The Reality of an Employee Mentality

In the grind of a job, life, & traffic, it can be hard to maintain an outlook of abundance. However, it is the abundance-mindset that makes the grind fulfilling, and not because of what you accomplish, but because of the reward that invariably comes from it.

                Regardless of position, one’s outlook is determined by what they do and how they lead. Although some people are more concerned with the bottom line and others with the top line, both concerns are necessary for organizational success. As needed as they are, however, there is never time for the employee mindset because it causes the absence of the following:

1. Building Successors & Leaving It Better Than You Found It
2. Internal Collaboration for External Expansion
3. Growth, Effectiveness, & Steller Service

The abundance-minded who keep the bottom line in the back of their head and the top line in the forefront understand multiplication over addition. They focus on maximizing what they have for growing market share. They don’t worry about “downturns” because they know it will bring them more opportunities. Why? Because their competition of “managers” will give it to them by talking themselves and their reports out of opportunity.

Abundance thinking produces growth-oriented leaders who build genuine working relationships with their reports and co-workers. Growth oriented thinking is exemplified by treating those within the sphere of responsibility as industry professionals. They understand that leaders and trainers are one in the same and take responsibility for both roles.

In a growth-oriented work culture, reports and managers trust each other. They don’t have expanded conversations with one party trying to figure out what the other is hiding. This is also known as collaboration. Collaboration is a function of heightened teamwork that is only possible after members learn to cooperate and is a key ingredient in gaining market share.

Market share growth is difficult to achieve. But to be truly effective for the long term, and a consistent champion of service, you must be fluent in abundance thinking, and know the difference between that and positivity: an all too often band-aid for misdiagnosed employee mindedness.

                The employee mindset is a contagious fear-based way of thinking that pulses negative reverberations throughout the organization such as:

1. Protection of Position/Job Security
2. Gladiator Mentality
3. Goals, Expectations, & Spreadsheets

When the employee-mentality pervades the organization, it is known to those who understand the levels of leadership as a Level 1 or positional organization. At this level, many of the employees are on a transactional basis. Like many athletes in professional sports, or gladiators.

Another name for a transactionally motivated culture is “rights-based”, or “rules-based”. In this environment, too much focus is on job security and/or protecting a position. It produces an unhealthy internal struggle or competitiveness that will always undermine market share expansion.

This is where the expanded conversations happen because the “gladiators” who have been tested monthly against growing goals, expectations, and their peers are digging for the right answer while there isn’t one. In this blood bath of “quotas” and “spreadsheets”, professionalism is in the eye of the beholder, and the word growth is strictly a reference to the bottom line. In the end, the spreadsheet, or the data, is the judge.  “The numbers don’t lie” is the phrase used most for performance improvement.

Missing out on the rewards of an abundance mindset is the most tragic part of harboring an employee mentality. It seems hard to maintain but it’s not if you keep it simple and focus on working yourself out of a job. Even if you have been under the cloud of this oppressive thinking, think about setting up your replacement for easy success, or teaching team members how to be champions at what they do. Once you decide, it’s the option of others to accept it and leave the results to the Almighty. It’s about your growth, which only comes with effort. It is light years more rewarding than a paycheck. I guarantee it.

I hope you got as much out of reading this article as I did writing it.