The Outward Mindset

Author: Arbinger Institute

Consider the following people: the three people you love most in your life, the two people who have influenced you most positively, your best manager, the person who inspires you to do your best, your three most preferred colleagues at work, an acquaintance for whom you have the greatest respect. When you think of these people, consider why you like them, respond to them appropriately, work hard for them, and revere them. Our belief is that many of the people you think of in this way share the following: you feel that they truly see you. Their way of looking at you and interacting with you makes you feel important, and you feel this when you are with them because, to them, you are important. This book is about that quality you admire in others—a way of seeing others that we call the outward mindset. People often use the term mindset to refer to a deeply held belief about oneself, but through our three decades of experience helping individuals and organizations, the biggest obstacle to change is not self-belief, but rather a radical shift in how an individual views their relationship with others and their commitment to them. This book is about the difference between an inward mindset, which is self-focused, and an outward mindset, which includes others. This book will help you adopt an outward mindset in your work, leadership, and life, and will guide you to build more innovative and collaborative teams and organizations. It will help you see why you like many people and what you can do to become like them. You can read this book alone, or you can read it with the two previous books: Leadership and Self-Deception and The Anatomy of Peace. This book reflects our latest work on changing mindsets, specifically showing how to change mindsets within individuals, teams, families, and entire organizations. While our first books presented fictional stories, this book consists of multiple real-life stories, most of which relate to our clients. Each chapter revolves around one or more of these stories. When the storyteller requests anonymity, we change names and details to conceal identities. Developing an outward mindset is about moving beyond thinking about ourselves. Our hope for you, as a reader, is that this book will help you achieve such a tangible change in your mindset and achieve the fruitful results at work and home that cannot be achieved without an outward mindset.