Smooth The Path

Member Informed Strategy, Innovation & Marketing

  • Home
  • Speaking
    • Presentations
    • Upcoming Events
    • Happy Event Organizers
    • Happy Participants
  • Services
    • Clients
  • Resources
    • Associations of the Future
    • New Member Engagement Study
    • Association Industry Innovation Research Study
    • New Strategies for Member Onboarding, Engagement, and Retention E-book
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

January 9, 2017 By Amanda Kaiser

3 Ways to Reduce Disappointment So Our Associations Can Move Ahead

reduce-disappointment

Avoiding disappointment is a very strong motivator.

We are disappointed when reality doesn’t live up to our expectations or future dreams. We are disappointed when we are cast in a bad light and feel others may judge us poorly. We are disappointed when we feel we’ve been mistaken by sinking money, time or energy into a project that didn’t work.

The start of every project presents the opportunity to succeed and the chance to be disappointed. The key to moving forward is making the hope of success far more attractive than the fear of possible disappointment.

Adopt a positive outlook – CEO’s from the Association Innovation Research Study continually modeled a positive attitude. We would hear them make statements like, “sure this project could fail but what if it doesn’t?”

Eliminate blame – Staff members who try and fail may still be recognized for trying to solve a member problem.

Seek out and cultivate resiliency – We need to build cultures of resilience. We need to hire for resilience in our associations today.

Our fear of disappointment cleverly hides behind our list of potential risks so it might be hard to identify but the fear of disappointment could be what is getting us stuck.

Related:

  • Our biggest job as association leaders
  • Keeping up staff engagement through a tough project
  • Are you really taking a big risk or does it just feel that way?

Filed Under: Association Innovation, Association Leadership Tagged With: association innovation, association risk, association strategy, forward-leaning staff, innovation, innovation culture, judge, member problems, project management, project strategy, risk, risk-harmony, staff culture

Follow

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Sign up for member insights & association inspiration.

Work With Me

Recent Posts

Association Strategy
Association Marketing
Association Innovation
Association Leadership
Association Value
Member Experience

Member Engagement
Member Research
Member Insights
Conference
Membership

Member Research

Blog

About

Happy Clients

Speaking

Popular Presentations

Contact Us

More Resources

Copyright © 2021 Amanda Kaiser