How Leaders Can Improve Their
Thinking Agility
Leaders operate with near-constant
deficits of time, energy, resources, and focus, which keeps them locked in
a perpetual state of catch-up. This reality erodes
quality contemplation. Although there are strategies to help you react to the
urgencies of the day without
sacrificing time to reflect, the value and impact of your thoughts
are not simply a measure of minutes. Rather, they can be measured by the thinking
agility you apply to changing priorities and circumstances.
More
specifically, your capacity to reflect dynamically
amid the constantly shifting work landscape is what counts most. The strongest
lever you, as a leader, have over how you manage your people, projects, and
priorities is your own thinking. Yet worry about being able to equip a new
generation of leaders with this ability is keeping a majority of the world’s
CEOs up at night.
In PwC’s most recent CEO survey, more than
three-quarters (77 percent) said that they were either
somewhat concerned or extremely concerned about a lack of key skills. When
asked to assess the most elusive talents, CEOs identified a raft of thinking
skills: adaptability, problem-solving, creativity, and innovation.
Leaders, you can increase your thinking agility — and develop
these related competencies — by leveraging the following three strategies.
Know your thinking sweet
spot.
The first step is to
develop greater awareness of your thinking tendencies. The reference point I use
is Herrmann International’s Whole Brain model. The framework includes four distinct thinking domains: analytical,
practical, relational, and experimental.
Analytical thinkers are logical, realistic, and numbers-driven.
Practical thinkers are organized, task-driven, and focused on operational
plans. Relational thinkers are expressive, engaging, and sensitive to others.
And experimental thinkers imagine what’s possible, challenge the status quo,
and leverage their curiosity to spur original, divergent ideas.
Every individual displays a unique mix of these, expressing some
more dominantly than others. And the way an individual navigates his or her
daily work — communicating, building relationships, solving problems, and
making decisions — reflects the strengths or limitations of his or her thinking
in the four dimensions.
So, which of these four dimensions dominates your mind-set? When
you’re faced with a difficult problem or decision, which domain(s) do you rely
on most to resolve it?
If you instinctively dive
into the numbers, scrutinize the details, and let logical facts influence your
decisions, you’re strong in analytical thinking. If you default to your project
plan and focus on getting the job done, your sweet spot lies in practical
thinking. If you naturally engage in conversation to explore others’ thoughts
and ideas and pursue trusted, personal connections to get great work done,
you’re relational. Or, if you ask why not, intentionally step back
to look at a bigger picture, and seek flexible possibilities, experimental
thinking is your strength.
Uncover your thinking gaps.
Knowing your thinking sweet
spot is crucial because we instinctively develop habits and patterns of behavior
around them. These well-worn patterns may be the cause of our success, but as
our roles evolve and the challenges we face shift, leaders need to branch out
beyond the sweet spot and develop broader thinking skills. Filling in these
thinking gaps by exploring the domains you tend to avoid will allow you to more
easily collaborate with and influence people.
According to Herrmann’s research, only 2 percent of people express
thinking habits evenly in all four dimensions. The vast majority have limited
range. Competitive businesses that rely on their employees having a healthy mix
of these diverse thinking styles require their leaders to guard against the
gaps.
Consider your last slip-up at work. Did your strong attachment to
sticking with the plan (or practical thinking) preclude big-picture thinking
that could have led to more team input and a better outcome? Or perhaps because
of your tendency to favor relational thinking, you got so caught up in
collecting others’ valued opinions that you failed to realize the day-to-day
operations were being neglected? Knowing your gaps can help you broaden into
those spaces.
As situations change, let
your thinking change too.
Not all thinking is created
equal, which is good because not every task requires the same response. Once
you know your thinking sweet spot, and your gaps, you can begin to cultivate
thinking diversity by considering the ideal response in a variety of
situations.
If success in one area depends on your ability to relate to
others, such as building trust with a new client or colleague, take the time to
do that. Don’t rush like it’s a task to complete as quickly as possible;
instead, make time to engage. If another assignment requires a technical
perspective, immerse yourself in the analysis. Focus on the research and expert
opinions of others. Sweat the small stuff, and be willing to map out all the
pitfalls.
Regardless of the situation, it’s the pivot toward an alternative
thinking style (or blend of styles) that can make the difference between
frustration and positive results. If you’ve ever wanted to just get “down to
business” while your colleague wanted to envision all possible scenarios, you
know how irritating the mismatch between thinking approaches can be.
To avoid this type of conflict, talk about your thinking
preferences with others. For example: “Hey, I appreciate the importance of
having a vision. For me, I feel like we’ve already done that work and the best
use of our time is to focus on the tactical plan moving forward. Is it OK if we
shift gears, or is there still something for you regarding the ‘big picture’
that we need to explore?”
As you work to stretch your own thinking agility, remember that
the least likely time to change is when you’re facing high pressure to perform.
In those critical moments, people usually behave in the way they know best.
This means that efforts to stretch your thinking agility are best undertaken
when pressure is low. Agility moves aren’t about right or wrong ways to think.
They’re about the situational awareness and intentional effort to adjust your
thinking to the circumstance.
Finally, as you take steps to implement these strategies, consider
your team and organization as a culture of thinkers. They reflect clusters of
thinking sweet spots and thinking gaps — all amplified by the thinking agility,
or thinking immobility, they possess. To leverage this awareness for your
broader enterprise, link it with the CEO’s agenda and get to specifics.
Assessments such as the Whole Brain model can be socialized on a large
scale to establish a baseline of awareness of current thinking patterns. As you
staff teams and develop people, include thinking elements in every decision.
From small moves, such as designing your weekly team meetings to be more
inclusive of diverse thinking styles, to big moves, such as aligning your
business’s strategy to the thinking capabilities needed to execute it, consider
your firm’s thinking as an integral part of your overall talent strategy.
Jesse
Sostrin
https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/How-Leaders-Can-Improve-Their-Thinking-Agility?gko=5058d&utm_source=itw&utm_medium=20170803&utm_campaign=resp
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