marilyn king manage your mindset with olympian thinking

THE LINKAGE LEADER

Copyright © 2009 Marilyn King. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

www.linkageinc.com

Manage your Mindset with Olympian ThinkingTM

By Marilyn King

Marilyn King is a two-time Olympian in the grueling five event Pentathlon (100 meter hurdles, shot put, high jump, long jump, 800 meters). Her 20-year athletic career includes five national titles and a World Record. An automobile accident in 1979 rendered her unable to train physically for her third Olympic Team. Using only mental training techniques she placed second at

the Olympic trials for the 1980 Moscow Games. This extraordinary experience launched her exploration into the field of exceptional human performance. Her discovery of the three elements that are always present when ordinary people do extraordinary things led to the development of Olympian Technology™. Through keynotes, training and consulting her techniques have been incorporated by businesses seeking to empower employees, embrace change and provide global leadership.

COPYRIGHT © 2009 MARILYN KING. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION.

"Are you waiting for things to return to normal in your organization? Sorry, Leadership will

require new skills tailored to an environment of urgency, high stakes, and uncertainty - even

after the current economic crisis is over."

Harvard Business Review, July-August 2009, Heifetz, Granshow, and Linsky

There may be no more important role on the planet at this time than effective leadership! When

change is happening so quickly and people are willing but unsure of what to do, moving

confidently into the unknown is a question of leadership. Our ability to shift from old ways of

thinking, doing, and being which are no longer viable; to engage new, as yet untested practices,

requires leaders to tell a compelling ‘story of now’ that makes meaning in the midst of chaos.

Then our organizations must provide the infrastructure to support people in the ongoing

identification of the highest level of strategic changes needed, and the means to shift quickly to

engage with the new story.

Change, Leadership: Our Current State

“The Business World is a place of constant change, with stories of mergers, layoffs, bankruptcy,

and restructuring appearing in the news every day. No matter the scale, when these kinds of

changes hit the workplace, the literal, situational shifts are often not as difficult for employees

and managers to work through as the psychological transitions that accompany them. Indeed,

organizational transitions affect people; it is always people who have to embrace a new situation

and carry out the corresponding change.” William Bridges, Managing Transitions, 2003.

It is clear that change is no longer episodic, it is continuous and it is not confined to a particular

area. Change is occurring in every arena and is impacted by changes occurring in seemingly

unrelated industries and parts of the world. To complicate matters even more, there is not just

one agreed upon reality, there are what I call “multiple, simultaneous, competing realities.” This

shift from manageable, episodic, contained change with a solid base of reality consensus, to

rapid, ongoing, systemic change and competing realities, leads to a high level of uncertainty,

anxiety and even fear. People do not know what the future will look like, they often feel out of

control, and they do not know what to do to be prepared to survive, much less thrive, in this

unknowable future.

When people are caught up in uncertainty, anxiety and fear, it is unlikely that their creativity

and effectiveness are operating at the level required for the organization to be successful in this

highly competitive, fast paced, constantly changing environment. It is important to understand

that under certain conditions, humans can be extremely adaptable and change very quickly.

Unfortunately, our traditional business environments tend to heighten the sense of anxiety and

fear in times of uncertainty rather than nurture creativity and adaptability.

Effective leadership can provide the critical success factor for the ongoing shifts required.

While leadership competency frameworks abound, the vast majority of the identified traits of

effective leaders are the same qualities required of good managers, good sales people and

people in general. Being a good listener, being open minded, and recognizing others are

important qualities for all people including our leaders. But the essential and critical

responsibility of leaders, especially at this time, is that of ‘making meaning’, managing mindset

and modeling the ability to ‘speedshift’.

MMAANNAAGGEE YYOOUURR MMIINNDDSSEETT WWIITTHH OOLLYYMMPPIIAANN TTHHIINNKKIINNGG™™

© 2009 MARILYN KING. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY PERMISSION. 3

Leading Through “high stakes and uncertainty”

Then how do we as leaders best move ourselves, the people we work with, and our

organizations through the white water of “high stakes and uncertainty” and make the high

leverage changes? When we too are challenged by information overload and where to focus our

attention, what are the new proven tools we can use to manage our mindsets and shift to the new

ways of being and doing? First, we need to better understand change, transition and mindset.

William Bridges, well known pioneer author and consultant on human and organizational

change, has made considerable contributions to our understanding of the change process.

Bridges identified that within all change experiences there are three phases:

1. Ending, Losing – “Letting go of the old ways and the old identity…”

2. The Transition or Neutral Zone – “…it’s when the critical psychological

realignments and repatternings take place.”

3. The New Beginning - Coming out of the transition and making a new

beginning…new identity, new energy, new sense of purpose.

While women tend to naturally address the larger context and make meaning to ease the anxiety

through these three phases, a process I call ‘Speedshifting’ is a very powerful mental practice

to engage during the Transition Phase. In this phase Bridges says, “ a significant shift takes

place within people –That shift comes from an inner repatterning and sorting process in which

old and no longer appropriate habits are discarded and newly appropriate patterns of thought

and action are developed.”

“They (People) need something they can see, at least in their imaginations. They need a picture

of how the outcome will look, and they need to be able to imagine how it will feel to be a

participant in it. This picture in people’s heads is the reality they live in…”

Mindset Awareness: The New Leadership Imperative

In 2007 Avastone Consulting conducted an important study of ten prominent corporations titled,

Leadership and the Corporate Sustainability Challenge: Mindsets in Action. As we all know the

embrace of effective, efficient sustainable business practices is essential, but managing mindset

is often the missing ingredient. The following excerpts from the Avastone study speak for

themselves.

From the Executive Summary, “Missing, however, is a key dimension of the conversation that

exists below the radar for most organizations. Few are focusing on the influence of patterns of

the mind, which shape our capacity to understand the world and allow us to take effective action

in support of it. Mindsets, the nature of their development, and the headway gained through the

expansion of consciousness, are often overlooked in the larger sustainability discussion.”

“The term mindsets refer to interior patterns of mind, or frames of reference, from which

individuals see sustainability and its importance. Two aspects driving mindset growth and

expansion are ‘horizontal development’ and ‘vertical development.’” While horizontal



development refers to expansion in capacities through increases in knowledge, skills, and

behaviors associated with a current mindset, vertical development is associated with capacity

shifts from an individual’s current way of meaning-making to a broader, more complex

mindset.”

“By these references to mindsets, we are referring to the potential of leaders, to the

transformation of mindsets, and to the transformation of perspectives that may rest at the heart

of large-scale sustainability gains.”

The Mindset of a Champion

My initial schooling in mindset management came through athletics. As an ordinary person with

slightly above average athletic ability I became an Olympic Pentathlete competing in five

events at the highest level on two Olympic teams. I succeeded because of my ability to manage

my mindset and speedshift, or literally learn on the run. In athletics I saw legions of highly

talented athletes who did not achieve their potential because of what and how they think. For

every Tiger Woods or Michael Phelps, there are thousands of physically gifted athletes who

never achieve their potential. Current research indicates that more than 80% of the people who

wake up on Monday morning do not want to go to work. If that mindset is prevalent in your

workforce, that is a recipe for organizational extinction.

Since retiring from athletics, and in my work with senior executives, I have been astonished at

how poorly equipped our organizations are to provide what is necessary to establish and

maintain key elements of a high performance mindset! While organizations may have been

successful in the past without effectively addressing the mindset within their organization, in the

future they will be left in the dust by organizations that effectively do. As leaders we will be

providing the essential elements for sustained high performance when we take responsibility to

‘make meaning’, identify what to change, and provide the means for how to change quickly as

ongoing core competencies.

Olympian Thinking: Your Gold Within Reach

While the awareness of the value of these capabilities is not new, how to do it effectively and

make them an ongoing organizational process has not yet gone mainstream. Those

organizations that do acknowledge the mindset of their organization, will literally leap into the

lead and embrace a new exciting future filled with creativity and a desire and ability to

continually reinvent themselves.

In order to lead in an organization that ‘makes meaning’, manages mindset and enables ongoing

strategic change, leaders must develop and model those competencies at the personal level.

Making meaning as a business leader comes from a combination of our values clarification

practices and ongoing access to information that keeps us abreast of not just what is happening

in the world, but the vision of what business needs to look like in a world that works. Then,

managing mindset and internalizing the ability to ‘speedshift’ starts upon awakening.

Looking back at my athletic career and learning from athletes who are the best in the world, it is

clear to me that the most important moment in determining who makes it and who does not, in

athletics, in business, in every area of endeavor, occurs when we first wake up in the morning.



Each and every morning, upon awakening, when we move from asleep/unconscious to

conscious, the first thing that happens is we re-set our minds. We literally ‘re-mind’ ourselves

where we are, what day it is, what is going on, what we are up to and what we need to do that

day. As we awaken, we tell ourselves a story and then act out our perceived role. Our actions

that day tend to fall into alignment with our story, with what our mind has been set to. For most

people their morning reset is to an old established mindset, an autopilot. “Oh yes, it’s Monday,

this is what is going on and I have to…blah blah blah.” They are automatically snapped back

into the mindset they had yesterday when the world has moved on.

I remember the day I went from a mindset that said, “I am an average, hardworking athlete and I

hope to someday make the relay team that goes to the national championships” to the

outrageous thought that “I could be in the Olympics.” That new mindset immediately changed

my behaviors, created new thoughts that led to different strategies which precipitated new daily

practices and took me to two Olympic teams. That kind of shift in mindset most often happens

by accident or is crisis induced. But as leaders, we are responsible for the mindset of our

organizations and we must manage it by design. It is up to us, we determine if our workforce

begins each day in the old outdated mindset or engages a new mindset that sparks new ideas and

strategies.

Because people can change their minds in a nanosecond, as leaders, we must be clear and

consciously manage our own mindset as a core practice in undertaking responsibility to guide

the day to day mindset of the people in our organization. Awareness of your own mindset is an

essential first step.

Begin Your Day the Olympian Way- A Daily Practice

I would like to suggest a powerful daily mindset practice that is a first step in aligning the three

elements that are always present when people excel. High achieving individuals and

organizations are:

♦ Passion-powered, which allows access to unlimited energy and creativity,

♦ Vision-guided, which provides a compelling context and focus

♦ Action-oriented, providing the infrastructure to effectively guide daily mental and

physical practices.

If you are a ‘rookie’ and new to paying attention to your own mindset and recognizing how it

impacts your energy, creativity and effectiveness, take this first step:

♦ Set your clock five minutes earlier than you normally do and pay attention to where you

mind goes. For just five days when you awaken, notice where your mind goes. Do not

try to make any changes; just notice your ‘autopilot’. You will be amazed what you

discover.

♦ Then, take “The Ten Day Challenge”. For the next ten days whether your goal is

harmony at home, productivity at work, or as President Barak Obama has stated, “a more

perfect union”, I recommend what a former training partner has allowed me to call “The

Bruce Jenner Technique.” For four years Bruce, the 1976 Olympic gold medalist in the

decathlon, ran five miles every morning, envisioning that in Montreal he would win the



gold medal, set the world record and retire. This practice aligned his highest aspiration

with new thoughts, strategies, and daily practices that led him to the gold despite the fact

that he was not the most talented athlete in the field of world-class decathletes.

♦ To apply this kind of Olympian Thinking in your life, I recommend that instead of

running five miles each morning as Bruce did, set your alarm clock five minutes early,

run a mental movie of your goal, your gold medal. (Can you imagine 8 gold medals?)

See your gold clearly and in great detail as Bruce did, and as all great champions have

done.

Through this intentional mindset practice you will quite naturally begin to look at your day and

notice what actions and behaviors are moving you toward that goal and what actions are

inhibiting your progress. You will begin to focus more attention on the behaviors that contribute

to your goal and naturally move away from the behaviors that detract. Like Bruce envisioning

the victory stand in Montreal, you will find yourself energized by these new images and new

creative strategies will emerge to support your desired outcome.

This simple, powerful, daily mindset practice is a first step in aligning the three elements

common to all high achievers. As this mindset practice becomes a habit it forms the foundation

that allows you to make meaning and manage the mindset of your workforce by role modeling

what it takes to speedshift.

Your “Full and Complete Call to Leadership”

I echo the Avastone study conclusion, “Yet the fact is that new manifestations of leadership are

required. Today more than ever, we need leadership that can re-imagine the boundaries of

individual and organizational identity, thought, and purpose in light of the fundamental nature

of reality and who we are as human beings. This is ultimately a full and complete call to

leadership— to live and fulfill the true nature of our human potential.”

.

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marilyn king manage your mindset with olympian thinking

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