Six years ago, if you’d told me chickens made great pets I wouldn’t have believed you—my view was that they’re noisy, stupid and smelly.
However, inspired by COVID enforced time at home, a bit of space on our property, and lots of food scraps that couldn’t be composted we made the rash decision to get some chickens.
Soon after this, things started turning to custard. We knew NOTHING about keeping chooks. Mrs. Mangle and her crew regularly escaped the coop, raided the neighbors garden, got clucky and invited themselves inside the house in a crime spree that lasted months. As we solved each chicken-induced problem a new one to overcome emerged. Getting rid of them wasn’t an option though, as it soon became apparent that our kids had taken a real shine to the chickens so we were stuck with keeping them…
Fast-forward to today, and what was once hard to believe is the chickens, while still naughty, have become a valued and much loved part of our family.
This change of opinion (or I should say, “mindset”) isn’t something anyone could have ever taught me, but now I literally ‘see’ them differently. So, what’s changed?
How mindsets are made
Our mindsets are created by our experiences. We create stories from our life experiences, which shape the mental models that help us make sense of the world — and drive our behavior.
Most people think behavior works like this: you hear or read something (data comes in), your brain responds, you take action, and you get a result.
However, behavioral psychology and neuroscience research tells us something different: Data comes in, it’s filtered through our mindsets, an emotion is evoked, this leads us to taking action or responding — and we get a result. This in turn creates a feedback loop that reinforces (or updates) the stories that make up our mindsets.
Take the simple example of failing a math’s exam. If you have a mindset that you’re not good at math’s, this result will make you feel bad and reinforce your story, and you’ll likely give up or focus on other things. However, If instead, you edit your mindset so your story is that you’re smart but just didn’t study math’s hard enough, what happens? You feel motivated to study harder for the next exam and as a result you pass. Then you feel great, and reinforce your mindset that you’re smart and even good at math’s!
Leadership and understanding mindsets
As an adult the above example may seem trivial but our underlying mindsets (I like to think of them as made up of “stories”) have a profound impact on how we live, work and lead.
Have you heard the quote “Seeing is not believing, believing is seeing, we see the world not as it is, but as we are”?
Every human sees the same things differently. We see the world through the lens of our stories and mindsets. As a leader, understanding this is key. It applies:
- In leading ourselves — by understanding our own mindsets and the stories that form them we can act and develop ourselves from a place of choice, not reactivity.
- In leading others — if we seek to understand the mindsets and stories of those we lead and collaborate with we can more expertly support, inspire and understand them.
In both cases, this takes a high level of self awareness to do well. Regular, deliberate reflection and curiosity is one way to develop this.
To build or edit our stories and therefore mindsets, we also need to give our mind evidence through real-world experience. This is why one of my favorite sayings is “it’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting”. Our development should focus more on mindfully experimenting first hand—and then reflecting on what happens—than on thinking and learning from others’ experiences.
Daniel Kahneman’s System 1 and 2 model of the human mind goes deeper to support this. The vast majority of our behavior happens unconsciously, in the fast, automatic system 1 part of our mind and the way to train and develop this ‘instinct’ is with experience and evidence rather than reasoning alone. Consider what would have a greater impact on your habits around health — reading about the benefits of exercise, or going for a long walk and feeling more energized as a result?
Going back to Mrs. Mangle and her flock, what changed my mindset was the experiences our family had. We built a better chicken coop, got to know our neighbors and kindly relocated clucky hens. The kids engaged and cared for the chickens and we got to know the unique and quirky personalities (chickenalities) they each have. And one day, while looking at a photo of my daughter holding Mrs. Mangle with a look of such love and happiness on her face, I realized that my story had changed: chickens make great pets!
No one could have taught or told me this – I had to experience it.
So how about you? What’s a story or mindset you’d like to change or develop — and what’s a small action or experiment you could try this week to help it along? Join the conversation on LinkedIn
Stay tuned for Part 2 — on how all of this connects to growing adaptive, future-ready leaders.