For people leaders, mindsets matter more than leadership

True or False? 

• Most employees will try to contribute to the best of their abilities. 

• With practice, any employee can build new skills and capabilities. 

• Cooperation is more effective than competition in driving performance. 

To some, these statements may seem at best overly optimistic and at worst, naïve. Yet in my experience, these beliefs underpin the behavior of some of the best people leaders out there.

For example, leaders who believe that people are fundamentally good and inclined to do the right thing will opt to focus on equipping their teams with the tools they need to be successful, rather than tracking when and where they do their work. Sure, there are bad apples in every bunch, but should those exceptions drive the rule?

Unfortunately, our brains are wired to zoom in on outliers because they signal danger. And then, moving forward, your brain remembers that one employee that disappointed you and uses it as the driver of beliefs about everyone rather than seeing it for what it us: just one data point among many.

Believe in your employees

In his Good to Great research, Jim Collins concluded that “The right people will do the right things and deliver the best results they are capable of, regardless of the incentive system.” Now what if we assumed that all people have the capacity to be those right people? And that it is up to leaders to provide the management and support systems to help them get there? 

I’m not suggesting that a poet can become a rocket scientist overnight. But there are innumerable examples of individuals who were able to thrive across genres. For example, Hedy Lamarr is best known as a glamorous and beautiful Hollywood actress of the 1940s. Yet she was also posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for inventing a frequency-hopping technology that laid the foundation for Wi-Fi. 

My point is that we can’t accurately estimate someone else’s potential. Not only are our perceptions biased in any number of ways, but someone’s potential is also not bounded by their current performance. It is merely an indicator.

If you would have scouted Michael Jordan early in high school, you would have been sadly disappointed. He famously did not make the Varsity team as a sophomore. He wasn’t considered the best of the best even heading into college. It was his commitment to practice that ultimately turned him into the legend he remains today.  

Get to know your employees

An average-performing employee today may be choosing not to stretch themselves because of young children, aging parents, or their own health challenges. You can’t see from the outside what someone else may be dealing with. Writing them off because “their heart just isn’t in it” ignores the reality that people’s lives have ebbs and flows. There may be times when work is someone’s top priority and other times when it isn’t.