Becoming a leader is hard, but remaining in the position and acquiring adequate leadership capabilities is even more challenging.
The truth is, leaders have a lot to worry about on a daily basis but during times of turbulence, their concerns are greatly multiplied. During these daunting times, leaders face various challenges including high turnover rates, organisational objectives not being met, or even problems between managers and their direct reports. If a leader gets too distracted by any or all of these problems the result is a static organisation with few or no proactive changes.
In that regard, I’d like to share a story that I think many of you can relate to. It involves a leading supplier of equipment, sign making and materials that had become very dysfunctional. The employees had stopped listening to each other, and had grown dishonest when dealing with one another. As time went by, the situation deteriorated to the stage where the whole department had become entirely unproductive, leading to an inability to deal with growing organisational pain; hence, the company failed to capitalise on business opportunities.
To solve the problem, management chose to write an administrative procedure code and made sure everyone in the organisation followed those rules. The problem is, they couldn’t understand why their employees’ behaviours hadn’t changed at all. They finally figured out later that you can’t change behaviour through procedures; unfortunately, they found this out the hard way.
What’s worse, the problem at the leadership level cascaded down, building mistrust between departments, leading to them intentionally withholding vital information, which would have helped other departments to function more effectively and better serve organisational objectives, such as customer insights and new product plans.
We know for a fact that behaviour drives results. But in reality, as in the case above, behaviour alone might be able to drive action merely in the short term as it won’t last. Sooner or later, things will snap back to where they were.
The question here is, how do we drive sustainable actions that drive results? The answer lies with our mindset. We need to shift it.
If a leader tries to get people to adopt new behaviours that aren’t supported by their underlying mindset, change efforts often fail.
Moreover, in most cases, when problems arise, leaders tend to overlook the fact that they could be the cause of the problem. They have developed what I call the insistent-blindness syndrome: they can’t find fault in themselves and instead blame it on their team or organisation. They lack the collaborative or communication skills required to achieve the organisational objectives.
These leaders can’t tell the difference between the “underlying problem” and the “presenting problem”. What do they do to solve this problem? They invest in numerous training courses hoping to develop their people or change their behaviour, when in reality it’s the mindset that needs shifting.
Training sessions normally take place in the hope of correcting or changing behaviour, but little do we know that by doing so, they are just treating the symptoms rather than the actual disease. In other words, training will bear no sustainable results as you are not tackling the root cause of the trouble.
Simply stated, although behaviours drive results, mindset is the only true driver of behaviours.
Now, when people shift their mindset, they will see things differently and they will perceive things from different perspectives; thus, they will act and perform differently. The benefit of changing the mindset of your people before trying to change their actions or behaviours can lead to breakthrough results, from heading off conflicts before they occur to turning disagreements into cooperative innovation.
Here are some steps for you to take to begin to change mindsets and start improving your organisation.
See others: The first step is seeing the needs, objectives and challenges of others along with those of the organisation as a whole. When your mindset is turned outward, the way you work with others will allow you to understand your own roles in relation to others; hence, you will improve collaboration.
Alter efforts: The second step is adjusting efforts. What I mean by this is that once you have an understanding of what other people around you are trying to do, you will naturally adjust what you’re doing so that you can make your own efforts more helpful to what they’re doing.
Create impact: With an outward mindset, you’ll be focusing on, and have an interest in the impact of what you do. You will start to see and measure the impact you have on others, whether you’re making their work harder or easier.
It’s clear that organisations that focus on mindset change will see dramatic improvements in behaviour and results at all levels. With an outward mindset, leaders will start to see immediate and tangible impacts on their teams, as well as supporting sustainable change.
It’s no surprise that leaders will be given challenges that will catch them off-guard, and they will continue to suffer from these underlying root challenges if they don’t address them.
From time to time, we all need to be reminded that behaviours may drive results, but what drives behaviours is mindset. Therefore, leaders and organisations need to understand the underlying mindset that allows them to see beyond themselves.
-----------------------------------
Arinya Talerngsri is Chief Capability Officer and Managing Director at SEAsia Center (formerly APMGroup) Southeast Asia's leading executive, leadership and innovation capability development centre. She can be reached by email at arinya_t@seasiacenter.com or www.linkedin.com/in/arinya-talerngsri-53b81aa
For daily updates, visit www.facebook.com/seasiacenter