Why are they “Not easy”?
Because, people like to focus on problems and don’t like to change.
Why do “We need them”?
Because, these shifts improves the lives and work of both employees and leaders. They make Work and Business better.
Shift 1: Move from Doubt towards more Hope, Optimism and Self-efficacy
Shift 2: Move from Driving people towards Enabling people.
In this article, we share our experiences from 3 concrete projects, where we were deeply emerged into our client’s transformation journeys.
A social media company, who we helped to facilitate the “birth” of a new team.
A logistics company, who we supported in creating a new leadership culture and behaviours.
A healthcare company, who we enabled to build new mental resources to overcome a performance challenge.
Shift 1
Move from Doubt towards more Hope, Optimism and Self-efficacy
Doubt is probably the emotion we meet most frequently when we start working with organizations. Doubt in the strategy. Doubt in the purpose. Doubt in the Products. But most of all we experience Doubt in Own Capabilities. This often leads to behaviours that attempt to conceal the perceived capability gap: Avoid taking risk, avoid to commit and hide true emotions and opinions.
“Doubt” can be the infamous “Elephant in the Room” that nobody wants to talk about. By revealing the Doubt, we help the team to understand their emotions and behaviours better, and enable them to start dealing with the Elephant. Most teams find this process a bit painful, but afterwards they appreciate that they have “put the stinky fish on the table”.
We all know that it is not possible to instruct people to not Doubt. That’s why we spend time with teams to explore the Doubt, and make it tangible. But if we don’t move on, and start building Confidence, Hope and Optimism, the doubt will soon creep back in again. Sustainable development work starts when we go into evolving mindsets and how we see the future.
Client: “We would like to be more resilient for the future. Our sales team is really worried that they will not be able to meet their budget.”
We were puzzled, couldn’t really make sense of this statement and needed to enable the HR Head to be more concrete.
It turns out that their team was very pessimistic and had lost the belief in themselves. We worked with them to rephrase the Brief to:
“How can we be more Hopeful, Optimistic and Confident in the ways we approach our goal.”
Hope is a key element of performance, but it is often labelled as being a word that does not belong in business. So let’s see it from another angle: When a person is feeling that a situation is hopeless, do you think that they will be very motivated and committed? Probably not. That’s why it’s so important to be clear about the goal, build different pathways towards the goal and define the resources needed in order to achieve the goal. It’s kind of the good old Goal Mapping approach with little added spice.
Optimism is another word that many people falsely think is not business related, as they see it as an expression of naivety. This a gross misunderstanding. Who would be motivated and committed to something, if they believe that it is not achievable? That’s how pessimism starts to creep in, poisoning the minds and the environment.
Therefore, it’s helpful to understand what negative automatic thoughts and beliefs are in the way, that lead them to be pessimistic. When we are aware of these negative thoughts and belief we can start disputing them, and take control of our mental processes.
Self-efficacy is often misunderstood as “Confidence”, which comes short of the real meaning. When people have self-efficacy, they believe in their own capabilities to achieve a positive outcome. It is a healthy belief and a source of energy, that fuels constructive and effective action.
We need more self-efficacy in the work-place, because it is a key resource for successful action. But unfortunately, many leaders are more worried about avoiding “Over-confidence” and “Arrogance”, than enabling their people to build a healthy level of self-efficacy. This leads to leadership behaviours that limit employees, and as a result we see employees “playing it safe”, avoiding risks and not committing.
Even senior leaders find it challenging to identify and name their strengths and the resources they have. The level of self-awareness can be surprisingly low, which feeds the earlier mentioned Doubt in own capabilities.
That’s why we utilize Strengths Profile® as a quick and impactful method to increase self-awareness around strengths and potential talents. Through coaching, clients can increase their available repertoire, and it effectively expands the number of resources that are utilized. When people also dig into what other resources they can find in their network or past successes, they end up being much more confident in their own abilities and positive about their goals.
That’s the Shift from Doubt towards more Hope, Optimism and Self-efficacy
Shift 2
Move from Driving people towards Enabling people.
Our clients often tell us that they want to be better “delegators”, because they feel that they have to do too much themselves. When we listen to this on a deeper level, we frequently hear that the leader is not trusting their staff, they do not really appreciate them, there is only little empathy and they spend too little time on constructive interaction/feedback. They also describe themselves as “driving” their organization using a mechanical terminology for their leadership practise. The reason for this is often that they over-focus on goal-achievement, and they feel pressured on time. There is no time to be “nice”.
It takes a big change in mindset to become an Enabler, instead of a Driver.
The Enabling Leader has a sincere interest in their people, and values the personal connection as a foundation for collaboration. They invest time in explaining and making sense of the goals, and they find ways to create a joint purpose. They do not see their team as a machine, but rather as a living organism. They are more of a Gardner than a Driver.
The biggest “Aha” moment comes, when the leader really starts to embrace the role of being an Enabler of Confidence, Hope and Optimism with their people. Because they have felt themselves how powerful it is to be more hopeful, optimistic and confident, they now start to feel it from their staff’s perspective too. That’s Empathy in action.
This Empathic leader now starts to approach things differently, and they change their communication, focus on opportunities and work with their team in a much more open way. We have seen it having an immediate effect on the Employee Engagement scores, and the performance.
That’s the shift from Driving people towards Enabling people.
The 2020 Challenge
2020 is off to a miserable start! The impact of the Coronavirus dominates, and leads to organizations running behind their numbers throughout the year. Cost cutting will start soon, and everyone will be stressed out.
In this situation, it is easy for leaders to dig into Command & Control behaviours, pushing the organization and squeezing the last bit of performance out of people to find a way to meet their 2020 budgets anyway. It’s all understandable, and crazy at the same time.
But, more than ever, organizations now need leaders who are able to build Hope, Optimism and Self-efficacy with their people. Leaders who know how to enable their people to be their best self, and to enable them to perform the best they can.
In 2020, let’s make Shift happen!