The Outward Mindset: How to Change Lives and Transform Organizations

Then ask questions that might spark ideas about what adjustments might be helpful: What can we do to help others understand how we value and appreciate them? What can we do to more fully understand others’ viewpoints and concerns? What trappings of leadership currently exist in the organization? Which of these trappings and differences make good bu

He called his regular check-ins with his clients self-accountability checks. This approach to measuring one’s impact requires nothing but a willingness to stay in regular conversations with others about whether they feel one’s efforts are helping them or not.

As in Chip’s experience with the baby bottles, the behaviors people choose to engage in (that they sense are right and helpful given their situation) will depend on how they see their situation and those with whom they interact. So while behaviors drive…

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A way to make this scaled alignment explicit is to help each person, each team, each department or division, and the enterprise as a whole construct their own outward-mindset-at-work diagrams.

As Captain Newson recommends, her focus is outward on something much larger than herself—on her essential contribution to the overall goals of the organization. And thinking of her role in this way requires her to focus on doing her work in a way that helps others to do theirs.

With an inward mindset, a person focuses on what he needs from others to achieve his objectives—what he needs from his customers, direct reports, peers, and leaders or from his children, partner, or neighbor. He is primarily concerned with others’ impact on him rather than with his impact on them.

A person whose mindset is outward sees others as people. Seeing them as people, he realizes that others matter like he himself matters. And because they do, their needs, objectives, and challenges will matter to him as well. As a result, his objectives and behaviors will take others into account. In a work context, a person with an outward mindset

Think about the times in your life when you have felt most alive and engaged. Who and what were you focused on in those moments—on yourself or on something bigger that included others?

A manager who wants her team to exhibit more of an outward mindset can lead that effort by building with them an implementation plan of consistent outward-mindset strategies and actions. For example, given that lateral awareness is a key indicator of mindset (as discussed in chapter 10), the team might decide to devote five minutes of every team me