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NLI culture change master class
Leadership

Culture Change Isn’t a Mystery If Leaders Follow the Science

Changing a culture can feel like just about the toughest job a leader has. It’s hard enough getting yourself to act differently — how could you possibly change the behavior of hundreds or thousands of people? From both our research and extensive client work, helping companies like Microsoft and HP transform their cultures, the NeuroLeadership Institute is confident that all leaders are capable of effecting great change. The key is to follow the science — to know how to shift people’s mindsets to adopt new habits for the long haul. Our latest white paper, “The NLI Guide: How Culture Change Really Happens,” delves into just that topic. The report provides a two-step process that begins with building a growth mindset — that is, the pursuit of always improving, not proving, yourself — and following NLI’s method of Priorities, Habits, and Systems to cement culture change. Every Thursday for the next seven weeks, we’ll be publishing insights from the white paper on this blog, as part of our latest Master Class series. (Catch the last Master Class series, on growth mindset, here.) Table of Contents Week 2: The First Step Toward Culture Change Is a Shift in Mindset Week 3: Leaders Need More Than Buy-In to Create Culture Change Week 4: CASE STUDY: Nokia Turns Two Cultures into One Week 5: How Microsoft Changed Its Culture by Going Simple Week 6: CASE STUDY: HP Embraces Growth Mindset and Kickstarts Culture Change Together, the posts will serve as a handy reference guide for the essential science (and implementation) of culture change. The conventional wisdom around transformation is flawed. It assumes awareness of the challenge or goal is enough. But once you’ve gotten buy-in, then what? NLI’s approach to culture change helps organizations answer that question, so they can make a lasting, scalable impact — and they can do it weeks, not years. [action hash=”1c967ecd-f614-4b3d-a6f1-a14c6ec523bc”]

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NLI Growth Mindset master class
Growth Mindset Master Class

Why Growth Mindset Is Crucial to Inclusion

Leaders typically think of growth mindset in terms of performance, personal growth, career development, and skills improvement. But the concept also can be crucial to driving diversity and inclusion efforts. The key: Whether you believe you are capable of improvement often determines whether you think other people are capable of change. That, in turn, shapes how you view your team as a whole. At the NeuroLeadership Institute, we define growth mindset as the dual belief that skills can be improved over time, and that improving those skills is the goal of the work people do. We recently explored this concept in a white paper featuring growth-mindset case studies from five leading global organizations. What science says Research has found a number of benefits to building a growth mindset culture, specifically around inclusion. For instance, growth mindset can reduce stereotyping. Researchers have found that whether or not you think people are fixed or mutable in who they are shapes how many stereotypical judgments people make. If you use a growth mindset, you are more likely to attribute stereotype traits to environmental forces, rather than inborn traits. When making judgments, a growth mindset also helps people gather more information before coming to conclusions. In one study, those with a fixed mindset needed less context before making a decision, potentially leading to undesired or unforeseen outcomes. Growth mindset doesn’t just help people doing the stereotyping; it also helps people on the receiving end. Consider the idea of “stereotype threat.” It’s when members of a certain group do poorly on a task because they’re told they’re not “supposed” to excel. A body of research has shown that growth mindset can reduce the effects of stereotype threat, enabling people to perform closer to their true potential. The business case For organizations, the implication here is that cultivating a growth mindset culture can help drive down biased behavior and create stronger teams. Leaders who help their employees see failures as learning opportunities, and threats as new and exciting challenges, can also help those employees see others’ shortcomings not as signs of personal failings, but merely as a product of being human. When employees start accepting diverse team members as generally well-intentioned, though perhaps fallible, they can move from a culture of competition to one of true and inclusive collaboration. This article is the twelfth and final installment in NLI’s series, Growth Mindset: The Master Class, a 12-week campaign to help leaders see how the world’s largest organizations are putting growth mindset to use. [action hash=”cd97f93c-1daf-4547-8f7c-44b6f2a77b77″]

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