If you don’t often find yourself immersed in the professional development space, you may not be overly familiar with the concept of a growth mindset. So, you might be wondering, what exactly is this?
Think: Someone who is not only open to new ideas and concepts but actively makes decisions and achieves outcomes based on them.
Enter: Dave Dite, QHSE Director at CBRE.
Dave is no stranger to the idea of a growth mindset. Having worked with him here at Acre Frameworks for the better part of the last 8 years, we’ve seen him continue to raise the bar for himself and those around him when it comes to abandoning ‘the way we’ve always done things’ and opting for new ways of achieving the desired outcomes.
When he was tasked with building a team at CBRE, the UK leader in commercial property, he recognised that the traditional professional development programmes that had historically been delivered within CBRE were a little dated, and he wanted something more innovative.
Then, by coincidence, Dave had two separate interactions in quick succession with the Acre Frameworks team and these showed him that he’d found what he’d been looking for - engaging content and delivery, focusing on impact and change in purpose-driven roles.
As we all know, in business, the bigger and more complex an organisation is, the more difficult it can be to get key stakeholders to engage. Over the following months, Dave strove to get the right people onto his team. He decided to take more ownership of that process and used Frameworks initially as a programme for his team which worked incredibly well.
The process began with everyone in the team undergoing our ‘Discovery’ process. This involves the completion of our market-leading non-technical skills assessment, followed by a 1-1 feedback session with an Acre Frameworks development coach to discuss the findings of the report; a process that Dave found fascinating.
After his original team had completed Discovery, Dave spent the afternoon with a couple of the Frameworks coaches going through all the results and they then mapped the results to gauge how the whole team worked together. “What really startled me was a couple of things - firstly, when you mapped the data together, it formed quite a nice picture. In other words, it said to me that the team is actually quite strong as a group because their strengths and weaknesses seem to counterbalance each other.”
"The second thing I found really interesting was that I could recognise quite a few members of my team from their Discovery results - so essentially, I could look it on the screen, and say ‘That's Person A. And that's Person B’ - but not for every single one of them. I’d probably say I recognised 60 per cent. But strangely enough, the one person that I didn't recognise from Discovery was myself.”
Dave then started a journey into his own personal development with Frameworks, which he says uncovered some fascinating high-level things about himself. Prior to his coaching, he states that he used to put on an avatar to come to work. i.e. get ready to leave the house, find his keys, grab his wallet, walk out the front door. At that point, he assumed the character of Dave the QHSSE lead. “That was why I didn't recognise myself on the Discovery map - and that is what the coaches at Frameworks and myself have been working on for the past couple of years. At that point, I felt able to throw the avatar in the bin and it was like a breath of fresh air.”
Dave has moved around quite a bit within CBRE since the avatar was discarded. Not only is he personally happy, but he is also professionally fulfilled which not many people can genuinely say. It’s been a great process for him to be part of but it has been hard work, and has kept Dave on his toe for five years.
Dave has built a team over the past couple of years that complement each other, who meet regularly, and whom he believes are now confident in their own skin. However, none of that would have been possible without the group working together as a team, and that is a direct result of them being part of the Frameworks programme.
“Ultimately, it's been a fantastic journey.”
At Acre Frameworks we are passionate about facilitating the non-technical growth of purpose-driven professionals within the realms of health, safety and sustainability - we know that each journey is unique but equally as rewarding to the teams that embrace the process.
Interested in how we might assist you with a people development strategy for 2023? Get in touch at sam.greensitt@acre.com or frameworks@acre.com
