With change, adversity and all things uncertain, businesses and people take quite a beating over the years. But when a crisis hits, everything escalates. Change becomes bigger, adversity affects us more and uncertainty intensifies. Through it all, our wit, strength, agility and mentality are tested.
Through it all, the foundation that keeps us getting back up after every fall is our mindset — the outward one in particular — and resilience. While resilience is part of an outward mindset, it is important to highlight it.
The concept of the outward mindset was developed by Dr C Terry Warner of the Arbinger Institute. It describes a perspective that views others as people with their own unique goals. That is in contrast to the inward mindset, which views other people merely as obstacles in the way of us reaching our own goals.
When we apply our outward mindset, we strive to understand the goals and motivations of one another. This helps us find ways to help others achieve their goals, for the team to achieve shared goals, and for us to achieve personal goals. In other words, the phrase “help me help you” takes on real meaning.
However, no matter how great a mindset we have and how strong our resilience is, we can still be shaken, especially when we’re in the middle of a crisis. As business leaders, mindset and resilience are tested further as we have to manage our people’s expectations, morale and motivation.
When it comes to business, it is all about people. This means ensuring that their mindset and resilience are strong enough to face any organisational challenges. As business leaders, we cannot control what our people say or how they feel. The only element in our control is how we process the situation and the reactions of our people, and our external reactions.
The concept of the outward mindset and resilience sounds great in theory. It is an ideal situation where everyone is in harmony, aiming to work together to achieve shared goals. But the reality of day-to-day workplace life can make this seem daunting and downright unrealistic to many of us.
To tackle challenges, here are some ways to strengthen your outward mindset and build up your resilience, and to help your people do likewise.
First, learn to embrace change and move with it. This isn’t an overnight process, but if we allow ourselves to practise getting out of the comfort zone, we can learn to manage the effects of change better. While we might never get completely used to it, the idea is to make sure we know how to deal with it, so it doesn’t affect us negatively.
Second, develop a wide range of skills by strengthening the ones you already have and learning new ones. Change can challenge us in many ways, and the way we can tackle it is through learned skills. The key is the confidence we build when we develop our skills. Confidence is important not just for facing change but for dealing with it as well.
Don’t wait until change happens to prepare. Learning new skills today can be easy and even free. So, depending on how much time, money and effort we want to invest, learning can match our needs while helping us prepare for the challenges ahead.
Third, communicate and reach out for support. This is especially important for strengthening your outward mindset as it connects with understanding one another and strengthening collaboration. At the end of the day, we cannot do everything on our own. We rely on the expertise and strengths of others to tackle the challenges we face together as an organisation.
Fourth, re-evaluate the way you manage expectations. You have probably experienced disappointment when things did not go as you had expected. This can happen a lot at a time of change, so managing those expectations matters.
Finally, re-evaluate the way you rest to manage stress. Everyone experiences stress; it is natural and not necessarily a bad thing. The important thing is learning how to effectively de-stress. Everyone has different ways to do this, but the most important thing is to be able to get back on track, refreshed and ready to tackle any challenge you may face.
The world of the outward mindset and resilience might seem unattainable because it sounds like such an idealistic concept. But the truth is, for many successful people we know, from well-known business leaders to our loved ones, a fundamental reason for their success is a mindset that gives them the strength to push on and get up after every failure.
Arinya Talerngsri is Chief Capability Officer and Managing Director at SEAC - Southeast Asia’s Lifelong Learning Center. She can be reached by email at arinya_t@seasiacenter.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/arinya-talerngsri-53b81aa. Explore and experience our lifelong learning ecosystem today at https://www.yournextu.com