A Positive Attitude is Crucial

A positive attitude is crucial in achieving success. If I had to pick out one characteristic that I would want to have myself or hope that I was able to produce in the people I work with, it would be the concept of having a positive attitude about their work, about what they're trying to accomplish and what they are accomplishing.

I'd like to deal with the negatives as tasks to take on that will lead to further success. I think its absolutely critical that one be able to develop within one's peer groups, and certainly one's subordinates, a positive attitude, and that goes to whether you're working with just two people or four or ten or hundreds of thousands. It is critical that you have a positive attitude about what you're doing, what you're trying to accomplish and what the groups are trying to accomplish.

Hopefully you're able to lead people in a positive fashion that will build into a success-oriented organization, and they do go together, there isn't any question about it. If you have a negative attitude in a unit you will not have success, and the leader has to turn that situation around. The leader has a very difficult challenge if he has a lot of people coming in and asking for transfers. He better understand why and be able to deal with that, and I guess one might say there's another element there. If you're the next senior up, you had better be wise enough to know what the cause; of that negativism is and remove it, even if it's the division officer or the division chief who is the problem.

Admiral Thomas Hayward