Graduated from a Manager to a Leader. What Next?

Although topics like Mindfulness and Meditation have recently threatened to overtake the presence that “Leadership v/s Management” has enjoyed in Leadership literature over the past 5 years, practitioners continue to have a lot to say on the subject. Instead of adding to the already over-crowded voice on how managers can progress to become Leaders, I would like to talk about what they should do after they’ve graduated to being Leaders. 

Let me start with the anti-climactic give-away up-front so impatient and disinterested readers can find better things to do than spend time going through the rest of my article. I would like to suggest that the most important thing to do after graduating from a Manager to a Leader is to get back to being a solid Manager. Through the remainder of this blog, it will be my endeavor to get the good old, much-neglected Manager back in fashion. None of what I am going to say undermines the value of attributes and practices that have been attributed to being the difference between Management and Leadership (example – this simple one). But I am making a case for the need to _remain_ a sound Manager even after becoming a Leader. The specific reason to note this is the fact that several smart and intelligent people have taken to practicing Leadership in lieu of basics of Management and I have seen their effectiveness suddenly drop.

Through my own personal experiences, reflections as well as several deep conversations with successful people in various walks of life, I have tried to formulate some routines and practices that I think can be the foundation of one’s “solid management” practices. Of course, this is a theory that I have not been able to fully put into practice, but the ambition is to get as close as possible to do so.

My conviction in the theory that it is important to remain a sound Manager comes from my surprising finding that even accomplished Leaders think quite a bit about doing the basics right – as in the case of a successful $30B+ company CEO with whom I had the good fortune of a prolonged interaction about his Leadership philosophy. When I tried to find out what he constantly thinks about, I was anticipating responses like vision, hiring the right people, budgeting and such things. His response was refreshingly simple. He talked about how he has some simple practices that form the basis of his approach. He mentioned to me about how he always checks in with his direct reports regularly and never goes out-of-sync for more than a week – even if it means he needs to call them on the way to work or back. He also talked about how he spends plenty of time with his admin(s) (I am sure they must be some highly qualified MBAs!) to deliberately divide his time across different things – internal governance, external interactions and meeting with people. He specifically mentioned that he does that to make sure that he does not inadvertently gravitate towards things that he likes to do and instead, focus on doing the right set of things in the right proportion.

Another similar example is that of a friend of mine who is perhaps one of the fastest rising leaders in the Silicon Valley circles. During a casual chat that I happened to have with him where I sought to understand what his magic recipe is, he was very clear about how the source of his effectiveness comes from being able to unblock people as quickly as possible. As simple as it sounds, think of the amount of productivity and explosive positive energy that it unleashes in an organization where there are very few stall cycles. I am sure this is not a uni-dimensional skill/practice. Behind the scenes, he spends time doing things that establish a delivery track record, progressively broaden his spheres of influence so he can successfully unblock people even when they are blocked by seemingly immovable rocks.

Again – it is worth repeating that none of this makes light of the “big things” that most successful Leaders do. But the point that needs re-iteration is that it is very, very important to not give up on the first principles of Management. I am sure most effective Leaders have their own practices and routines. Here are some that I try to practice. What are yours?

1. Check-in with my direct reports at least once a week – even if it is over a quick phone call or just swinging by their offices on my way to or from the coffee room
2. Spend time on every Thursday afternoon to map out the following week and get a mental map of what I would define as success the following week
3. Have at least 4 90-minute blocks on the calendar every week for impromptu meets, walking around the office floor, etc.
4. Whenever possible, I meet people in their offices instead of mine – gives me thinking time between meetings and people are far less guarded in their own areas than others
5. As hard as it is (and I must admit, I break this rule quite often), I try to make Friday my meeting black-out day. Serves as buffer for catching up on backlog, meet people that need quick time with me so I can unblock them
6. Come to work really early on Fridays and attend to my reading backlog (I focus mostly on Business, Leadership, Technology, Spirituality and some Self Development topics) before people start to trickle in
7. If I have important meetings where I am not just participating, but trying to lead or drive an outcome or provide a direction, I make very sure to block prep time for those meetings. In general, if there’s a meeting that I am driving, I always set aside time to prepare for it
8. For every 1-hour interview, I set aside an hour to prepare for it so I can make it count for myself as well as the interviewee
9. Set aside 4 hours per direct report per quarter just for performance feedback, goal setting and career planning discussions
10. Respond to every email directed to me – even if it means I just respond with a “let’s take this up in person” 
11. Do my best to show up – may be an employee celebrating the birth of a little one in her family or even an employee’s going away lunch
12. Look back at my calendar every month and see if I would like to re-balance the way I spend my time across different activities. More broadly, I try to use my calendar to align it with my long and short term goals rather than let it grow on me and consume me

What are some of your practices?

The curious case of Kevin Pietersen….and parallels with the world outside cricket

This is not a topic that will appeal to too many people that don’t follow cricket – simply because of the context being so deeply connected with cricket. But the theme that I am attempting to discuss here is beyond cricket. It is about flawed geniuses and what the rest of us – as friends/colleagues, managers, coaches or stakeholders in some form – can do towards channelizing their disproportionately superior gifts for the greater good as well as the benefit of the individuals themselves.

Those of us who follow the game of cricket closely have been consumed by all the press – mostly negative – that Kevin Pietersen’s book is attracting. The England cricket administration has its response, the management group that KP has targeted in his book has felt compelled to come with its response, some ex–players resorting to Twitter to offer their retorts/interpretations and so on. I am sure we have not seen the last of this saga and several more gigabytes of press will be wasted on this subject. But the most insightful article that I have seen on this subject comes from Martin Crowe – an ex-cricketer himself and not far from being a genius himself with the bat, especially when he was at the peak of his powers. His analysis of KP’s psyche and its evolution over the last decade or so is very deep and insightful and offers a window into people of KP’s ilk that we run into every so often in our lives – whatever disciplines we practice. I am talking about those extraordinarily gifted people with extremely high skill/IQ, but are also characterized by a fragile ego and absence of emotional intelligence or stability.

Early in my career, I had the good fortune of watching – from the sidelines – such people either being expertly managed by excellent coaches/managers towards some larger good and also cases where such “flawed geniuses” either burned themselves or environments that they were in. As I started my career as a people manager, I often found myself confused about the approach and action to take with such individuals. My own think-tanks would come up with opinions ranging from quickly cutting such people loose from the organization all the way to simply dealing with such people and their fragile egos with kid gloves in anticipation of them turning into “the goose that lays the golden egg”. After a fair amount of trial and error with such individuals, I have come to settle to what I think is a recipe for handling them….something that has worked for me with a reasonable hit-rate. I am sure I will find that this recipe will fall flat on its face in several situations and I am also sure that it will keep getting refined in my own mind as I go through more such experiences. At the risk of sounding like yet another “5 Habits of …” prescription, I will try to outline this formula using a combination of view-points and actions or suggestions:

1. You will know such a “flawed genius” when you see one. It is generally never very hard to figure out if someone fits into the class of people that form the subject of this discussion., There’s so specific check-list that I can think of to describe such people, but the incandescence of their brilliance is generally matched by how visibly fragile – and big – their egos are.
2. Very low tolerance as well as blind impunity are both approaches that are doomed to fail with such people. There may be time-bound periods and specific situations where a competent manager may take such an approach, but neither of these can be the steady-state formula.
3. The most important thing that such people need is TOUGH LOVE…..not unadulterated admonishment or blind ego-boosts. These people know they are good, and they never tire of hearing that they are good. But they need an equal dose of reality-checks. This is where, I have seen many a good manager lose sight of the “tough” part of the tough love.
4. The most important value that one (as a manager or a coach) can add to such individuals is to help them discover and stay connected with a broader purpose beyond themselves. While this is true for most individuals, these outliers have a tendency to transfer focus from the broader purpose to themselves very often and for seemingly petty reasons. It takes a lot of effort to get these individuals to buy into a larger goal than themselves, but it is possible. The key is to find goals that either (a) enhance their reputation at a company/industry/society level or (b) are challenging enough that they can be the difference between the success or failure of an important initiative. Some of the things that are compelling sources of inspiration are – the opportunity to make an imprint on the industry, opportunity to upset the hegemony of a market leader, leave a strong legacy of proficiency and accomplishment.
5. Pair them up with fairly intelligent, but very high EQ (high emotional intelligence) individuals – self-assured people that understand the value of such individuals as well as their psychological and emotional make up. They serve two very specific purposes – (a) be a willing sounding board…often at short notice and at unreasonable frequencies (b) serve as a “sink” to drain out all the negativity and poison that inevitably builds up among such people – by simply giving them a hearing.

Back to the case of Kevin Pietersen – for all the mountain of runs that he has collected, he will remain one of the most unfulfilled talents of his time. He really should have retired with at least 12,000 test runs, lot more test and ODI victories and many more compelling duels with the best bowlers of his time. It is a major loss for cricket and for that, the English Cricket Leadership should share the blame with the man himself!

In the mean time, we all can continue to do some simple things to make sure that these flawed geniuses don’t squander the gifts that they’ve been blessed with. They deserve better and more sustained support structures than they generally get. And organizations can create huge value by thoughtfully supporting and harnessing such special talents.

Sachin Desai
http://www.facebook.com/sachinsdesai

The Creative Benefits of Boredom – Inputs to Energy Management & Career Management?

Happened to run into this HBR article the other day. Quickly eye-balled it like I do with a lot of these sort of blogs. But somehow, the contents of this blog hung on in my head for some time and I ended up reading it again in detail.

http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/09/the-creative-benefits-of-boredom/

The summary of this article is simple – certain amount of boredom at work may actually enhance the quality of creative work that an individual produces. The article makes references to a few simple experiments that have been conducted to make this observation. Although the experiments sound overly simplistic and use sample sizes that are too small to be able to form the basis of a reliable theory, I tend to agree with what the article hypothesizes. Perhaps, it has to do with having frequently watched – and lived through – this dynamic playing out from very close quarters.

The blog also triggered a broader thought that I am going to try and translate into another another loose, unscientific and unvalidated hypothesis. The concept of boredom giving way to creative bursts has applicability and relevance in at least two specific areas – one with self management and one with career management, as seen from an individual’s perspective as well as from the perspective of a manager who has the responsibility of managing and developing people’s careers:

1. Energy Management through a day – On days when I have found myself in a number of such meetings and phone calls that occupy my time – but don’t necessarily engage me intellectually – I find myself generating a lot of creative ideas. I am not going to make a lame attempt to explain this with analysis related to hormones, etc., but it may have to do with one’s sub-conscious brain finding the space to start firing up and making the kind of connections that are waiting to be made. A fully occupied mind clearly doesn’t find the kind of down-time that is required to make these connections. I can’t claim to have audited this very systematically, but I haven’t felt a similar burst of creativity during times when I have replaced these phases of boredom with other activities that interest/engage me.

Clearly, it is hard to insert “Boredom Time” blocks on one’s calendar. But in a well-regulated manner, perhaps we should allow ourselves to be pulled into such meetings and engagements every so often. The key will be to get involved non-judgmentally – however mind-numbing the engagement may be – so one gets into the right mental frame for creativity to find expression.

2. Career Management – This may sound like an extrapolation beyond bounds, but I have also noticed this in some people’s careers that their best work has come right after a lull that they have had….either because they were between jobs or between roles or were simply taking some down-time by design. People respond to lull phases in their careers differently – the more self-assured ones treat it as welcome renewal time and yet others live through such times with a lot of anxiety. I have not had the good fortune of such a period in my career to know how I would handle it, but I can sincerely say that I have shown (in my hiring decisions) a definitive bias towards people who have gone through such periods in their careers. And if they are coming out of one such phase into a critical role that I have, it is an added source of optimism and excitement when I land such people. In most cases, such an assessment has worked…often enough for me to have continued to use this parameter in my hiring choices.

In this case again – it may not be just a case of the individual’s physical, mental and emotional faculties being fully renewed. I am sure it also has to do with the down-time allowing interesting connections to be made and several new neural pathways to be formed in one’s brain.

A final note – clearly, it is not possible to plan one’s calendar and one’s career precisely enough to create these sort of “Boredom Phase” interventions…at least not with the kind of frequency that is high enough to be useful and low enough to not turn into unhealthy inactivity. Is regular meditation then, the answer to achieve a similar outcome as (1) and periodic vacations and retreats the answers to derive the same benefit as (2)?

Wish I knew!

Educational Systems Alternatives (Korean, Finnish) and what can be learnt from them

http://ideas.ted.com/2014/09/04/what-the-best-education-systems-are-doing-right/

Summary:
The Korean model: Grit and hard, hard, hard work
The Finnish model: Extracurricular choice, Intrinsic Motivation

My views:

Very nice article about two contrasting education systems (Korean, Finnish) that have been acknowledged to have produced excellent outcomes. Importantly, the write up offers useful insights to those of us playing roles as parents and/or teachers (or other practitioners in the education systems). With a bit more push, one can extrapolate these findings towards creating the right cultural make up at a workplace.

While these two education systems showcase two diametrically opposite approaches to creating the right “products”, it is useful to think of building the best of these into environments where one has flexibility or sufficient authority/autonomy. Three immediate opportunities come to mind:

1. Home environment with young children: A pro-choice environment that juxtaposes freedom of choice with plenty of opportunities to build the grit/resilience muscle.
2. A school setup with sufficient flexibility for teachers to improvise the “system”, the time-table and/or syllabi: Perhaps the best setup to systematically and holistically build the best of these attributes at a young, impressionable age.
3. A work environment – a startup or even a large unit with plenty of possibilities to promote self-selection and choice for employees. An ideal balance would be coming up with a system of guided self selection – for employees to make choices on the kind of assignments that they take on, while rewarding behavior that results in gritting it out to the finish line for challenging tasks.

A personal reflection: This is yet another example of a point of view that I am beginning to develop more and more strongly that there are a lot of common concepts, principles and philosophies that guide three different segments that a lot of us find ourselves operating in – Parenting, Teaching and Leadership in a workplace.

 

Random Friday collection (of articles on Leadership, Self Development, etc..)

Character at the heart of Global leadership
http://www.imd.org/research/challenges/character-global-leadership-morrison-black.cfm
Character at the heart of Global Leadership – really like this article for touching on simple but essential traits of being an all-seasons leader. This, coupled with an earlier post makes good reading if you are looking for a quick refresher on basic leadership qualities. This one talks about two basic traits that global leaders need to develop and practice:

1. Establishing emotional connections by (a) developing sincere interest in people (b) genuinely listening to people (c ) understanding different view points
2. Integrity in the form of demonstrating strong commitment to company and personal standards/values

Leadership v/s Management
http://blogs.hbr.org/kotter/2013/01/management-is-still-not-leadership.html
Another perspective on the oft-repeated subject of Leadership v/s Management – this time from John Kotter. Does a good job of not glorifying Leadership and instead simply tries to articulate the difference between these two things, while re-iterating the need for both qualities in an organization.

Very nice and crisp article on traits of collaborative leaders
http://www.strategy-business.com/article/ac00040?gko=8e8d0&tid=27782251&pg=all
There’s plenty of literature on these matters in the modern blogosphere era but I found this to be quite relevant. Took me just 10 minutes to read. Worthwhile read – if only to serve as a refresher….
My Summary: 4 important traits of collaborative leaders:

• Focus on authentic leadership and eschew passive aggressiveness
  • Follow through on organizational commitments – in spirit and in deed. Particularly avoid passive aggressiveness
  • When there is disagreement about a decision, fight the instinct to make it personal
• Relentlessly pursue transparent decision making
  • Be open and transparent about your decision process, who owns the decision, accountability to execute decisions, etc.
• View resources as instruments of action, not as possessions
• Codify the relationship between decision rights, accountability and rewards
  • Perhaps the most important of these 4 in my mind – in building the right organizational culture that lasts beyond your time and gets integrated into the organization’s blood stream

11 Simple Concepts to Become a Better Leader

A simple article that articulates some basic traits that great leaders have. While quite a few of them sound obvious and the list is by no means exhaustive, the ones that appeal to me the most are (a) Story Telling (b) Authenticity (c) Transparency. Story Telling is a particularly powerful trait that IMHO all modern day leaders should learn and develop. In his wonderful book “The Whole New Mind”, Dan Pink talks about the power of story telling in terms of its ability to provide context to any text and hence, paint a fuller, more relevant picture.

As regards Authenticity and Transparency, I can relate to these attributes through the first hand experience of having worked for someone who was the ultimate embodiment of Authenticity and Transparency. It was an absolute clinic as far as these two attributes are concerned. It is pretty clear to most experienced leaders that these are very important characteristics to practice – both in professional and personal lives. But I was able to see the power of authenticity realize its full potential in the case of this manager. Very simply put, he turned out to be three times the manager that he could have been without the fundamental trait of authenticity. His ability to be completely himself at all times, share his vulnerabilities openly with his team and promote information flow in the organization created an environment where the whole turned out to be much greater than the sum of parts. An authentic leader can foster trust in an organization much more easily and in the process, eliminate currents of negative energy that can set even the best of organizations back.

11 Simple Concepts to Become a Better Leader

Dave Kerpen

CEO, Likeable Local, NY Times Best-Selling Author & Keynote Speaker

Being likeable will help you in your job, business, relationships, and life. I interviewed dozens of successful business leaders for my last book, to determine what made them so likeable and their companies so successful. All of the concepts are simple, and yet, perhaps in the name of revenues or the bottom line, we often lose sight of the simple things – things that not only make us human, but can actually help us become more successful. Below are the eleven most important principles to integrate to become a better leader:

1. Listening

“When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.” – Ernest Hemingway

Listening is the foundation of any good relationship. Great leaders listen to what their customers and prospects want and need, and they listen to the challenges those customers face. They listen to colleagues and are open to new ideas. They listen to shareholders, investors, and competitors. Here’s why the best CEO’s listen more.

2. Storytelling

“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.” -Robert McAfee Brown

After listening, leaders need to tell great stories in order to sell their products, but more important, in order to sell their ideas. Storytelling is what captivates people and drives them to take action. Whether you’re telling a story to one prospect over lunch, a boardroom full of people, or thousands of people through an online video – storytelling wins customers.

3. Authenticity

“I had no idea that being your authentic self could make me as rich as I’ve become. If I had, I’d have done it a lot earlier.” -Oprah Winfrey

Great leaders are who they say they are, and they have integrity beyond compare. Vulnerability and humility are hallmarks of the authentic leader and create a positive, attractive energy. Customers, employees, and media all want to help an authentic person to succeed. There used to be a divide between one’s public self and private self, but the social internet has blurred that line. Tomorrow’s leaders are transparent about who they are online, merging their personal and professional lives together.

4. Transparency

“As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.” -John Whittier

There is nowhere to hide anymore, and businesspeople who attempt to keep secrets will eventually be exposed. Openness and honesty lead to happier staff and customers and colleagues. More important, transparency makes it a lot easier to sleep at night – unworried about what you said to whom, a happier leader is a more productive one.

5. Team Playing

“Individuals play the game, but teams beat the odds.” -SEAL Team Saying

No matter how small your organization, you interact with others every day. Letting others shine, encouraging innovative ideas, practicing humility, and following other rules for working in teams will help you become a more likeable leader. You’ll need a culture of success within your organization, one that includes out-of-the-box thinking.

6. Responsiveness

“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.” -Charles Swindoll

The best leaders are responsive to their customers, staff, investors, and prospects. Every stakeholder today is a potential viral sparkplug, for better or for worse, and the winning leader is one who recognizes this and insists upon a culture of responsiveness. Whether the communication is email, voice mail, a note or a a tweet, responding shows you care and gives your customers and colleagues a say, allowing them to make a positive impact on the organization.

7. Adaptability

“When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” -Ben Franklin

There has never been a faster-changing marketplace than the one we live in today. Leaders must be flexible in managing changing opportunities and challenges and nimble enough to pivot at the right moment. Stubbornness is no longer desirable to most organizations. Instead, humility and the willingness to adapt mark a great leader.

8. Passion

“The only way to do great work is to love the work you do.” -Steve Jobs

Those who love what they do don’t have to work a day in their lives. People who are able to bring passion to their business have a remarkable advantage, as that passion is contagious to customers and colleagues alike. Finding and increasing your passion will absolutely affect your bottom line.

9. Surprise and Delight

“A true leader always keeps an element of surprise up his sleeve, which others cannot grasp but which keeps his public excited and breathless.” -Charles de Gaulle

Most people like surprises in their day-to-day lives. Likeable leaders underpromise and overdeliver, assuring that customers and staff are surprised in a positive way. There are a plethora of ways to surprise without spending extra money – a smile, We all like to be delighted — surprise and delight create incredible word-of-mouth marketing opportunities.

10. Simplicity

“Less isn’t more; just enough is more.” -Milton Glaser

The world is more complex than ever before, and yet what customers often respond to best is simplicity — in design, form, and function. Taking complex projects, challenges, and ideas and distilling them to their simplest components allows customers, staff, and other stakeholders to better understand and buy into your vision. We humans all crave simplicity, and so today’s leader must be focused and deliver simplicity.

11. Gratefulness

“I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.” -Gilbert Chesterton

Likeable leaders are ever grateful for the people who contribute to their opportunities and success. Being appreciative and saying thank you to mentors, customers, colleagues, and other stakeholders keeps leaders humble, appreciated, and well received. It also makes you feel great! Donor’s Choose studied the value of a hand-written thank-you note, and actually found donors were 38% more likely to give a 2nd time if they got a hand-written note!

The Golden Rule: Above all else, treat others as you’d like to be treated

By showing others the same courtesy you expect from them, you will gain more respect from coworkers, customers, and business partners. Holding others in high regard demonstrates your company’s likeability and motivates others to work with you. This seems so simple, as do so many of these principles — and yet many people, too concerned with making money or getting by, fail to truly adopt these key concepts.

Acquiring & Building Talent

Very nice article – to-the-point, actionable and isn’t one of those articles that simply puts together well-known and obvious practices.

http://www.rallypointwebinars.com/Clients/UNC/UNC-White-Paper-Talent-Builders.pdf

Short Review of “Man’s Search For Meaning” (Author: Victor Frankl)

Just finished reading “Man’s Search For Meaning” by Victor Frankl, a highly acclaimed book that makes it to a lot of people’s must-read lists. Over the years, I have noticed that most book readers quickly establish frequency spectrums as far as topics that land well with them go. And that spectrum becomes more and more inflexible as you go along. This particular book has a knack of dividing readers to an extent where people either give it an almost 5-star or a sub-2-star score. You end up either thinking of this as one of the best books you’ve ever read or the subject will simply not resonate with you.

As for me – this book has definitely made it to my top-3 and I have tabled this book as one that I will read again within the next 2 years.

Victor Frankl was an Austrain Psychiatrist who is credited with some highly acclaimed work in the area of psychology. This book basically has two separate parts. In the first part, he chronicles his experiences as an inmate in a concentration camp during WW2 – as seen with the expert eye of a psychologist. He smoothly bridges over to the second part where he outlines a brand of psychology that he has defined – logotherapy. The author makes a very compelling case for how an individual can find meaning at every juncture of his/her life, including situations of extreme distress or adversity.

I personally assess non-fiction books based on whether I learnt something that will make me think differently or react to a situation differently or change/refine/sharpen my own life’s direction or if it simply fortifies view-points and beliefs that I have already held….with lesser clarity perhaps. This book checks off almost all of these criteria.

Managing with a growth mindset

Carol Dweck’s “Mindset” which I have recommended to quite a few people takes this subject of mindset up in much greater detail. My personal interest in the topic comes from the fascination that I have developed in the subject of parallels between Leadership and Parenting. But this article focusses on the matter of mindset as it pertains to the work-place and specifically, the pit-falls that “fixed mindset” managers risk. I have seen some very good managers suffer from this blind spot to varying degrees – especially that of staying anchored on a negative first impression of one’s capabilities. This, multiplied by a tendancy to size people/situations up in a hurry can cause potentially disastrous effects in organizations with such managers.

I also like the fact that this article provides practical tips for managers who recognize this about themselves and want to foster a flexible/growth mindset.

PS: One word of caution for people who are thinking of reading the full book by Carol Dweck. I found the reading to be fairly tedious at times….engaging in extreme repitition of the central theme and also over-selling it at times. But there’s no denying the value of the concept itself and the “action-ability” of the learnings that one gets from the book.

Rgds
Sachin

http://knowledge.asb.unsw.edu.au/article.cfm?articleid=1696

To Realise Workforce Potential, Manage with a Growth Mindset

During the past three decades, research pioneered by Stanford University professor Carol Dweck has accumulated a vast literature on “implicit person theories”. These are peoples’ assumptions – known as mindsets – about the malleability of personal attributes such as intelligence and personality. It has become well-established that mindsets affect how people think, feel and act in achievement situations.

About 45% of the children in Dweck’s studies, and 50% of the managers in studies by Peter Heslin, a professor of management at the Australian School of Business, were found to hold the fixed mindset that, essentially, people tend not to change much over time.

Roughly the other half of the population – those with a growth mindset – focus more on how the personal attributes that guide behaviour are quite malleable by life experiences such as education, challenges and developmental relationships.

A recent series of studies led by Heslin looked into the implications of fixed mindsets and how they can be changed. This research aims to address damaging employee reactions including demoralisation, disengagement, absenteeism and turnover, and a sense that they are not being given a “fair go” by their manager.

“It turns out that managers with a fixed mindset tend to demoralise everyone, including themselves,” says Heslin, who leads the EMBA Managerial Skills course at the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM).

“It’s imperative to recognise how readily a vicious cycle can be created by anchoring on a negative first impression of someone’s performance capabilities,” he says. “A person’s initial achievements in a role are often not predictive of what they are ultimately able to achieve. Employees resent feeling unsupported and underestimated. Imagine how frustrating it would be to be managed by someone who did not believe in your potential to improve your performance or advance in your career?”

Managers with a fixed mindset can also be dysfunctional in how they deal with top performers. “After categorising someone as a star, a fixed mindset can lead managers to not recognise when remedial action is needed,” Heslin says.

“For instance, what if someone who was once a high performer in a nuclear power plant – which is where we conducted our initial research on the role of mindsets in organisations – was no longer performing adequately. Having been categorised as a star performer by a manager with a fixed mindset can prevent an employee’s currently inadequate performance from being recognised and acted upon. The implications could be catastrophic in this context, as in other arenas such as the medical, military and security industries when competent performance is imperative for human safety and wellbeing.”

Everyone is Not Equal

“Sure you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear – not anyone can become anything and some people have more innate ability in certain areas than others. Our research is nonetheless revealing that it is dangerous and often costly for managers to focus primarily on that and thus lock people into a particular performance category, regardless of whether it’s winner, loser, dud, or superstar. Sustained attentiveness to employees’ scope for performance improvement through suitable coaching and developmental experiences is a much more productive approach.”

Beginning in 1995, Dweck and her colleagues reported that students with a fixed mindset developed deeply encoded evaluative labels for others (such as lazy or intelligent) based on hearing an anecdote about a single behaviour. She theorised that these labels acted as an anchor that was resistant to change.

In a series of studies published in 2005, a collaboration between Heslin, Gary Latham from the University of Toronto and Don VandeWalle of Southern Methodist University found that a fixed mindset blinded managers to variation above or below an employee’s initial performance level. On the other hand, those with a growth mindset were more data-driven, less anchored by past impressions, and therefore more capable of providing an accurate and unbiased appraisal of employee performance.

Subsequent research by Heslin and his colleagues found that employees believed managers with a growth mindset were more willing and capable of providing helpful on-the-job coaching. Intuitively, it makes sense that if fixed-mindset managers were sceptical about employees’ ability to change, they would be unlikely to invest their precious time and resources in coaching their employees.

Heslin’s latest work, again co-authored with VandeWalle and published in the Journal of Management, sheds initial light on how employees react to managers as a function of managers’ mindsets. In short, it shows that when managers hold a growth mindset, employees feel that they receive a more procedurally fair performance appraisal (probably reflecting it being more data-based, accurate and supplemented with coaching). Employees will thus be more committed and willing to go the extra mile for their organisation – outcomes that are well known to have significant business benefits.

Can a Growth Mindset Be Grown?

A growth mindset can be systematically developed within individuals and teams, according to Heslin, who has developed and refined a workshop program during the past decade that is now being deployed within leading Australian organisations. The workshops aim to embed within managers the notion that improvement in employee performance is almost always possible, given the plasticity of the human brain and that virtually everyone’s skills can be honed to some extent with suitable guidance, encouragement and deliberative practice.

“The process is key,” Heslin says. “It’s easy to read that change is almost always possible and say, ‘Yeah, I agree with all that’. However, recalling instances of intransigent individuals readily hooks managers right back into the limiting fixed mindset. Thus, managers seem to benefit from experiencing a process of deep immersion in the potentiality of a growth mindset. This involves working through the various workshop exercises, rolling up your sleeves and doing it all chapter and verse.”

Katrina King, from resources giant BHP Billiton, is using Heslin’s work on growth mindsets as a key component of the organisation’s Metallurgical Coal Leadership Program, in partnership with AGSM Executive Education. “It has been wonderful to see managers using this latest thinking back in the business to engage stakeholders more effectively,” King says.

Colleen Durant, head of leadership and talent at banking group Westpac, says: “The focus on objectively assessing employees’ contributions – what they have actually achieved in the past six to 12 months – as opposed to labelling employees as superstars (or not), builds a more inclusive and respectful work environment.”

Naomi Fox, senior manager at AGSM Executive Education, says “a growth mindset is disarmingly simple to grasp and immediately resonates with managers. The art of developing a growth mindset, before translating understanding into behaviours that engage and inspire people, requires deliberate practice. Organisations that embrace growth mindsets as an essential capability for leaders create a platform for competitive advantage.”

Heslin offers three tips for managers seeking to foster a growth mindset:

– Recognise that initial efforts are not necessarily indicative of what a person can ultimately achieve. Ensure adequate time and other resources are devoted to improving individual and team performance (as well as your own), which almost invariably involves some experimentation, risk and failure. What may have enabled success in the past is often inadequate to meet emerging challenges.

– Avoid focusing primarily on stars or declaring brilliance. This creates a fixed mindset within employees, making them risk averse and concerned with not jeopardising their illustrious status.

– Perhaps most importantly, resist routinely diagnosing people. Focus more on what people have done and are doing, as well as how their strengths can be built upon, rather than on the kind of person they are. Declared stars often fall, but people rarely outperform any negative labels assigned to them. It’s more productive to help people appreciate their actual performance and the viable opportunities to proactively fine-tune it.

A Simple & Light-Weight Approach to developing your annual goals

It is that time of the year….where we get to assess how we’ve done against our 2012 goals and also set some goals for 2013. It’s easy to call them new year resolutions or your annual vision or something even more grandiose than that – for now I will attempt to demystify this activity by simply calling them “Annual Goals”.

I am sure there are a number of us that are not into the habit of setting annual goals. In my own opinion, this is a very healthy habit to get into as quickly as possible. Among other things, it equips you with a compass (or a GPS for the modern day professional or a gen-Y individual!) that directs you as well as keeps you aware of how far you are from the destination. It also forces you to re-calibrate your life, re-assess where you are going and re-shape if you need to. In the worst case, it doesn’t hurt and in the best case, it can re-vitalize how you live life and your approach to things – constantly asking questions of you and possibly, causing enough of a re-think to put you in touch with your calling…..or at least put you on a trajectory that enables a journey to connect with your calling.

I have been doing this exercise over the past few years, but it has been a bit of a soft activity….only a bit better than not doing anything. It has also been an intensely private practice for me with only my closest circle of friends/family getting to know about my goals and almost nobody in full. I happened to be in a program earlier this year where there was a self discovery workshop with a broader scope. Elements of what I learnt there can go into the creation of a framework for this activity – which I would like to describe here. My goal is to make this non-fancy so one can actually do this.

I have tried to define a 4-way framework for the goal setting exercise:
1. Preparation
2. Goal categories and the goals themselves
3. Activities supporting the goals
4. Sounding board and a change management system

1. Preparation
(a) It may be too late for the year 2013 but it would be useful to get this started towards the October/November time-frame where you can start logging your thoughts/notes/observations (about things that are candidates for your annual goals) in raw format. The key is for this to remain in raw format without any judgment of whether it fits or not. I have personally gotten into the habit of keeping two notes “open” from the beginning of the year – one for Year N+1 and one for year N+2. As and when ideas bubble up, I just dump them there. But October would be an optimal time-frame to start because the context is much more current and hence much more relevant.
(b) Perhaps the most important step is the one that happens closer to the end of the year. The last 2 weeks of December are ideal – irrespective of whether you work through those 2 weeks or are vacationing. This is where you take a hard look at yourself, recall what your goals in life are, what is your calling, what gives you joy, who your stakeholders are and what are the steps that you want to take towards them during the following year. You have a nice large list to choose from already. If you force yourself to limit the number of goals to a strict number (3 ideally), you are guaranteed to cut unimportant things out of your goals and keep only the REALLY important ones.
A quick tip for those of us that may not have started on 1(a) is to get it started now and have only one goal – that of firming up your goals by the end of Jan or Feb. You are going to be skewed by 2 months for the coming year, but it doesn’t matter. This is exactly what I did when I started this routine and it worked out just fine.

2. Goal categories and the actual goals
(a) Categories – I have found it useful to have goals under 4 clear categories and it turns out, they remain relevant at all times – irrespective of where you are in your career, where you are in your life, who your key stakeholders are and so on. But it is VERY important to have no more than 3 goals under each category. The easiest thing to do is use the much-abused “AND” conjunction and pack two goals into one, but trust me, this is no more than self-fulfilling prophecy. At the time of setting goals, there’s a strong temptation to become ambitious and pack too many goals but there are two problems with that – (i) they quickly become unrealistic and you get into the habit of setting goals but not meeting them (ii) you don’t force yourself to take out the not-so-important and unimportant things….and that undermines the whole goal-setting exercise.
(b) The categories themselves – this is quite simple if you think of it. But what fits into each category changes with where you are in your life. So, the 4 categories that I would like to advocate are the following. They are very self explanatory and I would not like to blur it further by volunteering unnecessary and obvious verbiage to explain them. The only thing note-worthy is the need to keep Personal and Relationship as two separate categories. Personal can include things like learning some new skills (example music, a new sport, etc.) or routines (do meditation twice a week) or well-defined milestones (example complete a half marathon by Sept 2013). Relationship goals can be related to things like strengthening your bond with the spouse (by engaging in activities – more about this later) or reconnecting with a parent or some such.
Another key is to make sure that these goals are well thought out and clearly connect with what is important for you and your key “stake holders” – the people that matter the most to you.
     (i) Personal
     (ii) Professional
     (iii) Relationship
     (iv) Financial
PS: Your goal of staying away from your smartphone through the evening/night can belong to either the Personal section (to build your abstinence muscle as well as to avoid being interrupt-driven) or to the Relationship section

3. Activities supporting the goals
I have found that the best defined and best meant goals lose their presence on an individual’s radar screen as the year rolls along. Other interrupts and the “tyranny of today” take over. As a second-order detail of integrating your goals into your life and also making time/resource investments appropriately, it is important to firm up activities and routines that support them. Some such examples are:
Goal: Spend more time with your wife
Activities/Routines: 1 date night every month, one visit to the gym together every week
Goal: Learn to play piano
Activities/Routines: Hire a piano teacher by Feb 28, Weekly Piano class and once a week piano practice by myself

4. A Sounding Board/Change Management Team
This is a component of annual goals system that I find missing in most people’s cases …..and the one that has ailed me the most personally. It is EXTREMELY important to get this right – to have a sounding board of 5-6 people that you trust the most and who have the fortitude to hold a mirror to you. It is also important to have diversity in your sounding board – people who have seen you from various vantage pints, people who come from different walks of life and ideally, people from different generations. One strong recommendation is to have at least one spiritually oriented person in the group – someone with a philosophical bent of mind.
Having picked a sounding board, you want to seek the help of your sounding board to
(a) Review your goals with them at the time of establishing them. Remember that they are free to give you feedback on your goals, but you own the goals and you NEVER change your goals to “satisfy” them
(b) Review your goals with them on a periodic basis – no more often than once a quarter
(c) Invite them to offer suggestions/critique as and when they see fit – not just at the time of establishing the goals or at periodic-review time
(d) Set a very high bar that offers resistance to change your goals during the year. This is a bit tricky because you have two conflicting forces to contend with. On the one hand, you have the temptation to change goals to “re-calbirate” them during the year because you are either doing too well against your goals or as is most often the case, you have fallen behind. The other possibility could be that the goal has gone out of context because there have been other developments that have rendered the goal irrelevant. One simple rule of thumb here is to change your goals only in the event of life-events of the scale of a job change or marriage or arrival of a child or some such thing. A terrific finish to a year would be to not change the goals thru the year AND to meet all all of them. You always get the sense that something is lost if you’ve changed your goals along the way. So, to summarize, it is important to strike the right balance between stability and continued relevance as far as the goal-set is concerned.

Hope this helps – it definitely has helped me. I find myself living life a bit more purposefully, free of peer pressures and any such anxieties that can weigh you down and blur your vision. Having annual goals is no elixir to life’s uncertainties and confusions, but it is a good start to focussing on your pursuit and cutting out a lot of noise and clutter that are features of the information-overload-age that we live in.

I have also attached a small template (with some sample goals filled in) that I am going to use to capture and maintain my 2013 goals. Please feel free to use/enhance it.

Click to access Annual%20Goals%20Sample.pdf

Rgds
Sachin