In general, optimists are best suited to lead entrepreneurial organizations. On our episode today we are going to review why both perspectives are valuable.

These natural traits motivate people to take action, different actions, but at least action.

A pessimist tends to focus on safety and security. A pessimist is your best ally because pessimists thrive on fixing errors. For this reason, pessimists can make good operational leaders but will never lead well!

An optimist prefers to think about how they and others can advance and grow. Optimists also have larger social networks, solve problems cooperatively, and are more likely to seek help in difficult situations. To energize an optimist, positive feedback is absolutely essential, because the optimist builds on incremental achievements and a sense of positive movement.

Choose optimists to lead growth activities in your family organization.

As a determined optimist, I do want to share one important finding from my 36 years of field research a.k.a life: Effective long-term planning and investment requires an optimistic approach, with contingency planning by pessimists, because things never go exactly as you want them to.