Transform Your Mindset, Transform Your Results
Clarifying your purpose can help you avoid a JDTM (Just Doing the Minimum approach to work.
By Rodger Dean Duncan
A balancing act faced by many leaders involves transactional and transformational leadership. It’s a balancing act worthy of effort.
Many leaders have an abundance of good transactional skills. What they often need is more transformational skills—the ability to create a psychological case for action as well as a technical and business case for action.
So, what’s the difference?
A transactional leader focuses on routine and regimented activities. He invests most of his energy in making sure meetings run on time, that administrative details are properly handled, and that completed tasks are noted on checklists. A transformational leader focuses primarily on initiating and “managing” change. He influences people to improve, to stretch, and to redefine what’s possible.
Transactional things involve making sure the train runs on time. Transformational things involve ensuring that the train is on the right track, that it’s headed in the right direction, and that everyone who wants to make the trip has a ticket.
All that may sound like academic gobbledygook. But in the real world of real work, it matters.
Business strategist Hugh Blane lends helpful perspective to the topic. His book is 7 Principles of Transformational Leadership: Create a Mindset of Passion, Innovation, and Growth.
Rodger Dean Duncan: You write about a mindset you call JDTM—Just Doing the Minimum. What contributes to that perspective among individual workers and in a workplace culture?
Hugh Blane: The number one contributor is lack of purpose. For employees or leaders to engage in doing their very best work they must have fallen in love with a hope, dream or aspiration that, when done well, creates value for customers. When they do, they are more enthusiastic, exert more energy, and are vastly more persistent in overcoming obstacles and breaking down barriers to underperformance. These are the employees who are running to work in the morning because of the contribution they want to make.
There are also employees who are running from work at the end of the day. They run from work because they are not passionate about their work, so the demands of their job become a burden. These employees don’t have a purpose that’s compelling so they do only enough work to keep their jobs and not get fired. But, there is no fire in the belly and they are simply going through the motions of work.
Duncan: What are a leader’s most productive tools in combating a JDTM mindset?
Blane: Leaders must have a leadership purpose that is noble, uplifting and that enables employee flourishing. This eradicates the JDTM mindset and converts an employee’s mindset away from accepting the minimum to encouraging the maximum.
Duncan: Many people simply feel overwhelmed in the workplace. What contributes to that and what can leaders do to help relieve the pressure without compromising productivity?
Blane: There are three contributors to feeling overwhelmed. A negative mindset, an indifferent heartset, and a poor skillset. A negative mindset says “this isn’t fair,” an indifferent heartset says “I’m really not committed to my company and my work,” and a poor skillset says “I don’t know how to do this.” When all three are present the likelihood of feeling overwhelmed is guaranteed.
