How great companies uses growth- mindset to develop new leaders?
This article is a re-edition. Add some topics. I wrote it one year ago, but is one of my favorite. Another year passes by, a new year is coming to re-think your management. This article can help you see your organization and teams from a different angle in 2018. Remember : all colaborators have the same opportunity to grow and develop their best skills with you and help the company go further and retain your best talented people.
Many things are said and written about developing talent and identifying future leaders.
Probably all are correct, in one form or another, however, those who consider the talent for leadership as innate prevail. It is a pre-conceived idea within the more traditional organizations.
Talent should be developed in everyone, not viewed as fixed or innate gift, that someone have and others don′t. Great companies develop growth-mindset strategies to develop talent in everyone and create future leaders inside the organization.
Organizations that deliberately create a growth-mindset culture evolve inside the company leaders - yet skilled - to levels they might not have in a traditional development model.
It is a continuous and consistent task throughout the lifetime of the organization and this means that the directors have to look beyond results and figures alone.They have to have the amazing capacity to observe their potential talents, listen, listen and listen and create strategy for this mindset to work and have results in a long term strategy. They have to have the audacity to risk and dare to go much further than the traditional companies.
How to create a growth-mindset culture?
1.Risk-taking. When risk-taking is explicitly rewarded, you can see new kind of leaders stepping up. Challenge your people to create new business lines, products, services or even new niche companies. Make sure that smart risks are encouraged and rewarded. That′s where the magic happens.
2.Responsible Freedom.Promoting consistently responsible freedom enables your people - specially those with more potential and open mind- to bring new ideas, vision and creativity to develop new business leaders. Freedom to think and do something on your own creates the ability to lead, in a natural way and they will be brave enough not to fail. These "space" of "responsible freedom" are unleashing greater potential for new and great leaders across the organization.
3.Assume that everyone in the company has the potential. Traditional companies approach to talent management/development is to identify a pool of future leaders, or, sometimes even outside the company. Great companies are focused in "looking" at EVERYONE inside the company, because everyone has light potential of being a great leader. They just need the "space" and "freedom" to show it.
4.Take micromanagement to another level. When you hire someone for a job means their are responsible for that. You can not micromanage all the time. Take it to the next level - let your people make responsible decisions. If mistakes come along learn from them and just be there to support them. This will bring to them the capability to develop skills of leadership.
The benefits are huge, specially because it creates opportunities for everyone to grow, and each year you see the company growing , in such a way, everybody feels and fits in the strategy of the organization. You will see, inside your company, the courage and bravery like no other organization.
The secret is always the same - do it in a consistent and coherent way for everyone!
Have a Happy New Year!
Sónia Jerónimo