Leading to Flourish: A Growth Mindset is Just the Beginning

What if we acknowledged that the way we have practiced leadership—as a set of goals, plans, initiatives, and programs to drive performance—is no longer working as it once did? What if we accepted that a limiting, fixed mindset about people and their ability to grow, learn, and contribute prevents us from unleashing pent-up energy toward positive results?

Would we accept that the mechanical world of leadership steps and levels needs to be replaced with a different model that equips and empowers everyone to influence the future? That the world and workforce are not going back to accepting the old ways…at least any time soon?

Would we realize and embrace that the best way forward is to lead from a focus of growth in the depth of our relationships as well as performance?

The “usual suspects” or organizational success

Survive, thrive, or die.

Those three words have defined our thinking about organizations for decades.

We know what dying looks like.? It happens to organizations all of the time. Conservatively, 80 percent of companies that existed before 1980 have vanished.

Unfortunately, too many organizations know what just surviving looks like, too.

Here’s a clue, if your business is operating from month to month with no cushion, deferring payments to preserve cash, or only growing with the rate of inflation, you are in survival mode.

Survival, over time, leads to stagnation. The immediacy of our problems justifies short-term thinking. That erodes customer perception, investment in the future, and employee morale. The results is that opportunities to catapult you toward the future are missed.

Thriving is the goal. At least that what we’ve been led to believe.

Thriving companies have mastered, or at least are very good at, the six essentials for a sustainable business:

• A clear purpose and vision for being combined with a set of values that guide decisions and actions.
• A product or service that solves a real problem for a sector of the marketplace that is large enough to sustain the company.
• An effective, consistently executed process for attracting and retaining customers.
• Financial controls and strategies that ensure profitability.
• Organizational capacity and capability to deliver the product/service as promised.
• A culture that attracts and retains talent who appreciate the opportunity to do great work.

?Thriving is clearly better, and it might not be enough.

Forty-five percent of global CEOs believe their company will not be viable in 10 years if it stays on its current path and does not reinvent itself. The number increases to over 50 percent when they extend their outlook beyond 10 years.

We must assume that at least some of those companies would be classified as thriving today. Sears, Blockbuster, Kodak, and a host of others were once known as market leaders.

Perhaps today’s leaders are more aware and/or more honest about the need to reinvent themselves. Perhaps they know that changes in technology, demographics, government regulations, catastrophic events, or customer expectations could render them obsolete.

All of those are possible, and perhaps there is something else. Perhaps thriving, as we understand it today, is no longer enough.

A different perspective – why don’t we flourish?

I recently made a short post on my LinkedIn page about the difference between thriving and flourishing. It said:

Thriving companies look at value through the lens of excellence and results. While they say that all constituents are important, shareholders and customers usually carry the most weight. Flourishing companies achieve results and deliver excellence, too. They just take a wholistic view of accomplishment that includes well-being, personal mastery, deeper relationships, purpose, and personal pride.

The crux of the meaning is that leading our organizations from a purely results-focused perspective could actually cost us long-term results.

That’s a bit of a switch for the person who wrote the book Results Rule!

Don’t worry. I haven’t gone soft on the need for results. I have, because of my research over the past 4 years, landed here: We don’t get the change and transformation we need because we don’t get the other aspects of leadership right.

Leadership occurs in interconnected dimensions not steps or levels. Our focus on leadership steps, levels, and styles is the equivalent of solving an organic problem with a mechanical solution. It can work, but it is clumsy and laborious.

My friend and colleague Liz Weber made this astute observation: Thriving is the “here and now.” Flourishing is going deep and wide now for a stronger future.

Mindset matters

Stanford professor Carol ?Dweck introduced the concept of growth and fixed mindset in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. She identified two types of belief about intelligence:

• Growth mindset:?The belief that intelligence can grow and develop through effort and perseverance.
• Fixed mindset:?The belief that intelligence is a fixed trait and cannot be changed.?

When applied to the idea of building organizations that flourish, leaders adopting a growth mindset believe that they and their teams can grow smarter through both learning and effort.?

Researchers now understand that we behave differently when we fully believe that our brain can grow.

That core belief expanded to include the full range of organizational stakeholders enables leaders to focus on flourishing rather than just thriving.

That expanded mindset is crucial to success in a world where:

·???????? Almost two-thirds of employees believe that the amount of change they experience has risen in the past 12 months. One-third have experienced at least four significant changes in the past 12 months.

• Burnout is at an all-time high.
• Seventy percent of employees would leave their jobs for more fulfillment.
• Employee engagement is at an 11-year low.
• Sixty-four percent of employees are financially stressed.

A new model for leadership

I am not a physicist, but my introductory physics courses taught me that Newton looked at space and time as static and consistent while Einstein viewed it as dynamic and changing depending on gravity and velocity

Einstein’s work laid the foundation for superstring theory that suggests a universe of ten dimensions. They aren’t parallel universes. They are distinct aspects of what we perceive as reality.

I am also not the first to view physics as a metaphor for leadership. I am suggesting that drawing a broader analogy between leadership and superstring theory in physics is useful for understanding how to lead in a complex, uncertain world. It turbocharges a leader’s effectiveness when guided by a Growth Mindset.

My research has identified six dimensions of leadership so far.

1. Personal leadership: This dimension is about leading by example. In prehistoric days, personal leadership meant being the strongest, fastest, and best hunter. Today it includes areas such as personal drive, integrity, competence, accountability, priority management, and personal performance.

2. Interpersonal and Relational leadership: This dimension is about connecting with others and developing strong relationships that grow into partnerships It includes authenticity, transparency, effective communication, listening, and emotional intelligence. It also includes fostering an environment and culture that values diversity and inclusion.

3. Operational and Execution leadership: This dimension ensures operational excellence and efficiency. It recognizes that executing today is essential to success in the future. It includes traditional managerial competencies such as setting clear expectations, ensuring organizational alignment to achieve goals, providing resources and guidance, and monitoring.

Dimensions four through six are where leaders influence the future.

4. Developmental and growth leadership: This dimension nourishes the first three and prepares everyone for dimensions five and six. It is the entry level for positive change. Fourth dimension leaders equip others to take their place, challenge themselves to continually grow, and prepare the organization to continually improve. The developmental and growth dimension is crucial for survival in a dynamic world. Most important, mastering fourth dimension leadership allows you to influence relative perceptions of speed, efficiency, and effectiveness compared to those who merely accept the status quo.

5. Change leadership: This dimension helps the organization and individuals prepare for, adapt to, and pursue the changes necessary to succeed. A strategic vision for the future allows the leader to paint the picture for what will be different and how it will be measured. Successful fifth dimension leaders help others anticipate and adapt to change. They build buy-in and overcome resistance, encourage innovative ideas and continuous improvement, and successfully help others transition to the new state.

6. Transformational leadership: Most of what we think of as transformation in our organizations and communities is just big change. Transformation is defined as “a complete or major change in someone’s or something’s appearance, form, etc.” It doesn’t happen often. Transformation isn’t completed easily or quickly. Swallowtail caterpillars, for example, transform into butterflies in 7 to 14 days. That is, relatively speaking, quick. They, on the other hand, have a lifespan of only 6 to 14 days once transformation is complete. The competencies for sixth dimension leadership encompass and extend beyond those required for the other five.

How the Six Dimensions affect Change and Transformation

The generally accepted statistics around the success rate for change are abysmal. The success rate for transformation, especially digital transformation, are worse.

Change and transformation do not fail because of faulty management. They fail most often because of faulty leadership. That is even more true when change, complexity, and uncertainty are present?… in other words, every day.

The trust, commitment, and capacity to quickly change and transform are built in dimensions one through four. Here is how it works:

• All leadership begins with personal leadership. Success in first dimension leadership builds trust and confidence. Trust is the lubricant that eases the development of relationships with others.
• Interpersonal and relational leadership moves us from transactional interactions based on the power of position to relationships that can grow into partnerships. Success in second dimension leadership translates to volunteered commitment rather than mandated compliance.
• Efforts to strengthen efficiency and effectiveness (third dimensional leadership) are exponentially easier when volunteered commitment is present. This is where excellent cultures based on connection, shared purpose, and trust transform into cultures of excellence that are obsessed with success.
• Developmental and growth leadership (fourth dimension) is the bridge from the present to the future. It is where the Growth Mindset is most visible. The organization (or constituent entity) speeds up or slows down relative to others based on the amount and quality of development and growth leaders commit to the first three dimensions.
• Change and transformation (fifth- and sixth-dimension leadership) are easier, quicker, and more effective when the dimensions 1–4 are successful. The presence of trust diminishes resistance. Strong partnerships promote teamwork rather than people protecting their own immediate interest. Effective and efficient operational performance provides a history of success that instills confidence. Consistent development and growth leadership (fourth dimension) prepares everyone to take on a new challenge because change is viewed as the next logical step toward continued success.

A dimensional approach to leadership allows leaders, regardless of position or entity, to more effectively anticipate and respond to the uncertainty and complexity of a world where there is no new normal?… only a new next.

It is essential, along with culture and strategy, to build organizations that move beyond thriving to fully flourishing.

Randy Pennington is an award-winning author, speaker, and leading authority on helping organizations deliver positive results in a world of uncertainty and change. To learn more or to engage Randy for your organization, visit www.penningtongroup.com, email [email protected], or call 972–980–9857 (U.S.).

?