What she said was so backwards.And yet I couldn’t believe I had never heard it before.I was walking through Costco on a particularly rainy Saturday morning when I heard a worker conclude an interaction with a customer by saying, “enjoy the rain!”The person was being wholly genuine and my attention was immediately captured because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use that phrase before.The idea that a rainy day is something to be enjoyed isn’t new. I know plenty of people, myself very much included, who love a good rainy day.The sounds, the smells, the overall indoorsiness of it all. Delicious.But, the idea that we should encourage people to enjoy a rainy day was new to me.We encourage people to enjoy the sunshine, but rarely to enjoy the rain.In fact, when I looked up ways to describe a rainy day, the results were words like dismal and melancholy and somber.This matters because leaders like you shape how people think about the circumstances around them.Is the challenge your team is facing something to be endured or something to be enjoyed?Is it possible for you to shape the answer to that question?TRY THIS: Identify a difficulty your team is currently navigating and probe for opportunities to redeem it. How is this making us better, smarter, stronger? What if solving problems like this was akin to achieving a new personal best at the gym? What if this circumstance is actually made much worse by the way we talk about it.The goal isn’t to pretend that everything is sunshine and rainbows.The goal is to determine if it might actually be possible to enjoy the rain.My free PDF, “The 5 Secrets of Impossibly Effective Teams,” will show you the simple leadership moves that help teams unlock their full potential and deliver outsized results—without burning out. Grab your copy now at geoffwelch.com/secrets
