Lead at your bestbest
Five simple exercises can
help you recognize, and start to shift, the mind-sets that limit your potential
as a leader.
When we think of leadership, we often focus on the what:
external characteristics, practices, behavior, and actions that exemplary
leaders demonstrate as they take on complex and unprecedented challenges. While
this line of thinking is a great place to start, we won’t reach our potential
as leaders by looking only at what is visible. We need to see what’s underneath
to understand how remarkable leaders lead—and that begins with mind-sets.
As important as mind-sets are, we
often skip ahead to actions. We adopt behavior and expect it to stick through
force of will. Sadly, it won’t if we haven’t changed the underlying attitudes
and beliefs that drove the old behavior in the first place. Making matters
worse, our behavior affects other people’s mind-sets, which in turn
affect their behavior. A leader’s failure to recognize and
shift mind-sets can stall the change efforts of an entire organization. Indeed,
because of the underlying power of a leader’s mind-sets to guide an entire
organization toward positive change, any effort to become better leaders should
start with ourselves, by recognizing the thoughts, feelings, and emotions that
drive us.1
In this article, we’ll share five
simple exercises adapted from our new book, Centered Leadership,2that can help you become more aware of your mind-sets.
Armed with this knowledge, you can start making deliberate choices about the
mind-sets that best serve you in a given moment and learn through practice to
shift into them without missing a beat. This allows new behavior that improves
your ability to lead at your best to emerge naturally.
1. Find your strengths
A surprising amount of our time and
energy at work is focused on our shortcomings—the gap between 100 percent and
what we achieved. For many executives, this pervasive focus on weaknesses
fosters a mind-set of scarcity: a feeling that there are too few talented
people in the organization to help it move the mountains that need moving. Many
executives we talk to find it very hard to recognize, accept, and appreciate
any other view. The same may be true for you. But what if you could move
mountains by starting with strengths, leveraging people’s strong desire for meaning?
Try this exercise to learn your
strengths. Find a comfortable spot without distraction. Close your eyes and
take a few deep breaths. When you’re ready, put yourself back in these three
moments, in turn:
·
As a
small child. What form of
imaginary play do you like most? What characters or roles do you choose? What
games attract you most, and who do you get to be in them?
·
As a
young adult. What activities
draw you in so entirely that you lose track of time? What boosts your energy,
and what does that say about you?
·
As a
working adult. Look back to a
high point that occurred over the past 18 months. What are you doing? What is
the nature of the impact you are having on yourself, others, and the
organization?
Looking across these moments, what
do you value most about yourself? What would fill you with pride if you heard
it from your colleagues and loved ones at a celebration for you? Those are your
strengths.
Of course, there is no magic in the
act of self-reflection on strengths. The magic comes when we learn to integrate
strengths into our daily work—a real challenge, since many executives believe
that strengths are the words that come before the inevitable “but” in their
performance reviews. It is hard work to shift mind-sets in the face of mounting
pressures and worries. We adopt the athletically inspired mantra “no pain, no
gain,” as if the shift to “playing to our strengths” was unrealistic, yet we
overlook the fact that professional athletes always aspire to
play to their strengths.
Some executives will use the
greater self-awareness the exercise brings to catalyze a career change—drawing
on feelings that may have been percolating. The vast majority find that the
simple act of peering through the lens of strengths is a doorway to enhance
their power, generating positive emotions and energy. One executive admitted
that the process of understanding her strengths—among them empathy and love of
learning—and then hearing them confirmed and appreciated by her colleagues
brought tears to her eyes. Another reported learning more about a colleague
during a ten-minute conversation about strengths than he had in the previous
ten years’ worth of conversations about everything else.
To be sure, everyone has weaknesses
to improve. But deliberately shifting to a focus on strengths is a far more
inspiring approach; you’ll raise the odds of lighting up everyone around you
and unleashing enormous energy for creativity and change. Fabrizio Freda, the
CEO of Estée Lauder, told us: “You need supertalented people who know they need
to do fantastically well. And when your leadership team takes the same
attitude, you create a culture where each one can give his or her best. . . .
In particular, you have to find the strengths of each individual and of the
organization—and then you can create magic.”
2. Practice the pause
We all face challenges at work:
impossible deadlines, missed budgets, angry customers, sharp-elbowed
colleagues, unreasonable bosses. When the upset caused by any of these
experiences threatens something at stake for you, you are likely to suffer an
“amygdala hijack”—that moment when your brain sends cortisol and adrenaline
coursing through your body to help you defend yourself. You may lash out in
anger, walk out on your colleagues, or simply stop in your tracks.
Instead of that “fight, flight, or
freeze” reaction, what if you could pause, reflect, and then manage—creatively
and effectively—what you’re experiencing? Here’s a tool to help. Recall an
upsetting thing that happened recently but still carries an emotional charge.
You were not at your best; you felt fear or anger in the moment, along with
unpleasant physical sensations: a racing heart, a knot in your stomach, or even
nausea. Put yourself back in that moment now. As you do, keep in mind the
metaphor of an iceberg, where little is visible above the surface.
·
In
this moment, notice the impact on yourself. What are you doing or not doing? What are you
saying or not saying? How are you acting? What effect are your words and
actions having?
·
Below
the waterline. What are you
thinking and feeling but not expressing? What negative outcomes are you most
worried about?
·
Deeper
still, look at your values and beliefs. What is most important to you? What belief do you
hold about this situation, about yourself, and about others?
·
Even
deeper, examine your underlying needs. What is at stake for you here? Are you aware of
any deeper desires and needs?
Surprisingly, perhaps, we most
often create the outcome we fear. Worried about losing control? When you
snapped at your team, you just did. Worried about being heard? When you argued
defensively, people turned away.
Pause and ask, “What did I really
want for—and of—myself in that moment? By noticing when our attention is
focused on needs that we want to protect, and redirecting it instead toward the
experience we want to create, we open up access to a greater range of behavior.
A senior executive, for example,
was involved with a large operational-change effort. He had been at a team
meeting to discuss safety standards, and things didn’t go well—he had not
created the outcome he wanted. He had hoped for a learning session that
generated solutions and empowered the local general manager leading it.
Instead, he had remained largely quiet and offered broad-brush advice based on
his own experience. The meeting felt like a surface-level discussion or, worse,
a top-down audit.
Examining his own motivations, the
executive saw he was leery of destroying the general manager’s confidence by
speaking; he wanted people to rise to the challenge and learn. But he also
wanted to preserve group harmony and be liked. By avoiding conflict and not
taking a stand, he was creating the outcome he feared—a vicious cycle of
inaction, disengagement, and defensiveness.
With this recognition, he could
begin to shift. When he felt this same tension rising, he practiced pausing,
thinking about his intentions, and then constructively voicing his concerns or
asking a question. His example prompted others on his team to do the same,
opening the door for more learning-focused interactions—his initial goal.
Further, to help teammates increase
their self-awareness, he instituted a “check-in” at every meeting’s start.
During this step, colleagues would each briefly describe something happening
“under the waterline” for them: say, a stressful project deadline. This ritual
helped all team members to pause, reflect, and better understand their own
mind-sets and those of colleagues. It sparked more honest, productive
conversations and encouraged teammates to trust each other—a key factor, as
we’ll see.
By figuring out how to pause and
reengage our “thinking” brains (the parts governing executive functions, such
as reasoning and problem solving), we can make the shift from a mind-set of
threat avoidance (a fear of losing) to one of learning and of getting the most
out of the moment.
3. Forge trust
Senior leaders need a community of
supporters to achieve audacious goals, for communities are built through shared
objectives and mutual trust. Yet not everyone views trust in the same way, so
as leaders we must learn what others value if we want to inspire trust. At a
minimum, the effort leads to greater understanding.
In fact, simply recognizing and
embracing the differences in how people perceive trust can strengthen it. Once
we are aware of our own—or others’—profiles, we tend to adjust our behavior
subconsciously. When we do so deliberately as well, the results are quite
powerful. After all, it’s our behavior that instills trust in others, not our
intentions.
Take this test to see what aspects
of trust matter most to you. For each of the elements below, score yourself
from 1 (I rarely do this) to 7 (I regularly do this):
·
Reliability. I don’t make commitments I
can’t keep; I always clarify expectations and deliver on promises.
·
Congruence. My language and actions are
aligned with my thinking and true feelings.
·
Acceptance. I withhold judgment or
criticism; I separate the person from the performance.
·
Openness. I state my intentions and
talk straight; I’m honest about my limitations and concerns.
Consider the case of the CEO of a
large bank who was dissatisfied with how his company had changed: what had once
seemed to be a collaborative environment now felt like the opposite. Executives
reported an atmosphere of defensiveness, bureaucracy, and pervasive mistrust.
These feelings reinforced a “silo” culture that made it harder to collaborate
on launching new products.
The senior team used the exercise
above to spark a broader discussion about trust and the company’s culture. Fairly
quickly, the team recognized that the bank’s moves to become more focused on
key performance indicators (consistent with reliability) were the source of the
tension. Digging deeper, the team learned that the big emphasis on performance
had, over time, discouraged managers from raising concerns about the
implications of the program for employees and customers. This, in turn, lowered
the quality of debate in meetings and encouraged defensive and bureaucratic
behavior.
Consequently, the changes were widely
seen to be in opposition to acceptance and openness, trust elements that
mattered dearly to employees. People were concerned that openness with
customers was being sacrificed to “making the numbers.” This realization
spurred the senior team to find areas where reliability and openness could be
seen as complements, not opposites—a shift in mind-set and, ultimately,
behavior that helped the bank to improve the customer experience significantly.
When you shift your mind-set from
“trustworthy people are a scarce resource” to “I can inspire almost everyone to
trust me more,” your community of supporters will expand effortlessly.
4. Choose your questions wisely
What propels leaders to carry out
unprecedented, audacious visions? Fear? Foolishness? Ambition? A sense of duty?
Hope. Leaders we admire tend to use
fear as fuel for action, but they favor hope. Fear is of value because it gets
our adrenaline flowing, sharpens us, and makes extraordinary contributions
possible. But it’s easy to succumb to fear and feel overwhelmed by downside
risks. Fear spreads through an organization like a contagion. Without the
counterbalance of hope, fear paralyzes. So how can we find the right mix of
both? Start with the questions we ask.
Try this exercise. Find a
discussion partner and ask that person to discuss his or her most pressing work
problem with you. However, at first use only these questions to guide the
conversation:
·
What’s the problem?
·
What are the root
causes?
·
Who is to blame?
·
What have you tried
that hasn’t worked?
·
Why haven’t you been
able to fix the problem yet?
In a few minutes, stop, thank your
partner, and ask for a redo. Restart the discussion, using these questions
instead:
·
What would you like to
see (and make) happen?
·
Can you recall a time
when the solution was present, at least in part? What made that possible?
·
What are the smallest
steps you could take that would make the biggest difference?
·
What are you learning
in this conversation so far?
Five minutes in, stop again and
debrief your partner about his or her thoughts and feelings during the first
versus the second discussion. What did you notice? What were his or her
underlying mind-sets? What were yours?
The difference is tangible. The
first set of questions, great for solving technical problems, often prompts
defensive reactions and leaves participants feeling drained. By contrast,
participants report feeling animated, curious, and engaged the second time
around.
We tend to use the first set more
often. These problem-focused questions work well for
technical, linear issues that have “right” answers. As we move up the ranks as
leaders and the challenges become more complex, our problem-solving instincts
can lead us astray. By contrast, when we develop solution-focused instincts,
we empower and engage others, deliberately infusing hope. Remember that
employees with problems already feel fear. Problem-focused questions only fuel
it.
A plant manager we know used this
approach to spark better ideas and improve accountability on the front line. He
created a pack of cards that shop-floor supervisors could use with line workers
in daily operational problem-solving sessions. On one side of the card, the
problem-focused questions; on the other, a solution-focused translation. The
supervisors quickly found that using both sides of the card brought markedly
better results than the traditional questions alone—and that the range and
quality of solutions improved dramatically.
The plant manager’s message was
simple, yet powerful: look for problems and you’ll find them; look for
solutions and people will offer them. By choosing our questions thoughtfully,
we can shift our mind-set from “my organization is a problem to be solved” to
“my organization holds solutions to be discovered.”
5. Make time to recover
Who wouldn’t want to work in
high-performance mode nonstop? A desire for achievement and competitive success
urges us on—often past our physical and mental limits. Professional athletes
build in time to recover, but executives rarely do. Why not? The limiting
beliefs are well accepted: commitment is noticed through hard work and
suffering; only slackers take time off during the day. People tell the story of
a hospitalized colleague with awe: “He worked so hard he collapsed, in service
of the company.” Hero? Not really.
If that young executive had the
self-awareness to shift his mind-set from managing time to managing and
balancing energy,3he might have remained
in good health. The solution is simple: find ten minutes twice each day
(morning and afternoon) to recover, stepping back into a zone of low but
positive energy to recharge. Consider all four sources: physical, mental,
emotional, and spiritual activities can each fuel you. Schedule recovery activities,
and stick to them until this is your new normal. Here are some examples we’ve
observed:
·
Physical. A Brazilian exec walks up a
few flights of stairs quickly—more flights if she is agitated or upset—and then
she slowly walks down, giving herself the time to reflect and come back to
center. An Italian senior manager has an afternoon coffee, walking to the lobby
café instead of the coffee stand on his own floor.
·
Mental. When a US CEO needs to
recharge his energy levels, he consciously seeks out conversations with
employees, so he can learn something new.
·
Emotional. A Mexican company vice
president chooses to recharge by reaching out to friends regularly to send
thanks and love. A Swedish entrepreneur reviews an e-mail folder where she
keeps compliments, thank-you notes, and warm greetings.
·
Spiritual. A technology executive turns
her chair to look out the window, meditating on nature and life in the form of
the oak tree that fills her view. A pharmaceutical executive brings an empty
chair, representing patients, to important meetings, to remind everyone why
they are there.
Of course, managing energy isn’t
necessarily a solitary activity; we’ve seen leaders inject recovery practices
into daily business routines. For example, the CFO of an aerospace company found
that a weekly meeting he chaired was draining. To energize his team, he changed
the format, starting each discussion with the prior week’s notable lessons and
achievements. The new format was a hit: weekly attendance went up, the
meetings’ substance improved dramatically, and what had been a pure
number-crunching exercise began to generate new ideas the company could use.
The meetings were more fulfilling for the CFO, too. “I finally feel like I’m a
thought partner to the business,” he told us, “rather than a cop.”
As you reflect on the mind-sets
that limit you, consider a shift to “practicing recovery regularly helps me
spend more time in high performance.”
In our work with executives, we’ve
found that tools, practices, and exercises like the five above help leaders
understand—and shift—the mind-sets that govern their actions. Trying to change
our behavior (what is seen and judged) will fail—the old, hard-wired patterns
return when pressure mounts—unless we have first addressed internal patterns
with conscious effort.
To make change stick, unwire and
rewire from the inside. Start with self-awareness: seeing yourself as a viewer
of your own “movie.” Once you see the pattern, you have a choice whether to
change. Owning the choice creates enormous freedom. And as you exercise that
freedom to change your mind-set and practice new behavior, you role-model a
transformation—creating what does not exist today but should. And isn’t that
what leaders do?
By Joanna Barsh and Johanne Lavoie
https://www.mckinsey.com/global-themes/leadership/lead-at-your-best
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