How Montessori method can improve your Leadership style
These days, a work slack post related to an online Leadership event caught my attention. The event, named “What Leaders Can Learn From the Montessori Method”, rang a very much known bell to me, mom of a 2.5yo, determined on pursuing a conscious parenting style. In case you’re wondering, yes, influence of Maria Montessori’s legacy.
Montessori’s Method
And now you ask: “What is Montessori method?”. That’s a good question, young Padawan, specially if you are still unaware of the wonders of parenthood. Long story short, Montessori is a method of education that is based on self-directed activity, hands-on learning and collaborative play. Children education, to be clear. Babies, toddlers, very young aged kids. In other words, the guiding belief is that children learn more from their experiences than from direct teaching. In theory, it’s awesome! In practice, is a living hell for parents — but a very good groundwork to raise empathetic, self-aware, autonomous, competent, self-sufficient and determined kids. As a parent, I kid you not, it cost your sanity — but the results are really great. Examples of how this method can be implemented will follow in due time.
So, having that said, I’d never spare a though on how or if this method could be applied in my job (yes, I’m an Engineering Manager, no surprise there)— but once I’ve read the title, the connection was immediate: leadership begins early, and it’s all about people. Not places, ages, roles or processes: people. And then I realised that I was already applying the method, just never though of it that way. It actually proves that your beliefs and who you are eventually shows in all you do, regardless you being aware of that or not.
I’ll now share with you what I’ve learned in the event, and explain my vision on this connection, starting by the leading theory in human motivation: the Self-determination Theory.
Self-Determination Theory
Self-determination is an important concept that refers to each person’s ability to make choices and manage their own life. It’s built on top of some key assumptions:
- the need for growth drives behaviour and
- autonomous motivation is important.
They are self-explanatory, but it will get clearer in the next paragraphs.
The question now is “How can we optimize our self-determination?”. Well, young Padawan, here starts the talk about Montessori, and how the preparation of children to their best self applies the same concepts than leadership core actions.
The theory claims that intrinsic motivation, connection, freedom within boundaries and a prepared environment (among others) play an important role on the achievement of self-determination.
Intrinsic motivation includes the autonomy and mastery concepts, which along with freedom/boundaries and a well prepared environment allows productivity and growth. Let’s look at some examples.
Independence.
This is the easiest of them all, as we can immediately connect to what independence or autonomy is. A child can carry out tasks way more complex than what parents think. Cleaning the floor, climbing the ladder to reach higher places, pouring water in the glass, eat by himself, carrying dinner cutlery to the sink, putting their shoes on, washing their faces and spreading butter in the bread. My 2.5yo does all this, since he was able to sit or walk. Now, does he do it well? Correctly since the day one? No. But he is improving. The confidence is growing within, and he is getting better by the day. He knows he can do it. And this is a powerful outcome. It’s easy to let the mess go? No. Put up with tantrums when you’re already late but he wants to do all by his own? Also, no. But look at the bigger picture: he will become a confident adult, engaged with his own actions.
Can you think of a situation where you wanted to do more, speak your mind, or just do/decide something and you lacked the confidence — in yourself or from your leader? How did you felt? Did that encouraged you to do the extra mile? Probably not. Confidence is an ongoing construction, and leaders need to delegate and let people do/decide. Can this go wrong? For sure, but the failure is part of the process. It’s the only way people learn. You just need to find a way to step in when needed without destroying people’s confidence. We’ll get into more detail in the environment chapter.
Mastery.
In the independence continuation, the mastery is the natural output. When a child is allowed to do, decide, experiment, fail, try again, he or she will master a skill. Will be great at it. It will build the powerful realisation feeling, that comes solely from having made it. And the child will want to learn more, to master more skills — not because what they can do with it (or the outcome of the skill), but because they are motivated to learn more, to feed that feeling of learning. This is the no-star principle: the outcome is the least important thing — the actions leading there are the important lessons to retain. This teaches children that failure is part of the process, and that it is possible to fail, redo, and succeed.
Going back to the workplace, have you felt this need to hide a failure, or to prove you know how to do something, that you are good enough? If you do, I’ll tell you something a very good friend of mine told me years ago: “if you don’t let what you do/know go, you’ll never have the chance to learn new things. that will keep you exactly where you are for the rest of your life. allow people to fill in your place, and find your space to do something different”. Powerful, right? But this is only possible when we take pleasure from the journey, and not only from the outcome. As a leader, reassure your people that failure is expected, that they can try new things, new approaches, new thoughts. Allow them to master skills that may not be directly related to their jobs, but that will probably prepare them for new roles. Again, can this go wrong? Yes. Some mistakes are hard to fix, recover or undo. The consequences need to be part of the independence and mastery processes. But, remember, people learn when they fail. In the environment chapter I’ll explain how to deal with downsides of independence and mastery.
Freedom within limits.
What a great thing, freedom, right? Let me start by saying that choosing is a learned skill. We are not born knowing how to choose. There are a lot of variables when making a decision of choice (there is a reason moving motivators were created), specially if we want to do a good one. For my child, the choices now are between the black or blue sneakers he’ll wear that day, or if we wants liquid or solid yogurt as a snack. We wants to ride the bike or the scooter? Wanna go to the park or to the beach? Does he wants to give me a hug, or not? All limited (max 2 options) and safe — he’ll be just fine with wherever choice he makes. This builds confidence that he is able to make the right choices for himself. And where we are again talking about confidence! I can tell you that my kid now makes choices almost instantly, and never looks back. No indecisions, no “what ifs”, no “I don’t really know”. He knows. And he chooses. And he lives with it. There are, obviously, boundaries. Safety issues (I’ll not let him jump of the window) or non-optional actions (going to school) are the boundaries for him. And surprisingly enough, he also knows that — anything preceded with “it’s not optional, honey, we need to…” or “I’ll not let you do…, it’s not optional”, he takes it and complies. This is just amazing, coming from a 2.5yo which just recently started saying “yogurt”.
In the workplace, the boundaries are thiner and more personal: respect, understanding people’s differences, ethical matters. But they exist, and it’s the leader’s job to set them and make sure they are being respected.
Environment.
Preparing the environment is a capital step. We need to setup our children for success. How? Let’s take the pouring water to the cake mix example. First, we model it. We pick a cup, pour the water in the mix, and put the cup down. Second, we put limits in it — we don’t put a whole litre of water in the cup, right? And what happens when the child spills water in the floor in the execution of the pouring for the first times? We ask them to clean — deal with the problem, facing consequences and acting accordingly. And that’s it. The environment is where all happens — independence, mastery and freedom, and where all the connections are built. It must be prepared to tell our children which are the choices they have, so that the risk of making bad choices is limited.
Same in the workplace. Nowadays, “self-organised” buzzword is a thing. But the environment must be prepared and set for success. Tooling, processes, communication methods, visibility in the information, transparency in high-level leadership decisions, personal development and career paths, fair recognition and rewarding (yes, extrinsic motivators are also valid, if used for a short/limited amount of time or a specific task). Leaders must setup their teams for success and be the anchor for the purpose of team’s actions. And here is where the consequences are set and taken. Action causes reaction, and a bad action (that violates the freedom boundaries) or a really bad mistake (something that could have been prevented or is repeated, but one overlooked it or just wasn’t careful enough) must bring consequences. With great power comes great responsibility. Which and the severity, is up to the leader. It can be really just talk about what happened and reflect on what could’ve be done better. Or not. You just have to bite the bullet, right?
If you recall the principles of good leadership, they are all mapped and stimulated in the examples described above.
- Belief in the purpose, encouraging strategic thinking, innovation, and action.
- Taking full responsibility.
- The ability to move on and forgive.
- Humility.
- Optimistic and realistic.
- Value others’ opinions, confidence in your own.
- Self-acceptance.
It kinda makes sense, doesn’t it?
Final thoughts
So, in the end, what is leadership? How does it relate to the Montessori mindset?
Leadership is about enabling people to do their best, grow their maximum and be as happier as possible. It’s really about giving autonomy to people, allowing them to improve themselves in a safe environment, setting clear goals, keeping expectations aligned and an healthy environment.
And isn’t it what we should want to do with our children? Let them live at fullest within clear boundaries, learn by experimentation, deal with errors and frustrations, learn how to speak for themselves, create connections with the environment and people and mastering skills just because they show interest on them. Raise self-aware humans, with ability to adapt and overcome difficulties.
Montessori’s method just proves with unbiased subjects action’s how the self-determination theory can work on fully grown humans, both in their life and specially in their workplace. It’s the universal human growth theory, regardless of any specificity — age, race, gender, job, role.
There is a known saying — “people don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses” — that depicts the need of continuous improvements on leadership skills in a company. As a leader, keep this in mind, as your actions will shape the future of your people and your company. Here in OLX, helping people overcome failure, allow them to learn and listening to their needs are the ground rules for leadership. Remember: the difference between the master and the student is the master has failed more times than the student has ever tried.
Thank you for reading!
