One of the biggest advantages you can have as a leader might surprise you.
It’s not the hours in a day, nor your resourcing. More of both is great obviously, but not the determinants.
It’s not a clear calendar, for you to diarise and schedule ample time at will. Nor is it all the conditions and circumstances lining up for you – lovely as that is.
Given that good health is foundational, what is your biggest leadership advantage?
What cuts through malaise? What transforms difficulties? What catalyses growth?
Mindsets.
Mindsets are the stories, automatic reactions, beliefs, and assumptions that shape how the world occurs to us, and how we relate to the world.
Read that again: it can be hard to get, but… the world is as your mindset sees it. You are as your mindset sees you. Your partner, your colleague, your job, your relationship to making a difference – occurs through the lens of your mindset.
How your mindset is, is how you engage with every situation.
Which is a pretty big deal.
Harnessing the power of mindsets gives you the ability to envision what might be possible, and make progress toward it.
What I absolutely love about mindsets is that it’s not positive thinking, or trying to sugar coat difficulties. Mindsets are crucial to leadership, activism, and life because they aren’t passing any judgement on what is. Instead, they empower us to interact and engage with what’s happening from a place of groundedness, choice and power.
People pleasing (and not saying no); being frustrated that your team just doesn’t get it; wishing things were different and passively hoping things change; giving up on initiatives because it’s a waste of time; sleepwalking through to the end of the year because it’s too late, we can’t do it in time …. might all be mindsets holding you back.
In the work I do with organisations and teams, it quickly becomes obvious the considerable advantages that mindsets bring.
Mindsets expand the pipeline of people ready to step into leadership roles because it removes the inner brakes of not ready or they won’t want me.
They get to the heart of that part of the culture that no longer serves. A well-established business I worked with realised its legacy mindset of how things are done was holding them back. Embedding new mindsets to support the agile, inclusive workplace they wanted to be were put in place. This allowed for new products to be successfully launched, and it became a place that attracted wonderful talent.
They provide space and extra bandwidth to people who are incredibly busy, with a lot going on. It’s not about adding more to an overwhelmed system. Rather, it cuts through the white noise. It’s amazing how much our mental churn is related to limiting mindsets.
Mindsets elicit fresh thinking toward gnarly problems. The right mindsets make the impossible doable.
Getting visibility and mastery of your mindsets gives you an advantage in business and in life. It’s huge.
Till next week,
My love to you
Cathy
