How early-career success or failure shapes leaders’ mindsets

We all learn from our experiences, good and bad. Humans out of self-preservation tend to shy away from situations in which they got burned in the past, and may readily seek a repeat of situations that in the past resulted in success and positive feedback. But the past can be yesterday, last month, a few years ago or even decades ago.  

So when it comes to how leader mindsets develop and how this in turn affects team performance, the timing of such previous incidents matters greatly, according to research by 2 academics at Cambridge Judge Business School, Yeun Joon Kim, Associate Professor in Organisational Behaviour, and Andreas Richter, Professor of Organisational Behaviour. 

Focusing on key transition periods in a person’s career 

Their research, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology, examines project success and failure experiences during 3 periods of a person’s career: 

• the transition from education to work, captured by the person’s first project after entering employment 
• the non-transition period between career entry and the first formal leadership role 
• the transition into that first leadership role

The research defines project success-failure as a ‘continuous project outcome’ related to a given reference point such as a goal set by the organisation, so outcomes falling short of that goal are deemed failures and outcomes that meet or exceed the goal are considered successes.

“We find that in the transition to a first real job, project success fosters a mindset focused on promotion, while project failure during this early period fosters a mindset focused on prevention in order to avoid setbacks,” says Joon. “We also find that these mindsets directly impact team outcomes, with a promotion mindset boosting team creativity and a prevention-focused mindset improving routine performance.” 

Adds Andreas: “What’s also interesting here is that the effect to mindset and team outcomes resulting from project success or failure in that first transition period to a job does not apply to the later transition into a first leadership role. Timing really matters here, and the implications are that a mindset formed from project success or failure at the very start of a person’s career carries over for decades as the person advances in their career.” 

An outsized effect of experiences at key career moments 

The research revolves around Role Transition Theory (RTT), which says that experiences during periods of role transition exert what the authors term “outsized influence on leaders” because people are “especially susceptible to external cues and demands” during such role transitions. While prior research had looked at how incidents affect leader development, those earlier studies had not focused on the timing of such experiences, and the authors also note that relatively little research has focused on mindsets in the leadership literature. 

Within the RTT framework, Joon and Andreas also draw on Regulatory Focus Theory (RFT), which suggests that leaders’ regulatory focus mindsets are shaped by experiences of success and failure. As they explained: “RFT suggests that social environments emphasising potential gains (such as project success) induce a promotion focus, whereas environments highlighting potential losses (such as project failure) induce a prevention focus”.  

Thus, say the authors: “We argue that these regulatory focus ‘states’, when triggered by project success–failure experiences during career transitions, may crystallise into enduring mindsets”. 

Primary and secondary sensitive periods in a person’s career 

The transition from education to work at the start of a person’s professional career, a key focus of the research, is characterised by the authors as the ‘primary sensitive period’. During this period, people “are more of a ‘blank slate’ as they are exposed to work-related environmental stimuli for the very first time” and are “more likely to experience cognitive unfreezing, in which their cognitive models are challenged and subsequently replaced with alternatives that are more congruent with the novel environment.” 

The later transition into a person’s first formal leadership role is characterised by Joon and Andreas as the ‘“’secondary sensitive period’. By contrast, the period between entering the workforce and assuming the first formal leadership role is considered a ‘non-transition period’, during which individuals “tend to face lower levels of uncertainty and are less susceptible to environmental influences.” 

“The transition from education to work is a highly impactful shift, as the organisational context and tasks are entirely new,” says the research. “By contrast, entering a first leadership role, though demanding, occurs within the world of work and often within the same organisation. Novice leaders are less of a ‘blank slate’ as they can draw on prior work experience and cognitive models that reflect organisational realities.” 

Tracking careers at an Asian firm 

The research is based on a decade-long study of 132 design-team leaders at an East Asian company, whose careers were tracked from their entry into the workforce through and beyond their first formal leadership roles. The researchers collected data from a design department composed of small teams of 3 or 4 members. Designs approved by the company became formal projects, and the success or failure of each completed project was assessed using its return on investment, based primarily on sales and project costs. 

To assess whether individuals’ mindsets are promotion-focused or prevention-focused, the study asked participants to answer questions such as whether “I take chances at work to maximise my goals for advancement” (promotion-focus) and “I concentrate on completing tasks correctly to increase my job security” (prevention focus). 

Team creativity was based on rating each team based on factors such as the number of new design ideas proposed by each team in certain key periods of the study, while routine performance was assessed based on the percentage of deadlines that each team successfully met for addressing stakeholders’ requests and complaints. 

Management implications: a reminder that an employee’s early experiences can have lasting effects 

From a practical management and organisational standpoint, the implications of the research are broad. 

Based on the findings, employees who experience success on their first project may develop a promotion-focused mindset, which can benefit teams whose work emphasises creativity. However, if their later roles primarily require adherence to rules and routines, “such a mindset may prompt unnecessary risk-taking or a failure to value routine accomplishments.” Given the long-term association between employees’ first project outcomes and their later mindsets, the authors suggest that “managers seeking to promote creativity might assign developmental rather than high-risk projects to avoid unwanted effects on prevention-focused mindsets.”  

In addition, as the research goes beyond the usual focus on skills such as decision-making to focus instead on the key role of motivational mindset, the research suggests that firms should think carefully about how they react to a junior employee’s first big project success or failure given its implications for years and decades on that person’s career. 

The research advises managers that a junior employee’s first big project isn’t just a performance milestone, but is instead a key experience that can shape their mindset and their teams’ creativity for decades to come. Early wins and losses are not isolated events, the research reminds us, so organisations should recognise them as pivotal points for their employees’ careers as well as the organisation itself.