As the calendar flips another year, there’s no better time to actively focus on developing your leaders with the skills they need to tackle 2024 with fire in their bellies so they’re raring to go!

We’ve all experienced the kind of managers who believe that “you either sink or swim” and some of us have been fortunate enough to work with those who “appreciate feedback and can learn and grow from it.”

The latter of the two types of managers potentially has a “growth mindset” as Carol Dweck neatly explains rather than a “fixed mindset” – this can-do attitude ignites the fuel of teams and permeates through the rest of the organisation.

This proactive approach creates resilience and strength to firefight any hurdles along the way and not only motivates and engages employees but can also have a direct impact on delivering bottom-line results.

So how can you as a HR leader galvanise a dedicated focus to encourage your employees to foster this essential skill? Check out these five tips on how you can ignite your leaders today with a growth mindset…

Step 1
Champion learning and development
The foundation of a growth mindset is really that anything can be learned… as long as your leaders are prepared to put in the time and the work. Upskilling, reskilling, mentoring, coaching and other forms of staff development play a huge part in establishing a beneficial growth mindset.

Offer an annual professional development allowance and enable access to internal and external learning opportunities such as:

– Encourage cross-collaboration by using in-house experts to work on projects between departments.

– Invest in self-awareness and the awareness of others; understanding other people’s strengths, weaknesses and values is core to developing a growth mindset.

Step 2
Create a culture of feedback
Leaders probably think feedback culture is great… but possibly only when they’re the ones dishing out the feedback, right? However, it’s only when we create a real culture of dialogue – top-down, down-up, peer-to-peer, that you can really unlock a growth mindset in teams.

Follow these tips to develop a culture of feedback:

–      Coach managers: They should provide individual clear, and meaningful feedback about performance and use examples.

–      Empower employees: Offer employees different channels to feedback digitally and anonymously.

–      Create dedicated time: It’s not natural for some leaders to give feedback, so ensure they build in time with their team to both connect, give and ask for feedback. In the Managing Hybrid Teams Report, 39% of managers confirmed that they want more support with more opportunities to connect with their team.

Step 3
Reposition how your leaders think about failure
Coach your managers with a new approach, and a new mindset. If someone fails at something in their team, they may think the easiest thing is to get someone else to do that particular task in future. However, that’s showing all the hallmarks of a fixed mindset, right? They’re effectively saying ‘they’re not good at that’ rather than ‘they’re not good at that… yet.’

A better way for managers to approach it would be to ask that colleague how they could support them in that task next time. What do they need? Additional training, support from the team, or something else? It’s only when employees are able to push through failures that overall teams become stronger and more resilient, but for that to happen you as a HR leader need to help create those development opportunities.

Step 4
Prompt managers to show they genuinely care
As a HR leader, you need to provide them with the support they need to minimise stress and develop a mindset of growth. In fact, a Global Hybrid Working Report, 74% of managers believe that empathy is an important skill to adopt and 40% believe emotional intelligence is also an important factor.

There are numerous things you can do to coach your managers to support their team. Keeping checking in. At the start of every meeting, we make it the norm to do a “check-in” grounding exercise – before we talk about work, we mentally check-in by engaging teams with a quirky question to give them the headspace they deserve before focussing on work.

Also, encourage managers to create dedicated time in diaries to purely have a catch-up with their team, and to discuss everything else BUT work to understand each other on a deeper, personal level. In each meeting, ask different team members to lead them, not just the managers.

Step 5
Empower teams to ask ‘stupid’ questions
A team with a fixed mindset may not want to ask a ‘stupid’ question in front of their peers or manager in case they’re judged negatively. They have to feel comfortable to be able to do so.

With a fixed mindset, people have a fixed amount of intelligence or expertise, and they continually want to prove it. When you as a HR leader instil a growth mindset in your leaders, you create that questioning culture where everyone feels like they’re able to challenge or question certain things. What that does is empower teams to work smarter.

It may be calling out clunky processes that take too much time or asking why we always do something that way – rather than trying this way. The great news is when you encourage your leaders to create that open dialogue, you’re able to really mine the talents of your team – a win-win, right?

Has your organisation’s mindset changed?
It won’t happen overnight but consider this mindset shift as evolving all the time. We can also connect that conversation to a colour model and the language of colour. Due to the power of adaptability, we are constantly changing; dialling up different colour energies to power through challenging times.

This ability to adapt and step up is what makes your leaders resilient, showing that we as individuals, like the world, are not fixed – and need to tap into a growth mindset now more than ever.