Becoming an ‘outward mindset’ leader

Becoming an ‘outward mindset’ leader

As a leader of your company, it’s your responsibility to not only drive your business toward the designated destination, but also to make sure the day-to-day operations can run smoothly without interruption from any conflicts or disputes — be they small or big.

In practice, how many hours a day do you spend leading and coaching your people? How much of your time is wasted resolving endless conflicts instead of planning future business goals? How often do you feel disappointed in others’ performance or behaviour?

Essentially, it is the leader’s prerogative to take any appropriate action in order to mend unproductive relationships. This is because even seemingly unnoticeable minor conflicts can still lead to major problems including weak teamwork, employee turnover, increased costs and deteriorating business performance.

Collaboration, on the other hand, helps to remove silos, improve culture and leverage business results, but it is only possible when everyone is invested in the success of everyone else and the company rather than themselves.

This is the concept of the “outward mindset”. It focuses on being accountable and helpful to others and the entire organisation in achieving their goals, seeing them as OUR results, and seeing others as “people”. This mindset describes a mentality wherein the individual focuses on collective success and well-being of others by being helpful and responsible, and makes a real impact.

When individuals have the desire to improve and care about others’ interests, they will begin to see their work as a function of how they can best fulfill the needs of others in a way that creates real and sustainable results; hence, this outward mindset will eventually create a culture of authentic collaboration and accountability.

As good as it sounds, I find that the real challenge in many companies, however, lies on the fact that even leaders themselves can be the cause of the problems. Some create conflicts as they lack an outward mindset or are blind to the consequences of their own actions.

Often enough we can see leaders who expect their people to perform to their standards. Consequently they set stringent goals, which they believe are achievable, only to find later that their people cannot meet the expected standard. Then they point fingers at their staff, branding them as dissatisfied, lacking in commitment and even underperforming.

The truth is, most of the time, leaders forget to consider the views or needs of others. They ignore the fact that just because they have been appointed to a senior position, it does not necessarily mean they have the knowledge to see all the answers and how the outcomes should look for everyone else.

I’d say that when leaders impose their views on their teams and dish out consequences when their people can’t perform to the expected standard, it means the leaders themselves have created the problem — not the other way around — and this is the act of an inward mindset.

The inward mindset reflects a singular focus, predominately on themselves and their objectives (MY result); seeing others more as “objects” and less as humans. This stems mainly from self-deception.

Self-deception is the process of denying or rationalising away the relevance, significance or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument. It happens when we see the world only from our point of view and it generally involves convincing oneself of a truth (or lack of truth) so that one does not reveal any self-knowledge of the deception.

The real problem is that most of the time people don’t even realise that they have a problem. This symptom is called “insistent-blindness” or the inability to see that one has a problem.

I’ve mentioned a few times that when you act contrary to what you feel you should be doing for someone else, this is an act of “self-betrayal”. When you betray yourself you will begin to see the world in a way that justifies your self-betrayal; thus, your view of reality becomes distorted and you will enter the box of self-deception. You may end up being trapped there.

In this case, leaders with an inward mindset are living in boxes of self-deception that concern them and them only — not others. The only way to escape the box is to start showing genuine curiosity about those around them as people with views as valid as their own. Then they can start to ask others about their opinions, their benefits and goals, and it is then that they see how they are the cause of many problems.

For leaders to step out of the box and become outward-mindset leaders, they can start by asking themselves these two simple questions suggested by the Arbinger Institute:

“Am I curiously seeking and hearing the other person’s opinion with the intention of understanding?”

“How am I making this situation worse for them?”

These questions will surely get you pondering your own intentions and actions. The moment when you start realising that you can also take others’ opinions and goals into account is the moment that can you start to see a new way of working individually but collaboratively in order to win altogether.

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Arinya Talerngsri is Group Managing Director at APMGroup, Thailand's leading Organisation and People Development Consultancy. She can be reached by e-mail at arinya_t@apm.co.th or https://www.linkedin.com/pub/arinya-talerngsri/a/81a/53b

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