Case Study #11: Leadership Mindset
Everyday challenges shows what mindset you have.
Do you have a leadership mindset?
They say leaders need to have the ‘right’ mindset. Mindsets drive what leaders do and why. In other words, mindsets also hinder leaders and their teams back.
How you cope with everyday challenges shows your mindset. Gabriele knew that and had to think about what was the right thing to do.
Gabriele was a manager of 15 highly skilled professionals in a mid-sized synthetic materials company.
In the past half a year, the business was booming, and the team got a lot of special projects. Everyone was tired and demotivated. The HR department was aware of this, but there was a shortage of specialists in this field.
Her only option was to hire less experienced professionals and invest in their training. On the one hand, everyone was busy, and they were not keen on babysitting new colleagues who were useless.
On the other hand, investing in training could alleviate the capacity crunch in the long term. They could develop a training program and build a solid knowledge bank. Yet, hiring inexperienced coworkers could prove expensive and risky.
What would you do?
Face challenges with an openness
You have so many decisions to make every day. Some are more difficult than others. You are at crossroads and have to decide what is best for your team, company, productivity, and of course, what is the right thing to do.
Every challenge comes with a baggage of consequences you cannot turn your head away from.
Choose to look at every challenge through multiple lenses. Gabriele could continue hiring experienced people, but it can take long. Alternatively, she could hire inexperienced professionals with potential. But would it solve a capacity problem faster? Maybe or not.
What is the most effective solution? When you don’t know. Why not make a decision tree?
When you lay down the possibilities, it might be easier to decide. The power of being open about challenges and using decision trees is that they help teams avoid decision-making gridlock and stay on track to achieve goals.
When options are laid out, there is an opportunity to consider what might happen. Rather than looking for an easy, winning solution, you need an option that works now and in the future.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to leadink to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.