The right mindset
A recurring theme in many of the business articles and presentations that I do is the importance of adopting the right mindset in order to achieve. When considering ‘Growth Mindset’ Professor Carol Dweck’s studies of high performing children showed that their enhanced abilities derived primarily from their propensity to learn from their mistakes rather than any inherent talent or skills. This carries on into our professional lives as well where you will find that the best performing staff are not necessarily those with the highest IQ, but rather those that exercise higher levels of emotional intelligence (the ability to understand how others are feeling as well as the impact of their own actions on others) and focus on the personal growth and development of themselves as well as others. This approach is very neatly summed up through Theodore Roosevelt’s quote:
“Nobody cares how much you know, until they how much you care”.
When I established OrgMent Talent Solutions we had the intention of using this as a key differentiator in the search for new staff. Whilst technical competence is of course a natural precursor to finding new employees, I believe that the technical characteristics tend to dominate the thinking of many business leaders hiring as well as that of the recruitment companies that support them in their search. For me, this is the wrong way round since if you get a highly technically competent person into the business who does not share the company’s declared values, it is extremely difficult to shift the individual’s behaviours to align. However, if you hire someone who has exactly the right attitude, it is much easier for them to learn and/or be trained in any technical skills required and hence stay with the business for longer.
This is especially true for highly specialised or key roles where psychometric or personality profiling tools are highly likely to be used to assess a person’s character and suitability for the position. Consider the role of a commercial pilot or astronaut. I do not know for sure, but I strongly suspect that a person’s ability to stay calm and focused during a pressure situation would be tested and an absolute requirement for any such role. Can you imagine Neil Armstrong yelling out “Oh my God, there is only 7 seconds of fuel left for us to land on the moon! We’re all going to die!” as he navigated his final descent onto earth’s closest neighbour? He certainly did no such thing, and most people don’t realise just how precarious the Apollo Lunar Module Eagle’s position was before it touched down in July 1969.
The good news is that as per Carol Dweck’s findings, the ‘right attitude’ can be learnt. Irrespective of what we were each born with, it is possible to change our actions and behaviours to accomplish whatever we want. To highlight this point, I would like to share a personal example. The secondary school that I attended in the UK (Dartford Grammar School – incidentally the same one that Mick Jagger attended, although he was years before me!), was in the habit of testing all students at the end of the term through exams. In the first maths test I undertook, yours truly came twenty-third out of a class of twenty-four thereby showing my ‘natural’ ability in maths. Fortunately for me, I ended up becoming friends with someone far more academically accomplished than me and partly because of some healthy rivalry and partly due to a shift in my own mindset, my academic scores improved and I ended up gaining an honours degree in Applied Mathematics. Clearly not due to any innate skill, but much more a function of developing the ‘right attitude’.
I hope this gives some hope to all of you that are striving to do better (or struggling with maths!).
Ian Ash ACC, AInstIB
MD OrgMent Talent & OrgMent Business Solutions
www.omtalent.com.au