THE GROWTH LEADERSHIP ASSESSMENT
The Process for Developing Agile Growth Leaders
How can you assure that your leaders possess both the fundamentals and the new capabilities for dealing with change and uncertainty?
The program for ensuring your managers possess the leadership mindsets, habits and behaviors to optimally deal with change, unpredictability and complexity.
“The GLA360 helped me understand my hidden strengths and uncovered blind spots in how I lead my team and I interact with others. The tools available to create a development plan make it easy to follow through on action items. Feedback from senior leaders in a development program that I facilitate indicate this is one of the best parts of their cohort experience in that it improves self-awareness, accountability, and ultimately, their leadership skills.”
— Executive, USA Fortune 200 Insurance Corporation
What are the components of the Growth Leadership Framework?
Thinking Agility
Looks Like
Continuing to sharpen and develop thinking ability is an exercise for the mind. Develop habits that role model investment in learning. Research shows that breadth creates more analogies and mental models, making for more creative, effective problem-solving.
Frames problems as opportunities
Seeks different perspectives when solving problems
Habits
Spend time every week engaging in self-directed learning:
Set one hour of reflection time in your calendar on a weekly basis. Write a “what if “question in the notes section to spend time pondering.
Read (or listen) to a variety of books, taking 15 minutes each morning to read.
Practice
Take a customer challenge and develop 3 possible solutions. Work with scenarios rather than accepting the first answer. Develop competing ideas or hypotheses in order to understand the assumptions and implications of the project more deeply. Superficial thinking can turn into deep thinking when implications are rooted out.
Mindset
There are many sources of truth worth exploring. Balancing our own intuition or sense of what is right with data and facts allows for new insights. Opportunities can be looked at from a variety of perspectives or disciplines such as economics, psychology, engineering and process. Understanding our own biases by experiencing other views takes curiosity and courage.
Leading Learning
Looks Like
Leaders who want to multiply talent must guard against being the hero and the source of all creative ideas. They create space where others feel safe learning and contributing.
Requires focusing on meeting others where they are.
Listening and coaching them to be active learners who balance not being afraid to make a mistake with taking responsibility for their outcomes.
Habits
Have a monthly agenda item for each direct report to talk about their learning within their current work projects.
Praise effort and improvement, particularly highlighting lessons learned.
Ask one “what if” question to stretch the person’s thinking.
Practice
Let someone struggle while being secure in the belief that they are fully capable of success. Pick a staff member or peer that you typically rescue. Instead of providing direct assistance, be a cheerleader and resource provider. People cannot learn to ride a bike if you hold onto the back of it.
Mindset
Delegation is a tool to allow others to reach their potential. Don’t take on work yourself that is not your responsibility with a misguided thought that it makes you a serving leader. Reflect on the criteria that must be met for you to feel confident in a solution and then share those clear expectations with your team. Delegating authority means that you will accept a solution that meets all the criteria even if it is different than the approach you would have taken. When all parties are clear about what success looks like, it is easier to delegate.
Results Agility
Looks Like
Take a continuous improvement mindset. Acceptance of the current state creates literal blinders to improvement opportunities. Creative destruction occurs when people challenge the default. Innovation occurs when someone asks, “Wouldn’t it be better if we could…?”
Articulates a compelling vision of the future
Challenges the status quo
Habits
Don’t let the status quo make you complacent. Make continuous improvement part of your routine.
Keep a notebook of improvement ideas based on the best/worst parts of your customers’ experience with your team.
Schedule time once a quarter to review a process and either map it out or ask 5 “whys” about a barrier.
Practice
Apply something you have learned in the last month to make a positive change. Make a small change to how you use technology, a planning system or a talent development process. Enjoy the feeling of accomplishment to energize yourself towards bolder moves. Learning in action disrupts the current state in a satisfying way.
Mindset
What got us here won’t get us there. Because we live in a rapidly evolving world, there are opportunities to reimagine almost every industry. Believing that the talent exists in your organization to thrive in the evolving economy means leading the learning of the organization with an eye towards what will serve members of the organization including customers, partners and employees. Balancing optimism and experimentation with a keen eye for managing risk creates a learning environment.
Learning Attitude
Looks Like
Being in pursuit of mastery requires that leaders are comfortable following a learning path. An intention of improvement, no matter how good one already is, characterizes a growth mindset.
Stays calm and positive
Listens to feedback
Habits
Find a project where you can exhibit the following behaviors on a weekly basis:
Ask how and why questions with a spirit of curiosity.
Seek feedback on an idea and incorporate it into your plan.
Practice
Learn a new skill that is outside of your comfort zone. Patience with yourself and the learning process is a forgotten art for some. Find opportunities to laugh at yourself while learning a new technology, sport, hobby, or work skill.
Mindset
Be kind to yourself; see failure as a steppingstone on the path to success and have faith in your abilities. This allows for the pursuit of improvement knowing that your best will be good enough. Fear can erode the team’s creativity and resourcefulness.
