Quotes from The Arbinger Institute

So while it's true that behavior drives results, it's also true that mindset drives behavior. Consequently, any solution to human problems that ignores this reality ignores too much of what's true to produce reliable results.

have you ever been in a conflict with someone who thought he was wrong?

As the mindset changes, so does the behavior, without having to prescribe the change. And where certain behaviors still need to be stipulated, the suggestions won't be systematically resisted. For these reasons, mindset change facilitates sustainable behavior change.

Generally speaking, we respond to others' way of being toward us rather than to their behavior. Which is to say that our children respond more to how we're regarding them than they do to our particular words or actions.

Most approaches to leadership share two common problems. As we've discussed in this chapter, they fail to account adequately for mindset and therefore put too much faith in our ability to change behavior without addressing mindset. In addition, however, a problem that originated in Western thought some four hundred years ago has led to mindset and leadership approaches that are built on a mistake.

Friedrich Nietzsche famously said that "a 'thing' is the sum of its effects.

If there is one truism about life, surely it is that we are inextricably and inescapably together.

Given that no one is born into this world without others, that one's ability to think requires language learned from others, and that one's cognitive and emotional experiences are shaped by thoughts and feelings about others, thinkers began to argue that individualistic approaches miss the mark. What is fundamental is not an isolated self but rather a kind of brute fact that just is—the reality of being in the world with others. Who we are is who we are with others.

So while it's true that behavior drives results, it's also true that mindset drives behavior.

There's something deeper than behavior that determines our influence on others—it's whether we're in or out of the box. You don't know much about the box yet, but when we're in the box, our view of reality is distorted—we see neither ourselves nor others clearly. We are self-deceived. And that creates all kinds of trouble for the people around us.

Martin Buber, who studied the reality of humankind's connectedness, observed that there are basically two ways of being with others: we can be in the world seeing others as they are, as people, or we can be in the world seeing others as they are not, as objects.

We can be connected to others as with people or connected to others as with objects, but we are always connected. Separation is an abstraction. Together is our reality.

She lives in the presence of wonder at their thoughts and abilities and therefore provides space for them to create and grow and for her to create and grow in response to them.

With Buber's observations in mind, we can see that both of these leaders are connected with others rather than split from them. It's just that one of them—the Isolated leader—is together with others as with objects, while the Together Leader is together with others as with people.

self-betrayal—times when I had a sense of something I should do for others but didn't do it.

if I am failing in my teaching, my correction will likely fail as well.

every person who is burning time and energy seeking justification is doing so at the expense of the contribution he or she could be making to the overall results of the company.

I become an agent of change," Yusuf continued, "only to the degree that I begin to live to help things go right rather than simply to correct things that are going wrong.

We end up gathering with allies—actual, perceived, or potential—as a way of feeling justified in our own accusing views of others.

Rok Zorko, vice president of product development for the very successful app-development company, Outfit7, said, "It is an eye-opener to realize that you are not to treat people as objects but to treat them as people. Once you have this knowledge, you can never unthink it.

We're so convinced that how we think and feel about other people is caused by them," he says, "by what they have or haven't done, by how inconsiderate they have been to us or how judgmental, and so on. But a seventeen-year-old young woman taught me that this wasn't true. I see people the way I see them because of me.

When my mindset is outward, I am alive to and interested in other people and their objectives and needs. I see others as people whom I am open to helping. When my mindset is inward, on the other hand, I essentially turn my back on others; I don't really care about their needs or objectives.

If I have an outward mindset, knowing that the organization's success depends on my colleague's success as well as my own, I will feel an obligation to help my colleague succeed.

Think about it: if I'm sure I'm right, there is little hope of seeing where I am failing. So I keep trying the same old things—the same lectures, for example, and the same punishments. And I keep getting the same outcomes: others with problems. On the one hand, I hate it, but on the other hand, I get my justification, which is what I most want when I'm in the box. My need for justification blinds me to all kinds of possibilities. Even to the obvious ones.