MAP Your Way to Successful Management

This is a guest article from Miki Saxon of Leadership Turn

Phil and David offer great info here at Slacker Manager, but to make the most of it you may need to change your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).

MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) is the basis for everything you do—it’s the why of life.

Everything you do and say is a mindset, grounded in your attitude towards others, which, in turn, is based on your personal philosophy.

MAP is learned, not innate, and it changes, either passively, through the influence of those around you, or actively, in ways that you consciously choose.

That’s why learning better management, leadership, parenting, etc., is a far cry from actually accomplishing it and the difference is often the difference between stain and paint.

* Paint learning means coating what you already think with new ideas or approaches. The problems arise when the underlying attitudes and thoughts, i.e., MAP, are inconsistent with the new ideas—the greater the discrepancies between the two the more difficult it is to successfully implement them.
* Stain learning means that the new ideas sink in and actually become part of your MAP. That also means being willing to change your MAP when the value of the new ideas are greater than the cost of change.

MAP is cool because it is completely within your control. Changing it requires a strong desire, the right catalyst: awareness and a journey through the through each of the four levels of competence:

1. unconscious incompetence,
2. conscious incompetence,
3. conscious competence, and
4. unconscious competence. (Most people believe they never reach this level since, by definition, when they do they aren’t aware of it.)

Although there are as many types of MAP as there are people, I think that good MAP is (in no particular order) positive, open, flexible, honest, secure, interested, enthusiastic, patient, sincere, encouraging, caring and loves creativity (its own or others).

Finally, in the high stakes employee productivity, motivation and retention game MAP is worth more than money.

About the author: Miki Saxon writes Leadership Turn and MAPping Company Success and has coaching startup executives on their cultures and communication skills for 10 years.

She uses a system she developed called MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) that’s predicated on the belief that every outcome starts with a thought, so “To change what they do, change how you think™”

MAP is the result of more than 25 years of successful recruiting during which she developed an in-depth understanding of the bottom line impact of employees who are turned on—and off. Miki distilled that knowledge into the framework called MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy)™ that helps leaders build better cultures and achieve stronger results.

In 2003, she shifted from consulting to a virtual coaching model to accommodate both her clients preferences and a move to southern Washington State.