Tweddle Group Outward Mindset

It was this occasion, this call for action, that was the opportunity to practice what I'd been talking about into my recorder all morning, lost in my own thoughts. These moments are choice points, when we determine our own way of being by whether we will respond to the humanity of another or not. The more consistently we choose to honor our sense of what we know to be the right thing to do, the more we discover the peace and deep naturalness of being right with others.

A genuine dialogue process is one in which people have significantly reduced their propensity to carry hidden baggage. Groups composed of such people create both a shared meaning and a common purpose, and their attitude toward each other is one of mutual respect and service. They communicate clearly because they live clearly; without blame and self-protection, they have the simple desire to help one another in achieving their common goal. When that is their way of being toward each other, productive dialogue always follows.

The Leadership Team of Spandex, the European subsidiary of an American multinational company, had become highly dysfunctional. Team members had become preoccupied with internal politics, had stopped listening to each other, and had become dishonest in their work with one another. According to Spandex President Rod Larson, things deteriorated to the point that the team became totally unproductive, leading to an inability to capitalize on business opportunities or solve organizational problems.

Some basics.

But there really is a way to conflict-free collaboration in our individual work lives-that is to say, an environment where individuals feel free to vigorously debate and challenge ideas, rather than "go along to get along." We typically think our ability to work without conflict depends on how others treat us, but Arbinger's work suggests something different: our ability to cut through conflict depends on how we see others. The structure, the nature of real collaboration, is the same at home, at work, or in our communities. And it all begins with mindset.

An outward mindset, however, focuses on being accountable and helping others achieve their goals and to the entire organisation (OUR results), seeing others as "people". This mindset promotes an attitude where the individual is focusing on collective success and the well-being of others by being helpful, responsible, and makes a real impact on the team effort.

Reflecting on the personal impact of the material, Zeck comments, "I am much more aware of my role in relationships, my role in these dealings with other people, my role in collusions I had with other people. [Over time] it became much more difficult to pretend that I wasn't responsible, and that I didn't have accountability and that I wasn't playing a significant role in those relationships like I had in the past. I could always find ways to blame other people, I could always find ways to excuse my behavior, excuse the way I was relating to other people and drat-the Arbinger material has taken all of that away from me! I can no longer do that in good conscience."

A long-time colleague of ours, Terry Olson, tells of the following experience that began in a workshop he was conducting for public-school teachers. They were using a room at a lockdown educational facility for elementary-aged children with severe behavioral problems. Some of the teachers from that school were eavesdropping at the back of the room.

Think your organization is in tip-top shape? "There's a saying that people don't need a doctor until they're sick," said Sam Whitney, one of the brains behind the Mindset Audit. "One of the problems with an inward mindset is that you don't know you have it. We wanted to develop a tool that could expose organizational mindset really quickly, and would allow people to walk away with an analysis of their score as well as suggestions for moving forward. As soon as you start to see those weak points, you begin to question the virtue of your organization's effectiveness, and that in turn causes you to question your place, and your part in that organizational breakdown. You're revealing a foundational mindset, and bypassing a lot of the common barriers by getting to the core of organizational issues."

Arbinger's new way of speaking about this same phenomenon-inward and outward mindset-illustrates the same principles. An inward mindset describes a mentality wherein the individual is focused solely on him or herself. Again, akin to being in the box, from an inward mindset others don't matter like I do. We are cut off from and closed to their needs and challenges-their humanity. An outward mindset describes a mentality wherein the individual is focused on collective success and wellbeing. A person with an outward mindset is aware of and alive to the needs, concerns and objectives of others and understands that their needs, concerns and objectives matter.

Here is the Arbinger webinar library.

How well do you take correction?

Arbinger teaches that transformation of conflict often begins with one party choosing to see the "other" differently-it is our hope that the documentary will help to illustrate that we share a common humanity, and that communities are multi-dimensional, living organisms where one sterile mandated behavioral solution is never the answer to true and lasting transformation.

Superior Water and Air is a plumbing, heating and air conditioning business founded in 1956. Rob Anderson, a senior Superior employee, and a partner, Mark Combourn, purchased Superior in 2007. While Superior was a solid company when Rob and Mark bought it, the company was small and wasn't growing. Rob, who was now CEO, wanted to grow the business, but felt stuck in how to go about doing so, especially with a workforce that he considered stagnant and complacent. He then also discovered that his company was suffering from fundamental business deficiencies. Rob knew that he needed to find a way to change the way the each employee operated if he wanted to remedy the company's deficiencies and grow the business.

You like the conflicts you're in. You like that your teenager yells at you, for example, or that your spouse is giving you the silent treatment. And you like how your co-worker is making your life more difficult. You like that your boss is a jerk and that your employees are incompetent. You like the trouble people are creating for you."

Video on how the Arbinger principles and an Outward Mindset can transform.