As the world we work in gets ever more chaotic and uncertain, being able to flex and respond effectively to new challenges has become an invaluable leadership trait.
Our mindsets shape how we work, lead, live, and adapt. The exciting thing is, we now have the technology and data to connect mindset development with leadership 36O-scores and an increased ability to solve the adaptive challenges that define modern life. For leadership development teams, it’s tangible ROI.
How mindset growth boosts leadership effectiveness
To understand how mindset growth enables leadership effectiveness, it helps to picture the apps on your phone. Each app is there to help you do something useful or create value for you.
Apps are like skills and capabilities. Having a wide range of them is very helpful – but once in a while you need to download a whole new operating system.
A new OS not only allows you to get more out of your existing apps, but to access new apps your old OS didn’t support. This is comparable to leadership mindset development. The range of mindsets you ‘see’ through as a leader are your internal operating system; they determine how effectively you use your skills and capabilities as a leader.
Mindset growth isn’t just theory, it’s measurable
I vividly recall the first time I experienced the Leadership Mindset Indicator (LMI) with Adeption (previously called the Vertical Mindset Indicator). It was unlike any other leadership assessment I had tried, with just a handful of sentence stems to answer such as “A good boss is…”. It took maybe 15 minutes. I was curious: could such a simple process result in any real insight?
I was amazed when I received my report: it was exactly me and gave me language to describe how I see my world. I hear so many leaders we work with say the same, with comments like “How did you reach into me and understand how I make sense of the world?”.
The LMI provides a powerful read on the mindsets you operate from as a leader. However, the real growth happens when you apply insights from your report and debrief, taking action to try new approaches and develop.
A recent Adeption report shows many leaders are experiencing significant mindset growth within the duration of a single Adeption leadership development program, versus the years this can take without intervention.
51.4% of participants who initially scored at an earlier mindset ‘center of gravity’ added a new mindset to their range over the duration of the program. – Adeption Insights Series report: Mindset growth through leadership development
Adaptive leaders ‘see’ through a range of mindsets
Leaders who can flex to operate from ‘later’ mindsets tend to have greater capacity to solve complex challenges at work. Research on vertical development connects later mindsets with the ability to deal with more ambiguity, see the wider system at play, and notice key patterns and connections.
Initial research by Adeption also indicates leaders with later mindsets in their range tend to outperform others in how they’re rated in leadership 36O assessments (across five key leadership competencies).
However an important distinction to make is that the focus of mindset development isn’t simply aiming for later mindsets. Instead, it’s about developing your mindset range so you can flex depending on the situation. When you can ‘see’ situations and challenges through multiple lenses (mindsets) this gives you more options for how to respond.
One leader at a global SaaS company we work with gave a great example of using mindset range:
“I was due to have a conversation with my boss that I didn’t have time to prepare for. I was coming in hot from other meetings… then I remembered to pause and think about the mindset that would be most effective in the meeting. And I brought my Redefining mindset. I was able to say, ‘Here’s my understanding of the challenge, here’s who else I need to reach out to, here are the options I’m considering’. I went straight from that meeting to one with my direct reports, where I switched to an Achiever mindset. I approached it as ‘Here’s how we’re measuring against our goals’ and led a discussion on the progress we needed to make. Flexing my mindset enabled me to have the productive conversations I needed to have”.
When it comes to knowing when to flex between different mindsets, I find the 3S framework by leadership expert Nick Petrie particularly helpful:
- Simple: Your read on the complexity of the Situation (the ‘what’)
- Solution: Whether you already have a proven Solution (the ‘how’)
- Stakeholders: How much Stakeholder buy-in is required and their mindset (the ‘who’)
When the situation is more complex, more stakeholders are involved, and you don’t yet have a proven solution, operating from later mindsets will likely be more effective. When the situation is simple and straightforward, an earlier mindset will help you quickly make progress.
By quickly assessing the situation this way, you can adjust your mindset to bring the perspective that will be most productive in moving things forward.
We’re at the start of an exciting new age in leadership development where the power of AI and digital technology is building on decades of research and practice. At Adeption, our unique database of over 1 million coaching questions, answered by 85,OOO+ leaders, is having an immense impact for the clients and leaders we support.
Curious to learn more? Let’s connect. Reach out to me directly at coreyc@adeption.io
Corey is Adeption’s Chief Leadership Officer, Americas