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Hey there, Morinchiana here, founder of the MindSight Academy, neurocoach to executives, leaders, entrepreneurs, and a neuroleadership trainer using insights from neuroscience to help you deliver results by learning to work smarter, be in control of your brain, manage yours and other people's emotions, change behaviors, flourish, and exceed expectations. Welcome back to another episode of Lead to Excel podcast. So today we'll continue with our part two looking at the four mindsets that you need for leadership and personal success. If you haven't listened to the part one, please go back and listen to the part one. This is one extremely important podcast. It's going to be full of practical tips and great information that you can now use to change your mindset so that you can change your behavior and achieve the excellence and great success that you truly desire and deserve. So without wasting any more time, let's get into this podcast. In our last episode, we talked about the four crucial mindsets that you need to achieve great success. And they were the emotional intelligence mindset, the connection mindset, the growth mindset, and the performance mindset. So we're gonna start this episode today looking at the emotional intelligence mindset. The emotional intelligence mindset requires managers and leaders to develop self-awareness, which is the cornerstone of emotional intelligence, so that you can effectively manage yours and other people's emotions. Self-awareness is becoming the number one recognized skill for managers and leaders in business today. To be self-aware is to have a clear perception of your behavior, your motivations, your responses, your emotions, habits, and thoughts. Many times I've heard employees say, they just don't care, or my manager doesn't care. Employees need their leaders to genuinely care and to be demonstrative of this care. Leaders and managers who are perceived not to care about their people will not fully engage their teams, and without this engagement, higher levels of performance will rarely be achieved or sustained over the longer term. Top performing leaders focus more on people-based activities such as empathy, collaboration, and gaining buy-in. An emotionally intelligent manager is constantly looking for the cues that people give through their actions, responses, body language, and tone of voice. Having this information helps a manager or leader to manage their people more effectively, both as a team and as individuals. So, in order to achieve your goals and results, it's imperative that you have to understand that your people are part of the equation. Emotional intelligence is a great enabler for organizational change as it requires employees to be more resilient in the face of challenging work situations. It increases motivation for learning and a work climate for creativity and innovation. So let's look at some of the benefits of having an emotional intelligence mindset. The key thing is behavior change, increased employee engagement, and better decision making. If you want to know more about emotional intelligence itself, I've got a fantastic course at the Mindsight Academy which goes into so much detail and gives you practical tips of how to achieve this. And importantly, it actually explains to you the great link between emotional intelligence and decision making. So, some reflective questions for you to use. How do you think your team will describe you? How do you respond when you're under pressure? What are your key motivators? What do other people do that upsets you? Do you truly care for your staff? Or are you more focused on results? And if you care, do they know? And I want you now to rate yourself on how much you feel you care about your team. And also I want you to rate yourself on how you think your staff would score you out of 1 to 10 of how much they feel that you care. So, some actions to take. I want you now, this is a great exercise actually. I want you to sit back and watch yourself in action. Analyze your behavior, your thoughts, and your responses during your next team meeting. Choose a meeting where it's safe to say less and listen more. Then just watch and listen to yourself and see what you can't help but say, what you can't help but feel and think. And also pay attention and notice the thoughts that you're having. This will tell you a lot about your hot buttons. It will also give you an indication of how emotionally intelligent you are because unfortunately, so many people think that they have an emotional intelligence mindset, but they don't. I have been with a leader who kept going on about how emotionally intelligent she was, but it did take me five minutes of just being with her, and I realized that actually her self-awareness is very low. And then when I got to meet the team, it all came out. The team were really complaining about how much she did not care, how much she was just focused on them meeting targets, and how badly they felt listened to. They really felt unheard. And these are one of the indicators of very low emotional intelligence mindset. And briefly, I want us to touch on courageous mindset. Doing anything great requires courage, but fear always has a way of showing up. Courage does not mean being unafraid. Having courage and showing courage means facing your fears, saying, I am scared and I'm moving forward anyway. Courage is like a muscle you can strengthen with use. Having a courageous mindset actually comes from building a high emotional intelligence mindset. So let's look at our next mindset, which is the connection mindset. Many leaders and managers are so focused on achieving results that making a shift in their mindset makes them feel that it will compromise their ability to achieve their required goals and results. But this cannot be further from the truth. The connection mindset is about forming positive relationships and it's also linked to emotional intelligence. It's about developing and showing empathy. Empathy is often confused with sympathy and thereby disregarded by many leaders as not being professional. And I go into the difference between empathy and sympathy in great detail on the course on emotional intelligence in the Mindsight Academy. I've dropped the link in the description for you if you're interested. Daniel Goldman defines empathy as an astute awareness of others' emotions, concerns, and needs. It's our understanding of others' feelings and concerns which flows from awareness of our own feelings because you cannot understand how somebody else feels if you can't even understand how you feel yourself. And always say this that in order to be an effective leader, in order to influence other people, you've got to first and foremost be able to lead yourself. You've got to be aware of yourself, you've got to learn how to manage your own emotions, you've got to understand how your thoughts impact your emotions and control your thoughts. So, some of the benefits of empathy in the workplace. It enables you to understand emotional cues and to be an attentive listener. It will enhance creativity, innovation, and employee engagement in your organization and in your team. It will enable you to show sensitivity and understand other people's perspective. Empathy is the difference between those who sell well and those who don't. And when I'm talking about selling, I'm talking about actually selling to other people, but being able to negotiate deals, being able to be an effective negotiator, being able to persuade your team to buy into your idea or buy into this new idea or project that your team organization are doing. Because in life, you've got to be able to get understand how people think, how their brain works, to be able to get them to trust you. Empathy is extremely critical to persuasion and influence, as I've just explained. It also enables you to adapt your behavior to different situations, which is so important now for you as a leader and for your people. Once you have empathy and you're able to create a culture or a team of empathetic people, you'll find that being able to adapt and change to different situations becomes easier and you're able to function more effectively under pressure. It enables you to understand other people's feelings so that you can create a more positive relationship that is built on trust, integrity, and confidence. People with an empathetic mindset are alert to unconscious biases. And this will go a long way in helping create inclusivity and diversity in your organization and in your team. And I'm not talking about just having it as a tick box. I mean that it becomes really embedded in everything you're doing so that every single day it's at the top front of what you're doing, and you become very intentional about the actions that you're taking regarding recruitment, regarding the language that is used, regarding promotions, regarding successive planning, regarding talent management, and even who you allocate projects to, who you allocate tax to, how you manage your people. This will go a long way in creating a culture of creativity and innovation. Because where there is diversity, there is great creativity and great innovation. And where there isn't diversity, you notice that creativity and innovation is stifled. Another benefit is that it helps you understand how your staff and customers perceive things. Leaders and managers that lack empathy see others primarily as a means to complete tasks to achieve goals. They are not aware of unconscious biases and they see others in terms of stereotypes. They misunderstand or are surprised by other people's feelings or actions. They are often in conflict with others as they don't understand their concerns or thoughts. One of your most important responsibilities as a leader is to understand your people and their needs because this will help you build morale, increase resilience, reach shared goals faster, and increase performance. This is the key to understanding what makes people behave and think the way they do. This deeper level of understanding will enable you as a leader or manager to bring things under control when things go wrong or during times of change and uncertainty. Ultimately, it will increase your ability to manage people more effectively, build client relationships, make better decisions, problem solve efficiently, innovate, be more creative, and achieve your goals. All key assets for a high-performing productive team. And our next mindset is the growth mindset. One of your most important and significant roles as a leader is to help your people build confidence in their roles. Building confidence and resilience in your team members ensures they keep growing, they easily adapt to changes, they're able to stretch their abilities and acquire new skills that they probably thought they were not capable of. High-performing leaders see potential in individuals that the individual themselves might not even see. They have a mindset that enables them to encourage people to be their best because they believe and know that it's possible. Whenever I go into organizations to do consultancy or training, I can tell whether a leader has a growth mindset by meeting their team. Because a team that has a leader with a growth mindset are so confident in what they're doing and they are not afraid to make mistakes. They are not afraid to push boundaries. But you know the interesting thing? The key thing that you notice is that their people come into work with their brain, they come into work ready to think things through. They're not always reliant on their leader. If you're a leader whose team members or managers under you are always coming to ask you questions, are always coming to ask you for approval before they do things. Instead of complaining about the team member or the managers or your direct reports, the first thing you need to do is look inwards at yourself. Because a lot of times it might be you that is causing the problem. In most cases, if that's the case, and that's because of the way your mindset is that is coming out to the people, so they are afraid to get things wrong because of the way that you will react. So leaders, managers, and business owners must maintain a growth mindset, and this can only be achieved by rewiring your brain and managing your own emotions so that you can operate at your own peak state. Having a growth mindset is an important and empowering attribute to have to improve your team performance, improve your business, and improve your personal life as well. Carol Dweck coined the phrase growth mindset to describe people who enjoy challenges, who strive to learn and consistently see potential to develop new skills, whereas fixed mindset people view talent as a quality they either possess or lack. Fixed mindset organizations put their emphasis on talent and unfortunately lose out on tapping into the potential of their workers. Do you know that believing in yours or others' ability to change can help spur workplace creativity and ease relationship conflict? For an organization to be successful in achieving your goals, results, and profitability, it's important to ensure that your employees and your organization have shared values and beliefs so that you can work together to achieve mutual goals. To accomplish this, leaders need to understand your team's perceptions of you in terms of your obligations to the team, your preferred behavior, and how you deal with individual staff and the team, and how you deal with the quality of their work. It are key beliefs that drive us as humans when the chips are down and shine through fast when decisions are needed. When you show up at work with a growth mindset, you are better positioned to address challenges at work, which shows up as you coming to work with your best self and how you work with colleagues, how you also write projects, and how you manage projects as well. Be comfortable being uncomfortable in order to stretch yourself to grow and progress. Growth mindset gives you genuine curiosity, a willingness to learn, and the ability to be comfortable with uncertainty as you build and boost your resilience. If you are comfortable with where you are or what you're doing, then you really are not pushing your boundaries enough. I had this discussion recently with one of my clients, and he couldn't understand why being comfortable was not ideal. And I had to explain in great detail that being comfortable means that you are within your comfort zone. To be able to grow your business, to be able to grow as a leader, to be able to move into the C-suite, into those top positions. In order to move into non-executive roles, you need to do something different. You need to push those boundaries. So if you are comfortable where you are, it's time to get up and shake yourself and start stretching. Having a growth mindset will enable you to prioritize quickly by having a firm grasp on what is important, what will move the needle most for your business or for your team or for your organization in the quickest time. This enables you to do those projects first so that you can be more productive, more efficient, and more focused on work that really matters. I must point out here that having a growth mindset does not mean that you don't get upset when things go wrong. No, it means that you intentionally respond rather than react to situations. And now the performance mindset. I've said this repeatedly. Many organizations are still really focusing so much on just getting the job done and completely ignoring the learning needs of the employees. Having a mindset of learning and creating a learning culture actually equips your people to be high performers. It enables them to achieve their goals because they are skilled to communicate effectively. They are able to work collaboratively with others, they're able to think creatively even under pressure, and they know how to be accountable. They really have the brain power to thrive where others falter. Maintaining the accountability and focus of your team should be a top priority for every leader because having absolute clarity about what needs to be achieved and a commitment to the task typically gets the work done. Accountable leaders with focused minds consistently outperform others. Leaders who are able to effectively empower team members, empower direct reports to self-lead, stay composed, making effective decisions even under pressure, they are able to anticipate problems and pressures in advance. Building accountability starts with providing your people with absolute clarity around your own expectations and around the expectations of your organization. If people know what is expected of them in terms of task and time frames, then they know what they need to deliver and by when. Clearly articulate what the key performance indicators for their role or goals are. They need this for their own brain clarity to be able to get things done. If you don't give this to them and they try and come up with it themselves, they end up getting themselves into a model, especially when a lot of work is coming. And especially at this time where people have to work independently because they're working from home and because they're also having to deal with probably mainly different jobs, different things happening. I've seen in so many organizations now where people are having so many meetings back to back that they don't have time to even think about the action. So when it's time to then take the actions that they need to take, they end up getting themselves all modeled up and forgetting time frames and not even being able to plan effectively. So clarity is really important. Communication is extremely important. And also listen to your people because a lot of employees are really getting flustered with the amount of meetings taking place. Have a culture where they can talk to you and tell you their concerns. This is so important. Many leaders don't have the skills to be effective in strategic planning as well, or how to best differentiate it from an operating plan. And having this performance mindset is so critical to know when to be operational and when to be strategic. Every failure has something to teach you. Everything you learn helps you grow. So struggling does not mean that you're not good enough. But if you're unwilling to learn, the fact is that no one can help you. And if you're determined to learn, no one can stop you. To radically change your life, you've got to change yourself. So start building your new mindset today. Think the thoughts that will help you move towards your goals right now. So take up the challenge as a leader to help your people grow. Ensure that as an organization, you're training, coaching, and mentoring your leaders and managers with the tools to be effective, high-performing leaders so that they can help their direct reports and others in the organization. And if you're a leader, go and ask for what you need from your organization. What training do you need? What mentoring do you need? What coaching skills do you need? Ask. You're within your right to ask because it will help you achieve the goals for the organization as a whole and for your team. So, in conclusion, to facilitate organizational change successfully, because we are going through a period of change now, you have to understand how mindsets create resistance to change. Just as corporations can embrace distinct mindsets, so can entire institutions such as academic institutions, healthcare organizations, STEM organizations, whatever organizations you are, it's time to embrace these mindsets. Forming new connections in the brain requires effort and motivation. Change also frequently requires that we change our existing mental maps and form new connections in the brain. People today need to understand more about why and how work will meet their personal needs and how it aligns to their values and belief systems. This is what many new managers struggle to understand and requires a shift in mindset from what they've previously been taught or even observed from their predecessors. When you build your awareness and start rethinking your habits, you'll discover that some of the mindsets and behaviors that have served you in the past may no longer be helpful. The need to make some changes, as uncomfortable as this may be, is the best way forward if you are to adapt and lead your team to this new, ever-changing new reality. There's a need to pay close attention to the mindset messages that you as leaders are giving to your staff and that lecturers are sending to students. This may help find ways to increase the number of women in C-suite positions, women and diverse ethnic groups who continue in STEM and finance roles, basically, disciplines that support an increasing number of vital jobs in our society. Any leader who desires to take an organization to a whole new level must make the intentional mindset shift from maintaining the status quo to creating all new possibilities. Creativity and possibility thinking are the best ways to achieve high performance. Maximize the potential of yourself, your organization, and your team. The mindsets make a big difference in terms of employee attitudes and job satisfaction. So are you the leader that is going to stay comfortable maintaining the status quo? Or are you the leader that is ready to be uncomfortable by breaking out of the status quo and making that leadership mindset shift or leader shift to thrive in these uncertain times, to upskill, to reskill, to look for opportunities, grab opportunities, take actions, help your team be the best as individuals and as a team, and build that collaboration you need so that you keep growing and achieving excellent performance, even where others falter. It's time for you to take up this challenge. Don't let this podcast be one you just listen to and do nothing. Everything I talk about needs you to take action. Don't forget that rewing the brain takes you to consciously decide to make that change. And as you're working on your brain, you put the actions into place and don't stop till you really have achieved that change in behavior. Thank you again for tuning in. I hope you found this podcast really useful. As I've said, I'm available to really help anyone with training, the educators, or leaders. It's so important that we do what we can to equip our leaders with the right skills and it will help them maintain great mental well-being. Basically, what we're talking about is having a good brain health, and that's what matters. Teaching them how to control their thoughts and how to manage their emotions is key. So, if you have not subscribed to this podcast, please hit the subscribe button wherever you listen to this podcast so that other people could also find this podcast and listen to it. I'll appreciate you leaving a review or comment about the podcast. And finally, I look forward to seeing you in the next podcast. Do look after yourself, take care, and keep sorry. Remember, you are limitless. Bye for now.