22 Nov 2023
The "Earning It" Mindset: Limiting Our Future Success
This episode is going to be amazing and I am excited to dive into this topic with you!
Last week we talked through the fact that the "Earning It" Mindset is a double-edged sword.
It has very much served us in our careers because it helped us succeed and achieve in school, college, and as we climbed the ranks in our careers.
Yet for all the ways it has served us, there have been instances where it has actually held us back.
When we have looked at others who haven't "carried their weight" or performed as much work or action as us, we have felt resentment and frustration.
When someone has taken our ideas and shared them as their own, we have felt betrayed.
And now that we are executives, this mindset could hold us back even further.
This is where I see top-talented leaders start to falter and where this mindset goes from being helpful to being a hindrance.
How?
Walk down this mental pathway with me:
As an executive, are you performing tasks?
Are you rolling up your sleeves and getting work done?
Are you solving problems and putting plans in place?
The reality is that for the majority of executives, the answer is no.
As an executive, you are contributing to the business in a very significant way, but not in a way you are used to. Not in a way that you define as "earning it."
Executives aren’t doers in the sense that we would define a “doer” in our careers. They are thought leaders and people leaders.
Throughout our careers, before being executives, we had to do the work. Whether that was truly doing the physical work to start, or whether it was overseeing people doing the physical work and putting plans in place to get more productive work out of them for example, we did the work.
As an executive, you’re no longer expected to "do" the work. You are now expected to bring all of your knowledge, experience, expertise, and judgment to the table to help the company strategically grow, navigate both industry and economic risks and move the business forward.
While these actions are beyond valuable to the business and organization, if we have an “earning it” mindset, we aren’t going to see this type of contribution as valuable.
This is going to cause struggle and conflict within ourselves.
If we do not move past it, we will delay and even damage our careers.
If we take the belief that the only way we can add value is if we do the work, sacrifice, put in the time, go the extra mile, and labor over the task at hand, then we are only going to be looking for those functions in our executive role.
When we don’t find them, we will create them.
The problem with this is again, the company doesn’t want that behavior from its executives.
So here is the golden nugget: if you can’t pivot your “earning it” mindset as an executive, you will focus on the wrong actions, which will damage your career.
It’s a pivot you must make if you want to succeed.
Join me next week to discuss how to keep this mindset or belief in check. When do we apply it vs. not? How do we pivot it?
Send your questions, comments, or requests for onsite training to: info@legendleaders.com.
Be Legendary!
