Behavioral Training: Growth Mindset for Innovation and Leadership

Behavioral training is emerging as the best way to teach someone how to develop the courage to step out from the pack and assume a leadership position, according to Carol Dweck, author of the New York Times Best Seller Growth Mindset.

Innovators introduce new ideas, practices and products.

Their ideas are unfamiliar to us, they change the way we see things and open us up to unconsidered and more effective ways of approaching challenges and solving problems.

Innovators pilot digital transformation projects.  Leaders determine the overarching mission and direction of the organization.

Both are willing to take risks and challenge the status quo for sake of what could and should be.

That's tough to do. It requires guts.

Particularly at big organizations that have been doing things the same way for decades.

So innovation is really just another form of leadership, and behavioral training is one of the best to learn to rise to the challenge.

Savvy change managers use behavioral training teach others how to step out from the group and implement digital transformations.

Behavioral Training for Innovators

Dreaming about new ideas doesn't make you an innovator or a leader.

You need the courage to act on your ideas, usually in the absence of complete certainty, because if you wait for someone else to prove you were right, you're no longer a leader. You're a follower.

So innovators, people who introduce new ideas, and leaders, people who act first on new ideas, are very much the same.

But how do you teach courage? You could do it intellectually in the classroom, but does that really change behavior?

The answer is through behavioral training and performance management techniques that show people challenges are a chance for growth, and effort matters more than talent.

Remember, “just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training,” writes Carol Dweck in her book Growth Mindset.