Magnetic Authenticity Podcast with Jolynne Rydz
Welcome to the Magnetic Authenticity Podcast with Jolynne Rydz, where we elevate your leadership impact by embracing your true self. If you're ready to harness your strengths, level up your confidence and influence so you can make a bigger difference in this world, then you're in the right place.
Magnetic Authenticity Podcast with Jolynne Rydz
14: Upskilling for Tomorrow: Why Mindset Matters More Than Skill
Comments, questions? Let's connect!
Join us for a thought-provoking exploration of the links between corporate learning, employee development, and the critical need for mindset over mere skills. As the corporate landscape evolves, organisations are faced with the daunting task of bridging skills gaps while nurturing a transformative mindset in their workforce. With investment in corporate learning reaching $361.5 billion in 2023 and projected to soar even higher, it is imperative that organisations rethink their strategies.
This episode tackles pressing questions regarding leadership development allocation and highlights a staggering disconnect found in many organisations: while there is widespread recognition of the importance of upskilling, less than 16% feel adequately prepared to meet impending skills gaps. Tune in as we delve into why mindset is paramount and explore actionable ways organisations can shift their focus from skill training to fostering self-awareness, a thirst for learning, and adaptability among their teams.
Engage with our insights to uncover how nurturing the right mindset can revolutionise not only employee performance but also enhance organisational success. If you're determined to unlock the full potential of your workforce, don’t miss the opportunity to connect with us through our strategy session. Subscribe, share, and leave a review to join the conversation and lead the charge for dynamic change in the world of corporate learning.
💖Love the podcast?💖
You can pay it forward by:
- Rating and Reviewing wherever you listen
- Sharing it with others!
Ready to level up your impact?
➡️Book a complimentary mini-strategy session and I'll help unpack one of your current challenges
➡️Join our Masterclass Waitlist and get practical tools to level up your impact
Let's connect!
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jolynne-rydz/
https://www.instagram.com/jolynnerydz/
https://www.facebook.com/brillianceinspired
I am a Confidence and Success Coach for leaders, Organisational Development Consultant and independent Leadership Circle Profile® Certified Practitioner. Information shared about this tool is courtesy of Leadership Circle®, all rights reserved. www.leadershipcircle.com
$361.5 billion that's the amount that Allied Marketing Research has estimated in 2023 was the spend for corporate learning and development. So the way we upskill our people in our organizations, and that's projected to reach $805 billion over the next 10 years. So that's a lot of investment and, while that's really amazing that we are investing in our people this way, because there's so much change and transformation coming at us over the next decade, for many reasons it is critical that we are uplifting our people, not just for the skills they need to do their jobs well now, but just for the skills they need to do their jobs well now, but also the skills that they need and the mindsets they need to do their jobs well in the future as well. It does take so much resourcing to recruit someone into an organization that has the right skill, and it's becoming more and more critical that we need to actually retain the people that have this wonderful corporate and organizational knowledge and keep them up to date and fresh with what we need their jobs to evolve into over the coming years and as individuals. It's critical that you understand that the skills that you got three, five, 10 years ago, 15, 20 years ago sometimes are becoming not redundant but outdated, and there's opportunity to learn and shift and add to your toolkit so that you can stay as relevant as you can as our world changes and the way we do our work changes. So what's a little bit scary about this $361 billion figure is that McKinsey did some research and they found that 90% of organizations feel that they have a real kind of critical skills gap approaching them very shortly, over the next few years. Yet only 16% of them feel prepared to meet those gaps. That's a massive hole that as leaders, as individuals, as HR practitioners, we need to be filling, because that is what's going to keep us ahead of the game. That is what's going to keep our people actually reaching their full potential and making the wonderful difference that we're all here to make.
Speaker 1:Now the problem is, as I've seen it across many organizations, is that we have some organizations, depending on your size, will have a HR team. Some don't even have that. But where we do, we might have a budget for learning and development, and often it's limited and often in hard times, it's the first thing to get cut, and that is a very short-sighted thing to do, because the moment you cut someone's ability to keep investing and growing in themselves, you're going to stagnate their skills and capabilities. So a bit like if we look at finance and inflation, right, If we just hold on to cash like wads of cash and hide it in our mattress, we know that the prices of things inflate around us so that $500 we've got hidden in the mattress that might buy us, I don't know, let's say, a Apple, iwatch. I don't know, I actually don't know how much they cost these days, but let's say it buys that us today. In five, 10 years time it's not going to get us that. The price of that would have maybe doubled. So the principle is the same for skills.
Speaker 1:If we stagnate the skills of a workforce because we feel that there's other priorities in the business and often they are there's the hard decisions we need to make as a leader, right what we can do by accident is actually stagnate the skills of that workforce, and that's why investment in learning and development is critical. But it needs to be a smart investment and that's increasingly becoming more and more difficult because of this environment that we're working in, because there's so much change and growth To keep pace of all the capabilities and skills that you need now and also into the future. It's like a multiple person, full-time job to keep across that and really make it relevant to the organization where it's heading. And in 2023,. A training industry report averaged that the spend of each employee for learning and development is $1,200. So if every employee had $1,200 to get the skills they need now and get them ready for what's coming over the next two years, it's not much.
Speaker 1:And it's not much when we spread that over things like our compliance training, which is important, but it's also one part of training in a bucket of things. When we spread it over the technical training to do the skill, the skills needed, specific for that job, and when we spread it over some more generalized core skills like conflict resolution, communication and then, more broadly, the leadership bucket. We have teams out there trying to do the best, absolute best they can with the limited budget they have, but there's too many, the buffet is too big. Can with the limited budget they have, but there's too many, the buffet is too big. So what I'm here to propose is that mindset matters more than skill, because you can go out there and allocate all of this money and support and resourcing and time that it takes to put these programs on in organizations, to select them, to curate them, then to get people to attend and then to get them using that. That is so much effort and resourcing that goes into that, and I just think we've got the mix wrong.
Speaker 1:So, if mindset matters more than skill, what's happening currently is that only 12% of our budgets across the globe are allocated to leadership. Yeah, the rest of it gets allocated to all those other things like the compliance, the technical core skills, right, 12 percent gets allocated to leadership, of which some of that leadership development is about mindset. So if you kind of do the mental math on that, that means only this tiny proportion of people, because not everyone gets access to that leadership training because they're not in a formal leadership role or are not identified as a high potential person. There's this whole majority of our workforce that don't have access to critical training and development around mindset, and mindset matters more than skill because it's the very thing that enables us to learn. It's the very thing that helps us through those tough times. It's the very thing that helps us to grow when the world around us is changing and gives us some certainty and control over where we will end up when we focus on our mindset.
Speaker 1:And the other challenge is that mindset only more recently is getting taught in our schools. Right, it's always been very much skills first, and then maybe mindset as a secondary thing, and only now is it really getting integrated into the learning of our children. So the next upcoming workforce yeah, they might be okay with this, but our current existing workforce we have to acknowledge that mindset has never really been something that you've had access to developing unless you're privileged enough to go and do that development yourself, or you've had access to developing unless you're privileged enough to go and do that development yourself, or you've had that own personal drive to go and do that development yourself. And there's only certain people in that world which would A have the right environment and the right thinking and support to even think that's a possibility, or even to realize that that's a benefit for them, and then to have the resources to go and do that. So mindset matters more than skill and for learning and development and people and capability, teams and leaders.
Speaker 1:Even when we try and offer this buffet of topics, I hope you're agreeing with me that we're spreading ourselves thin. It means that the content that we can offer to people has less impact. It's probably less appealing because we have to be realistic about the budgets that we have, and I get it. I've worked in organizations where we've developed capability frameworks and I think they're great, they're really important, but I think they're one step too soon if we haven't got the core mindset in place, because teams, people and capability teams are out there doing these capability frameworks, trying to work on the culture, trying to work on their people strategy and trying to move all these needles at once with all these different initiatives, and what can happen is, when we put the pressure on spreading ourselves thin across this, we can lack integration, the teams can become overworked. We can then fall into the trap of ticking the box like, oh, we've got to get this performance development program up and running over, let's get it as meaningful as possible and pare back on maybe the nice-to-haves that aren't going to shift the needle as much as our culture work and building a trust in our organizations.
Speaker 1:So what's missing is this time and capability to look at the root cause, what's sitting underneath the need to develop all of these different capabilities? Yeah, because this capability framework is usually a list of capabilities or skills that people need in the current job and in future and that there's a gap often that the teams are trying to fill. So if there's a gap, there's a piece that comes before that as to why are there so many gaps. Because I've often these frameworks are really big documents. Usually there's, you know, I've seen six is a good amount, but I've seen, like way, ones that go up to 30, 40, 50 capabilities that we're needing to identify and develop across a workforce.
Speaker 1:So what's missing is that clarity and coming back to root cause, because, at the end of the day, organizations are made up of individuals and if we're going to develop our workforce, we have to start at the individual, and that's where mindset matters more than skill. So, if mindset matters more than skill, what we've been doing is spending on the skill. It's like a toddler, right, we can show up at dinner time and try and force feed them the vegetables, because we know the science behind vegetables and it's great for our bodies, right, and those that love it will eat it. And those that are obedient and have been trained to be obedient will eat it, but others won't. And so then we worry about this gap in nutrition for our kids, but instead, instead of going, you need to eat this because it's good for you what we need to focus on, and doing that every, every meal and doing that every time.
Speaker 1:We deliver learning into the workforce when we instead activate the individual by developing their mindset, by developing the way that they think, the way that they think, the way that their beliefs, their motivational drive, when we create this fertile ground for transformational learning. Where they want it, they see the value of it, they're hungry for it. That is where you can unlock the potential and the performance of your workforce. So mindset matters more than skill, because it's the inner game. It brings all of someone rather than just their knowledge. And when we fall into the trap of just delivering knowledge in our learning programs, we are activating just the mind, the logical brain, and we're losing out on all the wisdom that comes from the rest of our instincts, our bodies, and it doesn't necessarily translate into action without the skill and the drive to put it into practice, the ability to experiment and the confidence to do that, to see what works for each individual, to adapt and to expand and then to go on and broaden your own toolkit. That's the thing that we need to be developing.
Speaker 1:Many years ago I was looking after an emerging leaders program and it's honestly one of the most amazing things that I've been able to be a part of during my career, because we had some, let's say, skill development in there for our emerging leaders. We taught the common things, that principles of leadership and tools that you can use. So that part of the program was maybe nothing fancy, but what made this program something that even to this day, a decade on, I still have people when we catch up talking to me about oh I remember this moment when you did this, or I remember this activity that we did, or I remember the way that we felt in this moment and that has shaped the way that I lead my teams from here on in. It's fundamentally shifted the way I think about leadership. It's actually changed my life. Like these are comments that I still get and I truly believe it's because of our focus.
Speaker 1:We put on development over the learning, so developing that mindset, that thought, the beliefs, the drivers over the learning of the content, because anyone can teach you content. But the difference is how are you developing the people alongside that? And I think along the way we've lost that balance. It's in the name, right, learning and development, but we've put so much effort onto learning content that we've forgotten the impact and the power and the importance of the development piece, and I get why we've forgotten it, or maybe we haven't forgotten. I get why it's maybe not prioritized is because it's seen as this hard thing to do, like how do you change people's mindsets, their thoughts and their beliefs and their drivers? Isn't that an incredibly personal thing? Yeah, it is incredibly personal, but there are ways that you can. I just hit the table because I was so passionately talking right. There are ways that you can I just hit the table because I was so passionately talking, right. There are ways that you can shift multiple individuals at once in a room together, and that doesn't have to be face-to-face, it can be virtual. There are ways that you can shift the individual on mass scale, and that's something that I love doing in my programs.
Speaker 1:In 2013, there was an article in Advances in Developing Human Resources called Mindset, not Skillset Evaluating a New Paradigm of Leadership Development, and these group of researchers were exploring how leadership is evolving and the development of our leaders is evolving merely from giving them discrete skills and tools that they need to manage their teams to addressing the underlying mindsets that they have that then impact on the results that their teams get and how. We should be focusing on mindset more than ever in the way that we measure and develop our leaders. And I'm saying that we need to be doing this beyond our leaders, because that's what's causing the problems. Right, if we invest in mindset in our leaders, it's really hard for someone without the training and how to shift this human behavior so I'm talking your average everyday leader to do that deep work where you can transition someone's mental drivers and their behaviors and their motivation. It's really hard for someone to do that with their own team. It takes a lot of training and skill to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:So why are we? We're getting our leaders ready with the right mindsets but we're forgetting about the main population of our workforce. If we resolved this in our workforces, you wouldn't have to put on things like anti-bullying training or conflict resolution, because people would naturally be able to do that or be owning the skill and the ability and the desire to create an environment where those things don't even occur. I'll let that sink in for a moment. Like there are so many training topics that we deliver that are the band-aid solution, because we're not addressing the root cause. We're not investing in the development of mindset over skill for the general workforce.
Speaker 1:So you're probably wondering if mindset matters more than skill, then what is it that we should be focusing on? What should we be developing? So I'd love to share three things that I think if every organization just pared back on the spend that they're putting into all of these topics and focused on developing these mindsets and their ultimately values personal values when you can develop that in your workforce, you're not just relying on recruiting the people that already have this. You're actually creating this wonderful ripple effect and shift in our society of people that are desperate for these skills but don't realize that that's what they need. Like these are skills that can help you beyond the workforce. Like not only can they unlock your potential in your job, it can actually impact your well-being and your outlook on life and your ability to cope and thrive in all aspects of your life. So what a wonderful gift it is if we can do that, and it's simply by reprioritizing. Instead of focusing on so much on the anti-bullying because that's a risk, a risk spend right. We're trying to manage our risk and mitigate our risk. Yeah, I'm saying, spend there, but don't spend as much there. Spend more on the things that are going to unlock the potential, which is the mindset.
Speaker 1:So what's the first one? The first one is self-awareness. If you've heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect, you may and you've probably experienced right. It's where you can see in people that they think they're really good at something but they're actually not, because we have this bias in our brains to overestimate our own abilities. And when that happens in a place where let's say, oh, I actually think I'm fantastic at self-awareness, and then the people around that person are saying, no, they have no idea, that gap is the gap that we want to close. So the moment and a beautiful leader who I admire greatly once said this to me which is the moment that you think you have got it all in terms of self-awareness, you're doing yourself and your team a disservice, because it's actually not possible I had a conversation with someone about this the other day that if we assume that we are fully self-aware, we are ignoring the fact that people perceive us through their own lens. People perceive us through their own lens, so they bring their own filters of beliefs about what your intent might be when you do something. They bring their own experiences and knowledge and evidence-based, and they attach a meaning to what you do. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1:I laugh a lot, right? I'm a very joyful person. I laugh a lot, and sometimes I laugh inappropriately and I'm aware of that, and it's something that I'm working on. Often, I'm either laughing because I find things amusing Sometimes it's a coping mechanism I'm like I could just crumble into a heap and give up or I can just laugh it off and go. Well, you know that's how it is. And sometimes it's because I'm nervous. I might laugh, but someone else, through their own lens, might see my laughing in a different way. They might think that I am having a go at them. They might have been picked on as a child and think I'm laughing at them. They might think I'm incredibly unprofessional laughing and giggling because they've come from a place where that you're not allowed to laugh in the workplace.
Speaker 1:So we perceive others through our own lens. So what that means is we can never, ever fully understand everyone's lenses. We can get pretty good at managing to see some of it, and I'm saying that it takes a lot of freaking work and training to get to that point right, but for most of us. We can imagine what someone's lens might be. We can see maybe their glasses are rose-colored or yellow or orange or green, but we can never know for sure all of the different multifaceted layers that they see us through, which means we can never be fully self-aware. Which means it's something that we should be continuously working on, because when we have that self-awareness, there's this ripple impact of how we show up. We are no longer subject to people getting frustrated with getting blamed for something when we're not taking our part in that situation. I see this so much. It's's one of the biggest causes of things like performance issues, of relationship issues, where teammates aren't getting along or where a direct report might think they're being bullied by a manager and then the manager thinking that direct report just has absolutely no respect for them. It comes down to self-awareness on everyone's part. So if we can continually grow this, and in every piece of learning and development we do, we build in self-awareness. That is critical to unleashing the power of mindset, mattering more than skill.
Speaker 1:So the second thing we should be focusing on is this thirst for learning. I know there are an incredible number of very talented people working in the people and capability space in the learning and development space, sick and tired of pushing out learning that doesn't get used. We know there's the serial learners that will take everything and that's great, and they learn it all and they implement it, and that's exactly what we want. But it means that the money that we're spending that $1,200 per person ends up being thousands of dollars for a few people and nothing for others, because they're not engaging in the learning, they don't have time to do it, they're not supported to do it, they don't want to do it, they feel like they already have what they need. So there's so many different reasons why this thirst for learning can be absent. But when we can generate that thirst for learning both in the individual, so they start to value it and they start to see what's in it for them. They start to see that it's critical for them doing the job the best they can. They see that it's critical for them to have a reputation where they're great at what they do and they're continuing to grow, that it's critical for them to stay relevant, regardless of the changes that get thrown over to them over the next decade or so. When someone sees it as critical and vital and important, they will want to learn and you need that for the learning to happen.
Speaker 1:And it's one thing that I'm incredibly blessed that I got from my very early childhood schooling I went to a Montessori school and that is all about mindset over skill. It's about developing the thirst for learning. Yeah, everyone in that school that I can think of wanted to learn. And the kids that came to our school because they got expelled for all sorts of behavioral reasons from their prior school would completely shift in our Montessori school because we developed the thirst for learning for them. And I say we because it very much was a joint learning environment with the students and the educators. It wasn't this hierarchical teacher to student. So generating the thirst for learning is something I'm incredibly passionate about and have done my whole life, and it's something that is possible to generate. You just have to know how to link it for the individual.
Speaker 1:And then the third piece is adaptability. How many times have you experienced that maybe you come in as a leader and you want to make these shifts and you can see what's wrong and you can see what needs to change, but people dig their heels in and don't want to come along with you. They want to hang on to the way they've done it and they want to. Yeah, they don't understand why the way you're pitching is not the best way forward. I've seen this scenario happen time and time again with clients or organizations that I've been working with, where the strategy, in a lot of cases, is sound the change that needs to happen. The change that needs to happen is a change that needs to happen.
Speaker 1:But what isn't acknowledged is where people are at, where they've come from, what their experience has been to date and what needs to shift for those individuals to be free and able to come along with you willingly, because you can force them to change. But anytime you're forcing someone, it becomes a contractual relationship. It basically is the opposite of engagement. If someone is there by force or obligation, then they're not engaged wholeheartedly in what it is you're trying to achieve. So this resistance to come along with you on a journey or a shift, I love because it shows that people do care. It shows that they do want things to be a certain way, whether that's because they think it works better, or whether that's because it's safe for them and that's all that they know, or whether it's that they just have experienced so much change before that they'll wait and see. So they want to wait and see what happens before they invest their time and energy, their passion and their soul into something that may run out of steam.
Speaker 1:So, if mindset matters more than skill, the third thing that we can be focusing on is building adaptability and, specifically, the ability to let go. So there's a skill, whether you're a leader or whether you're working with an entire organization in helping people to let go. You need to recognize where they're at and give them the tools and the permission and the space to even recognize where they are and that they are resisting, and give them the option to come along. Give them the choice and making that choice so incredibly wonderful that they do want to come along with you. So when we have these three things self-awareness, a thirst for learning and adaptability I hope that you can see that if everyone in your team, in your organization, had these three things, so many problems, so many things that we train for and give development on, would fall away.
Speaker 1:So you wouldn't need to get in there and be dealing with spot fires and interpersonal relationship issues and needing to really dig in and drive people's learning and performance, because they would be doing it themselves. They would be wanting to realize what's the best thing for them to be working on. They will be wanting to realize okay, now that I know that I have this gap, these are the cool things that I reckon would be great for me to try to fill that gap, and I'm open to hearing from you what you think as well. That gap and I'm open to hearing from you what you think as well and that ability to let go of what's been and feel acknowledged and valued and included on the journey forward is just a key part of any change management as well, no matter how big or small that might be. Whether it's something as simple as oh, we're going to change the way we use our emails versus Microsoft Teams chat to something really big, like we're, we're restructuring our whole organization and the way teams report into each other and the way we work.
Speaker 1:So if you have self-awareness, a thirst for learning and adaptability, everything becomes so much easier.
Speaker 1:So if you are a leader looking to build this in yourself, or maybe your team, or maybe you are a HR leader looking to really amplify this and connect this across the organization, I would love to connect with you so you can book in a 30-minute strategy session where we dive into what are the challenges you're facing right now, what is the one thing that you want to achieve, and then what's the first step that you can take to move things forward.
Speaker 1:So I do that to understand what it is that you're wanting to achieve and also to show you the way that I would approach that, and from there you can decide whether you've got what you need. You can take that and run with it, or you might want to work further, and then we can go through some options there. So there'll be no selling on that section. It's literally a strategy call for you to go away with clarity on your next step if you're looking to build self-awareness, a thirst for learning and adaptability. So, once again, I trust that you found that useful. Remember, you were born for a reason it's time to thrive.