Positive Spirit: A pillar for nations’ building and development

08/12/2013

When Germany surrendered to the Allies in 1945, it was a wreckage of a country with a frustrated people, having lost more than 10 million militants and civilians. The war left Germany with 5 million detainees in Siberia and Europe, demolished cities and destroyed infrastructure. The Allies forces carried Germany’s factories, machineries and scientists with them while leaving the country.

At that time, women became the majority of the population in Germany with a rate of 82% aged between 18-40 years, and suicide increased to unprecedented rates.

However, in three months after the Allies left Germany, women started calling for re-building the country under the theme “Rise from the Rubble” with absolute absence of the then government. Women and elderly people started clearing the rubble to rebuild houses and gathering documents and books to rebuild schools.

Women wrote slogans on the ruined walls to stimulate hope and encourage work, such as: ‘Don’t wait for your right’, ‘Do whatever you can’ and ‘Cultivate Hope Before Wheat’.

Thereafter, between 1945 and 1955, houses, roads and schools were reconstructed, and from 1955 to 1965, factories were rebuilt, and 4 million workers were recruited from Turkey and Eastern Germany. By then, slogans on the walls were changed to read: ‘Seriousness and Hope’.

The period between 1965 to 1975 witnessed the emergence of patriotic businessmen who ensured that each of them trained 50 young people. Thereafter, Germany turned out to be a super economic power.

With the growth of its economic strength, Berlin Wall collapsed elevating Germany’s economy to become the strongest in Europe. Demolished walls were the only means to inspire hope and create an enormous positive spirit which enabled a frustrated and destroyed nation to make a global economic miracle after being a destroyed country that even lacked electricity to power on a radio, and whose people couldn’t afford buying newspapers.

The above introduction was called up by the words of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, when he addressed local and international media representatives upon Dubai’s winning of the bid to host Expo 2020. In his speech, His Highness expressed hope for Arab nations to overcome challenges in the way of their sought out development.

His Highness underlined the importance of determination, resilience and positive energy in overcoming obstacles, saying: “We hope that peace will prevail all our Arab countries. We tell them that determination, will and positive spirit are important factors for the targeted positive development.. Rivers naturally surpass obstacles on their watercourses and change their course to continue flowing. We wish all the happiness and prosperity for everyone”.

Progress, prosperity, successful policies and management of nations are basically dependant on the public who should be addressed with the language of hope and positive spirit. Positive spirit is based on credibility which is the right channel to respond and interact with the public who is supposed to lead the development process with faith and strong belief in objectives so as to make miracles. Human history is certainly full of examples proving that positive spirit and effective energy can build nations and institutions. With positive spirit a nation can overcome the barrier of time and surpass other nations.

A quick overview, even from a political perspective, shows that a happy human being, no matter if poor, is the one who can be relied upon to build a nation. And since nothing is good or ill but by comparison, we must mention, here, the opposite fact. A sad human being destroys all his surroundings and pass on misery and negative energy to others, thus subvert and demolish the community. A miserable human being unknowingly becomes a negative element that drives the wheel backwards, even in case of being rich and not lacking any cause of living . Herein lies the essence of the subject and the key to success.

Positive spirit that inspires love and determination is a key to success, progress and happiness. By means of positive energy, obstacles can be overcome, cooperation and contentment will prevail. It is a treasure Allah blessed his people with, and those who lack it shall fight for it. Here, in the UAE, we do possess this treasure thanks to our deep belief, prudent leadership and ambitious country which was unified by fate, history and wisdom of our great founding fathers led by late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

We started with certainty, hope and positive energy that spread throughout our nation and became part of the people living in this country. Whoever lives on this giving land have a deep belief that such an unprecedented progress, welfare and advancement witnessed by the country has become the focus of the whole world. The world, now, believes in the ability of this nation to convey messages of love, peace, prosperity, science and education to all countries and nations. Our unique experiment has become a reference in science, management and knowledge and an example for others to follow and benefit from.

On the other hand, a dissatisfied person brings a big harm to himself and to those around him. Discontentment impacts one’s health and social environment leading to desperation, which is like a communicable disease; once spread, it deteriorates the lives of people who will consequently be busy blaming each others. Fortunately, the UAE is protected against this plague and Emirati people need to maintain the positive energy they possess and get rid of all the negative emissions.

In this context, it necessary to remember that organizations are like nations or any human groups; once misery and disagreement prevails among its members, all their efforts and energy will not be directed to success, progress, good planning and efficient performance, but will rather be focused on politics, complaints, wasting energy and thus impede their progress and development.

Leaderships are the pillars for their organizations and the hearts for their nations. People are naturally distributed into workplaces, and we, Emiratis, love work. Unemployment rate in the UAE is almost zero; not to mention job opportunities offered by the UAE to expatriates living on its lands. That said, we must underline the importance of organizations’ leaderships as their primary responsibility lies in positive interaction and emission of positive energy among employees, directors and work teams.

In his brief speech, His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has given us a priceless advice. It is not just a speech that we joyfully listen to and forget in a while. It is an integrated action plan which needs a precise scientific analysis to figure out how to adjust the spiritual status and positive energy among employees and in the field of service delivery. It is not an easy task for a leader to get adapted to smiling, drawing thereby the smile on the faces of employees and customers. It needs persistent efforts to build a culture and enormous energy to emit positive spirit in the surrounding environment, as well as love, respect and positive attitude. These should lead to accomplishment, innovation and satisfaction.

To enable this positive attitude, institutional leaders should be characterized by tolerance and should lay the foundations of administrative governance and justice whose main pillar is ‘rewarding achievers and depriving the fruitless’. Although this principle seems to be somewhat rigorous, however, on long term, it helps promote responsibility, protect positive employees from reclusion and keep them energetic. Being just, requires giving employees what they deserve, which is something that can be achieved only through a fair assessment of their achievements, work conditions, authorities and knowledge available for them to accomplish their tasks.

It is also noteworthy that teamwork is a vital means that help unleash best capability of employees, and human beings in general. By nature, human beings tend to socialize; they speak, think and have feelings and emotions that make them interact in different ways with their surrounding environment including work mates.

Hence, an organizational leader needs to ensure maintaining positive atmosphere to work teams and carefully select their leaderships and members. Then, comes empowerment and training employees on how to achieve goals through teamwork techniques and appropriate ways to deal with people.

A proficient leader is the one who can make the best out of his/her team in all conditions in order to overcome obstacles, conflicts and all sources of negative energy that may exist in the team itself and which can destroy its intended mission to achieve organizational strategic and operational goals.

In this context, it is necessary to underline the serious impact that may result from the failure of the teamwork. It is the core responsibility of the higher leadership of any organization to ensure appropriate selection of team leaders, setting out the team’s objectives and provide the environment and resources that help the team to achieve the set out goals.

In all these equations, human resources are the most vital elements. They get attracted to, sympathize or contradict with each other leading a number of outcomes. It is the human being who generates either positive or negative energy.

Human resources scientists highlighted the importance of considering this fact while forming and organizing teams. This necessitates maintaining work norms, respect and cordiality between employees, fighting against rumors and Machiavellian attitudes, thus enabling a governance environment based on respect, responsiveness and cooperation among all members.

An organizational leader should not place contradictory and trouble making employees together or within the same teams, and should always assign them roles and responsibilities that suit their capabilities, enhance their knowledge and ensure financial benefits for them. Leaderships should also strive to maintain positive spirit as a driving power towards achieving progress and prosperity to both employees and the community.

Satisfaction is the key to positive energy, and in this context, it is best to conclude by commemorating words of our great Prophet Mohammed, Peace be Upon him, when he said: “How wonderful is the situation of the believer, for all his affairs are good. If something good happens to him, he shows gratitude for it and that is good for him; if something bad happens to him, he bears it with patience, and that is good for him.”. These words urge us to be optimistic, never be depressed and always expect a bright future.