Leaders are made, not born

“Mindset” by Carol Dweck has been on my reading list for the longest time. This month, I finally got down to reading it. You know what? I’m sure that almost everybody has come across most of the stuff in this book.

“No question is a stupid question”.

“This isn’t failure, it’s just a learning opportunity”.

But when it comes down to it, how many of us actually put these quotes of wisdom into practice?

When I was a kid and a teenager, I was mortified of asking questions in class. Even worse, I was terrified when the teacher asked a question. Even if I was pretty sure I had the answer, I would never open my damn mouth to say it. It was only in university, studying in a different country where I observed other people actively engaging in lessons – and coming out of discussions better off. Why was I so scared of speaking up?

Carol Dweck’s answer lies in the type of mindset we have towards skills – in the instance of school, she refers to our mindset towards our intelligence. Do you believe that your IQ is a constant; that you inherit your intelligence and that you can’t change it? Or do you believe that intelligence is malleable – that education and the environment can change your IQ for the better?

People with the fixed mindset (the first one) tend to believe that traits like intelligence are fixed – and therefore are fixated on proving that they are decently smart. This is in part driven by fear. If intelligence is a trait that cannot be changed, well, you’d better be smart, because there’s nothing you can do to help yourself if you’re dumb. That’s why I was so scared of seeming dumb in school. I was afraid that I would be labelled as stupid, and that the label would mark me for life. In short, having a fixed mindset meant that you’d spend the rest of your life having something to prove – that your innate talent doesn’t fall short of average. On the other hand, having a growth mindset means that you’re open to correction and admitting your faults – always the first step of improvement.

This article isn’t about intelligence and IQ though. This article is about how organizational mindsets can influence their effectiveness. And who sets the tone for the organization, if not the leaders? Leaders set the tone for organization culture. Carol Dweck believes that leadership skills, just like athletic performance and intelligence, are skills that can be learnt. In other words, leaders are made, not born.

Companies like IBM and Xerox made comebacks because their leaders were practitioners of the growth mindset. They had leaders that believed in developing, mentoring, and empowering their workers – because they believed that the company and its workers could be nurtured to greatness. This is in contrast to leaders with the fixed mindset towards managerial skills and intelligence – their tenure as CEO or manager was directed to the central goal of proving their intelligence and leadership skills, but not in actually doing things that would improve the organization.

How does having a growth mindset (in terms of both organizational culture and the mindset of their leaders) sieve out good companies from the great?

1. Encouraging discussion and innovation

When top leadership has a growth-oriented mindset, ideas and innovation from the bottom follow naturally. People are less afraid to share their ideas, especially those that might threaten the status quo or oppose organizational norms. This is because success refers to a process, rather than a state, in the growth mindset. Corrections and improvements can always be made. On the other hand, fixed mindset organizations may find it hard to keep up with innovations due to a fear of seeming incorrect. Just like how I was as a young student, employees caught in fixed mindset organizations might find it easier to tend towards groupthink and agreeing with the boss.

2. Nurturing future leaders and making the most of human resources

Having a growth mindset means having a belief that anyone can get better in whatever skills their job requires – whether it be in accounting, or artistry, or in managing. Simply put, it doesn’t really matter at what level of competency someone starts at – as long as that person is willing to put in effort to learn and continuously improve, you can be sure that that someone is going to grow into a somebody.

This applies to leadership qualities too. There are not many organizations where leadership is as crucial as it is in the military. In some militaries, future officers are selected for during basic training. This means that recruits are assessed for their leadership skills only a few months into their careers as soldiers. However, if leaders are made, and not born, is this a legitimate method of selecting future leaders of the military? Would assessing for whether candidates have a growth or fixed mindset be a better assessment criterion than assessing their current skill and ability levels?

In my workplace, I do think that I was stuck in the fixed mindset regarding my leadership skills for a long time. However, when I think about it, I do realise that I’m not the same leader that I was a few years ago. I realise that I have learnt from leaders that have inspired me, and perhaps passively started practicing some of their habits. For one, I used to tend towards micromanaging which would disempower the middle-level managers. Skipping the chain of command downwards made the managers in the middle redundant. Unfortunately, I think that my habits permitted the middle managers to stop taking ownership of their roles, which increased my workload because delegating became less effective. Only after experiencing being under the leadership of someone who consciously empowered managers to lead, I began to realise the importance of nurturing others and empowering leaders. Why would you want to have just one leader (yourself), when you could have a workplace full of them?

But just how much more powerful can the learning be, just how much steeper can the learning curve go if I did it consciously, rather than absorb their teachings passively?

I’ve met people who were entrenched in the fixed mindset towards leadership skills as well. Have you ever met a boss who found a subordinate untalented, and decided to neglect the said subordinate? What do you think would have happened if someone just guided that subordinate a little more? I believe that as long as that person is willing to change and improve, then that person is capable of doing so.

I realize that this article is less of an article and more of a disorganized rant, but I just had to pen down my thoughts from this book. I just want to say that I have learnt about the power of nurturing others and being open to correction yourself.