“Expand your employees’ mindsets,
Double your organisational returns”
How effective are your employees
How effective are your teams?
Do they continually surpass their targets, or are they just trying to keep up?
Whether they are effective or not depends largely on their mindsets. A mindset is but a fixed mental attitude that predetermines a person's responses to, and interpretations of situations. It is an inclination, a habit. Mindsets are difficult to change because you cannot see them. They are often entrenched and reinforced by many years of often negative personal experiences. Until employees are made aware about their mindsets, they cannot change.
For instance, a junior employee is reluctant to go for training after work, not because he doesn’t want to learn, but the perceived opportunity cost to him is too high. To go for training after work means he has to forgo his overtime work and compensation. For some one trying to make ends meet, that’s too costly a price, unless he can see the bigger picture of better prospects. In the same token, employees are often reluctant to change because of perceived disadvantage to them. Why do they feel this way? Simply because they do not have complete information. After all, old habits die hard!
Using Ned Herrmann’s whole brain model, right brain dominant employees are different from left brain dominant employees. Cerebral (thinking) dominant employees are different from limbic (feeling) dominant employees. This small difference can make all the difference as to whether an employee or a team can be effective, because different folks need different strokes to connect with them.
When it comes to business, a blue quadrant employee thinks about efficiency and financials, a green quadrant employee worries about resources and control, a red quadrant employee focuses on recognition and communications and a yellow quadrant employee talks about future trends and competition. It is all business, but from different perspectives of the whole brain.
Once you know how your employees think, you could design interventions in their preferred mode and help them expand their mindsets. Their thinking will affect everything that they do, from making decisions to communicating to being motivated at work. Why not take an “X-Ray” of how they think and find out how they are effective? After that, you can duplicate success throughout the organisation.