The Need For a Transformational Mindset
“I never let my schooling get in the way of my education.” by Mark Twain.
A transformational image of the mindset of Joan of Arc. Notice the image of the saints in the background
Weeds in the Garden of the Mind
You might say that weeds in a garden are like false beliefs in the mind. Periodically, one must clear them out if one wants to have a thing of beauty. A transformational mind-set requires one to continually question the assumptions ones makes to determine whether they is true or not.
Not everything you learned in school is correct. When one is young, one focuses on learning. As one gets older, you realize that you have to unlearn what you learned when you were young. Sounds weird, huh. But some of what you know is false, but you don’t know it is false. You need to transform your thinking, but fail to understand the simple truth.
Take a simple example. A true or false statement which goes, “The sun rises in the east.” If you think true, you are only partly correct. Actually the sun doesn’t rise, the earth rotates.
It is the begining of wisdom to understand that not all commonly accepted truths are true. However, when one encounters information that is not consistent with your accepted truth, we do not question the belief, we discount the information. In the case of the article, if you encounter a statement the runs counter to the what’s already installed, you likely will reject the new information out of had and not even consciously think about it.
Every field has their set of false assumptions accepted as true. I once had a friend tell me that he liked business better than politics since, “The business types tend to be more rational and pragmatic.” Pragmatic, yes since you get more negative feedback. Rational, no since business has it share of false beliefs.
Lets take one assumption commonly stated today by many b-school professors. It goes, “You need to manage people.” Many of you have heard it before, and maybe think, “Yes, I am a manger of people.” I accepted this for quite a few years but eventually came to realize it was not that accurate. Actually, a more accurate saying was said many years ago by Grace Hopper. In this case, “You manage things, you lead people.” She should know. She left the U.S. Navy as a rear admiral having started in public service during World War Two.
Unfortunately, if you accept the view that people can be managed, you will not devote the time and effort needed to develop leadership skills. And leadership skills are important in most cultures.
So one aspect of a transformational mindset is having the ability to question assumptions to determine how true or false it might be. Want to examine, “Work hard and you’ll be successful?”
Transformational Leadership and Emotional Intelligence
All individuals who aspire to become great transformational leaders must master their own emotions. After all, would you want to follow someone who has anger management problems?
Effective transformational leaders understand how another will respond to a persuasive or motivational attempt. And when they do not correctly anticpate, they have enough empathy to adjust.
One might say this this theory is a correction for the assumption made in business schools that humans are rationally. If fact, this is a key assumption underlying the dominant theories held by the field of economics.
Transformational leaders cannot assume logic and rationale in responding to change, one will have to deal with illogic and negative emotions. And so, the importance of being high on emotional intelligence.
Five Elements of Emotional Intelligence
Technically, emotional intelligence is not about leadership. The Emotional Intelligence approach stresses five developmental areas:
a. Self-regulation
b. Social Skills
c. Empathy
d. Self-Awareness, and
e. Achievement Motivation
Is Emotional Intelligence Genetic or Learned?
Unlike IQ, it is thought that your EQ can keep growing throughout life—and in some it does. However, since most of us will never be a diplomat, we don’t develop our human relations skills fully. A macho male (or female) will not develop empathy since it’s too “touchy feelly.” And partly lack of growth has to do with inbuilt problems associated with an immature Ego, one symptom of which is low self-awareness and self-discipline. Of course, many of us would like to make self-improvements, but there never seems to have enough energy left over at the end of the day.
Resources
What does a psychologist know about leadership? Quite a lot in this case. Of the many psychologists who wrote in this area is Daniel Goleman. His name is most associated with this concept primarily because of two widely read books he wrote. He has also written a third book on emotional intelligence called, “Primal Leadership.”
How To Give a Lousy Presentation
Image by: VectorOpenStock
You might ask, what does a business professor and a historian have in common? They both can take fascinating people living in interesting times into topics that should be advertised as insomnia cures. When was the last time you pulled out an economics book increase your mental alertness?
This article functions as a checklist-one that you can use as a means of determining if your overheads are worth the paper they are printed on. It also covers a few basic presenter techniques such as (always one of my favorites) failing to have a backup plan.
What One Expects In a Great Boss
One sees it over and over, large corporations are really not the good at choosing the next CEO. And in fact, it seems that some formerly great companies have become very good at putting the wrong person into the big chair. All of us no doubt have our own pet reasons why that is. One of mine is that interviews are an extremely poor method of predicting job performance. This article lists seven must have traits (notice, one is not getting an MBA or a JD.) Many of these are traits of personality.
• Integrity
• Passion
• Courage
• Vision
• Judgement
• Emotional intelligence
• Empathy
Skill Building: You Should Never Stop
One of the strategic blunders made by many is a they stop building skills. It’s like in the game of baseball. They somehow manage to get on first base, but they stop running they never go on.
One famous writer of human history who saw the same tendency was Aesop. And this is one meaning of his parable, “The Tortoise and the Hare.”
The Hare was once boasting of his speed before the other animals. “I have never yet been beaten,” said he, “when I put forth my full speed. I challenge any one here to race with me.”
The Tortoise said quietly, “I accept your challenge.”
“That is a good joke,” said the Hare; “I could dance round you all the way.”
“Keep your boasting till you’ve beaten,” answered the Tortoise. “Shall we race?”
So a course was fixed and a start was made. The Hare darted almost out of sight at once, but soon stopped and, to show his contempt for the Tortoise, lay down to have a nap. The Tortoise plodded on and plodded on, and when the Hare awoke from his nap, he saw the Tortoise just near the winning-post and could not run up in time to save the race. Then said the Tortoise:
“Plodding wins the race.”
You might say, “How does that apply to me? Well, most people act like the Hare, they race to build knowledge and skills up to the point of graduation . . . .and then they stop.
The same rule about always building skills applies to your personal life and your business life. In fact, if you have a business, you have six skill building principles to keep in mind.
The Transformational Mindset: Getting More Exercise
Image by Catherine
Does being a coach potato ruin your health? You wouldn’t think so, but it does. It actually causes a great deal of health problems.
For example, in some countries like America, people sit for over 9 hours a day. And what does it do? It wrecks the body–probably due to the fact the historically our ancestors spend a lot more time an their feet.
If you believe THE FACTS, it’s best to change your routine. Of course, like many things that make sense, getting to it daily is much harder. Changing one’s routine so you decrease that time you sit can be difficult. The question worth mulling over is, “Why don’t we do something that makes sense?”
Does Leadership Run in Families?
Lorenzo De Medici
One thing that does not change is the great families phenomena. Most nations have one or two. I am reminded of the slogan of one of these families; in this case, Italy’s House of Medici. It’s been said that the family slogan was simply, “Money to get power; Power to have money.”
Unlike many of today’s wealthy families, they could have used that great wealth to satisfy hedonistic impulses and materialistic urges. However, most of them were patrons of the arts during the fame years from the 14th to 18th century.
What is interesting about the great family phenomena is that each generation steps up to leadership roles, rather than taking the easy path of luxury.
“Some things change, some things don’t.” Morpheus, The Matrix Reloaded.
The Transformational Mind-set: The True Nature of Change
Image by Felix Burton
I remember on organizational behavior professor taking about change as a rational process—something that you can manage. You have seen it before in PowerPoint slides and white reports. We know it as the Stair-Step Model—something always starting at Step 1 and going to Step . . . . Yes, if you are changing a tire, I can see how this can be a logical, rational process.
However, when it comes to changing anything involving people, the process is not so neat, not so orderly—if you think you will succeed by only managing change, you will likely fail.
Here a psychologist has an advantage over the manager—the psychologist knows that the Stair-Step Model is often illusory, change really functions more like finding a Path to the Mountain Top. You are likely to find dead-ends, will fall down, will at times take two steps back for every step forward.
Despite that weakness, Stair-Step Models are helpful. Here is one of the more useful ones, a summary from John Kotter’s book on “Leading Change.”
Leading To Innovate
Steve Jobs during the introduction of a vary thin notebook, the MacBook Air
Sustaining innovation requires a special type of leadership style—one very transformational in its orientation. An innovative company is less surprised by changes in the marketplace and will likely ambush competitors with product or service launches that put competitors on the defensive.
This was the case with Apple’s Mac, iMac, iPod, iTunes, and iPhone. For example, the iPhone made it difficult for competitors in two ways. The first way was the design and feature set of the phone itself. And the second was the thousand of apps that you could buy on the apps store.
For insight into the thinking of a very innovative CEO (and college dropout), be sure to listen the video of Steve Job’s commencement address delivered at Stanford in 2005. For those who would like to work in innovative companies, here is one list of the top 50 companies worldwide.
Self-Mastery: The Time Paradox
Titian, "Allegorie der Zeit"
If you don’t learn how to use time better, someday day you will realize the truth of Shakespeare’s quote, “I wasted time, and now time doth waste me.” Do you wisely use time or does it slip away from you, like trying to hold water in your hands?
The other day, I spent on hour with a organization president who was leaving the organization to go on to new and better things. What was so sad about the conversation, was that 80% of it was about the past, there was almost nothing about the future. This is the case with many, while living in the present they keep reliving the past; and so, in effect, have no future.
To discover whether you have a present, past or future orientation, take this free assessment at:
Take the survey
Below is a one-hour lecture by Philip Zimbardo, a true giant in the field of psychology. By listening, you will discover the details on seven major time orientations: 2 about the past, 3 from the present, and two about the future.
View the video
