Smartest Person in the Room: Carol Dweck discusses “Fixed Mindset” versus “Growth Mindset” in her book Mindset: the new psychology of success. I find her definitions and description of the people who have one or the other mindset to be very useful in my professional and personal life. As usual, things with human beings are complicated. Most of us have …
What Do Managers Really Do?
Managers: The saying I grew up with was, “Leaders make sure we are doing the right thing. Managers make sure we do it right.” In a modern corporation, the desire is to move leadership to every level of the organization (Intent Based Leadership—IBL). Therefore, managers are being asked to broaden their view to include managing unrelenting change in our internal …
Comfortable being uncomfortable
I’ve heard or read the phrase “Leaders are comfortable being uncomfortable” several times now in various different places. The general meaning I get from that phrase is that in order to grow, in order to lead, a person has to be willing to push themselves outside of their so-called “comfort zone.” I think it also has a deeper meaning. To …
Danger! Leader On Pedestal
Many times, when facilitating discussions around leadership, I will ask participants to “brainstorm” a list of attributes for leaders. The list is always long with great characteristics for all manner of leaders. The chances of finding a person with all or even a significant number of the attributes is nil. Yet, it seems as though we expect our leaders to be …