You Majored in What? (10 page)

Why Would an Employer Care About Your Positive Mindset?

• As mentioned earlier, research increasingly supports the importance of the positive mindset for success in the workplace. A positive mindset cuts stress, boosts morale, and improves productivity.

• The most successful leaders have positive mindsets, and a positive mindset helps you motivate yourself and others. Motivating workers is an ongoing challenge in many workplaces, and positive psychology research offers valuable advice and solutions.

• Optimistic workers are more resilient, less likely to quit or give up, and more likely to achieve goals and focus on their strengths.

• Individuals with positive mindsets are more likely to take responsibility for themselves and work independently.

How You Can Develop or Use the Positive Mindset:

• Consider a time when you experienced a setback. How did you handle it? What would a person with a positive mindset have done? When you’re faced with a setback, ask yourself: “How would the ‘perfect’ me at my all-time best handle this situation?”

• What strengths did you discover in your Wandering Map? How can you use or build on them today?

• Think about times when you’ve been “in the flow”—when time just flew by because you were so caught up in your experience. What were you doing? Can you increase the time you spend in the flow now?

• In his book
Authentic Happiness,
Dr. Seligman writes that “the key is not finding the right job; it is finding a job you can make right.” He recommends “recrafting” your job by changing the duties to fit your strengths. Think about the various jobs or activities you’ve enjoyed. How did you make them right through recrafting?

• Name three things that went right today. Better yet, name three things that have gone right with your job search recently. Perhaps reading this book is one of them. What did you do to make them happen?

• Develop an “attitude of gratitude” by focusing on what has worked well in your life. Or try thinking of three things you’re grateful for today. You might even want to create a gratitude journal, writing down the large and small things you’re grateful for, like that great coffee shop that’s located on your way to class or work. By the way, this also works when you can’t sleep. Instead of thinking about all the things you need to be doing, or haven’t done, focus on the three things that went right during the day.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rank your use of the positive mindset?

If you were going to tell an employer about your strength in using a positive mindset, what example(s) would you use?
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MINDSET 6: THE GLOBAL (INTERNATIONAL) MINDSET

You’d have to have been living in a cave to have missed all the buzz about globalization. The world seems to shrink every day—we are not on an isolated island, nor should we strive to be. A global mindset goes beyond tolerance of another culture to appreciation and understanding. People with global mindsets go out of their way to study other cultures and languages, and immerse themselves in new places and experiences. The global thinker understands that our worlds are enhanced by appreciating, valuing, and incorporating ideas from other countries and cultures. We even understand ourselves better when we understand others.

Why Would an Employer Care About Your Global Mindset?

• Even small organizations are increasingly international in nature if only because the Web has created customers or clients from around the world. They have a need for workers with global knowledge and understanding.

• Leaders, in particular, need to have global mindsets to be able to develop far-reaching visions for their organization.

• Workers who can speak other languages and understand and appreciate other cultures are highly prized in the workplace. They already have a strategic advantage over employees who don’t possess the same skills and knowledge.

• The organization that is global in its thinking has a strategic and competitive advantage in the marketplace.

How You Can Develop or Use the Global Mindset

• Expand your world: seek opportunities to immerse yourself in people, places, and experiences that are new and out of your comfort zone. Deliberately seek experiences that you might find uncomfortable and go in with an attitude for learning.

• Study abroad—or better yet, volunteer or work abroad so you are more fully immersed in the culture.

• Seek out students at your school who are not native to your country and listen to their perspective. Ask them what they like about college. What do they dislike? What has been hard about adapting to American culture? What mistaken assumptions do Americans possess about their culture?

• Seek out courses that will teach you about cultures, languages, and international issues. Go with an open-minded attitude and a desire to learn. Consider studying a language that’s completely unknown to you, such as an Asian or Middle Eastern language if you’re most familiar with European languages. Download a foreign language podcast and take the first lesson. Understanding someone else’s language will help you better understand their culture.

• Immerse yourself in an unfamiliar culture or country by reading books or watching films native to that culture or country.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rank your use of the global mindset?

If you were going to tell an employer about your strength in this area, what example(s) would you use?
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MINDSET 7: THE COLLABORATIVE MINDSET

The collaborative mindset can be challenging, particularly for students who have had negative experiences with teamwork in their classes. If you’ve ever been graded on a team project, you probably know what I’m referring to. Isn’t there always someone on the team who doesn’t even show up for the meetings? And doesn’t someone always get stuck doing the bulk of the work? Bad experiences with working on teams have created a mental block against teamwork for many people. In fact, teamwork often goes against the classic American mindset of rugged individualism and the romantic image of the lone hero. Consider the film
Die Hard,
which in 2007
Entertainment Weekly
magazine voted the number one action film ever made. Bruce Willis is the lone hero and the only “teams” in the movie are the evil terrorists and the clueless police force. That is, until toward the end of the film when Bruce teams up with one lone-wolf street cop and the two together outsmart the larger groups.

On the other hand, many of you have probably experienced good moments of collaboration: the orchestra you played in, the choir you sang in, the athletic team you were on, or the student committee you formed to change a bad policy at your school.

Most people would agree that collaboration is a good thing. While most conflict can be boiled down to the simple question, “Why aren’t you more like me?” the collaborative mindset responds, “Sure we’re different; so how can we work together?” Good collaborators know that our thinking expands into new areas when we work with and listen to others.

Why Would an Employer Care About Your Collaborative Mindset?

• Employers consistently list teamwork as a vital skill in their organization, regardless of the type of organization.

• Being able to work on a team is a survival skill in the workplace. Workers have to be able to communicate and work together to be efficient.

• Teams are often responsible for the development of new products, innovations, and ideas. Teamwork results in synergy, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

• Well-constructed teams can break down “silo thinking,” the failure to take into account the opinions and needs of other groups within the organization.

• Teams foster the sharing of information and cooperation and can draw out the best in each worker.

• By strengthening communication, teams help to foster a culture of trust within an organization.

How You Can Develop or Use the Collaborative Mindset

• Consider when you have you been part of a team. Was it a successful experience? What made it a success or failure? What did you learn from working in a team?

• Seek opportunities to be part of a team. Join an organization, attend the meetings, and be an active participant.

• Make a point of listening to and valuing the ideas and opinions of others. Ask yourself, “What could I learn from this person or this group?”

On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rank your use of the collaborative mindset?

If you were going to tell an employer about your strength in this area, what example(s) would you use?
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MINDSET 8: THE REFLECTIVE MINDSET

During periods of relaxation after concentrated intellectual activity, the intuitive mind seems to take over and can produce the sudden clarifying insights which give so much joy and delight.

—FRITJOF CAPRA,
THE TAO OF PHYSICS

With cell phones, iPods, BlackBerry devices, video games, twenty-four-hour cable, and so on, developing a reflective mindset is probably the most challenging. In fact, when surveyed, students often indicate that it is their least-used mindset, and it is usually in the top five mindsets the students wish to develop. Most of us know the value of taking a moment of reflection particularly when emotions are high—have you ever regretted sending an e-mail or IM in a moment of anger? Taking time to reflect helps us make smarter decisions.

A reflective mindset is extremely powerful and the small amount of time spent in this mode will yield results exponentially. There are two main challenges to reflective thinking: time and noise. You need to have a chunk of time and get into a quiet setting.