Warren Bennis has said that “there’s no difference

between being a really effective leader and becoming a

fully integrated person.”

z
Leading with the
mind and heart…
z
CAPACITY VS COMPETENCE

 Capacity:
Capacity the potential each of us has to he potential each of us has to do
more and be more than we are now
In this chapter, rather than discussing competence, we explore a
person’s capacity for mind and heart.
Whereas competence is limited and quantifiable, capacity is unlimited
and defined by the potential for expansion and growth.
As a leader, you can expand the capacity of your mind, heart, and spirit
by consciously engaging in activities that use aspects of the whole self.
You can refl ect on your experiences to learn and grow from them.
 Leadership

 Whole leaders use both their head and their heart.

 They use their head to tend to organizational issues and their heart to tend to human
issues.
 https://youtu.be/
HPD_5y_Fxhg

VIDEO TIME!!!
 Mental models and assumptions, changing them, developing the expansion
in the mind
z
THE HEAD OF A LEADER
 MENTAL MODELS
 Mental models theories people hold
about specific systems in the world and
their expected behavior
 Leaders have many mental models that
tend to govern how they interpret
experiences and how they act in
response to people and situations.
 A system means any set of elements
that interact to form a whole and produce
a specified outcome. Therefore, a mental
model is how you think something works
 MENTAL MODELS
 An accurate mental model helps a leader understand how to arrange the key elements in these
systems to get the desired outcome.
 Leaders have many mental models that tend to govern how they interpret experiences and how
they act in response to people and situations.
 Google Leaders’ Mental Model- the tennets below shows the mental model that Google’s top
leaders use to keep the company on the cutting edge as its core business of search matures.
At Google, risk-taking, a little craziness, and making mistakes is encouraged for the sake of
innovation. Too much structure and control is considered death to the company
Stay uncomfortable

Let failure coexist with triumph

Use a little less “management” than you need

Defy convention

Move fast and figure things out as you go

 ASSUMPTIONS

 Leaders have assumptions that affect how they deal with everything and everyone.
 Assumptions are part of a leader’s mental model about events, situations,
circumstances, and people
 Assumptions can be dangerous because people tend to accept assumptions as “truth.”
 Being aware of and questioning their assumptions can help leaders understand and
shift their mental models.
 WHAT LEADERS NEED

 Successful leaders need a global mindset.

 A global mindset can be defined as the ability of
managers to appreciate and influence individuals,
groups, organizations, and systems that represent
different social, cultural, political, institutional,
intellectual, or psychological characteristics.
 Changing and expanding mental models

 Top leaders affect the success of their

organizations.
 The greatest factor in determining
success may be the ability to change or
expand one’s mental models.
 Organizations are vulnerable when
leaders stick with obsolete mental
models that led to success in the past.
 They find themselves simply going
along with the traditional way of doing
things.
 HOW TO CHANGE and EXPAND
MENTAL MODELS
 Leaders must allow their mental models to be
challenged and demolished.
 Becoming aware of assumptions and understanding
how they influence emotions and actions is the first
step toward being able to shift mental models and
see the world in a new way.
z

Discussion
Why is it so hard for people
to change their
assumptions?

What are some specific

reasons why leaders need
to be aware of their mental
models?
z
ANSWERS

 It is hard for people to change their assumptions because they have

assumptions about events, situations, circumstances, and people, and
they tend to accept them as “truth.” A leader’s assumptions are part of a
mental model. Mental models govern how leaders interpret their
experiences and the actions they take in response to people and
situations.
 For example, many organizations in the automotive industry operated on
their leaders’ traditional assumption that people wanted to drive a car
before buying it. This false assumption has hurt car dealers as Internet-
based competitors gain market share. Leaders can learn to regard their
assumptions as temporary ideas rather than fixed truths. The leader can
question whether long-held assumptions fit the reality of the situation.
 https://youtu.be/
lv2fYgBThO4
z
SSSIHL changes your mental models?
z
DEVELOPING A LEADER’S MIND
 Developing a leaders mind

 The leader’s mind can be developed in four areas—

 independent thinking,
 open-mindedness,
 systems thinking, and
 personal mastery.
 These areas provide a foundation that can help leaders examine their mental models
and overcome blind spots.
 INDEPENDENT THINKING

 Independent thinking means questioning assumptions and interpreting data and events
according to one’s own beliefs, ideas, and thinking, not according to preestablished
rules, routines, or categories defined by others.
 People who think independently are willing to stand apart, to have opinions, to say what
they think, and to determine a course of action based on what they personally believe
rather than on what other people think or say
 MINDFULNESS

 Independent thinking is one part of leader

mindfulness.
 Mindfulness can be defined as a state of focused
attention on the present moment and a readiness
to create new mental categories in the face of
evolving information and shifting circumstances.
 Mindfulness is the opposite of mindlessness,
which means blindly accepting rules and labels
created by others.
MINDFULNESS
 THE MOVIE OF ME….

 https://youtu.be/ULJSacYFzzQ – the story of me

 https://youtu.be/iebciuBXCh4 - mindful meditation through breath
 https://youtu.be/ABK0SYFxyEY - mindful meditation for clarity – becoming aware of
thoughts and emotions and physical sensations
 Independent thinking

 When leaders think critically, they-

 Question all assumptions
 Vigorously seek divergent opinions
 Try to give balanced consideration to all alternatives
 Good leaders also encourage followers to be mindful rather than mindless.
 Intellectual stimulation is arousing followers’ thoughts and imaginations as well as stimulating
their ability to identify and solve problems creatively.
 Open-Mindedness

 Conditioning limits our thinking and behavior.

 Leaders have to forget many of their conditioned ideas to be open to new ones.
 This openness—putting aside preconceptions and suspending beliefs and opinions—can
be referred to as “beginner’s mind.”
 When someone becomes an expert in a particular subject, their mind often becomes closed
to the perspectives of other people.
 Effective leaders strive to keep open minds and cultivate an organizational environment
that encourages curiosity and learning.
z

Open mindedness
Discuss the similarities and
differences between mental
models and
openmindedness.
z   Open-mindedness means breaking out
of the categorized thinking patterns people
have been conditioned to accept as
correct. Mind potential is released when
opened up to new ideas and multiple
RECOGNIZE !!!
perspectives.
  By contrast, mental models are deep-
seated assumptions, beliefs, blind spots,
biases, and prejudices that determine how
leaders make sense of the world. Mental
models govern the actions leaders take in
response to a situation.
 What do you think of people
who can say sorry and do not
think they are always right?
 Is it necessary to change what
others think?
 DO YOU DO IT?
 SYSTEMS THINKING

 Systems thinking is the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than just the separate
elements of a system and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns.
 Many people have been trained to solve problems by breaking a complex system into discrete
parts and working to make each part perform as well as possible.
 However, the success of each piece does not add up to the success of the whole.
 It is the relationship among parts that forms a whole system that matters.
 Systems thinking enables leaders to look for patterns of movement over time and focus on the
qualities of rhythm, flow, direction, shape, and networks of relationships.
 SYSTEMS THINKING

 When leaders see the structures that underlie complex situations, they can facilitate
improvement. But it requires a focus on the big picture.
 Leaders can develop peripheral vision—the ability to view the organization through a
wideangle lens rather than a telephoto lens—so that they perceive how their decisions and
actions affect the whole.
 An important element of systems thinking is to discern circles of causality.
 Reality is made up of circles not straight lines.
 PERSONAL MASTERY

 Personal mastery means mastering yourself in a way that facilitates your leadership and
achieves desired results
 Mastering oneself embodies three qualities:
 Clarity of mind- commitment to the truth of current realities
 Clarity of objectives- the dream, the vision and goals
 Organizing to achieve those goals

All elements of mind are interrelated. Independent thinking and openmindedness improve systems
thinking and enable personal mastery, helping leaders shift and expand their mental models.
 Acknowledging and living with the disparity between the
truth and the vision, and facing it squarely, is the source of
HOW?
resolve and creativity to move forward.
 The effective leader resolves the tension by letting the vision
pull reality toward it, in other words, by reorganizing current
activities to work toward the vision.
 The leader works in a way that moves things toward the
vision. The less effective way is to let reality pull the vision
downward toward it.
 This means lowering the vision, such as walking away from
a problem or settling for less than desired. Settling for less
releases the tension, but it also engenders mediocrity.
Leaders with personal mastery learn to accept both the
dream and the reality simultaneously, and to close the gap
by moving toward the dream.
https://youtu.be/
UkhE_afMsDc