To be open-minded is something everyone should practice daily. Not only in professional context, but also in your personal life.
During my 20 years of experience in multinational environment, I must say that to be open-minded is one of the most precious skills to unlock challenging situations.
To build an open-minded mindset, it’s recommendable to use some coaching competences: to listen with empathy, to ask open questions and specially to believe in other’s potential. These competences will help us to understand other’s points of view.
Success is highly correlated with open-minded organizations and professionals. Why? Because is a mindset that fosters the creation of new opportunities, vs being prisoners of our common thoughts & believes.
There are many benefits of having an open mindset for professionals and organizations. The most valuable ones for my clients are the following 7:
1. You will manage Stress.
If you are open-minded, the continuous frustrations won’t be part of you, limiting the scope of your thoughts. On the contrary, you will evaluate new options, new ways of doing, that will open you the doors to scape from your limiting beliefs.
It’s like operating under the blue ocean strategy: until you don’t move from your red ocean full of competition, to start to look at the things with a new perspective, you won’t find new solutions. The analogy with the stress is the same, allow yourself to be open to new possibilities and avoid the non-exit streets.
2. To build High Performing Teams.
To build high performing teams, the roots are extremely important.
These strong roots are based partially on the confidence between the team members, and being respectful and accept other’s opinions is key in the building of these roots.
Any team leader may foster the open-minded mindset if he/she really wants to build a team with no fissures.
3. Continuous Learning.
If we listen to answer, we don’t learn. But if we listen to understand, we’ll be learning continuously.
We interact daily with different professionals, from different areas, origins, experiences, etc. We are exposed to a vast quantity of rich knowledge. So, why not to take advantage of that, and be continuously updating our “brain software”? And the good thing it is that is free!! 😊
4. To become a Master Strategist.
The starting point to develop good strategies, is to have a good diagnosis, gather the real insights of what’s happening. It’s like in medicine, a good doctor spends most of the time exploring and making the right diagnosis. The more accurate is the diagnosis, the higher probabilities of being successful.
If we are open-minded, and we listen properly the messages we are receiving from the people & the environment, we will be magnificent strategists & problem solvers.
5. Growth Agility.
When you are open, you consider different point of view, what leads you to experiment new things, making you a more complete professional.
Professional with high level of growth agility are gold for organizations.
6. Positivity.
When you are open, you will build positivity, for you, for your team, and for your organization.
And this can be the best competitive advantage of your organization vs the competition, as you always believe in your possibilities of achieving success.
Give up is not in your vocabulary.
7. Trust.
When being open-minded, you build strong and humble relations, that guides you and your teams to trust. And trust in the organizations should be at the core of their values.
The best professionals want to work in companies where the culture is based on strong values. And trust is a non-negotiable.
There are many other benefits, but I choose to focus on the ones with higher correlation with success at organizational & professional level.
A last question: How should you practice them?
Activating your coaching mindset:
- Asking the right questions.
- Listening actively.
- Giving space to others.
- Digging deeper with curiosity.
Start to practice your OPEN-MINDED mindset.
