Leadership in Business: Effective Management with Growing Minds

The word leader is the word that excites me the most in this life and gives me great meaning. I think I would be honest enough if I said that the main reason is that it comes from the great leader Atatürk. I grew up learning how a real leader can transform a whole society. And that is why leadership has become not just a title for me; it has become a responsibility, a journey and a matter of character.

"If what you do inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and be more, you are a leader." -Simon Sinek

I was deemed worthy of the leadership position in the 4th year of my career and at the age of 25. I can say that it was the most exciting and happiest time of my life. The reason I was so excited and happy was that, in addition to loving the word leader and its meaning, I was also learning how to use my ambitions and determination correctly. I say a positive development because if you have an ambitious and determined character, you do not suddenly learn how to use these traits correctly with the touch of a magic wand. It really is learned with time and effort, on your journey. Before receiving this award, I had made it a habit to work hard and be proactive, then I can say that the position came as a surprise. I was the youngest in the team of 15 people and there was no usual promotion system in the company. Naturally, I did not think that such a thing would happen in the near future and I worked without thinking about it. Because I believed that the product I sold really benefited my customers. This always led me to strive to be more successful.

Before the position, I participated in an assessment study and my leadership qualities and aspects that needed to be developed were determined in line with this study. Frankly, I thought that this study was generally conducted for those who moved to leadership and higher positions in companies. The study included different concepts such as role play, case solution and interview. I was very excited before my participation and our company's human resources department said that this study was for my development and my promotion would not be affected by this study.

After the study, I received my promotion and the intermediary company that conducted the study held an analysis meeting with me. The point that I needed to improve the most from the results of the meeting was that I was taking on too much responsibility while I needed to distribute the work to my team more as a leader.

In line with this result, I was told that the company would include me in training programs and that my development process as a leader would be planned. Of course, nothing of the sort was done… But I am saying this seriously, even the fact that this assessment study was conducted was a miracle.

The fact that our way of doing business; our good, bad and features that need to be developed are evaluated impartially and professionally is a great start. Because awareness is an important stage of change.

Afterwards, I have never encountered such a process in the companies I provided project-based consultancy to and among my colleagues in my circle. People who did their time, put in enough effort or were deemed worthy in some way were brought to leadership positions and managed a team without any tests or training.

How much do you train your leaders?

I will give an example from one of the companies I previously provided consultancy for. When I start working full-time or on a project basis, I ask a lot of questions, ask a lot of people, and listen well. I mentioned on this subject in my article titled “Salespeople Ask Questions”. As a salesperson, asking questions is my priority, and this is a stereotyped behavior that I have sometimes done willingly and sometimes unwillingly in many parts of my life. There was someone in the company I mentioned, who worked in a senior position and who went through all the important legal processes of the job. This person was in a state of burnout that I witnessed during my onboarding process, and she had an incredibly negative energy that affected everyone who worked under her and our other teammates who shared the same room in the office. Because of this energy, I never asked her any questions or requested any information from her. But one day, the boss (I won’t call him the founder, I will call him the boss, I don’t like this word at all, but this guy was a total boss) told me to ask this person I was talking about a subject and learn from her. The conversation went exactly like this: “Can I ask you a question?” “No, you can’t ask Nil, I have a lot of work right now.” I hope I was able to make you feel the harshness of the tone of this answer.

My position in the company I mentioned was director and I was older than the individual I mentioned. We can call it disrespect or depression, but I call this situation a lack of education. The mistake the company made was that they brought this individual to that position without measuring her leadership qualities and then training her. Did the individual make a mistake? I don’t think so. Because if you want to improve yourself, you can. This is a choice, and if you don’t know that you have to do this, how are you going to improve yourself? Especially when you are very busy…

The situation I have seen in about 10 companies I have worked for and provided consultancy to in Turkey was the same, except for 1-2. Promotions given to people who think they deserve it, and the subsequent loss of motivation and new problems that arise… The leaders inspire, pioneer, apologize when they make a mistake, always work for the better and never hesitate to share their position.

If I go back to my own story that I mentioned at the beginning of my article, the company did not provide me with training after my promotion and I continued my journey of learning by reading as I always do. I am sure that if I had received customized training, I would have been much more successful in many categories without getting tired and quickly, but I have a beautiful success story where I learned and applied it according to the feedback I received.

A Leadership Lesson from Simon Sinek

I applied a tactic from the book “Leaders Eat Last” that I was reading at the time to my team. This tactic was about ensuring people’s involvement. In other words, you give your team members more responsibility than they have and important responsibilities, and then you watch how they become more successful, happy and motivated. And despite working harder…

We prepared a new employee orientation program where we ensured people’s involvement. If I were to briefly talk about the program, this really useful product that we sold was a web-based pre-accounting program and we had to adapt our new team members to our product and processes in many ways. Our new director asked me to shorten the 3-month orientation process, which was prepared by the previous managers and implemented very successfully and yielded good results, to 2 months. This request was a great opportunity for me to apply the new tactic I learned from Simon Sinek.

In order to shorten our orientation process to two months, we sat down with two friends from my team and re-planned all our training and development activities. In the new program we planned, we gave a task to each member of our 15-person team that I mentioned. Some became a teacher who taught the application, some became a manager who explained how to use our CRM program…

One of the 4 friends we hired within the scope of our new orientation process doubled his target in just the second month and became the team's highest bonus recipient, and believe me, everyone was proud of him. Because since the entire team took part in the process, this success was also their success and they knew it very well, there was no need to even talk about it.

Training and Development in Leadership

Your team members, whom you have promoted with great motivation, are turning into people who act superior, claim to know everything, and cannot convey valuable knowledge even if they have it. What is the solution? Analysis, training, and development.

McKinsey's 2023 'State of Organizations' report shows that even 40% of leaders placed in the right position need additional development to meet expectations.* This rate shows how important the issue which I am talking about.

Conditions change every day and companies learn and develop more. In my opinion, this issue has started to gain importance in large-scale companies. At the Brick Institute, where I work as a business development team leader, institutions frequently come to us with requests for training specifically designed for their leaders. In line with these requests, our training design experts design development journeys for leaders working in different fields, and we accompany them to become inspiring leaders who contribute more to their teams.

The companies I provided consultancy to were generally small-scale and had neither a planned orientation process as I mentioned, nor training activities for their leaders or employees… In my opinion, all companies, regardless of size, should plan training and development processes that add value to individuals throughout their employees’ journey from the beginning of their employment to the end of their employment. This is a very important issue for the development of both individuals and companies. The research studies conducted also support this idea. High-performing leaders create five times more stakeholder value than average managers.*

The “mindset” theory, which I came across in psychologist Dr. Carol S. Dweck’s book “Mindset”, reveals how the beliefs individuals have during their learning and development processes affect their motivation and success. While individuals with a fixed mindset see their talents as innate and unchangeable; Those with a growth mindset believe that they can develop their talents through effort and learning.

A fixed mindset can be seen in individuals we promote to leadership positions without measuring or training. The book I mentioned explains very well that it is possible to change this. In other words, we can transform our leaders or any of our employees from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset.

• “Mistakes are failures.” → “Mistakes are learning opportunities.”

• “I should avoid challenges.” → “Challenges are my areas of development.”

• “If I can’t do something right away, it means I don’t have the talent.” → “If I can’t do it yet, it means I’m learning.”

• “Criticism is personal.” → “Feedback is a tool for my development.”

• “Effort is a sign of weakness.” → “Effort is the path to mastery.”

• “Talent is fixed.” → “Talent can be developed.”

• “Others’ success threatens me.” → “Others’ success inspires me.”

• “I have to prove my intelligence.” → “I can improve my intelligence.”

My final word is that learning is a lifelong journey and transformation is possible at every stage of life…