**13. Discussion**

The fundamental characteristics that stand out among positive leaders are their heliotropic effect across situations, and authenticity to serve both in the group and out-group members, share power as well empower members to experience growth and development by striving towards wholeness and integration of goals. The study significantly indicates that employees do experience affirmative and virtuous behaviour at the workplace, demonstrated by their immediate supervisor which influences them towards positive performance or outcomes. The leader's positive practices enhanced the team members rendezvous and well-being due to the positive leadership approaches. The supervisors exhibited positive deviance at

workplace via (i) respect individuals and acknowledge them as the first customer at the workplace, (ii) shape optimism, formulate positive strategy and introduce positive organisational design, (iii) engage employees and deliver better results through trust and empowerment, (iv) not only focus on hard behaviours, but unleash the softer behaviour to experience independence and autonomy in a true sense of employees. The leaders need to cultivate and manage a combination of technical, business and people management skills to manage projects and teams effectively in ITO. When they exhibit affirmative behaviour, it creates an environment trust and empowerment at work place. These factors support them to manage challenges better, and ensure holistic employee engagement, resulting thereby in enhanced stakeholder management. Importantly, they play the role of a facilitator, a coach and a mentor, an observer and supervisor. By and large, they look to develop competences that are essential for developing via providing positive perspective and recognising the accomplishments.

Positive leaders have a clear sense of resolution towards achieving the organisational objectives and to develop employee's competencies aligned with the organisational objectives. They allow employees to participate and work on the strengths or competencies to perform well. Due to which they set clear expectation and direction for team members to achieve. Among the positive leadership sub-dimensions, immediate supervisor's positive perspective had the highest traction. This could be due to leaders playing an (i) significant role in managing uncertainty of change and (ii) controlling the perceptions and implementation of strategies that reduce the stumbling blocks, and looks at the pitfalls as an opportunity for growth and development. The leaders with positive perspective demonstrate resilience in terms of developing employee's character and gravity of their capabilities by sharing their experiences and perspective in handling the challenging situation or assignments at workplace. The ability to be authentic, trust their team and analysis the issue either by providing solutions or recommending alternative measures are appreciated. They not only inspire and influence the teams but build organisational capability via team building and manage change to perform and deliver under pressure. At the same time through strength based approach enhance the performance of the team towards organisational objectives. They encourage and recognise team members which motivate them to work more cohesively, share statistical data or information and also engage with one another towards achieve the set objectives and have positive solutions towards problems encountered. Positive leaders are resilient and therefore do better in challenging situations and also reinforce preferred performance from employees. They exhibit that via recognising the employees for their contribution influences others to perform better and build a positive image of the organisational practices. These factors recognise the leader's affirmative behaviour, winning attitude and momentum and sustainability to deliver against all odds.
