The Future of Work is Here and Now:

Harness the Great Pause to make yourself, your team and your organization future-proof

* Co-authored with Jeroen van Weeghel, a Human Potential giant, Millenial and visionary coach helping Millenials find their leadership.

To help professionals and organizations be prepared for the future of work and embody a new normal mindset, we have compiled 16 Future of Work mindsets. In this article, we will take you on a journey through the different mindsets based on stories, anecdotes and experiences to illustrate them. To help you adopt these mindsets, towards the end of each chapter we have also some enquiry questions.

Photo by Andreas Klassen on Unsplash

This is what we’ll cover:

° The Future of Work is Human

° 16 Future of Work Mindsets

° Epilogue

We are confined at home due to the Corona Virus, and for the majority of us work has changed overnight. Many people lost their jobs, others have had to close their businesses to help slow down the spread of the Corona Virus. The world is experiencing a rapid shift towards remote work. Workers worldwide are in financial stress due to the loss of their jobs and often have little to no financial reserves.

Those seemingly secure jobs turn out to be not so secure after all when such an unprecedented crisis strikes. In such a moment we realise how fragile our world economy and its supply chains are. Many are in a situation where they cannot perform their jobs, because it is dependent on face-to-face interaction with stakeholders in a physical location.

Those companies and employees fortunate enough to continue their work are faced with important issues around remote work, such as cyber-security, sufficient capacity, and having to reexamine their regular way of working. This moment calls for a fundamental reinvention of old processes and systems. We simply cannot continue business as usual. Systems and processes, however, are not the only concern of employers and employees around the globe.

We read a lot about the so-called old normal and the new normal. Clearly now is a good time to shape the new normal. In the old normal, the global middle class has been giving very little attention to self-care, self-realisation and to being present with their loved ones. Professionally, many are in jobs for survival, often with very little work-life balance and meaning involved. People have been increasingly less in service to their communities and the collective uplifting of humanity and ecology. Economic inequity has been on the rise, while populism and polarization has been increasingly visible politically.

All of the above calls for a new normal. However, that new normal cannot be ushered in unless we embody a new mindset; What could that new normal mindset be to truly make a new impact?

The Future of Work is Human

More than anything, the above-mentioned situation presents us with opportunities to express a deeper dimension of humanness. Teams and their managers are invited to trust each other on a deeper level. We are asked to focus on the human connection at work, in teams and organizations. However technologically developed we may be, human beings and their creativity are essential to the world of work. That implies that systems and processes cannot be successfully reinvented without first reinventing our mindset.

“Energy informs configuration”, is a piece of ancient wisdom from our ancestors. The systems and processes of an organization will reflect the underlying consciousness of that organization. That is why we, at BEING at Full Potential, focus on the energy of ecosystems and not so much on the processes and systems. You can spend millions on new systems, but when the culture (or the energy or consciousness) of an organization is not transformed, the new systems will not serve their purpose.

The corona situation shows us what a VUCA world is. Jobs can disappear in a matter of days, income sources can dry up and companies can go bankrupt. All in a matter of weeks due to circumstances beyond the scope of your personal influence. Placing your trust in a solid education, good skills and a secure job prove to be insufficient for a sustainable future.

What future proof alternatives do we have? How can we thoroughly prepare ourselves for the future of work?

One thing is clear: the future of work is here and now.

We can use this time at home in a multitude of ways. We can sit back, relax and wait for the world and our work to return back to normal. But what if the old normal never returns? What if now is the only moment we have? We encourage you to use this gift of time to reinvent yourself and your mindset about work.

We have a great opportunity in front of us, to empower ourselves and take ownership of our lives. Regardless of external events and influences, we are in control of our mindset. With that clarity, since 2018 we have been asking ourselves the question, “What constitutes the future mindset of a successful individual?”

Our enquiry has taken us into the research done by several world leading institutions and organizations busy with what they call the ‘Future of Work’. Different studies have disclosed different aspects of the individual, the team or the larger ecosystem that will make us succeed in the VUCA world. While some of these researches have focused on mindsets, others have exposed valuable insights into skills, trades and technologies that will mean much in the future. At the end of this article, we have referenced a short list of pioneering and useful studies that we have researched while compiling our list of Future of Work mindsets.

We have also looked within the BEING at Full Potential community at mindsets displayed by individuals and groups that add to the community in the midst of its rapid evolution. This qualitative study further validates the Future of Work mindsets we have found through our external research.

Enjoy studying the 16 Future of Work mindsets. And please reach out to us to share your favourite picks and to offer your valuable feedback on this pioneering body of work. In particular, we are keen to learn about exercises and practices that can help bring these 16 mindsets to life.

1. Becoming more of Yourself

In the midst of the lock down, we see the number of subscriptions on platforms like Udemy and Coursera go up. People leveraging this time to hone and expand their skills. Seems like many are in the midst of massive reflections around their ideal work.

A few of our colleagues are currently focused on writing some books. Yet others are developing training programs around their passion areas. The current situation has created the opportunity for them to experience more meaning and purpose, while at the same time realise their limitless Human Potential.

The current gift of time is allowing us the opportunity to become more of ourselves. A lady from our network who is active in training and coaching entrepreneurs has dedicated more time to her passion of creating disruptive educational materials for children.

Jeroen, one of the co-authors of this paper, is focusing more of his time, energy and attention on coaching and writing, helping Millennials realise their dreams and express their full Human Potential.

The journey of realising and expressing your Human Potential is a lifelong journey. However, the current times ask us to become more of ourselves on a profound level. The mindset of ‘Becoming more of Yourself’’ is one of constantly reinventing yourself.

It is about discovering why you are here, what your God-given gifts are and how work gives you meaning and purpose.

This mindset is driven by two forces:

1) an internal force, continuously asking us to become more of ourselves. This is the continual striving and thirst for self-realisation that comes from within ourselves. We notice this undying thirst towards self-realisation very present within most of the Millennials and Gen Z.

2) external forces: developments in society and the world at large, such as Artificial Intelligence, and today the Corona Virus, are some examples of the external forces that drive us towards this mindset. Nearly 50% of companies expect a reduction in their full time workforce by 2022 due to automation. A study done at Oxford University found that 45% of current jobs will disappear in the next 10 years. We do not even have to wait for these developments to reach their peak to experience the rapidly changing reality of the workplace. Many people are at risk of losing their job and their income. There are so many variables at play that it is difficult to forecast when this economic disruption is going to end and what its results will be.

In order to flourish and thrive in our VUCA world and to make yourself future proof, now more than ever it is in your personal and our collective interest to become more of yourself. And that implies finding the resourcefulness within to reinvent yourself.

You could kickstart practices around ‘becoming more of yourself’ by:

1. Leveraging this lock down by deeply reflecting on what your unique gifts are and if you are fully expressing them in your current occupation
2. Identifying ways in which you can create the conditions for your team and your organization to become more of themselves at work. You could, for example, host online video meetings to have conversations about the passions and strengths of your team members and brainstorm together on how they could leverage them in the workplace.

2. Vulnerability

We see beautiful examples of vulnerability all around us these days. On social media we read stories of people who we normally know as strong individuals and leaders now openly sharing about the impact of isolation and their longing for human connection. The responses to these posts are very warm, with people suggesting very concrete and practical solutions to connect with one another. Within our network we happened to see a Facebook post by a woman vulnerably sharing that she currently had no income coming in and was very worried about putting food on the table for her and her children. Many people responded with help and advice, ranging from food banks to inviting the lady and her children over for any meal they needed.

Jeroen’s parents had generously extended their financial support to him in these times of economic disruption. They offered this support because he embodied vulnerability in sharing his financial worries with them.

The mindset of vulnerability is the openness to admit that you do not know the things you do not know and rely on others for support. It is the ability to rely on our collective resourcefulness to support us.

Imagine vulnerability as an enormous vacuum cleaner. Once you declare to the universe what you do not know, the universe conspires to support you in the way you need and brings to you what you need.

The moment you embody the mindset of vulnerability it is incredible how much the universe conspires to manifest for you.

Individual resourcefulness can only get you so far. In order to be able to rely on collective resourcefulness, it is essential to practice the mindset of vulnerability. If you do not express what you do not know or do not have, the world around you cannot help you receive what you need. Vulnerability is relying on collective resourcefulness to make things happen. It throws the universal tap open.

We encourage you to experiment with finding the right combination of individual and collective resourcefulness that works for you. By practicing vulnerability, you encourage more authentic communication and trust within your team and organization. If there is sufficient psychological safety for people to be vulnerable, remarkable things can happen. More authentic human connection can emerge. Your innovation capability can become exponential, because you will know where people need help to make the next step.

You can start practicing vulnerability in your life by:

1. Asking for help from your colleagues if you do not know the answer to a question or are in need of help to complete a task or project
2. Introducing vulnerability as a standard in the culture of your team and organization. Lead by example through embodying vulnerability. You would be surprised by the shifts that might emerge as a result in your professional environment.
3. Sharing with your friends, family, neighbors, and community when you are in need for help. This can be on any level; emotional, financial, material or otherwise. You can start small by asking for help with small tasks in your household for example.

3. Sporting the Child-Mind

Children can run around in circles and have a novel experience each new round. In the most mundane things they see magic and miracle. They can see the same room and garden over and over again and endlessly discover new experiences and perspectives.

The idea of the child mind is seeing everything with fresh eyes and involves seeing the magic and the miracle in little details.

This comes from the quality of the child-mind to be here and now, in the present moment and in the present place.

Photo by Phil Goodwin on Unsplash

The childlike mindset is innocent and inquisitive. Many good researchers and scientists display the child-mind at work. Creative scientists have the ability to live in a state of enquiry. They look at every topic with fresh eyes every time they get to work. They have cultivated the skill to remain curious and to see novel perspectives on their research subjects.

Introducing the child-mind into your team and organizational culture can foster an innovative environment. When you remain open to novel perspectives and live in a state of enquiry you open the way to see unexpected answers to challenges. You create fertile soil for a creative culture.

Today, we have a choice: to let ourselves be completely shut down by the virus or be inquisitive and curious about what tomorrow will bring. Practices you can adopt to embody the child-mind:

1. Start a regular meditation practice to train your awareness to be in the present moment. There are great resources available online to get you started with meditation.
2. Start brainstorm sessions within your team and organization. Dedicate quality time to collectively reflect on a challenging project coming from a place of curiosity and innocence. Look at the project through the eyes of a child.

4. Creativity & Imagination

Jeroen says: “I used to think of creativity as only belonging to talented painters, poets, actors or singers. I discovered this was a mistaken assumption. Creativity is a mindset every human being can embody. Writing is an expression of my creativity. In the creative process, we create from the dimension of the invisible into the visible.”

Creativity is your capacity to source solutions or something new previously unseen. Tapping into creativity sets you up to thrive in a chaotic world. You will have the ability to find novel solutions to practical, systemic and other challenges.

Imagination is another quality that will lead us into the future that is VUCA. During a training Jeroen recently joined, the facilitators came up with very creative ways to carry out the training online through Zoom instead of the planned live training. They used their imagination to create an online training space in which the participants could thrive, experience the joy of learning and in which the learning objectives were met.

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Examples of people who harnessed the power of their imagination are Martin Luther King, Gandhi, and Greta Thunberg. They could see in their mind a picture they wish to bring forth into reality. By believing in their internal vision, they found the power to overcome challenges and keep working towards the realisation of their dreams. Thanks to the power of imagination, enormous change has taken place in our world. Think of your own imagination as a great tool to realise the future you envision for yourself, your community and the planet.

Imagination is the sight you use to see things that you cannot see with your eyes.

You can use it to create worlds. It serves as an anchor in your life. It helps you create stability in your life in an otherwise chaotic and volatile world.

A number of ways you can use imagination in your life at home and at work:

1. Create a vision board with the vision of your life in 5 years. Use images from newspapers and magazines or paint your vision. Imagine where you see yourself living, who are you with, what work do you do. Many examples of vision boards or mood boards can be found online.
2. Invite your team to reflect on their vision for their team and organization for the coming 5 years. Give them a specific period of time for this reflection and organise a group session where you can harvest the vision of the collective.

5. Disrupting the Self

The current lock down is giving us the opportunity to fundamentally re-invent ourselves. There is a saying in marketing that if you do not disrupt your products and services, your competitors will.

The same goes for you as a person, if you do not disrupt yourself, this rapidly changing world will make you obsolete.

You will get stuck in the 1.0 version of yourself, seeming like working in MS DOS in today’s world. Our environment is evolving so rapidly that we need to continuously reinvent ourselves to remain relevant.

Disrupting the Self involves looking at yourself as a constantly evolutionary being. Decades ago, you could function fine with just your native language. In today’s world, the English language is a minimum to operate in our globalized world. A dis-empowering narrative is that change is difficult. It does not have to be. Just look at children. One day they hate pizza, the next week they cannot do without pizza. Change is as natural as the coming and going of the seasons.

Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash

The VUCA world demands our ability to disrupt ourselves. Since our ecosystem evolves rapidly, we would need to adapt as well to the ever-altering reality. That is where the mindset of disrupting the self comes in.

Human beings are an interesting species, given the fact that we can block, flow with and accelerate the natural process of innovation and change. Your future self and future organization will thank you for aligning yourself with the process of change.

Practices to consider for disrupting the self:

1. Start a daily journaling practice. Block 10 minutes daily, preferably in the morning, to write down your thoughts. Do this for 2 weeks. Then introduce reflective questions into your journaling practice. Questions such as “which habits or parts of my identity have served me in the past, but don’t serve me anymore? You will be surprised how much clarity can arise out of your journaling practice.
2. Invite your team members to engage in the above-mentioned journaling practice. Let them include reflections around their professional role into their practice. Step by step enlarge the scope of the reflection to their teams and the organization as a whole.

6. Prototyping Mindset

Legacy organizations will become obsolete in the coming decades if they remain stuck in the past. Prototyping your organizational model, products and services allows you to quickly respond to feedback from the outside world. It allows you to grow, respond to trends and to continuously improve yourself, your business model and your organization. In the prototyping mindset we never reach a stage of perfection and completion. You recognize everything to be in a state of evolution.

Prototyping mindset is about viewing life in general and work in particular as a continuous laboratory where everything can be improved.

By approaching what we create in our work, our products and services as a prototype, we remain creative, flexible and open to new insights. This adaptivity makes us suited to the VUCA world we live in where everything we rely upon — including technologies, methodologies and systems — is in constant flux. The prototyping mindset allows us to enjoy the process of creating, working, evolving and transforming.

Practices to integrate in your organization:

1. When working on new business models, products and services, prototype them. There are companies who specialise in helping you with prototyping your business model, ideas, products and services. Reach out to us if you want a reference to prototyping experts.
2. Start every day with what Zen calls “Beginners Mind”. By experiencing every new day and moment with fresh eyes and a sense of curiosity, you invite yourself to embody the prototyping mindset. Realise there is never a “finished product” or “finished you”; everything, whether at work or in your personal life, is an improvement of the older version, continuously in development.

7. Stepping into Flow

We have created a narrative, particularly in the West, that in order to succeed — or be happy or fulfilled — we must resort to heavy labour and hard work. It follows that we must crash through walls and overcome obstacles and fight the heroes’ battle of good versus evil and come out victorious on the other side, all scarred, bruised and sweaty. And then with vigour and force, we must reach out with our hands and grab what each one of us are entitled to. This narrative may sound familiar for many.

Stepping into flow is a mindset of surrendering our free will and allowing the collective universal resources to take us forward.

The moment I subtract my free will, my egoistic will, a larger force starts to take me forward. Your free will may tell you that you would like to create an online program and monetize this opportunity. If you are aware that your free will is speaking, you can simply surrender the voice of your ego and decide not to listen to it. If you do so, you will enter that “space in between”, and you will notice some kind of force that will just naturally take you to some place else.

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Our flow is fueled by divination and intuition.

Divination is the process by which the universe communicates with you through signs. This can take many forms; think of receiving a phone call from a friend you did not speak to in a long time and brings you in touch with a new business opportunity. Or seeing a cloud in the form of a question mark, when you suddenly realise it’s a great opportunity to deeply reflect on your career.

Detailed explanation of intuition is covered in the next heading.

Ways for you to step into flow:

1. Start a daily meditation practice to become aware of your inner voice and deeper knowing. As you practice daily and as time passes, you can develop the capacity to distinguish conditioned mental activity from your inner voice and deeper knowing.
2. Experiment with doing meetings while walking, preferably in nature. This will drastically change the quality of your thinking and your perception of the meeting topics. Moving while being in nature will make it easier for you to step into flow.

8. Using your Intuition

You sit at your desk, and suddenly you feel the urge to call a former colleague. You do not know why, but you trust the urge and pick up the phone. Your former colleague was working on an interesting project which happens to be in your field of expertise. That urge to call him turned out to be the start of a very fruitful collaboration between the two of you.

Many can relate to such seemingly synchronicities. This urge comes from your intuition. Another moment in time, following your intuition you may go outside and be in nature. And there, just being aware and in the present moment, you suddenly receive a breakthrough which guides you to your next step. This is your intuition at work.

Intuition is that inner intelligence that expresses from that unconditioned constant that is existing within each one of us.

Call it the voice of your soul, or if you will call it God, talking to you through you. This voice is considered all knowing and omnipresent.

In today’s VUCA world there are an infinite number of variables at play. Things keep changing fast. Yet, many organizations are too intellectual. They try to rely on data and analytics for making decisions. Instead, we will have to go inwards and rely on our intuition to navigate through the VUCA world. Intuition will tell us what is right for us and all our stakeholders.

As an academically trained philosopher, it has taken Jeroen years to recognize the inner voice of intuition. Spiritual practices such as meditation have been invaluable tools in getting to know himself better and in trusting his intuition.

Suggested practices for using your intuition are:

1. Start a daily meditation practice. Start small, for example 5 minutes a day. When practice consistently over time you can develop the sense of what your intuition is for you. You can develop the ability to distinguish between the voice of your mind and the voice of your intuition.
2. Listen to that spontaneous inner voice that occasionally speaks to you. That voice may sound counter logical, however once you start following it, you start noticing radical improvements overall.
3. Introduce practices for your team and organization that connect everyone to a deeper level of knowing, beyond the rational mind. The Being at Full Potential frameworks offer great tools to introduce expanded levels of awareness into your team and organizational culture. As you become more accustomed to using intuition as a valuable source of knowledge and insight, allow more space in your decision making process for intuition.

9. Prioritizing Self-realisation of others

The mindset of prioritising self-realization of others is a crucial factor in the success of future-proof organizations; organizations in which people work according to their passions and strengths, rather than their written down roles and responsibilities.

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash

When you embody this mindset, you naturally create a nourishing environment for people to thrive, to be creative, and you give them the opportunity to shift their consciousness and consequently realise their Human Potential.

Such organizations are the organizations of the future.

In the early 2000s, Sujith was involved in an experiment called Humanistic organizations, where they opened up the borders between all departments and let people spend time on projects according to their passions and strengths. He witnessed people from customer service spending a part of their time in engineering, for example. This raised the fulfillment and engagement level of those employees, especially among the younger demographics.

It is the responsibility of a manager to create and hold space for the members of his team and organization to constantly grow and evolve, shift their consciousness, and consequently realise their Individual Human Potential.

Suggestions to prioritize the self-realisation of others in your organization:

1. Help each individual identify their dimensions of change from the Human Potential house. Invite them to create a set of habits that can help them express further those dimensions. This initiative is particularly relevant if you intend to harness the creativity and power of the Millennials and Generation Z.
2. Invite your teams to undertake a qualitative self-assessment along these 5 team measures. On a scale of 1–5, invite each team member to anonymously share their scores for each of the 5 measures. This will instantly expose the self-realization opportunities for the team member and the team as a whole.
3. Reach out to us if you would like to have a conversation around future-proofing your organizations’ citizens and culture.

10. Support Evolution of the Collective

The experiments around Humanistic organizations shared under the previous heading shows how you can create the conditions for the collective to evolve.

Within that project, Sujith also coached his key people to extract life lessons from their life experiences in order for them to share these lessons with their teams. The key people in turn held space for their teams to realise their potential. The teams would integrate all the lessons they took from their growth and healing processes and creatively designed their new insights into their jobs. The whole group found great fulfillment and experienced a significant evolution in the overall maturity of the organization.

A manager’s job today is not anymore about managing people’s output. The old paradigm of managing people based on their input and output is obsolete. In the new paradigm we have to focus on self-realisation of the collective. This is asked for, particularly by the two new generations entering the workforce. Gone are those days when people joined the workforce solely to earn their bread and butter. In the new paradigm, the future of work is part of the manager’s responsibility.

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And part of a manager’s responsibility is to create conditions for the collective to thrive, excel and evolve.

And the most identifiable collective within an organization is the team. If you help the teams realise their purpose and shine, you would automatically be creating collaborative ecosystems and networks of excellence. You create self-managed teams, empower others through shared leadership, and develop collaborative ecosystems to get work done within networks of excellence. This will make your organization future-proof.

Practices to support the evolution of the collective:

1. With your HR/Talent Development Manager, design your own small experiment to create the conditions for your employees to discover their talents, strengths and passions. This could take the form of scheduling one afternoon per week to work on this experiment together. Or a full day each month. Whatever format you choose, when you create the right conditions for experimentation and discovery, you will witness a shift in the way your employees engage with their work.
2. Identify what are the implicit and explicit values lived by your immediate environment. Conduct some deep interviews and focus groups to excavate them. Map them against the organisational maturity model under the ‘Cultural Transformation’ tab on this page. Collectively identify the new list of values that your environment aspires to live in its evolutionary journey. Develop practices to code their values into the DNA of your environment.

11. Resilience

These times are showing us the need to become more resilient and alter our relationship to adversities. Existential challenges in one form or the other will become the new norm for us. The virus will loosen its impact on our lives one day and there will be something else that will challenge us, perhaps a natural disaster or oil shortage or something else.

In the midst of the VUCA reality, identify your resource that can boost your resilience. For some, their faith or spirituality is a powerful resource towards resilience. There are examples from the generation of our grandparents, how they relied on religion to remain resilient in difficult times.

Photo by Drop the Label Movement on Unsplash

Close to home, in our own network Sujith’s faith in the goodness of humanity has given him great resilience in times of challenges. Sujith and his family received their new house as a gift, as well as a vast amount of money contributing to restoring their house, through the generous effort and resourcefulness of people. Some within Sujith’s immediate environment were quite pessimistic about the house funding project. However, his undying faith in the goodness of humanity gave him resilience to carry through with this experiment.

Having strong familial and social connections are valuable resources to give you resilience. It often gives you courage to think that “nothing is an upset, everything is a setup”, and that attitude could instill you with great resilience. With that mindset, everything is an opportunity to learn and grow.

For yet others, hope is their fuel for resilience. Beyond the current phase of darkness, many are kept going through the adversities of life by the “light at the end of the tunnel”.

Resilience is a must have mindset to thrive in the VUCA world.

It is a muscle that enables you to quickly rebound and recover from challenging situations.

With that muscle, you are able to rebound and recover from crises and challenging situations will set you up to thrive and lead yourself and others around you in the direction of a new paradigm.

Practices to embody the mindset of resilience:

1. When facing challenges, take quality time to meditate and engage in deep reflection on your challenges. Enter the reflection with a mindset of curiosity, growth and learning. Sincerely look for the opportunities for growth and learning in your situation. Through frequent repetition of this practice, you can strengthen your resilience muscle.
2. During periodic team meetings, reserve quality time to collectively reflect on the challenges of your team and/or organization with the objective to harvest learning opportunities and insights from the reflection. Repeated practice can foster your collective resilience. If you experience challenges with this practice, you can take a look at the Human Potential house to find dimensions that can help your team with embodying a mindset of learning and growth.

12. Infinite possibilities mindset

On the island of Ibiza, a green delivery company and a project for local, organic and sustainable produce joined forces and launched an online supermarket where clients can get fresh, organic produce delivered to their doorstep in a sustainable way during the virus lock down.

During these times of lock down, we see groups of yoga practitioners gathering online through videoconferencing to practice yoga together in real-time.

A company that rents out photo booths for festivals and events is now developing an online photo booth for online events.

A Dutch business coach started a Facebook group to share webinars on how to leverage the business opportunities of this time. He created a place to brainstorm with fellow entrepreneurs.

Each of these anecdotes form beautiful examples of the mindset of infinite possibilities. Rather than being defeated by the effects of the Corona Virus, these businesses and individuals chose to open their minds to the possibilities and opportunities emerging now. They harnessed these opportunities to provide value to their communities and clients.

The mindset of infinite possibilities is the mindset that all adversities are part of a greater design.

You receive all setbacks as setups for new possibilities. You see the VUCA world not as a threat, but as an opportunity.

By embracing the mindset of infinite possibilities, you allow yourself the opportunity to adjust to new circumstances and events. You give yourself the chance to thrive in the VUCA world and be of service to others.

In the mindset of infinite possibilities you go with the constraints and look at each of the constraints as levers for the next leap. Embodying the infinite possibilities mindset enables you to remain positive, balanced and future-oriented in a world of constant change and uncertainty.

Here are some practices to embody the infinite possibilities mindset:

1. Regularly schedule time for a meditation followed by a brainstorming and mind mapping session. Take an important question, go into a meditation and from that state freely start writing and mind-mapping anything that comes to mind. There are good resources online to learn more about mind mapping, for example from Tony Buzan. With this regular practice, you are able to develop the ability to see more and more opportunities.
2. Set aside time in your team and organization to collectively reflect on societal and economic trends and innovation. This will give you a better grasp of the direction in which the world is evolving. What products and services will people purchase in the future? Where do you see new needs emerging? By regularly reflecting on trends, you can create the conditions for your team and organization to allow space for innovation to occur and even accelerate the innovation process.

13. Co-creating with Source

In the predominant modern education system individualism is strongly inculcated. Success is seen as a function of your individual effort. The more you labour, the more you sweat, the more obstacles you overcome, the more success is within reach. In this paradigm, you rely solely on your individual resources. This is a quite limiting perspective, however.

Increasingly, a vast and growing minority of humanity recognizes that there is a higher intelligence, a higher mind, an infinite library, which you can tap into.

Imagine a big cosmic library, where everything you need to know, and everything that ever will be known, is available. All the answers to every question that has been asked and all questions that are yet to be asked, is already available. Now imagine that you are able to tap into that field. This is what co-creating with Source is about.

Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

Co-creating with Source goes together with a holistic mindset. Today we see the consequences of an individualistic, self-preservation mindset all around us. We are collectively paying the price for decades of unsustainable and exploitative capitalism. The planet is on a decline. All of that makes the necessity of adopting a holistic mindset clearer than ever. Especially among the millennial generation and Gen Z there is a clear understanding that we need a new and holistic paradigm.

The Great Pause we currently live in brings to us a profound level of compassion, hope, empathy and 'beingness'. We are suddenly becoming collaborative, constructive, and collectively in service to each other. In Ibiza, where Jeroen lives, he witnesses people volunteering at a local organic farm to help maintain the land and grow and harvest vegetables. They are not volunteering merely for their own benefit of getting vegetables, but contributing to a greater goal for the collective. All of this shows an ever growing mass of the holistic mindset. They expect their profession to be holistic while also being receptive to the idea of co-creating with Source.

Practices to integrate co-creating with source into your life and organization:

1. During one of your next team or board meetings, set aside quality time to reflect on your immediate and wider ecosystem. Practice with embodying a holistic mindset by collectively writing down all stakeholders involved in your ecosystem. Think as broadly as possible and include everyone and everything affected (whether positively or negatively) by your organization. You may notice stakeholders you were previously unaware of or observe points of improvement.
2. Start a daily meditation and journaling practice. Start small, with 5 minutes of meditation and 5 minutes of journaling a day. Through repetitive practice, you could learn to distinguish conditioned mental patterns from insights coming from source.

14. Attitude of Self-attunement

The dharma of a guitar, its reason for existence, is to create music. It cannot fulfill its dharma unless the strings are tuned. This is a simple metaphor for us humans as well. For us to show up in our purpose and flourish, we must constantly self-attune. There are various ways to do that. There are very profound and simple exercises you can do each morning to use the power of your awareness to go beyond the mind and the ego.

Self-attunement is a constant necessity in the VUCA world. It enables you to remain anchored in your own centre and clear in the midst of a VUCA world. It helps you cut through the noise. It helps you reduce life to the simplicity of what is essential to live your purpose in a VUCA world. Without self-attunement you can be easily distracted from your purpose by things that are non-essential, and become occupied with instant gratification of the desires of the ego.

The practice of self-attunement uses the power of awareness to go beyond the mind and the ego to access the wisdom and resourcefulness within yourself to help you realise your Human Potential.

Practices to introduce the attitude of self-attunement into your life and your organizational ecosystem:

1. Start a daily routine of yoga or Qi Gong. These forms of movement and meditation integrate body, mind and spirit. They help you find clarity in your own centre. A good online Qi Gong program that was recently released, is the one by Damo Mitchell (see www.damomitchell.com for more details).
2. Introduce within your organisation or ecosystem self-attunement practices like meditation or breathing techniques. Do this together everyday. At the start of every meeting, take three minutes to recenter. Develop a set of standards or codes of conduct that will help you do your clearing and keep you as a collective centered.

15. Service mindedness

In a hierarchy of motives for why people go to work, survival would be the most primitive. Others go to work because they want human connection and companionship. Some people want identity in the form of status, power and respect. A higher level motive for people to go to work would be to realise their mission or purpose. The highest motive to go to work is to be in selfless service; to live in the joy of bringing joy and happiness to other people’s lives.

We observe that Millennials and members of Gen Z are more inclined to work for the higher motives than the lower ones. The possibility to express their service mindedness is a greater reason for them to say yes to a job offer.

Many actions are fueled by self-preservation consciousness. The mindset of service mindedness offers a holistic and sustainable alternative.

Service mindedness is the mindset that follows from a life of meaning and purpose.

In this mindset, you act selflessly and are of service to others in a variety of ways, without the expectation of reward or personal gain. Your service is offered with the intent to bring joy into the lives of others or to nurture collective well-being.

For Sujith, service mindedness is helping humanity fully realise its God-given Human Potential. Sujith does this through supporting others to embody their mysticism. Through this act of service, he is fulfilling his mission and is being infused with vitality and joy.

For Jeroen, service mindedness is helping Millennials realise their full Human Potential. He does this through helping them realise their dreams, by creating a space in which Millennials can find their own answers to their essential questions. He also helps men connect to their mature masculine spirit through workshops, retreats and coaching. That is being in service for Jeroen.

More and more, jobs will take the role of service to a greater good. Value-creation and material rewards will be seen as a by-product of being in service. And if you lack in service-mindedness, in the future paradigm it will show through. Clients and the other stakeholders will sense it. And that would work against you.

Exercises to integrate service-mindedness into your life and your organization:

1. Take a period of one or two months to self-enquire about your mission or purpose. Meditate, spend time in nature, go for long walks, and write in your journal. By frequently spending quality time in self-enquiry, very likely more clarity around your purpose will emerge. By realising your purpose, over time this can evolve into service mindedness.
2. Spend quality time (an afternoon or a whole day for example) with your team and/or organization reflecting on your individual and common purpose. Engage in meaningful conversations on the purpose of each individual within your team. Explore your common team purpose. Ask how your team’s purpose aligns with the bigger purpose of your organization. This alignment will create greater service-mindedness within the team and the organisation.

16. Legacy Mindset

The aim of Jeroen’s work is to co-create a world in which Millennials embody self-leadership and make a sustainable impact towards the collective evolution of humanity and our planet. In this work he simultaneously realizes his dreams, his purpose and is in service to the Millennial generation. He is driven to do this work because he believes in a better, more prosperous future in which we collectively thrive, support each other and live in harmony with nature and all other beings. He believes in a future in which the soon-to-be leaders — a great part of who will come from the Millennial generation — show up and claim their place in society and the world.

Jeroen’s belief belies the legacy mindset. The legacy mindset is crucial to thrive in a VUCA world, where seemingly stable jobs can disappear overnight, the profession which supplies your income may change numerous times during the span of your lifetime, and you may have to change homes, cities and countries. When you have a clear direction for your self-realization and your service to the greater good (your legacy) you can align your decisions and actions with it. Knowing your “true north” can keep you playing in a rapidly changing world.

The legacy mindset means that everything you do is aligned with your higher purpose.

Photo by Shot by Cerqueira on Unsplash

Your work leads to self-realization and is a service to the greater good. You aim at leaving a legacy for humanity to benefit after you have left this planet.

Exercises to embody the legacy mindset in your life and organization:

1. On an individual level, start a daily journaling practice to get your creativity sparked and keep it flowing. You can start with writing whatever thoughts and feelings come up during the journaling practice. Once you are accustomed to the practice, write down the question “what is my purpose and what legacy do I wish to leave behind?” or your variation of the question. Write until you are out of words. You may be surprised by what turns up on your page. We recommend meditation prior to journaling.
2. Come together with your team or organization (live or virtually) and spend some quality time reflecting on the question “what impact do we ultimately aim to make in our ecosystem (clients, our community, country, the planet)?” Be as creative as you like in the way you harvest the outcomes of your conversation. You can use big sheets of paper to write down words, mind maps, and draw images. Use colors if that helps you in capturing the essence of your conversation.

Epilogue

After this virus is gone and we return to our routines, we will not be able to go back to the old normal. That much is certain. Aside from the rapidly shifting demographic change in the workforce — wherein the Millenials will continue to grow as a majority — disruptions like the one created by COVID-19 will repeat. If it is not a virus, it will be other disruptive forces.

That makes the 16 Future of Work mindsets laid out in this article imperative. To not consider them as an important demand from the new workforce system would mean risking obsoletion, whether as an individual, or as a team, or as an organization.

The future of work is here and now. We are moving from a paradigm of efficiency and productivity to one of deeper meaning and higher purpose. Tapping into the source of boundless creativity, limitless possibilities, abundance mindset, and gratitude - among others - will help us thrive in the new world of work. In order to remain relevant, we have to become more of ourselves.

To make the 16 Future of Work mindsets work for you on an individual, team or organizational level, embodiment is crucial. Living the 16 mindsets in your personal and professional life. This takes practice and time. Be patient, enjoy the process and just get started.

We invite you to embody and practice the mindsets through the exercises and practices we suggest underneath each mindset. Feel very welcome to reach out to the authors when you encounter challenges and have questions. We would like to learn hear from you when you have developed practices and methodologies to deploy the 16 mindsets within your team and organization, or on an individual level. It is through our collective contribution that we will thrive in this new normal.

Are you looking for support and guidance in deploying the mindsets for yourself, your team or your organization? Please reach out to us and we will be happy to engage in a conversation to explore how we can help you.

Stay safe, stay well.

You can contact Jeroen through e-mail: jeroen[AT]beingatfullpotential.com

Reference list:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshbersin/2016/09/21/the-future-of-work-its-already-here-and-not-as-scary-as-you-think

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/industries/social%20sector/our%20insights/education%20to%20employment%20designing%20a%20system%20that%20works/education%20to%20employment%20designing%20a%20system%20that%20works.ashx

https://hbr.org/2014/01/what-vuca-really-means-for-you

https://www.thehindu.com/education/careers/fluid-leadership-is-in/article29390571.ece

https://www.trainingjournal.com/articles/opinion/learning-agility-key-leading-vuca-world

https://fernandojimenezmotte.com/mi-articulo/artificial-intelligence-disruption-and-v-u-c-volatility-uncertainty-complexity-ambiguity/

https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Leading-in-an-Increasingly-VUCA-World?gko=73d76

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/social-sector/our-insights/education-to-employment-designing-a-system-that-works

https://www.willistowerswatson.com/en-US/Insights/2018/05/the-future-of-work-do-you-have-a-legacy-mindset-part-2-in-a-series