4 Conditions for Changing Mindsets
Hatem Shehab
Human Capital Consulting | Transformation, Culture & Change Management | ROI Consulting
Perhaps, there is no reliable way to shoot yourself in the foot when you’re leading a large-scale transformation effort other than disregarding what’s on the mindset of your key stakeholders.
The need to shift mindsets is the biggest block to successful transformations. The key lies in making the shift both individual and institutional at the same time.
Most Prevailing Mindsets:
Growth helps create an advocate view rather than a victim view mindset. With a fixed mindset, people often avoid challenges, give up easily, see no point in making an effort, ignore useful feedback and feel threatened by other people's success. With a growth mindset, there's a desire to learn, embrace challenges as opportunities, persevere through setbacks, view effort as the key to success, seek out constructive criticism and feel inspired by the success of others.
A mindset of abundance comes from FAITH, whereas a mindset of scarcity comes from FEAR. With abundance, you see limitless possibilities in life and can see the positive side of any situation and focus on what is working well. With scarcity mindset, there is a focus on the negative aspects of life, being a victim, to whatever happens, and that there is never enough.
A mindset of challenging assumptions compared to knowing and telling is a mindset of learning. It’s a mind that is open to diverse perspectives. Choosing to be curious rather than being judgmental can yield remarkable results.
The Way Forward
Mindsets converge and overlap, but the most important thing is to consider is how to shift the mindset from one to the other. Here are some techniques to help you do just that, but they are not exhaustive.
We tend to live through each day on autopilot, reacting to people and situations automatically.
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Noticing exactly what we are thinking about in any given moment is a huge step toward choosing a different mindset. Start noticing where your thoughts are when you are listening to someone else. Where do you put your focus? Where do you invest your energy? Is it on what they are saying and what they mean, or are you just thinking about what to say next? Is it focusing all your energy on fighting the old? Or is it focusing all your energy on building the new normal?
This is a huge step into greater self-awareness that gives you the ability to choose your response. It allows you to interject and prevent your autopilot from running the show.
Greater self-awareness gives you the ability to prevent your autopilot from running the show.
We are hard-wired by our long-standing belief systems; however, Neuroscience has proven that we can rewire ourselves.?Our thought patterns are driven by our underlying beliefs, biases, and assumptions that we have held onto tightly, as long as they kept us safe. There are several methods that guide you through the process of revealing these underlying and often limiting beliefs and replacing them with more effective thoughts. This could be achieved through inquiry using a series of questions, or through a meditative approach to revealing, diminishing, and unhooking from a limiting belief. Another way is to use a technique called brain dump; the act of?writing down everything that comes to mind on a particular topic. Its proponents describe it as a way to get all of your thoughts and ideas down on paper and free up space in your brain.
A more holistic approach is to go on an offsite, workshop-based learning journeys of small groups (20–30). The workshop methodology is grounded in the “U-process”. The U-process has three phases:
The workshop will be followed by small groups typically convening to offer peer accountability and advice, with a further facilitated sessions to take stock of changes in behavior.
Final word
Before you jump into a future state, you must be able to leave your current state. The current state is a comfort zone that you don't want to get out of. It's the habits that put you on autopilot doing the same thing you used to do. It is the collective organizational behavior pattern that maintains the status quo. We need to understand and do something about the things that are holding us back in the present situation, otherwise the best future vision of the situation will not get us from where we are now. There is a lot of energy we can use from the current situation to instigate change. We can build on our current strength. We can tap into any dissatisfaction people have with the way things are. We can share a sense of urgency about what happens if we continue to do things the way we do. Why rely solely on the future to propel you forward when you can get a boost from the present or even the past.
Don't focus all of your energy on building the new normal. You need to fight (and benefit from) the old too.
Forming the right mindset is not necessarily a quick and simple exercise. However, it is crucial to realize that one has the ability to alter his thoughts and change his beliefs and attitude or at least sharpen them. This can be achieved either on your own or with the help of a coach, where you can be guided through a process that enlighten your belief system which creates your mindset, allowing you to visualize your limiting believes and let them go or replace them with more fruitful thinking patterns.