A leadership journey, Believes

Idea in Brief 

“Do. Or do not. There is no try”.Despite the fact that a small, green, fictional character from a galaxy far, far away said this, I have struggled to find a better way to summarize that, unless you change your mindset from a “we will try” attitude to a belief pattern of “everything is possible”, change cannot happen. As a leader, you can drive this mindset shift by:  

• Finding the impossible, 
• Communicating passionately, and
• Asking why.

This is the third part of my six-chapter story where I reflect on my life’s past 14 months and I share key insights and lessons learned.

Prologue

If you’ve been following my journey and applying the learning for yourself, you likely have your team’s respect and your peers’ and superior’s trust. Trust is the foundation of every great team. In the third of my six-part story (read part one - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leadership-journey-enrico-biscaro-mba/and part two - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/leadership-journey-mistrust-enrico-biscaro-mba/), I will review how you can leverage their trust to help change the team’s mindset regardless of the business you are in.

As a reminder, my journey’s six parts are:

1.    Morale, 

2.    Mistrust,

3.     Belief (our focus below),

4.    Change,

5.    Results, and 

6.    Future.

Belief

“This is impossible.”I heard this repeatedly when I arrived in Asia. I later discovered someone even bet against our team. Luckily, we are in an age of continuous transformation. Every time I hear someone stating an absolute truth or whispering the word “impossible”, I smile. I also remind myself of the people smarter than me who publicly declared that consumers would never switch from a physical keyboard to a virtual one or that film would never succumb to digital or that people would forever drive a few miles to rent a movie. 

MBA classes are full of business cases and literature is full of real-world examples. It does not matter how many books your team reads, how many leadership courses they attend or how many TED Talks they listen to, experience trumps data and reason. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two Nobel prize laurates, conducted extensive research to prove this. Learn more here (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/undoing-project-why-you-need-learn-tell-good-story-biscaro-mba/). Because of this, you must choose an impossible task and literally conquer it with and in front of your team. Doing so will convince anyone that impossible does not exist in business. Regardless of how articulate your thought and exquisite your communication is, results are the most important matter to your team and senior leadership. The result demonstrates that impossible is simply a word.

I cannot help with the impossible you are facing. I would advise you to uncover a small challenge to conquer initially. If you are in a turnaround situation, the solution may be buried under the excuses people make for themselves or the team. The solution simply requires a fresh pair of eyes who can review the problem from a new perspective. No matter your business or location, I am confident one of the first things you will hear is “It is impossible.”And this is the exact moment you should smile and be confident the tide will soon change for the better. You have found your small, early win.

In the first part of my story, Morale, I mentioned the importance of communication for a leader using the example of “we” vs “I” to communicate trust. Verbal and written communication are important, but great leaders also communicate effectively with their tone of voice and their body. This style of communication is continually on display. When overcoming the impossible, a leader will want to communicate with passion as it is a signal you do believe things can and will change. Passion will reassure people and spur action. Passion for what you believe in and what you do is what makes you stand up when you fall. Passion, in my opinion, is the difference between conquering the impossible or being conquered by it. Conversely, if you are not passionate, the tone of your voice will quickly betray you. Your body language will inform your team your heart is not committed. The consequence of this is that your team will see more obstacles than opportunities. They’ll deliver more excuses than results. The impossible remains impossible.

While your first impossible might be easy to address, with time, challenges will increase in complexity. Your fresh eyes may not be as fresh. As a leader, you may want to have the same curiosity and determination of any child who is great at asking questions. Purposefully asking “Why?” to your organization, subject matter experts, innovative colleagues, early adopters, and more, you slowly bring to the surface solutions not considered before. 

Asking open-ended questions is usually best because they leave room for your team to expand their unique thoughts. Open-ended questions also signal that you, as leader, do not pretend or assume to have the answer. I find open-ended questions create and reinforce trust as they show you truly value your team’s contributions.    

Even when things are progressing smoothly, do not stop asking questions. When you do, your team may think there are no new answers and change is not intended to happen. Moreover, if you stop asking questions, the underlying message sent is that you are satisfied and that there are no more improvements to be made. This may lead to complacency - change and continuous improvement’s worst enemy.     

Now that your team has defied the impossible, it will likely start believing all things are within their control. The switch from “we will try” to “we will do”, coupled with morale and trust, will produce a positive continuous feedback loop enabling your organization to achieve results previously considered out of reach. After the first impossible is conquered, minds will immediately shift to the next challenge. Once that challenge is met, the third one will be called an opportunity. That is where you, as a leader,  can let go of the daily struggles and focus your energy on Change, Results and the Future, the next three chapters of my story.

Before I go into the next three chapter I would like to thank you to Michael S. Seaver (learn more about him at https://michaelsseaver.com) for brainstorming this 6-part series with me, offering ideas to enhance my story, and ensuring we share the leadership traits most beneficial to my journey.