In the past years, I had a chance to work with organizational development. I started with a small organizational unit, which we built from scratch, and now we are heading to over one hundred. Our foundational principle is built around self-organizing teams.
More and more, we dig into details, we are facing instinctive situations.
All of the labor force we are hiring thinks they are adults. As our organizational unit self-organizing, we have a preconception the members able to make decisions like adults. But think it over! If you need to go to Daddy to ask for money and you need Mommy to check you did your homework, how much result you made in the process of growing up?
In hierarchical organizations, we have the signs, which I described prior. I think it is a childish need when you always ask for approval for your decisions.
When you give your colleagues the empowerment, to make decisions which affect their work. They have the evolutionary purpose which they have to achieve. I think this is an outstanding possibility to be able to really grow up!
How far an organization able to go on this road, it shows their maturity!
Maturity is a fundamental behavior. Just imagine how much reckless actions can you expect from a child, and from an adult?
I think the evolutionary growing up independent from age. You can see childish behavior even from the labor force of the age of the seventies, while you can find a mature mindset of the twenties.
I think today, the most crucial leadership task is the soft-skill enhancement, which is accelerating the mindset maturity development.
The root cause of this problem in the educational system. All of the studies built around knowledge, and when the students enter the job market, they still don't know how their brain working.
They still missing the real value of self-esteem and self-knowledge.
They don't have a clue, how their memory works, and how emotions change the information which their brain store.
They don't know how shadow personality and superior self create stress in their daily job. Here comes the importance of maturity again. You can escape the pressure, but it will catch up again at your next appointment.
Whenever I travel with public transportation, I see the majority of the traveling people using their mobile phones and scrolling on social network sites. Even at a restaurant when a couple sitting together, they use their mobile instead of conversations. With this change, we are losing the importance of face to face conversations. Just think back to your child's age, what was easier? Send a letter to someone, or stand in front and tell your feelings? It is the same in the office.
How much work relationship broke because of insufficient communication. In most cases, when the problem identified, we have deadly wounds. That time the situation envenomed. The wounded person starts to poison the near audience. Terrible thing to lose an expert, but in this case, the only chance to stop the spread of the disease is the elimination of the infected body.
For these reasons, my most crucial dilemma is the balance between the fields of expert and the person's maturity.
We need gems to have bright concepts and control over the quality, but in the majority of the team, the mindset much more important than the field expertise.
As a leader, we need to find toolset to measure the maturity of the team and have a strategy on how we enhance the soft-skills required of the team members. Actually, the change in mindset is the most complicated task. It cannot be learned! You need to understand, and you need to release the resistance in the unconscious part of your brain.
A growth mindset is an extraordinary accelerator in this process of growing up!