Are you ready for change – and how can you be sure?

The way that each of us approaches new circumstances has a big impact on our working lives. There’s no doubt about it – our “mindset” makes a huge difference to our success or otherwise.

People who adopt a “fixed” mind set believe that the qualities in themselves and those around them don’t change – and so neither does any process they undertake together nor its outcome. Those with “change” mind sets, however, believe that their qualities, traits and behaviours are cultivated directly through their efforts. They believe that they – and those around them – can change and grow through their experiences. None of us are completely one or the other of course, but it’s clearly good to slide along the scale from the former to the latter.

Yet one of the biggest difficulties for most people comes when they genuinely believe they have a change mind set, when actually they don’t. This is a particularly evident when it comes to learning from their experiences, as opposed learning more formally. Most people are generally open to learning something new when it feels formal, such as when they are in a workshop or classroom. But getting into a change mind set where we are learning from our daily experiences can be more of a challenge. Yet this is precisely where we need to change the most, to make every day small innovations in the little things we do. Most innovations are small improvements and when taken together, lots of them can make a very big difference.Are you ready for change – and even if you think you are, how do you really know? Start by asking yourself this: how open to learning are you in a work situation when you feel you already know how to do a task? You can jump-start your way to a more open mind set by committing to 3 small changes to the way you think:-

• Pay extra attention to situations where the same challenges keep coming up. There may be areas of your work where you have already given up on doing anything about them. But ask yourself how you and your colleagues can be doing better. The process of simply beginning to even think about new and better solutions to old challenges helps you to become more accepting of the need to do something.

• Ask yourself whether you could be doing more to learn from any feedback you receive. Feedback can be a real challenge to listen to at times, but make a point of really trying to understand and learn from what the other person is trying to communicate.

• Try to learn methodically from your mistakes. When things don’t go as planned, ask yourself specifically what it is that you can extract from an experience & learn for the future.

Just taking these 3 small steps to change will help bring you some certainty that you really are moving towards a change mind set. Even small shifts like these can help to unlock a big positive impact.