Post by amy on Sept 26, 2016 20:28:16 GMT
The leadership resource that I have found invaluable the past couple months is a book called "The Outward Mindset" by The Arbinger Institute. Many of us have heard about the Golden Rule, to due onto others as you would yourself. Those of us in FHWA who have gone through the Leadership Development Academy have learned about the Platinum Rule, to due onto others as they would have you do unto them. In my opinion, "The Outward Mindset" is a combination of the Platinum Rule and seeing the big picture. Taking the time to see beyond one's self and focusing your energy and decisions on the greater good can make for a better team and work environment. I love how this book is broken down into real life examples so that you can visualize how this theory is put into practice and difference it can make.
To get a little personal here, I've read this book three times this summer. We have a new employee who is not performing at the level as the rest of the team and does not seem to be engaged or have any independent initiative. Initially, when this individual joined the team, the team started to lose it's momentum. To be fair, all of the individuals on the team were worried about how the new member's under performance was affecting them. This caused some dissention and gradually the productivity of the entire team was going down. We all knew there was a problem, but we were only focusing on the new person negatively. We had all tried to help, but instead of making him better, we were getting resentful of carrying his load. My team leader came to me and asked me what did I think that I could do to help him improve? This one question and subsequent discussion, pulled me from being focused on how our new employee was affecting my work and had me focusing on how I could help him without doing the job for him. It changed my mindset from being inwardly focused to outwardly focused.
My team leader and I came up with a strategy and started implementing it with the team. Overall, we have seen progress. I have used many strategies from this book and the team that was falling apart is still working together to accomplish the team's goals. Our struggling teammate is still struggling, but there is improvement. We have high hopes that he will soon be working at the same level as the rest of the team.
Back to the book, another take away I have is on managing expectations. By keeping an outward mindset, you will be more conscience of what the needs of your organization, boss, teammates and customers need. By knowing what they need, why and when they need it, you are better able to set and deliver expectations that will amaze.
