Leadership Mindset

This is one of those unwritten yet insightful revelations that is much more valuable than any assessment could reveal regarding the teams leadership mindset.  And because it happens in real time, it can be addressed and corrected in real time.  Here is how this wonderful awareness opportunity unfolded at a recent client strategic planning event.

To begin the process of strategic planning, an anonymous survey went out to the leadership team asking them the standard foundational questions like what are the organizations strengths and weaknesses, and what are the most critical areas for improvement.  Prior to the meeting, the survey results were handed to each leader for review, and that is where the team revealed their leadership mindset.  The conversation went directly to who said what, and why the survey got distributed.  And the energy behind it was unbelievable.  Where the conversation did not go was to identify any nuggets in the survey that could be helpful with growing the organization.  When who said what becomes more important that what it means, you have a problem with your leaders.

Worrying about who said what does not contribute to a better strategy.  Complaining about the survey getting handed out does not empower opportunities.  This is low level thinking and not becoming a leader.  It certainly is not productive team play.  But it is a very insightful indicator to how big or how small the leaders on the team think.  In this case, they spent forty-five minutes discussing nothing of benefit to the organization.

The organization relies on it’s leadership to stay focused on the big picture that propels the organization to a better world.  The mindset of a leader should be to identify insights that can drive better decisions, keep the company relevant, improve efficiencies and moral, and stay true to the culture, not worry about who said what.  There are plenty of people who will never be leaders around to take care of that.