The Mindset Advantage: Are you using it to get business results?

The Mindset Advantage

Mindset underlies everything. Action, choice, thought, feeling, relating, success, satisfaction and positive regard all arise from and are impacted by, our mindset. In its impact on our action and choice, mindset largely determines the results we experience by that action, as individuals, teams and organisations. (I talk about this more in a previous video blog).

Illustrated most simply, success is most basically impacted by whether our mindset is, “we can,” or, “we can’t.” If you think, “I can,” you likely will. If you think, “I can’t,” clearly you won’t. Athletes often attribute victory to the one who had the most mental strength. Basically the one who, with the aid of a sport psychologist, had the power over their mindset to illuminate their path to success and victory.

In this way mindset impacts results and success in everything:

• Tied to training success, mindset is essential. If we believe we can implement new skills, we likely will. If we believe we can’t, we likely won’t. A person who walks away, albeit thoroughly trained, with a mindset of, “I can’t do this,” or, “It’ll never work,” will be no more likely to succeed at their newly acquired skills than if they’d never been trained in the first place. Yet, how many training organisations do a check on participant’s mindsets?

• Taken further, success in any new skill set requires its own mindset. For example, being an effective leader requires a leadership mindset; meeting the targets of a successful sales person requires a sales mindset; and providing exemplary customer service requires CSRs to have a customer service mindset. Supportive mindsets necessary for success in each of these skill areas are as important, if not more important, to success with the skill than the external skill training acquired. How many training organisations ensure their clients have the mindset to succeed in the area in which they are skill training?

• In Change Facilitation, mindset determines our response to change, in general and in particular. If we have a mindset of viewing change as undesirable, scary or even a threat, we’ll likely resist and work against it, if not sabotage. Conversely, if we believe that change is advantageous, we’ll likely welcome, if not embrace, any change and promote and lead it. Yet again, mindset is the essential difference between success and failure but how many change facilitators and facilitation organisations are sufficiently concerned about, facilitate and monitor closely this crucial element?

• Organisational Culture is essentially the sum of the mindsets of those engaged in it, starting most influentially with the mindsets of those at the top. To shift culture to a state of high performance, customer service, or proactive, ‘can do’ culture, requires, foremost, organisation-wide mindsets to support it. The success of any cultural change initiative will be defined and delimited by the organisation wide mindset that is necessary to support it. Without the right mindsets in place, any change effort will be temporary at best, with people going through the motions in an effort ‘to keep them happy.’ And, as so often happens, people are left with cynical mindsets wondering, “Why did we do that?” ensuring any subsequent change initiative will be even harder, if not impossible.

For permanent improvement/culture change, a permanent shift in mindset is required. It must be the objective. Without the shift in mindset to support it, any change or improvement will be temporary at best, with people, teams and cultures reverting or gravitating back to the delimiting dictates of their unchanged mindsets.

Mark Huston
Senior Transformation Consultant

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