tale to tell about him. This bright, positive man would have loved his funeral. It was summarised by the vicar, who said, “Dave reminds me of the two prisoners looking out through the bars on their cell window. One only ever sees mud, and the other only sees stars. Dave was the person who could only see stars”.
Indeed, Dave was a “glass half full” man. Though I suspect he was a true “the glass is completely full” man. That’s what I tell students when I show them a picture of a one-pint beer glass with half a pint in it. Some students say it is “half empty” and others say it is “half full”. But I point out that it is completely full. The bottom half is full of liquid molecules, and the top half is full of air molecules. If it were half empty, there would have to be a vacuum; since there is no vacuum, the glass must be full. That’s the prisoner seeing stars rather than mud again.
As we sit here at the end of one year, ready for the next to begin, it’s common to consider what has happened in the last 12 months. Those reviews are already taking place on the radio, TV, newspapers and on websites. The ones I have seen so far have been from the person who is only seeing mud. Things like: “Global warming’s getting worse”, “The economy is stagnating”, “We’re all paying higher taxes”, and “Artificial intelligence is going to ruin the world”.
My friend Dave would have turned each of those statements into something to laugh about. He would have looked for something constructive to remove the doom and gloom. Good leaders do the same. Leaders who display optimistic explanatory styles significantly influence team performance and resilience.
So, in my review of the year, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you of all the positive things I have discussed each Saturday morning at 10.00 am. The year started with the revelation that social media is not all bad and that it can have a beneficial effect on mental health. Then we discovered together that holidays are a fantastic boost, and we should take more of them. Next, I pointed out that business conferences can have a significant enabling effect on the community. By the middle of the year, I’d explained the wonders of peppermint tea on your ability to work well through a boost in memory. That’s before I pointed out that working beyond retirement was really worthwhile. And if you were worried about your ageing brain, fear not, I explained that creativity can reduce the impact of the years on that grey matter. Towards the end of this year, you would have discovered that working from home does wonders for your mental health. And that’s just a quick round-up of the positive things I have written about. There are plenty more.
Sadly, like me, I am sure you will have been in business meetings where at least one person cannot see the positives and repeatedly brings the topic of conversation back to the negatives. That can cause a “ripple effect” causing others in the room to start to focus on the downsides. Here’s what I’d like you to do with me in 2026 and beyond, if you want. Tell the person who is draining the energy negatively that they should have met Graham’s friend Dave. If he had been a prisoner (he wasn’t…!), then he would only have seen stars, not the mud. Ask your negative, half-glass-empty colleague to lift their head up and see the stars. It’s a much better view if they look towards 2026 this way. You can change the thinking in a meeting by reframing the discussion for people.
As we close 2025, I would like to thank you for all your support over the past year. Wishing you all the best for a super start to 2026. I will be back with you on the first Saturday of the New Year.
