THE PACIFIC INSTITUTE
ARTICLES
As leaders helping our teams grow, we occasionally are confronted with an individual who is stuck because they cannot see themselves overcoming their latest challenge. In this current time, dealing with the reality of today has the potential to have many members of our team stuck. Using our Mindsetting Strategies model below provides a path for helping a team member not only get unstuck, but accomplish what was once thought to be impossible.
Connect the Dots: As leaders, we connect the dots to create the context. It’s the “Why” necessary to engage the discretionary energy needed for both accountability and resilience. When the team member is stuck, you not only need to create the picture of what final success looks like, you also want to be sure they can see a strategy and steps along the way.
Energize Action: This is not just getting the “What” done, but creating and guiding the individual to be an independent, engaged team member. After you have connected the dots for your team member, and provided a few steppingstones, you want to help them see that they already have some experience. They can flick back to past experience and use it to address their current challenge. You need to help them see that they are not starting from zero. They have experience that can be applied in a new way, and it will get them moving. This is where your role is that of coach. Be sure that you are looking for evidence of movement towards success, so that you can recognize the progress. This, in turn, creates more energy for more progress.
Nurture Growth: This is where our values and divergent thinking come in. It’s the “How” we do the What. Something is a challenge because our day-to-day process does not solve the problem at hand. As a leader, you stretch your team members’ comfort zone by actively coaching them to keep the end result in mind, encouraging them to challenge their own assumptions of the current processes to find a new way.
With the Mindsetting Strategies model, you lead your team members from being stuck, to being energized, accountable and taking action. You have stretched their comfort zone and formed a new base of success to build on, the next time.