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As a trait first measured by social psychologists in the ’50s, open-mindedness has not been studied in relation to leadership effectiveness. Here are the key characteristics of open-mindedness and how it can be cultivated by organizational leaders.
What does “open-minded” mean in organizational life?
Open-mindedness means being receptive to new ideas and new information. In organizational life, it has several dimensions:
- An openness to internally generated inspiration or innovation (creative dimension)
- An openness to the ideas of others in the organization (collaborative or team dimension)
- An openness to new trends and needs evident in customers and markets (external sensing dimension)
How to develop open-mindedness
- Are you able to admit you’re wrong? Dissect recent disagreements to examine whether you were appropriately defending your position or shutting out others’ opinions and important observations.
- Can you describe instances where you, as a leader, changed your mind on a fundamental organizational issue?
- Are there key people in your organization whom you turn to because they will give you the “unvarnished truth?”
- Can you describe a time when your team took your initial point of view or decision, reworked it, and came out with a better decision? How did you respond?
- As a leader, do you promote or hinder open-mindedness as part of the culture? As the CEO you can elevate the importance of open-mindedness as both a value and a behavior.
Open-mindedness is foundational to both good decision-making and organization-wide engagement.
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GE is currently one of the largest companies trying to modernize their annual reviews to maximize employee motivation and align their goals with FastWorks, the company’s initiative for lean and nimble workflow.
How to Modernize the Performance Review
- Create a platform for continual assessment. GE managers and employees check in throughout the year, and use a mobile app to provide each other praise and constructive messages.
- Reward progress, not just being right. Following their initiative to create room for innovation in the company, GE rewards employees for asking questions and learning rather than simply rewarding them for being right.
- Give rewards throughout the year.
- Meet for a brief annual summary. In addition to frequent check-ins, managers are encouraged to meet with employees for an annual summary to talk about the feedback they have received throughout the year.
- Don’t limit employees to a label. Instead of rating employees in five categories ranging from “role model” to “unsatisfactory,” GE managers use the information to look at the bigger picture and evaluate the employee on different capacities such as customer service, problem-solving skills, and improvement throughout the year.
Takeaway: Provide employees with continuous feedback and reward learning processes and progress to foster adaptability and innovation.
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Take the quiz to find out if you are a challenger or defender.
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The longer I teach (I’m now in my 32nd year) the more I’m convinced that the best thing we can do for our students is help them learn to think for themselves. That’s why I recommend talking to students on the first day of class about critical thinking. What is it? Why is it important? How can they learn to do it?
Critical thinking, as the term suggests, has two components. The first is thinking — applying your brain to the issues at hand, disciplining yourself to grapple with difficult concepts for as long as necessary in order to comprehend and internalize them.
Actual thinking requires deep and protracted exposure to the subject matter — through close reading, for example, or observation. It entails collecting, examining, and evaluating evidence, and then questioning assumptions, making connections, formulating hypotheses, and testing them. It culminates in clear, concise, detailed, and well-reasoned arguments that go beyond theory to practical application.
The second component of critical thinking is the critical part. To be “critical” means to be objective, or as objective as humanly possible. Understanding that we’re not objective, by nature, and striving mightily to be objective, anyway, is about as good as most of us can do. To be critical also means to be analytical, to be able to look at a problem or question and break it down into its component parts. Finally to be critical means to be dispassionate, to be able to separate your emotions from the situation at hand.
What better place than in a college classroom, where you’re exposed to all kinds of ideas and information, including some you don’t like?
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