Time after time, senior management executives face challenging workplace conversations that they may feel ill-equipped to handle. A challenging conversation is one in which we are out of our comfort zone, but also has the potential to make a significant impact for the better organization-wide. Examples of these types of interactions might involve providing developmental feedback, addressing poor performance, turning down an employee request, handling a complaint or disciplinary process, or meetings in which it is necessary to raise issues that potentially result in conflict, such as addressing critical and difficult organizational issues. Understandably, initiating a challenging conversation can feel overwhelming, and there’s a natural tendency for leaders to postpone taking action in the hopes that the issue will get resolved quietly – and without their intervention. However, this is seldom the case. In fact, procrastination rarely results in issues fading away. If specific problems are disregarded, they can escalate and become more challenging to resolve down the road. As a result, negative consequences not only arise for those team members directly involved but also for the greater company. It’s much better to face issues head-on at an early stage as it can help nip issues in the [...]

As leaders, most of us would like to believe that we have the ability to lead organizational transformation effectively. Expert and author Carole Dweck refers to this view as a “growth mindset” – when people work to improve their abilities and skills and, as a result, demonstrate significant improvements in leadership. One major benefit of the growth mindset, Dweck says, is how you view setbacks. People who embrace a growth mindset often view mistakes as learning lessons and their initial failures become part of the overall development process. Alternatively, there’s the “fixed mindset,” which assumes abilities are carved in stone with limited room for change. Fixed-mindset leaders are often more cautious and resist venturing outside their comfort zones, sometimes leading to failure in leadership and business success. It‘s essential that leaders not only understand their mindset, but have some understanding of the contributing factors, including the experience of organizational stages as described in a seminal article by Larry Greiner, and learning from the stages of human development and where they might be stuck. My research with hundreds of leaders over the last decade has focused on how we perceive the world through the lens of our personal work-life journey – and via our [...]