The absolute foundation of leadership is a powerful positive mindset, and it needs to start on day one.
What comes to mind when you hear the word “mindset?” If you feel like mindset isn’t important, and you’re impatient to get to the tactics, the “good stuff,” then this episode is for you.
Co-hosts Richard Lindner and Jeff Mask reflect back on the days when they first started working together. Jeff introduced an exercise called “positive focus” and Richard wanted to skip it and move right to the solution to his problem. He quickly learned that, if you don’t start by fixing the problem of mindset, then every solution is a temporary band-aid.
In this episode, we’ll walk through mindset and positive focus, then move into some tactical suggestions for your first day, week, and months leading a new team.
Why Mindset and Positive Focus Are So Important
At the start of Richard’s first coaching session with Jeff, Jeff said, “Let’s start out with your positive focus.” Richard remembers thinking, “Better yet, why don’t you help me?” He really wanted to skip all the woowoo juju stuff and didn’t understand why Jeff was making him do it.
Richard said, “I don’t know, man. I got nothing.” And Jeff said, “Well, I guess we’re just going to sit here then. There’s something good, and we’re going to find it.”
Fast forward to today when they start off every weekly leadership meeting with positive focus, and Richard believes in it wholeheartedly. Jeff knows a lot of people can relate to Richard’s initial skepticism. Mindset can seem touchy-feely and unnecessary when there are difficult business problems to solve.
Jeff takes people back to the second Back to the Future movie when Doc Brown creates the time space continuum on the chalkboard and says “this is where we’ve been, and this is where we are.” He tells Marty that, when he went back in time, he changed something, and now there’s a new time space continuum, another 1985.
When we don’t start our meetings, our thoughts, from a place of positivity, we’re on a time space continuum that isn’t healthy because we’re thinking what we’re fearful and frustrated about. The highest part of our brain isn’t functioning. We’re in the bad 1985. When you reframe and refocus your brain on the positive, you start to exercise the higher-level functioning of your brain, the aspects that enable you to problem solve, learn, and create.
We’re wired as humans to be thinking more in the survival state, which is owned by the brain stem, the oldest part of our brain. When we try to solve problems from that part of our brain, we don’t get great outcomes.
Contrast that with the prefrontal lobes, the part that’s responsible for learning, adapting, creating, problem-solving, leadership. When we use that part of our brain, we hack ourselves to a higher level to get to a much deeper, better outcome. Jeff says at the beginning of every meeting, “Let’s hack our brains.”
A Simple Exercise to Realign Your Team’s Mindset
Leadership is not about protecting yourself. It’s about growing others, aligning others, and building a cohesive team. If you put yourself first, none of that works. If we understand the science behind it, understand the need for mindset, what is a simple exercise we can go through to realign our mindset?
Jeff recommends starting with a level one exercise. The question is simple: What are you grateful for in your life today? At the beginning of a meeting, you just go around the room and give everyone a chance to answer that question.
The level two question is this: What is something in your business that you’re excited about or grateful for? Encourage people to get super specific, add detail, paint a visual image. This starts to...
