Like it or not, your IMBAR impacts your team. Your Identity, Mindset, and Behaviors create the Actions and Results that the team produces. You can see it. You can feel it every day. And by knowing this, you have a tremendous opportunity to do something really amazing with it.
Their IMBAR is a direct reflection of your own IMBAR. Like a mirror in which you come face-to-face with yourself, your team’s Identity, Mindset, and Behaviors are really your own.
So how do you create something amazing?
Start by looking and listening for its evidence. Look for it in their language, behaviors, and results. It is right there for you to see and hear. Look for how the individuals refer to themselves and their group as a whole. Are they proud? Are they excited? Do they demonstrate a bravado built on success and positive momentum? Are they fired up to share their wins? If so, you can see the reflection of your own Identity and Mindset. If not, you can see the same.
If it is unclear how they are thinking and feeling, you may be in dangerous territory. Leading a team, you don’t connect with at this level provides many risks. Not knowing what they are proud of sets forth a culture of disconnect. This disconnect produces feelings of apathy, non-engagement, grudging compliance, or worse.
Regularly ask for feedback. Conducting confidential surveys of how they see you, the organization and their own team is a great way to gather data that can point you in the right direction. Be careful to avoid the blame game with the results, however. Look at the data as evidence of your own Identity, Mindset, and Behaviors. Keeping your reactions intellectual versus emotional gives you a tremendous opportunity to really learn and grow.
Lastly, craft a team IMBAR. Collaborate with the team to help them define their own Identity, Mindset, Behavior, Actions, and Results. Help them see who they are and design who they want to become. This exercise can create engagement, alignment, accountability, purpose, and fabulous results. Once fully built, this IMBAR can be a source of pride that your team can use as their compass along their professional journeys.
As executives, we have tremendous responsibilities. Beyond any balance sheet, we are responsible for the teams we lead. Our results are important, certainly, but with that comes the overall welfare of those who work alongside us to deliver those results. Establishing a clear and compelling purpose, crafting a strong Identity and Mindset aligned with that purpose, and defining the specific Behaviors to deliver it is paramount in responsibly leading any sustainably successful team.