I was contemplating where my blog could go next after talking about the need to give ourselves time to create strong teams, the importance of asking questions in that process, the need to be accountable for making things happen.
And then this I saw this image posted, and it was simple.
This week we’re bringing the last 3 blogs together, by talking about the power of changing your mind.
If we are going to deliver all that we’ve committed to, and that we are capable of, we need to trust one another, lean on one another and do so with inquisitive and open minds.
Asking questions helps us gather more information – facts on the situation, viewpoints of our colleagues and that can put us in a challenging situation.
One where our own point of view is put to the test.
How good are you at being prepared to change your mind, and to communicate that you have changed it.
This is often the definition the creativity:
Creativity is, quite literally, going from one way of thinking and doing to another. When creativity is at its best and most impactful, it is a process of repeatedly, indeed perpetually being open to changing one’s mind.
The connection proves stronger still when you look beyond the individual. Creativity, at least the kind that produces lasting value and impact is always a co-creation. What this means in this context is that in order to create we are ever and always in need of changing each other’s minds.
A change of mind need not be a wholesale substitute in thinking. Even a nudge counts. And there is a robust spectrum from nudge to fundamental mind shift in the process of co-creation that relies on both the goal to change minds and the willingness of all of us to have our minds changed.
We tend to think that changing our mind is down to information – facts and figures, stats and MI. We need the evidence to enable us to justify the climb down or the pivot without losing face. But in reality it’s pretty hard to find space to change your mind all of your own accord. Information can help, but we are overloaded and overwhelmed by it, so much so that we cannot blindly count on information to be the chief catalyst for changing our minds.
Research shows it’s a lot more to do with relationships, but that doesn’t really peel back quite enough. What is it about the relationship that give us that confidence and willingness? The power sources behind why we are able to change one another’s minds: trust and shared purpose.
No matter the field, new ideas are seeded and sewn by the degree of trust we have in others. They don’t have to want everything we want, and they won’t be like us in every way. They simply need to be trusted that what they offer up is the genuine article.
When we can go further to reveal to one another that, whatever our ideas, they are conceived with a shared purpose in mind and a genuine desire to achieve that purpose, we automatically gain the ground to think, ideate, and co-create something better together.
Wherever you are, you'll be experiencing pulling together different experiences from within your company, coupled with new joiners bringing us external examples, and all our own histories, thoughts, experiences and desires – that’s can be a recipe for disagreements, conflicting opinions, designs and ways forward. Things that a create really uncomfortable situations that styme progress, make us spin idly at a time when we need to be moving at pace in a specific defined direction collectively.
It’s also a time when creativity can give us more than the sum of the parts, where behavioural choices of each part can dictate the future of the whole.
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The part is greater than it’s role in the whole” – Tom Atlee
If you have shared purpose, and many companies and team do spend time to create these, that gives you an amazing first step.
Now focus on finding and building the trust in one another whilst being open to asking questions and truly listening to the answers with a willingness to potentially changing our minds, to compromising, we can build a foundation that is aligned, strong and effective.
I love it when people share their thinking and logic with me, I enjoy a good debate, a sharing of minds – it gives us opportunities to be open, honest and transparent and make statements like the ones I shared at the start , which in turn further builds the trust, and before we know it we’re in a virtuous circle
“There’s a virtuous cycle when people have to defend challenges to their ideas. Any gaps in thinking or analysis become clear pretty quickly when people ask good questions” – Joel Greenblatt
I would love foreach of you to be in a place where your differences enable you to create a virtuous cycle like the one below:
I leave this with you to contemplate and I really hope to hear of more gracious, changing of minds based on open conversations littered with quality questions.
Each of us can be accountable to helping the place we work be a place with a difference virtuous circle.
Until next time...
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