Every employee once in his career imagines of a dream job. A dream workplace where there is happiness and comfort. A fantastic environment where you can work and have fun at the same time. Supportive colleagues who are always ready to collaborate and learn. Employees are comfortable speaking about challenges, setbacks and how they are dealing with them.
There are no office politics, ego clashes and no failures. Everyone is working together to improve the business. A great culture that promotes openness, transparency and risk-taking.
If you work in this ideal environment then you look forward to Monday mornings and your entire workweek is blissful. If you aspire to create this magic then all you need is one simple strategy – “Inculcating a Growth Mindset”.
What is Growth Mindset all about?
Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies and input from others) have a growth mindset. This is a major shift in thinking pattern. HR & Business Leaders must establish the right priorities and build the right habits to get their teams on board. By eliminating the fear of failure and nurturing learning, a Growth mindset can be enhanced. Talent Management is a crucial aspect here.
Is Talent Management helping or hurting your organization?
Despite the good intention, an ineffective training program can hurt the Company and its employees in several tangible and far-reaching ways. Just observe how Managers share their feedback? Is the feedback on employee’s effort as perceived by the manager or judging the natural ability? A growth mindset is one which sees people enjoy learning, seek out situations to experiment, and view failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. Growth Mindset and genuine care boosts employee’s self-esteem and encourages people to take charge of their careers.
Review the Performance Review System?
For a long time, HR professionals have evangelized the benefits of a good appraisal system. Bell curves or 9 box matrixes, typically call for ranking employees. Managers are forced to rank and rate their teams from top to the lowest performers. During performance discussions, managers try to defend and justify their ratings rather than focusing on improving performance. This exercise is often complemented by a carrot and stick approach. Increments and bonus are tied with the rating scale. Interestingly many senior leaders believe that the appraisal system is an easy way to distribute the bonus and annual increments. Very few are able to link it with the growth of the Company. Challenging the status quo and applying a Growth Mindset can unleash the hidden potential of the organization which can strongly influence the Organization’s Growth.
Generate the Constant flow of inspiration
The concept of the growth mindset is a continues process. Once established the momentum must continue. This can be done by rewarding innovative and creative thinking. Recognizing the efforts and accomplishments of both the team and individual within a team. Encouraging and appreciating everyone equally is the key.
Growth Mindset is an overriding belief that every individual can develop and grow, not based upon innate intelligence or talent, but based upon their motivation and their willingness to work hard.
This is a major shift and a much-needed one in Human Resources. A growth mindset can change our culture and help us to unlock hidden potential by identifying real and unconscious barriers to growth and energizing people to overcome them. This can also usher a systematic change that will help to increase agility and further improve business performance.
A people’s person, Sangeetha Ramesh is a Senior HR Leader, thoroughly results-driven with international experience in Global and Strategic HR roles. Sangeetha holds Masters in both Psychology & Human Resources and has acquired extensive HR expertise in different business sectors focusing on people transformation, innovation and organizational development areas.