Have you ever been told that you need to “elevate your thinking?” What does this mean? Why is my current thinking not elevated? How does elevated thinking differ from what I’m currently doing? Is this just management-speak, or does it really matter? In this article, I will answer these questions from my perspective.

When I write my articles, I picture my readers as somewhere in the middle of a complex hierarchical organization. You have people that report to you. You also have someone to whom you report. You are somewhere in the middle.

The world according to me

In our natural states, we are the center of the universe. Everything that happens, is happening to me. I am bombarded with information and experiences from every possible angle. I continually evaluate everything on a basis of “how does this impact me?” This isn’t wrong. It’s just natural. We navigate our world to survive and thrive.

The world according to leaders

Leaders have a higher calling. In addition to and often above carrying for themselves, they look out for the health of the team. All input and experiences are interpreted through the lens of “how does this impact the team?” This isn’t wrong. It’s your calling and you should do it.

The world according to the tribe

In addition to caring for yourself and leading your team, you are also a member of a team. You have peers. You have colleagues. You are interdependent for your mutual success. When you think like this, you do not interpret your world as a zero-sum or fixed pie where what is good for someone else is bad for you, or vice versa. Within your peer group, pain and gain is shared. This is good and necessary to behave as a faithful team member.

Non-elevated thinking

So far, everything I’ve described is non-elevated thinking. You think about yourself, the team you lead, and the team you are on. If you think about your organizational hierarchy as floors in an office tower, you are only traveling between the ground level and your floor.

If your elevator is stuck, or perhaps you misplaced the special key that unlocks access to the higher levels, hang with me, I’ll help you out shortly. First, you must remember this:

The world according to followers

In addition to everything I’ve already written, it is key for each of us to remember our responsibility as a follower. These days it is fashionable to talk about leadership, but we don’t often discuss the other side of the coin: followership. Fortunately for you, I’ve written an entire article on that subject that you can read here.

In essence, you need to harness the same capacity for empathy that you exercise on a daily basis for your team members and your peers; however, you need to direct it upwards to your leader. He or she faces challenges and carries a burden that you only partially grasp. Imagine as hard as you can what it must be like to walk in the shoes of your leader and sit at their table of peers. It starts with empathy, but it doesn’t end there.

Corporate artifacts

The top leadership of the company spends a lot of time carefully crafting and modifying various enterprise-wide artifacts. Whether you work at CHS or some other large organization, you likely have a mission, vision, or purpose statement. You have values or guiding principles. You have key strategies and initiatives. You have leadership expectations or behaviors.

All of these artifacts are wonderful windows of insight into the hearts and minds of the leaders above you. They put a lot of time into them. Do you take the time to really understand them as best you can?

Us vs. Them

The items above that I mentioned, are they theirs or yours? Do you speak about these artifacts as if they are external, or do you internalize them? When you talk with your team, do you distance yourself with language such as “this is what came from corporate” or do you talk with your team about how your actions support and enable the higher-level artifacts that you understand and believe in yourself?

Breadth and duration

Given the nature of our hierarchies, chances are good that your leader oversees a broader area and plans on a longer time horizon than you do. While the term “elevate your thinking” elicits a vertical movement, you should also think multi-dimensionally. From a breadth standpoint, you already think effectively about the team you lead and the team you are on, but what about your entire function or business unit. If you have that perspective, then what about the enterprise?

From a duration standpoint, the lower levels of the organization think in terms of hours, days, and weeks. In the middle of the organization, we often think in terms of quarters and fiscal years. I often hear my CEO talk about the founding of our organization 90 years ago, and our promise to serve farmers for another 90 years in the future. That’s a 180-year point of view. Now that’s elevating your thinking.

Where is your elevator stuck?

If you are on 2^nd floor, you might not immediately reach for the 79^th floor. This mental exercise is hard, but it’s totally doable to reach up the floor immediately above you. Elevating your thinking isn’t just good for your career, but it makes you a better leader, and more valuable to your entire organization. If you are stuck, I gave you some ideas to get you moving again. Please let me know in the comments below which aspects of this article resonates with you the most.

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