The Outward Mindset: Seeing Beyond Ourselves

The outward mindset is a way of looking at the world. It involves seeing beyond yourself and making others feel valued. An outward mindset focuses on others, on what is important to all stakeholders: our employees, customers, manager, family members.

An outward mindset means that we genuinely see (and hear and listen to) others. We evaluate their needs, objectives, and challenges rather than focusing on our own. When we do this, options occur to us that never could have before (e.g., the formula story) and we can focus on the collective result we desire.

An inward mindset is focused on self-benefit and self-concern—our individual self-interest or if we are operating in a larger organization, our individual team, or our division.

When people focus on themselves rather than on their impact, lots of activity and effort get wasted on the wrong things. Collaboration suffers, innovation is limited and employees disengage due to the boredom inherent with inward-mindset thinking and working.

The framework for working with the Outward Mindset goes by the acronym SAM—See others, Adjust efforts and Measure impact.

• See others: Ask your executive team to see what each of their colleagues is doing and push the executives to reveal what is not working, to be vulnerable about their real needs and challenges.
• Adjust efforts: Once challenges are revealed, invite the team to step in and help.
• Measure impact: At weekly meetings, the executive team assesses the effects of the help they are providing across the entire team’s efforts.

Adopt an outward mindset even when others don’t. Rather than complain, we can make the move we are waiting for the other person to make—we can act the way we want the other person to act. 

While we think this might lead us to be taken advantage of, it is not a “soft” thing to do—in fact, it’s a hard behavior that requires courage. Putting others’ interests first when we aren’t sure others are doing the same is a scary move.