Jan 15, 2020
Jennifer Garvey Berger is the CEO of Cultivating Leadership, and the
author of two books, Changing on the Job: Developing leaders for a
complex world and her
most recent book, Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps: How to Thrive
in Complexity. Jennifer
shares the common Mindtraps all leaders unknowingly succumb
to.
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Key Takeaways
[4:15] There are five leadership
mindtraps that hold us back:
- We
are trapped by the ways we believe we’re right.
- We
are trapped by the simple story we tell ourselves about people,
events, and places.
- We
are trapped by our desire to be in a tribe, to agree with the
people in our tribe.
- We
are trapped by our need to control events.
- We
are trapped by our own egos.
[12:25] As Jennifer works with
more and more leaders, she has started to realize that it’s not
what you know, it’s all about how you’re being.
[14:00] Our parents have trouble
with the simplest of technologies, does that mean we, as we grow
older, will have the same problems? Is this a mindset thing or are
we always going to hit some sort of technological threshold?
Jennifer is curious to see what the answers to these questions will
be as we age and grow.
[18:05] Across our lifespan, we
have gotten education wrong in so many ways.
[20:40] Beyond roleplaying and
trying out new roles in a safe setting, people can expand and
change their behavior through having real conversations in “the
wild.” It's scary but it can be very transformative.
[24:05] The reality is, we as
people love simplicity. In chaotic or complex environments, we are
often drawn to the simplest of solutions. However, in such a
fast-paced environment, these simple solutions are actually
dangerous. We need to take a step back and reimagine
leadership.
[27:30] We fall into these
leadership mindtraps because we are so overwhelmed by the
complexity around us. We have to intentionally evolve ourselves so
we break the pattern.
[32:35] Sometimes you need to go
slow to go fast. Doing stuff for the sake of doing it is just not
productive or helpful. Slowing down is a discipline very few people
can consciously do.
[36:40] Pay close attention to
how we make sense of the world. Do you always get easily frustrated
by x reason? Take a step back and uncover the why behind it. Take
time to make sense of it. Once you do, you will be much more
productive.
[42:15] Jennifer wants you to
think about who you are trying to be seen as. What descriptions
would you like other people to use when describing you? What
descriptions would you hate to be used when describing you?
And are those words, those
descriptions, helping you or getting in your way?
Quotable Quotes
- “We
look for a hero and a villain and we make up our minds on an
incredibly small amount of evidence.”
- “We
don’t go looking for complexity.”
- We’ve
never lived in a world that has challenged humans so much
when it comes to handling
complexity.
- “We
don’t know the difference between informational learning, which is
from a book, or transformational learning, which is am I changing
and growing over time.”
- “We
need to reimagine leadership and we need to do that by noticing
some of these simple solutions and simple answers are actually
dangerous.”
Connect with Jennifer:
Resources Mentioned
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