Mindset is crucial for effective collaboration.
The clearest reminder for me about the importance of mindset was when our son was born (32 years ago!)
I guess my wife and I both thought at the time that the world would keep rolling along and we just had to fit the new arrival into our comfortable ‘business as usual’ existence (notwithstanding the advice from family and friends about the significant change we were about to experience!)
While we could learn the techniques of child rearing (nappy change, bottle feed, managing the crying, etc), a big surprise was how we had to adjust our thinking:
- No longer were we in control of our agenda- we had to adapt and be ready for what emerged in the night, or at mealtime, or when we were due to be somewhere!
- We no longer knew the answer (and sometimes even the question was unclear – babies aren’t very clear sometimes in what they want!). So we had to become a lot more comfortable with uncertainty and not knowing but just trying stuff and seeing what worked (or not)
- Our schedule went out the window, we had to accept that flexibility and not certainty was the new order of the day.
- We could no longer do things ‘to’…., it always had to be ‘with’….the new arrival- as uncomfortable and frustrating as that sometimes was.
I learned to shift my mindset around some significant patterns of behavior, just as our experience at Twyfords tells us is necessary for collaborating effectively.
My key insight is that our natural and learned thinking that has worked and been successful in the past can compromise our efforts to collaborate.
We need to challenge and shift our thinking – to “rebirth” our mindset so that our collaborative efforts are congruent and effective.