Courageous leadership is optimistic leadership — and it’s measurable
In boardrooms and team meetings alike, I keep coming back to a simple truth:
The fastest way to improve performance is to make it safer to be human.
Not “soft.” Not “nice.” Human — in a way that creates clarity, learning, accountability, and energy.
The world of work is under pressure, and managers are right in the middle of it. Gallup’s latest global findings show engagement fell from 23% to 21% in 2024, with an estimated $438B productivity impact — and managers saw the sharpest drop (from 30% to 27%).
When managers are stretched thin, uncertainty rises. And when uncertainty rises, people stop speaking up, stop experimenting, and stop learning.
So the question becomes: What kind of leadership creates the opposite effect?
Leading with optimism is not naïve — it’s disciplined
Optimism in leadership is often misunderstood as “positive vibes.” I see it differently:
Optimism is the discipline of believing improvement is possible — and then building the conditions that make improvement likely.
That takes courage. Because it means we don’t lead through fear (“don’t mess up”), but through possibility (“let’s learn fast”) while still holding high standards.
McKinsey has highlighted that psychological safety is not a perk; it’s a performance enabler — and leaders can intentionally build it through learnable behaviors.
And the research foundation goes back decades: Amy Edmondson’s work defined psychological safety as a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking — and linked it to learning behavior and performance.
Psychological safety is the operating system for high-performing teams
If you want initiative, innovation, continuous improvement, and real accountability, people must be able to say:
“I don’t understand — can you explain?”
“I think we’re missing a risk.”
“I made a mistake.”
“I need help.”
“I have an idea.”
This is where optimism becomes practical. Because psychological safety is not a slogan — it’s built through repeated micro-moments:
How we respond to bad news
How we treat questions
How we run meetings
How we handle conflict
How we reward learning (not just outcomes)
“We don’t need 100% skills — we need 100% willingness”
One of the most powerful shifts I’ve seen in leadership development is moving from perfection to progress.
You don’t need to be a finished product to lead well. You need:
curiosity over certainty
coaching over control
learning over blame
consistency over intensity
This matters because the manager role is expanding — expectations rise, complexity rises, and many leaders still lack the tools to support wellbeing in day-to-day work.
Deloitte’s research shows a clear gap: leaders often don’t realize how poorly employees are doing, and many organizations fail to empower managers with the tools, data, and support to impact wellbeing. That’s not a motivation issue. It’s a system issue.
Positive work ability management is how optimism becomes measurable
In the Nordics we’ve long talked about work ability as something you build and protect — not something you react to when it breaks.
The best organizations treat work ability management as:
systematic (not ad hoc)
early (not late)
manager-enabled (not HR-only)
data-informed (not based on gut feel alone)
Finnish occupational safety guidance emphasizes early support and monitoring practices agreed together with occupational health, to promote work ability and prevent work incapacity over a career.
This is exactly where digital tools can help — not to “track humans,” but to support humanity:
making early signals visible
prompting timely conversations
guiding managers with structure
helping organizations learn what’s really driving absence and reduced work ability
turning good intent into consistent action
From individuals to a Tribe: the social engine of performance
When psychological safety and positive leadership are real, something else happens:
People start protecting each other’s energy.
They start sharing skills.
They start solving problems together.
A Tribe forms — a community where people feel: “I belong here, and I’m growing here.”
That’s how high-performing teams become sustainable: not because they push harder, but because they recover better, learn faster, and support each other.
Where Aino Health fits in (without losing the human focus)
At Aino Health, we’ve focused on a very practical problem: how to help leaders support work ability early, consistently, and at scale.
Our platform is designed to connect the dots — understanding root causes, enabling early support, and giving managers tools to act at the right time. And when you look at absence data through the lens of real conversations, you often find something important: many drivers are organizational and human — workload, recovery challenges, conflict, skills fit — not purely medical.
In other words: work ability is leadership in practice.
Digital tools don’t replace leadership — they strengthen it:
by lowering the threshold to start supportive conversations
by making patterns visible earlier
by helping managers learn what good looks like
by turning “we care” into repeatable, measurable habits
A simple leadership playbook to start tomorrow
If you want to lead with courageous optimism — and build psychological safety that improves work ability — start here:
Frame work as learning. Replace “prove yourself” with “improve together.”
Make it safe to tell the truth. Reward surfacing risks early.
Do early support as a habit, not an intervention. Systems beat heroics.
Give managers tools + data + permission. Don’t make wellbeing a side project.
Build the Tribe. Strengthen peer support, learning, and belonging — the real multipliers of performance.
Because when you lead through positivity and structure, you don’t just get nicer teams.
You get:
stronger commitment
better wellbeing
lower preventable absence
faster learning
higher performance that lasts
And in today’s world, sustainable high performance is the only performance that matters.
Jyrki Eklund
CEO, Aino Health
#Leadership #PsychologicalSafety #WorkAbility #Wellbeing #PeopleAnalytics #HRTech #FutureOfWork #Upskilling #HighPerformingTeams