Positive leadership is an evidence-based approach to leading teams, built on the five strategies of the PERMA model: foster positive emotions, use people’s strengths, invest in relationships, make the purpose clear and make accomplishments visible. The aim is lasting project success in which productivity and well-being support each other, without lowering standards or glossing over problems.
Key Takeaways
- Positive leadership is not about being nice at any cost. It is an evidence-based toolkit that links positivity with productivity and appreciation with value creation.
- The PERMA model names five leadership strategies: positive emotions, engagement through strengths, strong relationships in the team, meaning through a clear “why” and deliberately celebrating accomplishments.
- Leadership is not a question of the right personality or a formal title. It comes down to concrete actions, and anyone can start with them next Monday.
- Leaders who ask for ownership and initiative cannot micromanage at the same time, because the two cancel each other out.
- Accomplishments are hardest to see where good work stays invisible, as in testing, which usually only gets noticed once something breaks in production.
What Positive Leadership Is, and What It Isn’t
Christian Thiele describes positive leadership as an evidence-based leadership toolkit: a set of strategies meant to combine appreciation with value creation. It doesn’t lower standards, and it doesn’t sugarcoat problems.
The label sounds generic at first. Nobody advertises themselves as an expert in negative leadership. That is exactly why the distinction matters. The goal is not to dial expectations down until everything feels great and every sensitivity is catered to.
At its core, positive leadership ties positivity to productivity. Teams are supposed to hit their goals and stay successful over time, and the people on them should be doing well while they get there. Both at once, not one at the expense of the other.
Leaders Caught between Soft Skills and a Longing for Authority
Leaders today face two expectations that pull in opposite directions. The need for soft skills keeps growing, because in many organizations nobody can simply give orders anymore. At the same time, there is a noticeable longing for authority.
The more uncertain things get, the stronger the temptation to crack down and ignore the rules. In the short term that can even feel like a relief, for the people being led as well, because it creates clarity. It can speed things up, too.
In practice the contradiction is easy to spot. If you expect your people to take ownership from Monday on, to think along and show some courage, you can’t micromanage their every move on Friday. You have to pick one.
“If you want me to take ownership and think for myself starting Monday, you can’t pin me down to the smallest detail on Friday.”
(Christian Thiele)
Self-Organization without Guidance Is a Trap
Self-organization fails when it is ordered overnight. Teams that have worked in a hierarchy for decades are used to getting their instructions from above. Tell them that from tomorrow they organize themselves, and the input they rely on is gone. What’s left is a vacuum.
This often happens in the name of agility. Expecting a team to act self-organized doesn’t answer the question of whether it has learned how and whether it can manage it right now.
In projects, it is often unclear who can tell whom what to do and what happens if they don’t. That is where leadership becomes fluid: sometimes one person leads, sometimes another, and roles change hands.
The PERMA Model: Five Leadership Strategies
The PERMA model bundles five strategies that give leaders a lens on their team and on themselves. Each letter stands for a place to start in everyday work, not for a personality trait.
| Letter | Stands for | What it’s about |
|---|---|---|
| P | Positive emotions | Deliberately fostering calm, inspiration, lightness and a sense of connection |
| E | Engagement, energy, effort | Bringing strengths into play: how people work, not only what they work on |
| R | Relationships | Working with each other instead of next to each other, psychological safety, a learning culture |
| M | Meaning, mattering | Clarifying the why and showing how each contribution fits the bigger picture |
| A | Accomplishment, applause | Recognizing successes and what made them work, not only analyzing mistakes |
Positive emotions widen the way people think. Those who experience a lot of them don’t get stuck in pure error avoidance. Thiele points to a study at British Telecom which found that employees with more positive emotions sold more.
Strengths go beyond skills. Modesty, humor or thoroughness count too: the way someone approaches their work. A leader who pays attention to what a person does well and likes doing is working on the E of the model.
Why Projects So Often Skip the Why
Leaders tend to spell out the how, the when and the who in detail. The why often stays open. The M in PERMA, meaning and mattering, closes that gap.
People should understand what the customer ultimately gets out of a new process or out of retiring a tool. Without that bigger picture, nobody can tell what their own work contributes.
This hits home in testing. Testers take the user’s point of view and represent it in the project. If the day-to-day loses sight of what the software is actually for, quality assurance loses its point of reference as well.
Clearing To-Dos Isn’t Enough: Celebrate the Ta-Das
Making accomplishments visible is part of good leadership, not a nice extra. Organizations are good at analyzing what went wrong and why. They are much less practiced at looking at what went right.
Thiele sets the ta-da against the to-do. Delivering a project on time and on budget with tight capacity is a result worth recognizing, not just a cue for the next list of tasks.
For testers this is doubly hard, because good quality assurance is invisible. As long as everything runs, nobody notices the work. It only shows once problems turn up in production. Yet seven bugs found can just as well be seven ta-das, if you make them visible to the team.
Leadership Doesn’t Depend on a Title
Leadership isn’t reserved for managers or project leads. It often shows in small things, from people whose job description says nothing about it.
Whoever makes sure everyone gets a birthday card, organizes the summer party or volunteers for a task is taking responsibility and going first. That is part of leadership, too.
A manager who wants more ownership in the team should welcome that kind of initiative instead of feeling threatened by it. When someone else says “I’ll handle this”, nobody loses face.
Can Positive Leadership Be Learned?
Yes, positive leadership can be learned. The PERMA model is about action: it describes what you can do on Monday morning, in a meeting or in a retrospective, not which traits you are supposed to be born with. That focus on concrete behavior is also what makes the model usable in leadership training.
The theory behind this is a shift in how leadership is understood. The old Great Man theory assumed that leaders are born, and it thought almost exclusively of men: innate traits make a good leader. The behavioral approach disagrees. Leadership lies in what you do, and that can be learned.
What it looks like differs from person to person, depending on what they bring and how they tick. The strategies stay the same, how you apply them is up to you.
When the Best Developer Becomes the Manager
Being excellent at the work doesn’t qualify anyone to lead. In many mid-sized companies, the person who has been at the machine the longest becomes the foreman. In software development, the best developer was promoted to project manager for years, whether they wanted it or not.
That costs twice. You get a manager who never learned to lead, and you lose a very good engineer. Some of these people experience leadership as a distraction from the work they enjoy most.
That is why more and more organizations separate development, pay and status from the management track. For a long time, moving up almost always meant taking on direct reports. Few companies have built a real expert career path so far, but awareness is growing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does positive leadership mean lowering requirements and standards?
No. This approach doesn’t lower standards or sugarcoat anything. It combines positivity and productivity, that is, appreciation and value creation: Teams should achieve their goals and remain successful in the long term, and people should thrive in the process. It is explicitly not about catering to every mood until everything seems great.
How do team ownership and micromanagement fit together?
They are mutually exclusive. If you expect your team members to think for themselves and show courage starting Monday, you can’t micromanage them down to the smallest detail on Friday. This contradiction often arises from two conflicting expectations: a growing need for soft skills (because hardly anyone can rule by command anymore) and a palpable longing for authoritarianism, which provides short-term relief in uncertain times.
Can a team switch to self-organized work overnight?
No. Teams that have worked hierarchically for decades are accustomed to receiving instructions from above. If self-organization is imposed overnight, the necessary input is missing, and a vacuum remains. This often happens under the guise of agility: The expectation of self-organization does not replace the question of whether a team has learned how to do this and is currently capable of it.
What counts as a person’s strength in leadership?
Strengths are more than just skills. They include humility, humor, or thoroughness, in other words, the way someone approaches things. A leader who focuses on what a person does well and enjoys doing is working on the “E” in the PERMA model: engagement, energy, and commitment arise from the “how” of the work, not just the “what.”
Why isn’t it enough to clarify the “how,” “when,” and “who” in a project?
Because the “why” is missing. Leaders usually spell out procedures, deadlines, and responsibilities clearly, but leave open what benefit the customer ultimately gains from introducing a process or phasing out a tool. Without this bigger picture, one’s own contribution remains unclear. In testing, quality assurance also loses its point of reference.
How do you make successes visible when good work goes unnoticed?
By giving patterns of success just as much attention as error analysis. Organizations are good at investigating what went wrong. The “to-do” is counterbalanced by the “ta-da”: a project completed on time and on budget despite limited capacity deserves recognition. In quality assurance, finding seven bugs can be celebrated as seven “ta-das.”
Is the best developer the right choice for project management?
Technical excellence doesn’t automatically qualify someone for leadership. Promoting the best developer is doubly costly: you end up with a manager who has never learned to lead, and you lose a very good technical expert. Some people see leadership as a distraction from what they love to do most. That’s why more organizations are separating salary and status from the management track.
Can someone lead without holding a leadership role?
Yes. Leadership often manifests in small ways and in people who aren’t listed in the job description: those who make sure everyone gets a birthday card, organize the summer party, or volunteer for a task are taking responsibility and leading the way. A leader who wants more responsibility within the team should recognize such initiative rather than feel threatened by it.
