it doesn't seem to happen but on the occasion that it does but that's a glass of half full mentality right there isn't it yes half empty no or half empty half empty it's a just in case scenario I have to say that I have learned not to act upon the just in case scenario as much because I was brought to really be prepared for the worst because it gives me a lot of hard work or a lot of extra work so I've had to teach myself to think well if that happens I'll deal with it then because if not mentally I just prepare myself for the worst all the time and of course what that does is it takes me to a worse place for a while that I might never get to but anyway is that part of a pessimistic tendency unnecessarily it's also that sort of foreboding joy thing that Brené Brown talks about I think that sometimes I mean it's not exactly the same but when you're preparing for the worst then you're sort of living that worst outcome even though it doesn't happen well listeners here we are in the second episode of our manager mindset series where again we touch on different kinds of mindset maybe you can call it biases cognitive tendencies but anyway this season is about how we think how our tendencies and thinking how they affect ourselves as individuals as managers and also our teams so we'll be talking for about 20 minutes 25 minutes our episodes are long and you're very welcome to join us for a coffee or a tea which is what co-hosting Burgess usually has some kind of tea drink tea-based drink a large cup of tea my half empty cup well I've got an almost full coffee today my name is Pilar Ortiz lovely to meet you you're going to have to rethink that so today's topic of pessimism I think you'll find that your cup is not full no it's definitely not full it's a little bit empty never mind I have a full cup but that expression my coffee is on my plate anyway so Tim I think at the end of the previous episode which was a very interesting one on comparison we came to a conclusion or I came to the conclusion that you have a pessimistic tendency even though yeah I do think you have a pessimistic tendency actually oh absolutely yeah yeah I do I do it's funny because I like to think that I have a positive mindset but I also have a pessimistic tendency and so you know I'm in conflict those who know me well wouldn't be surprised because I'm very confused but I remember I used to live with a guy Charlie lovely lovely very funny guy this is around the time we left uni first job sort of thing and then I bumped into him a few years later and I said oh hey Charlie how's it going and he said I'm married beautiful wife job's going really well all this stuff and then he said and I'm just waiting for disaster and I was like oh I get it and I was thinking I knew I liked that guy I got that same so for a long time I'd be like just be thinking well things are going well yeah sometimes something's going to happen I'd like to think that over time I've gotten better at enjoying the good things and like you were saying before when the bad stuff happens I'll deal with the bad stuff when it happens I'm probably too much that way now because bad stuff happens it's probably easily avoidable if I can't pay more attention to it well it doesn't mean that we think nothing bad is going to happen regardless but I think yeah I think it's about the pessimistic will saying it's unavoidable maybe I don't know it's like it can be like a superpower in some respects because if you can see problems and things could break or things that might be going wrong like that can be that can be a superpower it can be a very helpful attribute to clear work you know in life in general you know so some people who are pessimists or warriors there's a lot of good stuff that can happen for that but it can also it can also have a bad side it can also have an investment and that's a big burden to carry if you're always saying the glass is half full half empty I think very similar to the when we were talking about the comparison mindset there's all these different levels aren't they of I mean what is a pessimist is it some actually let's define that because I'm not sure it's so nuanced isn't it what is what would you say is pessimism I don't know if we've got any kind of definitions for it or not today how would you define a pessimistic mindset for example or tendency I think pessimism is expecting or an awareness of like a negative outcome a bad outcome where a situation presents itself and your interpretation of that is a negative one as opposed to a positive one I think that's a pessimistic outlook and I think particularly let's look at the definition what do you think yes I think that is but how you're describing it to me sounds very much in the present whereas I think there's maybe there's also like an element of the future yeah absolutely because as you were talking before I'm thinking oh maybe I'm a pessimist as well but actually like I usually see the good things in the present like if you give me a situation something that's happening now I'm more likely to see it as something I mean if it looks good I'm more likely to do that rather than perceive it as something negative so I'm more likely to see the positive before the negative but when I start to think about the future a lot of the time my mind goes immediately to what if that causes a problem which I think I probably like hints and tints of the same thing but for me it's very much that I'm definitely not a pessimist I see very quickly the good things here but I am definitely a pessimist when it comes to thought experiments my mind usually goes more towards the how would that look like if it broke rather than how would that look like if it worked and sometimes maybe it's a survival instinct as well like just in case we were talking about before I just want to be prepared because I think it'd probably be okay but if it's not okay I want to be ready for it so I don't know where that puts me in a pessimistic scale it sounds like a healthy interaction like you know between your anxious worrying aspects and your positive outcome focus aspects like I don't think this necessarily needs to be something that you sit at either end of and you know like we've spoken about before like we can have a skill or a tendency or something that's a strength and that's another way to think about it you can have a mindset you can have a tendency you can also have something that you can do well that you can do naturally but that only you only use in certain situations and I think that's one of the things that I'm hoping aware of those aspects of ourselves and that we are aware of how we like those aspects to be to service and how we don't like them to then we can get to a good place around it like if to your viewpoint right like if you don't want to get surprised by a negative outcome in the future then being able to think through that like why are you way through or think through what could go wrong is a great actually that brings you a lot of comfort there are also pessimistic outlooks even at the past oh how does that work where something has happened well think about like something happened someone made a comment and you can interpret that comment that's happened you can interpret it with an optimistic outlook like oh they made that comment because they really value me or oh they made that comment because they think I need to improve the framing of how you do it can happen I think in past, present and future so part of it I think is how we allow it to influence the behaviour that's coming but I think also part of it is what we're allowing it to tell us how we're allowing it to influence our view of the world and people and interactions and behaviour and all those things I like that all those levels I like that very much the very holistic level and then the very specific level just going back to something a very big thought but I just got something else on my mind while you were talking which was this tendency of thinking what could go wrong for example and like you say this pessimistic tendency into the future because half of it as you were saying as well is having the awareness and I started to recognise I had that tendency and that I actually was blocking a lot so I've rewired because in the way it was happening for example you're having usually in meetings and you're trying to think of something and someone would say oh we could do this and I would be like oh yeah but what if blah blah blah instead of okay I've rewired myself and I say stop and someone says something that a lot of the time I don't think is going to work because I don't have enough information of how it could work and so I stop myself and I go and sometimes I even have my words come out and then I have to backtrack and I go no no I don't mean what I mean is how would that work or can you explain more about that and then a lot of the time once they've done that and once I can see what they're thinking that sometimes dissolves the pessimism because it's the clarity I think going back to something we were talking about in a previous episode is that if I don't have all the information then my mind runs wild with everything that could happen yeah we fill in the gaps here so yeah well and also it's that uncertainty sometimes we're so uncomfortable with uncertainty that we want to have we want to have some clarity some certainty around it even if that certainty is I reject this I don't know enough about it I'm just going to reject it because I don't want to deal with like the maybe I mean I'm jealous because you're further along the path than I am when people bring new ideas people would make a suggestion and my first reaction would be negative oh no here's not going to work oh no we've already thought about it and then it would go a little bit longer and then I would be like almost oh I've got this great idea not quite that bad you thought it was your idea and I can just make fun of me he'd be like oh you're on board now and because I'd have to think my way through it and eventually I'd get over it and I think for me a big part of it was that that uncertainty until I felt comfortable with it I was negative towards it and I think this mindset this pessimistic mindset that we worry or thinking of the worst this is one of those things where as a manager I think you really need to think about people are watching what I do and how I act and they're influenced by it and if I'm always seeing the worst in things and that's my reaction that's my physical reaction what's encouraging everybody else to do it's encouraging everybody to do the same thing and that's not an environment well is that the environment you want because that's the environment you're creating I agree that that can happen but there's another thing that can happen and this is because you were reminding me of my husband and someone he used to work with and it's that people then like Duncan was saying to you you know ah you're on board now then it's like yeah these ideas we have to present them to him like five times until they used to have a kind of a Kanban board they were dealing with different machines a workshop was a physical workshop and each machine had its list on the wall of jobs that were on the machines and everything of course if you're away and also with different machines you're in different rooms a list on the wall is not very good and so my husband tried to introduce Trello and so I said look let's just move this onto an online space it took him like five or six months until the guy saw that it was usually it took him ages it took him so long that I actually got in touch with Trello and asked him to send me a t-shirt for my husband and they did and now it's always like this when my husband would say something he'd say like yeah I've said you know I've told Steve this and it'll just take time and so one thing is that it could spread if you're really lucky and if you have other qualities that people like they'll understand you and they'll see your tendency and they'll work around it so there's also the optimist in me he says it doesn't always have to be yeah yeah yeah your optimist muscle is very well defined it's like an Olympic bodybuilder but something that I have experienced is that working closely with somebody who has a pessimistic mindset you get fatigued you get anxiety or you know bad vibe or whatever fatigue and if somebody always sees the problems that can happen or the things that could go wrong or the misinterpreted you know like the ways things should be interpreted negatively like for me I struggle to be around a lot of negativity even if I'm spreading it and so I will just like I just can't do it anymore I will avoid it or so in that situation if you're the person who's always saying oh this could go wrong this could go wrong this is why it could be a problem you can get tuned out which ironically is probably one of the problems it should be one of the problems because it means that actually your strength of being able to see problems it slips into then a weakness of being unable to communicate problems effectively because you're overdoing it and I think that that's something that's really really important for managers is to remember that we have all of these tools and skill sets and ways of communicating if we overdo any one of them it loses its utility if you think about like you've got a toolkit and you've got all those tools in the toolkit if you only use one tool every time that tool will wear out and then you're only left with the other tools like you have to balance it out it's not the best analogy the toolkit running out thing but I think you know what I mean I hadn't thought of that I think you're really really right this is such a good holistic thing to remember as well yes but a lot of stuff we're going through my mind at the same time one is that if we have a pessimistic tendency we can use it I hadn't thought of the tuning out bit so the tuning out so you made me think of again going back to okay this tendency or this mindset within ourselves but what happens if we see it in team members as well and I think that I hadn't thought of this that actually when someone is pessimistic or someone is bringing this either energy or thinking always which is always the same to the table then it can be very easy to tune them out and I think that's also something that we should be aware of is that can that tendency be used in a different way is that something that can be done before we start to tune out and that will depend a lot on so many things and context on the individual but I think it's something to be aware of oh yeah yeah absolutely well a couple of examples that were shared if this is a conscious thing if it's known and acknowledged and people understand it then that can also mean that they understand the benefits and the upsides and downsides and so you could be in a situation and again I've had this experience where I know that there are people who are good at picking things apart so if I've got some half thought through idea and I want to get some feedback and try and develop that idea going to someone who's purely optimistic and says oh yeah everything's going to be great don't worry it's all going to turn out might not be that helpful but going to somebody who can think through what might break and then have you thought about this and oh no that'll be a problem can be a really wonderful attribute and within a team environment within a work environment it's a really valuable skill in the right circumstances yeah I think my point is not to discard it like because we're human as well we might go oh no it's that thing again and it becomes that can become a habit but you mentioned the optimists so I don't know whether this needs a different coffee or whether we can mention it here maybe we can mention it here no yeah I'll still get a little bit of my time which is that the flick side oh I don't worry everything's going to be alright the pessimist knows or the pessimist expects things to turn out for the worst but I think that there's also a tint of pessimism is not a bad thing because not everything goes according to plan all the time And I think just recognizing that as well is, well, I think that's important. I think it's healthy to have a dose of both and to wrestle with them, you know. But ultimately, we do keep going. So that's one of the difficulties, I think, with pessimism in too great a dose is it can force inaction.
Yes. You know, it can lead to inertia because at some point, and this is one of the great things about humanity, about life in general, is you just got to keep going. It might seem impossible, you know, it might seem really hard, it might seem like it's not going to work, but, you know, but we still get up and give it a go and sometimes, you know, watch that really well and sometimes just the effort itself is a reward. So I think fundamentally, that's an optimistic outlook, that we're going to try something, we're going to do, you know, we're going to find a path forward.
And I think most people, fundamentally, that's sort of wired into our nature because, like, we do keep going. Yeah, yeah. So in the end, you are an optimist. With pessimistic tendencies.
I'm sorry, yeah, pessimistic optimist, yeah. Good. Well, I have to say that my cup is fully empty. Is that disturbing me anything?
If I say, does it always have to have a half in it? Because if it's empty, it's empty. Ah, maybe a realist. A realist.
I am a realist. I am a realist. Listen, we would love to hear any thoughts or stories we have around this and whether there's any aspects of pessimism we could explore further, and we'd love to hear from you. ManagementCafePodcast at gmail.com for your emails or ManagementCafePodcast.com for your messages.
Tim, anything else that you'd like to say before we get up and go? Well, I'd just say, you know, if your cup is empty, don't let that stop you. Another coffee inevitably is just around the corner. Excellent.
Well, coffee's over for us. Now it's over to you. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Management Cafe. You've been listening to Tim Burgess and PRRT.
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