Introduction:
Many organizations are looking for leaders who possess a growth mindset to drive innovation, adaptability, and success. A growth mindset is the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through dedication, effort, and a willingness to learn.
Here we explore the impact of a growth mindset on leadership and performance, highlighting the importance of fostering a culture of continuous learning, adaptability, and personal development. 1. Embracing Challenges: Leaders with a growth mindset see challenges as opportunities for growth and development. Mistakes mean we are trying, not failing.
They encourage their teams to step out of their comfort zones, take on new challenges, and learn from experiences that push us to be more.
By embracing challenges, leaders push beyond the status quo by asking "how can we be better" innovation and creativity follows and creates a better future.
At OrgTreeMe, we talk about granting trust as creating an environment for growth by giving someone the responsibility of a stretch goal while keeping all of the accountability as a safety net.
1 big change from a leader generates hundreds of small adaptations that shift performance.
More importantly, the people adapting own it, and feel good about their ideas being adopted. More to come! 2. Cultivating a Learning Culture: A growth mindset in leadership promotes a learning culture within the organization. Leaders encourage their teams to seek knowledge, acquire new skills, and continuously improve.
This means networking, connecting with individuals or departments that you wouldn't normally work with. Finding help builds relationships and those connections build inclusive attitudes towards diversity.
They provide "on the job" opportunities for professional development. Learning while working and helping solving each others operational challenges are more effective than training programs, and they are cheaper. By guiding employee investment in their own growth, leaders create a motivated and engaged workforce that is committed to personal and organizational success. 3. Encouraging Feedback and Collaboration: Leaders with a growth mindset value feedback and see it as an opportunity for growth. In the knowledge that we seek learning, and that help will follow. The social risk of saying "I have a problem I can't solve" is reduced as the outcome is "if we don't know, we'll find the help and we'll all learn".
People will always gauge the social risk of opening up, the more help that follows, the less social risk is involved. If the outcome is always helpful, you will get solutions to increasingly complex problems which are always the ones that really need solving.
It is easy to say "foster a culture of open communication" the reality is that leaders need to ask for problems, put collective effort into solving whatever was raised and repeat. Don't prioritise "operational needs" as you tell people their problem is only important if it is an operational priority. If you care about your employees' problem, they will in turn care for the operation that you care about. It isn't and and/or - this is an and/and. 4. Embodying Resilience and Adaptability: At OrgTree we believe that resilience is fundamentally our collective and individual ability so deal with the problems and challenges we face. If everyone looks to leadership for solutions, and leadership make it clear that you can't adapt without their control or influece, then your organisational ability to adapt is limited to how many problems leaders can resolve and how good they are at communicating and managing the changes.
If you engage the team in challenges and beneficial adaptations, then you increase the organisational capabilty to think critically and problem solve. It is much faster as the team will have a ton more ideas from their context of how work gets done, and will adopt the changes they defined almost instantly.
So, embodying resiliece and adaptability actually means trust the team. You can keep talking and check in on progress, you can still be firm on direction and core values, but be flexible on how the team gets there and you will get further that you imagine. 5. Know your role: We often work with the historical influence of job titles and job desriptions that imply or state that increasing seniority means increasing control of people lower in the organisation.
One example is Supervision: Think of it in terms of the 2 words it is based on, "Super" and "Vision". The all powerful and all seeing hero. When supervision asks you to do something without asking questions, then they instruct you from a position of power to get things done with all you've been given to get it done.
Try asking "super powerful questions" like "do you have what you need, do you have a better idea, how can I help?" This transfers power to the team, it also means that the supervisor has to turn their power away from control and into sourcing the helping the team succeed.
Does Manager mean "manages me" or "manages to help me".
Your role is always to help your team succeed. If you don't ask them about their challenges and use your role to help them, your team will also struggle to help you succeed.
If your job title has "Chief" in it, then you are accountable for the wellbeing of your tribe. Use your role to ask your team who is helping them to solve their problems and challenges. Your team is motivated to achieve "social wellbeing", a sense of belonging and recognised contribution - by sourcing help that in turn helps them contribute, you increase their social wellbeing. See which of the team members talk about collective problem solving and which talk about being the hero, then you know which behaviour to encourage, and if you encourage the right behaviour, others will align themselves to the behaviour that earns them your good favour. Conclusion: A growth mindset in leadership has a profound impact on organizational performance. By embracing challenges, cultivating a learning culture, encouraging feedback and collaboration, embodying resilience and adaptability, and by knowing your role, leaders create an environment where individuals thrive, innovation flourishes, and performance soars. Fostering a growth mindset from leadership and in your leadership style, is not only beneficial for the organization but also for the personal and professional development of individuals within the team.
A connected culture working through mutually beneficial business practices to deliver shared purpose is the way we move from the silos illustrated in your OrgChart to an OrgTree where every part of your OrgTree adds value to and as a whole.
For more information contact us through www.orgtree.me or curious@orgtree.me
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