It doesn’t matter where an organisation is or how long it has been going, there is always room for improvement. There is always room for change. There is always room for a transformation. If the culture is toxic, change it. If the people are unhappy, make the change. If the processes don’t work, change them. If the leadership is not right, change it.

Throughout my career in engineering and rail, I have worked alongside many people who hate change. They would actually prefer things to go back to the way they were in the 70s and 80s.

However, what they and so many people around the world don’t see, or they don’t acknowledge is that things are changing every day. The technology that we use every day is changing. The tools and equipment that we use is changing.

Products that we buy are changing. People are changing and the goals they set themselves are changing.

1. Our Mindset Must Change

Everything around is changing, and we must acknowledge it and accept it.

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A lot of people have a limited mindset and for them to embrace change we must help them to develop a limitless mindset. For you to help your team and beyond change from a limited mindset to a limitless mindset, you need to focus and be very deliberate with this change.

The main reason people resist change is due to fear of the unknown, and we need to ensure that we are doing everything we can to help our people overcome this fear.

With your people having a fear of the unknown, it will up to you as their leader to show them what change can bring. What positives and benefits will change bring to the team and organisation? Share your vision and how change can make things better within the team and then the organisation.

2. Your Team Players

Highly effective team players have a limitless mindset already and they will more than likely embrace change. Low performing team players will choose to resist and moan about the change.

You must leverage your highly effective team players to help you in leading change. Do you have more highly effective team players than low performing team players? If you do, then gaining the buy-in from the rest of the team won’t be as difficult as it would if you had more low performing team players.

Either way, it is up to you to engage with your highly effective team players and leverage them to help you in making change happen. Leverage them in helping you to gain the buy-in from the rest of your team.

Highly effective team players don’t just embrace change, they actually look for ways to inspire change with their team members and their leaders. They understand that change is constantly happening every day, and they want to be a part of it.

A highly effective team player will get upset if things remain the same because they know in their hearts that they and the team are not making progress. They want to make constant improvements to processes and procedures, and they do not need to be told what to do or how to do it.

When I worked as an engineering shift manager for Scottish Railways and how the team, I was working with changed their plan to complete work on a train in time. This is a great example of how we can help change the mindset of people from limited to limitless in the space of an hour.

3. Responsibility

The teams I worked with were so used to being micromanaged and told what to do, that they feared being empowered to make things happen by themselves. The managers who managed them told them what to do and how to do it, and if anything went wrong then they had someone to blame.

They were not accepting any responsibility for when things went wrong. This is an example of a limited mindset with a manager. However, when I used open questions with the supervisor, I empowered him to empower the team to change the plan, and they did it.

Then when the plan worked, that was the way I worked with other teams from then on. The supervisor and the team changed their mindset from limited (being micromanaged) to limitless (being empowered).

It is a real shame with the number of leaders in all industries throughout the world who have a limited mindset. Many of these leaders are at the top of organisations, and do not take responsibility either.

With their limited mindset, they blame the teams when things go wrong instead of taking responsibility and then working with the teams to put things right. These leaders do not want change to happen, and if they don’t want it to happen at the top of the organisation then it will not happen.

They are low performing leaders and use their position and title to get what they want out of their people. They do not use their influence to develop their people and help them to be their best selves.

This is obvious in organisations that have issues in losing their best people because of the relationship they have with their leaders. There is no room for a limitless mindset in these organisations.

Highly effective leaders have limitless mindsets, this is how they think every day. They understand and accept that as a leader of a team, they have huge responsibilities. They are responsible in ensuring that their team members are developing their character and competency.

It is the highly effective leader’s responsibility to inspire their team to work on themselves every day. How do they do that? They show their team how to do this by leading by example and sharing their knowledge with them.

4. Sharing Knowledge

Then they go beyond knowledge sharing by teaching their team members when it is necessary. They are both a mentor and a coach to their team.

When you climb the ladder to a highly effective leadership culture, you cannot take the next step on that ladder without change. You cannot help your people to take the next step on the ladder without change either.

You are changing the culture within your team and eventually your organisation. So the one constant in all of this is…change.

You can’t transform without changing, but you can change without transforming. Sharing our knowledge and teaching people what we know, helps them to change what they know. When we help our people to transform, they are changing how they do things and more importantly who they are.

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To keep your team moving forward and growing into becoming highly effective, you need to show them that you care. You need to share your values and inspire them to take on the same values and live them, following your example.

When you have this in place, and develop limitless mindsets, will you have a highly effective team. Only then will you all become immune to negativity.

My book, A Limitless Mindset: How A Highly Effective Leader Thinks, is the best resource for you to use to help you grow a limitless mindset, and then help your team to grow a limitless mindset too.

By reading this book yourself, you are releasing your own potential. By sharing this book with your team, you are releasing their potential. I can highly recommend this book for one of your book studies.

Leading positive change is great for any team and organisation. But leading a transformation is even better.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

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All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)