Mindset Matters - Transforming operational leadership and delivery through a Mindset of Growth
Transforming operational leadership through a growth mindset can lead to significant improvements in team performance and psychological safety. Mindset Practice won a silver award at the Learning Awards for its work with Thales UK and presents this and its wider work at the upcoming Learning Live event in London.
Our client, Thales, is a global technology business researching, developing and supplying technology and services that impact the lives of millions. They deliver their work through teams with a diverse mix of engineers and managers to tackle complex programmes worth £millions.
The challenge from Thales UK was to improve how their programme delivery teams work together. Collaboration and teamwork are fundamental to success and they knew it wasn’t a strength between managers and engineers, especially under pressure. Working with Thales Learning, we convinced the programme teams that performance is linked to mindset and emotional intelligence.
We are now rolling this out across all delivery teams to raise awareness of team climate and individual mindsets to develop Practices for Growth that will enable teams to perform especially early in the programme.
In summary, enabling psychological safety in delivery teams would save them £millions over the programme duration while also enhancing their customer reputation.
Senior leaders report improvements in teams raising problems and having challenging conversations. Quantifying the impact is difficult but, given the size of the programmes, it is possible to estimate the cost of NOT having them in terms of £millions and reputation.
“At its simplest level I wanted to improve the quality of conversations with people. The big bang approach at [the Engineering Conference] worked …. We are seeing differences in behaviour – 12-18 months ago in Gate Reviews you would see silo-behaviour and protectionism. Now the conversations are more in Growth, richer and joined up. In the past I’ve seen teams wasting months because they’re being bloody minded. Now these conversations are happening, and prickly team members are managing their Survival more consistently.” VP Engineering
Independent research within Thales found that psychological safety was higher in teams that undertook the initiative. We confirmed this with our own psychometric data, e.g. in one team it increased by 40% five months later. This relationship has resulted in the development of our new Mindset Practice App launching in September to ensure development that is sustained.
Come and hear Rich Cook and Jackie Grier at LPI Learning live https://learning-live.com/agenda/ in Synergy 2 on 12th September at 3:15pm to hear more and learn about how your own mindset may impact your performance , or visit our stand and receive a free Mindset Indicator report.