Mindsets of Great Leaders

2 mindsets that really resonate with me in particular are the "Growth Mindset" and "Coaching Mindset".

I'm a firm believer of the leadership concept of Self-efficacy (Bandura (1982) defined self-efficacy as "a belief in one's ability to effectively perform and to exercise influence over events") which require Leaders to not only "explain" and "suggest" what a colleague should do but to allow them the space to experiment, learn and grow such that the your organisation’s values  are not only understood, but internalized through practice.

A Growth Mindset involves curiosity, challenging long held assumptions and evaluating data of experiments to learn & iterate your solution to solve customer problems. 

Coaching involves prioritising a delicate balance between "learning orientation goals" versus "performance orientation goals".  Sometimes there are trade-offs and inefficiencies. 

For example, your team is required to perform a task and as a Team Leader, you have to decide who in your team should complete that task.  A performance orientation mindset will suggest you allocate the task to the person who is better skilled at it and can get it done the most efficiently.  The Learning Orientation Mindset however, will mean you allocate the task to the person, not necessarily the best at it, but the one that stands to learn the most and grow from the experience. 

It's about building "bench strength" but it can be difficult as a Leader to juggle this trade-off.