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1-Page Summary of The Outward Mindset

Overview

Think about the people you like and respect most. They probably have something in common: they make you feel seen. When you’re with them, you believe in yourself and know that what they think of you matters. This is because what they think of you really does matter to them.

The outward mindset is a way of looking at the world. It involves seeing beyond yourself and making others feel valued.

Something New

A team of police officers is serving a dangerous warrant by entering the home with their guns drawn. Chaos ensues as people are running around and children are crying. The two suspects reach for their weapons, which causes more chaos in the situation.

Within five minutes, the officers have the scene under control. They have all of the people face down on the living room floor and are questioning them in a dining room. The senior sergeant watches his pointman leave to join in searching for more suspects and moments later finds him preparing baby formula for crying infants. The senior sergeant helps by distributing formula to mothers who are holding their terrified babies while they’re questioned by detectives.

Although the police department’s SWAT team has been praised for its performance, it wasn’t always that way. In the past, this SWAT team was one of the most complained about units in KCPD. Officers used to spit on furniture and ruin it while executing warrants or shoot any pet they deemed dangerous. The leader of this unit believed aggression was necessary for survival.

A police officer named Huth realized that his team’s mindset was counterproductive and changed it. They stopped chewing tobacco, and they worked with an animal specialist to understand how dogs work. As a result of this change in thinking, the squad managed to make bottles for babies as well as have no complaints against them at all. How did he manage to achieve these results?

By using a different way of thinking, the SWAT team learned to see others as human beings. This mindset changed their approach to interacting with people and resulted in better performance. In three years after adopting this new perspective, they recovered more drugs and guns than in the previous decade.

Mindset and behavior are closely linked. If you want to change your behavior, it’s insufficient to focus only on the behavior; you need to look at both mindset and behavior. When your mindset is outward-focused, appropriate behavioral changes tend to follow naturally.

Many things can prevent an individual from thinking outside the box, such as corporate incentives and personal egos. As a result, individuals and organizations get stuck in their ways. Louise Francesconi was asked to cut $100 million from her company’s budget during a meeting with other executives. Everyone agreed that layoffs would be necessary, but no one wanted to lose their jobs or have the cuts affect them personally. The situation quickly stalled out, causing frustration for everyone involved until two things helped them start moving again:

When people were worried about massive layoffs, they thought of who would be affected and what it meant not only for them but their families as well. This led to a commitment to find alternatives to layoffs where possible. Then an Arbinger consultant asked the executives to team up with each other and learn more about one another’s area of business in order to protect it.

In the past, people would only think about their own division and how to cut costs. Now they have to think of ways that other divisions can save money too, which is more difficult but also more effective. This led to some really creative ideas for saving $7 million by merging two different departments together.