WorkSoft.
There’s something about being together but not facing each other during our car rides to and from school that causes my daughter (Maya - 8) to feel relaxed enough to open up about what she’s thinking about.
Often, she’ll say weird, throw-away things like: “Would you rather have the ability to turn into a bear or be immortal?” Other times we will get into thought experiments, although she justifiably rolled her eyes at me when I asked her if a tree falls over in a forest and no one is there to hear it… (you probably know the rest.)
One of the most revealing conversations was around growth mindset. First up, I was blown away she even mentioned it and, I must admit, I first thought her school fees are well spent. Although we differed on the definition: mine about being a lifelong learner open to changing one’s mind, hers more about an attitude to work, it was encouraging to know this fundamental skill is being baked into her day-to-day.
Aside from my misgivings on formal education, I will not decry the learning of human skills; seeing the culture of my daughter’s school in action never ceases to take my breath away. Enter into the work place, however, and these types of skills are crushed under the heady weight of capitalist expectation to exceed targets at any cost.
Aside from the conversation about what to call them, where the modern work sacrifices these skills, it flushes the loyal baby out with the bathwater: although the days of working at the same company for 30 years and earning the watch are gone, the revolving door of talent and loss of institutional memory does not necessarily need to replace them.
As a data junkie, one of my favourite movies is Moneyball. TL;DR Brad Pitt’s character Billy Beane assembles a highly competitive Oakland Athletics baseball team with limited budget by using sabermetrics to scout and analyse the players. It’s an incredible piece of content about how we can use data to increase performance. Where it misses the mark, however, is that it excludes the value of how people interact with each other.
“Imagine a team member with all the traditional vocational skills: productive, skilled, experienced. A resume that can prove it. That’s a fine baseline.
Now add to it. Perceptive, charismatic, driven, focused, goal-setting, inspiring and motivated. Generous, empathic and consistent. A deep listener, with patience. What happens to your organization when someone like that joins your team?”
I like what he’s saying: that we “learn them accidentally, by osmosis, by the collisions we have with teachers, parents, bosses and the world.” I would add that in the world of work, we also them by starting up our own businesses, understanding different cultures and, yes, failing.
“This theory chatter is all good and well” you say, “but how do we implement this inside our business?” Great question.
First: understand what kind of culture you want inside your business: What behaviour do you want to see every day? Are people encouraged to be brave and make themselves vulnerable? Are they allowed to admit mistakes?
Second: announce the change and make it concrete through leading from the front. Yes: make yourself vulnerable. Show your human side - it’s in there somewhere. Peter Pan flies by thinking happy thoughts - remember what makes you human and use that as a foundation for how you interact with others.
Third: be an ally to those who follow your lead. These skills grow in the loamy soil of empathy and encouragement; go to where the behaviour is living and hold it aloft inside your business where it can be celebrated and propagated.
As the summer winds along, Maya is working towards earning her wooden cricket bat by hitting the ball over the fence in our local park. She has taken to denigrating herself while she bats - the opposite of a growth mindset. Instead of enjoying the process of batting, she tells herself off for not hitting the cover off of the ball. In that moment, I remind her:
“The More Relaxed You Are, The Better You Are At Everything.”
Enjoy the summer.
