Fake positivity doesn’t work
How i changed my mind on “winning mindset” and what will help train our team on instead
For a long time, I thought our company needed a winning mindset to succeed
That idea made sense to me
If you don’t believe you can win, it’s really hard to
You second-guess every move. you use brain power on back-up plans instead of creating paths towards success
Sports teams understand this well
They train belief in addition to intensive practice
So this seemed obvious to me:
If athletes train their mindset, why wouldn’t we?
And yet… I couldn’t move forward with it fully
I felt blocked for months
Till it finally hit me a few days ago (thanks to a podcast discussion about this topic)
I couldn’t fully move forward with it because
I didn’t want to train people to hold fake positive beliefs
I didn’t want to tell them, “Everything is fine, just believe harder.” Because that’s just pretending
How can you force someone to believe they’ll succeed when they’re scared?
They might have valid fears:
What if a competitor eats our lunch ?
What if the product ships late?
What if sales misses the number?
I don’t have those fears cause I’m built differently. But I’m a founder, I’m supposed to be fearless. Yet I can’t expect this from everyone. We are all built differently
Telling people to “stay positive” or emulate my beliefs doesn’t remove fear
It just teaches them to hide it
Which is the last thing I want to do
Humans don’t work that way
We are codependent
Our success depends on other people showing up
So belief isn’t just personal
It’s relational
For most people fear is very rational
That’s how I finally got it
I realized that for someone to believe in success they have to get to a place where they have CONVICTION WITH WELL STATED BOUNDARIES
I call it:
Grounded Conviction
Think of it like sports
A great athlete isn’t confident because they repeat affirmations
They’re confident because they know:
what they’re great at
what they’re not
and how the team around them plays
Grounded conviction has two parts
Part 1: Belief in yourself
Self confidence starts with self-knowledge. And a lot of hyper awareness
You have to know clearly:
your zone of genius
where you create the most value
where your strengths align with the team’s goals
And just as important:
what you’re not great at
what drains you
what you should stop doing
In sports, no one expects the goalkeeper to score every goal
In companies, we often expect people to do everything and that makes no sense
We are all born with limitations
Grounded conviction comes from knowing our roles in the field
How do you build that self-knowledge?
Feedback. But not the passive kind that comes only once or twice a year.
You have to seek it
That’s hard because feedback can bruise the ego. We learned to hide our imperfections. Someone stating out loud something we didn’t do right hurts us. Because we get afraid we might get “punished”
Yet without it, we don’t improve
And feedback alone isn’t enough
The real work is receiving it without collapsing
Owning it and taking action
That’s where confidence actually grows
Not from being told you’re great. But from understanding where you shine and where you might need to let go and leave space for others to chime in
And that’s where most progress happens
Part 2: Belief in others
This part is harder
We trust ourselves because we live in our own heads
We don’t trust others because we’ve been hurt before. I’ve yet to meet a human without scars
So our brains learned a shortcut:
Predict danger early and protect ourselves
Someone misses a deadline
Someone says a word that we might perceive as dangerous
We jump to conclusions about who they are and what they’ll do next
We apply labels on them and we lose our belief in them
But teams don’t win like that. Because no one will EVER be perfect
In great sports teams, trust is built through repair and our ability to learn to grow our trust in humans around us
Belief in others grows when two things happen
1. Fears are voiced, not buried
Concerns need to be said out loud. Often . In a way that doesn’t create damage
Clear and calm, from compassion. Without blame
Without attacking others to learn to co-create solutions. You become creative
I believe speaking up is critical
Because silence doesn’t protect teams - it just breaks them
Encouraging people to speak up when they feel hurt is my favorite activity these days
And I do that by example. I talk about the most uncomfortable topics in public. I’m still learning too
2. People show they can hear feedback and act
Trust increases when someone:
listens
takes ownership
tries to improve
That’s the moment belief shifts . To evidence This is what good feedback really does
We’re not “being nice.” We’re not avoiding discomfort
But keeping people responsible while staying human
That’s hard
And it’s a skill that needs training
In our personal lives too. I work on this every day. It’s a frigging hard skill to develop
YET I THINK IT MATTERS A GREAT DEAL
Because in winning teams they don’t hide the fears
They work with it
They build accountability with compassion for self and others
That to me is grounded conviction
Not fake positivity
And I can’t wait to work with my team to build on these skills. It’s a hard puzzle but it’s the most beautiful puzzle I can think of
"Silence doesn't protect teams - it breaks them." But make sure you're solving for silence on each level 1) the ways people silence themselves 2) the ways we silence each other, even when we don't intend 3) how silence is baked into the systems we're all part of. Because too often we point the finger at someone else to say they should have more grounded conviction, when really, we're making it too costly for them to do so.
I really appreciate this framing, especially the rejection of fake positivity and the emphasis on trust, feedback, and boundaries. That alone puts this far ahead of most “mindset” conversations at work.
Where I think the model still needs strengthening is how humans actually change under pressure.
Fear isn’t just rational, and it isn’t only relational. It’s also conditioned.
Most of the fear we see in teams isn’t the result of active evaluation (“Is this risky?”). It’s the result of repeated past experiences training the nervous system to anticipate threat. Once that loop is established, people don’t choose fear... they default to it.
That’s why awareness and feedback, while necessary, are rarely sufficient.
Under stress, the brain shifts resources away from the prefrontal cortex — the very part required for reflection, trust, and conviction.
In those moments, people don’t lose belief; they lose access to choice.
They fall back to what the body knows.
This is where many well-intentioned culture efforts stall.
We ask people to:
Speak up
Hold boundaries
Receive feedback without collapsing
Trust others despite past scars
…without training the physiological capacity required to do those things when it actually matters.
In sports, confidence isn’t built only through role clarity and feedback. It’s built through repetition under simulated pressure, followed by recovery. Athletes don’t just know their role ... their bodies know how to respond when the game tightens.
Teams need the same kind of training.
Grounded conviction doesn’t come from belief alone.
It comes from practicing new responses until they’re familiar.
When people learn how to:
Interrupt automatic stress reactions
Regulate emotion in real time
Recover faster after conflict or mistakes
Rehearse better responses before high-stakes moments
…fear stops being something to manage or hide.
It becomes information.
That's how trust compounds.
How you turn feedback into growth opp instead of threat.
That’s when conviction becomes embodied rather than aspirational.
So yes, agreed. Not fake positivity. Not forced belief.
But you can train adaptability.
And that’s the missing skill most teams were never taught.