Leaders, Inspire Future Resilience & Can-Do Attitudes w/ Happy Endings

Leaders often ask me how to inspire future resilience and can-do attitudes. Many start thinking of this when tough times hit. Although it’s not too late to try, leaders have more success when they start doing it long before the tough times come.

Inspire future resilience and can-do attitudes by showing how daily optimism and realism gets you to the finish line. Frequently, leaders focus only on the realism — the struggles and skills to overcome them. Yet resilience needs a picture of hope and success to actually develop.



Inspire Future Resilience: Image is Acacia plan growing in concrete.

Inspire Future Resilience & Can-do Attitudes w/ Happy Endings.

Image by Forest & Kim Starr via Flickr Creative Commons License.


Inspire Future Resilience w/ Stories of Happy Endings

Why does it take a hopeful picture to build resilience? Because when the struggles weigh employees down, they can’t see the horizon. Dark clouds may inspire some but they don’t inspire everyone. Assuming that the struggle alone makes everyone stronger and more resilient is ridiculous.

Famed comedian/actor Carol Burnett credited her early optimistic and can-do attitude (especially in her early days) on the movies she saw in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Most of them included some struggle AND a happy ending. When you think of the 30’s and 40’s (the Great Depression, WWII), happy endings kept people resilient and inspired. Instead of thinking of happy endings as nothing more than escapism, see the power they have to keep people going especially in tough times.



Leading Morale: How to Tap the Power of Happy Endings



  1. Realize that optimism doesn’t mean you are all dreaming and wasting time.

  2. Share your stories of struggle and the happy endings you achieved.

  3. Ask employees to tell their stories. What struggles have they had and what happy endings did they reach?

  4. Put as much or more focus on the happy ending (the finish line) as you do on the obstacles in your way.

  5. Address constant pessimistic naysayers on the team to prevent their pessimism from deflating the resilience you are building.


Summary: Inspire Future Resilience

Connect this practice of discussing happy endings, with honoring employee talents, recognizing effort as well as the end result, showing appreciation, and focusing on learning not blaming, in order to inspire resilience and lead morale.



Please share your story of struggle and happy ending here. Inspire others to keep going!



From my professional experience to your success,
Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™

Related Posts:
10 Ways to Inspire Greatness w/o Leaving Scars
Leadership: Don’t Dream or Deny — Discover!

©2021 Kate Nasser, CAS, Inc. Somerville, NJ. I appreciate your sharing the link to this post on your social streams. However, if you want to re-post or republish the content of this post, please email info@katenasser.com for permission and guidelines. Thank you for respecting intellectual capital.


Kate Nasser, The People Skills Coach™, delivers coaching, consulting, training, and keynotes on leading change, employee engagement, teamwork, and delivering the ultimate customer service. She turns interaction obstacles into interpersonal success. See this site for workshop outlines, keynote footage, and customer results.



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