Mind Congruency and Leadership Design with Manny Fiteni

As listeners would have heard previously, I attended a FinTech event which got me thinking about financial literacy and financial experiences. I’ve started to write some thoughts down related to that which I am posting on my Substack. You can find that at https://garycdavid.substack.com/. 

This post was about financial literacy as financial inclusion, and how knowledge is power especially in relation to financial decision making for oneself. I will admit this gets tricky because it can seem like the financial game at the highest levels may be for lack of a better term ‘rigged.’ Financial literacy may not go very far when the game is a ‘heads you win, tails I lose’ proposition. Nevertheless, it is important that people understand the nature of finance and financial decision making. FinTech in its variety of forms provides an opportunity to do this. There is a lot to explore and discuss in this realm, especially in relation to the creation of financial experiences. 

My guest today on Experience by Design actually has a work background in financial services. Manny Fiteni worked in wealth management and financial planning. But that’s not why we talked. Rather, we talked about his work “The Mind Congruency Effect” and how it applies to leadership and more effective employee experiences. The book and his larger body of work explore how inner obstacles keep us from achieving greater potential, which is something that we can all relate to.

Beyond that, we discuss how this also stops managers from more effectively managing. I’ve often said, “If you call people managers, that’s what they’ll do.” We discuss how this is not necessarily the best role for managers. Employees need to have levels of autonomy in which they can have agency and some level of authority over their work. But it is not just employees acting alone, but together toward a shared goal and purpose. This is why managers need to act more like community organizers and facilitators which bring people together.

However, people in management roles are rarely if ever taught those kind of skills, and why they are important. 

We talk about the traits of being a high-performing leader, and what an employee-centric manager looks like. We discuss how managing is different from leading, and how the people side is more important than the technical and compliance side. We also talk about how he is creating new training and development approaches to help better prepare managers to become leaders in a more employee-centric way. And we also talk about how he was working at a bank that was robbed, and how imagining that scenario prepared him on how best to respond. Like an athlete, if you rehearse something enough times, the mind creates patterns of how best to respond. 

Manny Fiteni: https://mannyfiteni.com/

Manny Fiteni on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manny-fiteni-b0173637/

“The Mind Congruency Effect”: https://www.amazon.com.au/Mind-Congruency-Effect-Transforming-Direction/dp/1763745406/