Mindset is quickly becoming a “buzz” word. Many influencers are talking about growth vs fixed, infinite vs finite, optimistic vs pessimistic, entrepreneurial vs structured, closed vs open, prevention vs promotion, inward vs outward and so on….

All of this has had my mind set into a spin, so I decided to take a look into mindset with the goal of helping you understand  what it means, and how it relates to you and the way we manage our people.

Now consider why you think and feel this way?

Why you think and feel this way is what shapes your mindset.

Past experiences shape the lens that we see things through.  This then shapes our way of thinking, beliefs, and attitudes which in turn influences how we make decisions and process information.

Your mindset has a direct impact on your behavior and in turn has determined your current reality.

How does this impact me as a manager?

New Managers are likely to develop similar mindsets and manage their employees as they have been previously managed.

Think about your past jobs and ask your self these questions:

• How were you treated?
• Were you managers competitive and always focusing on numbers?
• Did they ask you for your input or feedback?
• How did they give you feedback or did they even talk to you at all?
• Did you feel like you had to go in and “put your head down and do your work” or were you empowered and supported to make decisions?
• What other experiences have influenced how you think and do things today?

The truth is whether we want to admit to it or not the way we interact at work with others and how we manage our team has been influenced by our past experiences.  When we experience behaviours happening again and again throughout different workplaces we begin to think:

“this is just how business works”

Traditionally we have had a transactional results approach to management where we focus on:

Most of the focus is on the product and how much money was made over a set amount of time.  Now don’t misunderstand me here… we all want to make money, but this type of management mindset is only focused on the short term, results are either met or not and then the whole cycle starts over again. It overlooks growth and balance which is needed to achieve long term success.

The Dangers of a Transactional Results Only Focus

I worked at a company that had their “best year” based on sales, in fact this region was top globally and looked upon by CEO and Shareholders as keeping the company “afloat” The employees would be told how good the numbers looked and that they need to keep doing what they are doing during monthly meetings.  Employees turned and looked at each other not feeling the success that was being celebrated by the CEO.  You see this region had the highest employee turnover in the companies history that year. Employees were burnt out and not feeling appreciated for their efforts.  They cut sales managers commissions, laid off employees, would not let employees work overtime but expected them to meet tight deadlines, cut corners on quality and safety and lying to customers just to get orders.  As a result of this dangerous ethical spiral; loyalty, engagement and trust throughout the company was also at an all time low.

We see the flaws in this mindset and have actually developed a whole industry to help the “victims” of it though selling products, medication, training, services etc.

We provide these tools, or band aids to help with these issues, but we need to turn our focus on fixing the sources of why this is happening in order to solve the issue.

Traditional transactional results mindset way of management needs to change

It is no longer enough to say:

“We care about our employees”.

Employees are looking for your actions to show that you care.

In order to make a change a new management mindset is needed.

I believe that we not only have the power to make a change but a change will be demanded by future generations.

What does this look like and how do we begin?

1. Start with self awareness- understand how your mindset has been formed.
2. Find your purpose or your why- understanding your purpose will bring clarity to your big picture and what is most important to you.
3. Make a list of the things that you can do or ways you can shift your thoughts to align with your purpose

Here’s an example: 

Rather than focusing on how many new customers you can get also focus on how you can best serve and retain your current customers.

Rather than being very product focused, put more focus on your customers what are their pain points and how can you help them.

Rather than only looking at short term goals/targets start to look at longer term things that will support your purpose such as identifying and managing risks, improvement initiatives and employee retention and development.

By becoming aware of your beliefs and shifting your mindset to align with your purpose you will begin to notice your decisions and actions shift and form a new management mindset.

Let’s inspire together,

Natasha