What’s wrong with focusing on goals? Are you comfortable with established ways of doing things?
John C. Maxwell argues that leaders must make an active effort to grow and improve instead of just treating growth as a natural result of their experiences. You can do this by pursuing growth instead of achievement and by innovating instead of sticking to tradition.
Keep reading for Maxwell’s advice on leading with a growth mindset.
Pursue Growth Instead of Achievement
Maxwell says leaders must stop focusing on achieving goals and instead prioritize continuous, long-term growth. He argues that, when you pursue goals, you focus on external achievements and recognition. While goals may help you accomplish tasks, they don’t necessarily lead to significant personal development or lasting fulfillment. Conversely, when you focus on growth, you develop and challenge yourself. Leading with a growth mindset unleashes you to become a more capable person and leader.
(Shortform note: While Maxwell suggests you pursue growth instead of goals, other experts argue that setting goals is invaluable for achieving great success. In The 10X Rule, Grant Cardone argues that highly ambitious goals motivate you to stretch your abilities and work harder, expanding your personal capabilities and boosting your self-confidence in the process. Without this motivation, you’ll put in average effort toward your pursuits and give up when you encounter setbacks because you don’t feel like it’s worth the effort.)
To prioritize growth over goals, Maxwell suggests you do two things:
1. Believe in your ability to grow. Your mindset affects the amount of commitment you put into bettering yourself. If you believe you can improve your skills and abilities, you’ll put more effort into doing so. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in yourself, you won’t pursue learning opportunities or try to improve yourself.
2. Live each day with the intention to learn. Be curious and intentional about growth: Look for opportunities to grow, take time to reflect on what you’ve learned, and share the lessons you’ve learned with others every day.
| Maximize Your Growth With a Limitless Mindset In Limitless, Jim Kwik also argues that people need the proper mindset and motivation to learn effectively and grow. He provides some strategies that may help you apply Maxwell’s suggestions: Mindset: According to Kwik, we sometimes struggle to believe we can grow and learn because of the limiting beliefs we learned when we were young—for instance, believing we’re not a genius. Kwik argues that most of the time, your limiting beliefs are based on your opinion of yourself, not fact. To stop limiting your potential, identify your limiting belief, look for facts supporting or contradicting that belief, and then form a new, more productive belief. Drive: You can more easily live each day with the intention to learn if you’re motivated to do so. Kwik suggests you identify four things to spark your motivation: 1) what you’re passionate about, 2) your goals, 3) your reasons for doing things, and 4) your values. |
Keep Your Mind Open
Maxwell writes that, to make growth a priority in your daily life, you must keep your mind open to new and inventive ways of doing things. This means nurturing your creativity and constantly looking for better, more efficient ways to do things instead of sticking to established practices. If you can be more open-minded, you can function at your highest potential, spot unseen possibilities, and more easily make changes to your life and organization.
Maxwell recommends several ways you can be more creative and open-minded:
1. Be curious. Instead of dismissing ideas that seem initially unfeasible, intentionally explore them a little deeper. Don’t let a fear of failure hold you back from considering new ideas—remind yourself that there is more than one solution to a problem. When you’re more open to ideas, you’ll be able to see more possibilities and help your organization achieve better results than other leaders who remain bound to tradition.
(Shortform note: There are two common reasons we lose our curiosity and open-mindedness: We either believe we know everything, or we let our ego get in the way—we’d rather feel secure about ourselves and our perspective of the world than face the uncertainty that comes with asking questions and reconsidering things. To rekindle your curiosity, practice observing with your five senses, asking more questions before expressing your thoughts, listening to more diverse perspectives, and intentionally trying new things—for instance, ordering a new dish instead of your usual.)
2. Elevate your results with the 10-80-10 strategy. When performing a new task, spend the first 10% of the time identifying your objective and then 80% of the time accomplishing your task. Then, once you’ve completed your task, spend the last 10% trying to improve your work. By devoting time to rethinking your work, you give your team the opportunity to think outside the box one last time and inject creativity and innovation into every project to achieve better results.
3. Add flexibility to your plans. Plans are necessary for getting tasks done, but if they’re too rigid, you’ll fail to adapt to inevitable curveballs along the way, and you’ll miss out on opportunities. Because of this, Maxwell recommends you leave room to change your plans. Once you’ve determined your overall goals and course of action, continue to look for options: Anticipate potential problems, adjust your plan, and review it daily.
| Escape the Trap of Execution Mode Maxwell’s 10-80-10 strategy and his suggestion to add flexibility to your plans can help you avoid a problem teams commonly face: getting stuck in “execution mode.” In Leadership Is Language, L. David Marquet says we operate in two work modes: thinking and execution. We plan, analyze, and make decisions in thinking mode and carry out plans in execution mode. The problem is that once we commit to a course of action and start working on a task, we rarely pause to reflect on our work or reassess whether plans need to change. As a result, we may fail to see risks, or we may overlook opportunities. Maxwell’s suggestions not only keep your team creative and open-minded, but they allow it to cycle effectively between thinking and executing their work: By leaving the last 10% of the task time for brainstorming improvements, you help your team return to thinking mode, providing opportunities not only for innovation but also reflection and learning. By injecting flexibility into your plans, you also encourage people to exit execution mode and reflect on their course of action. Marquet suggests you also give your team members the power to call for a pause for reflection by giving these pauses a predetermined name (such as a “time-out” or a “mindful moment”) that team members can call out. |
