Questions and Mindsets – The Portal to Understanding Others
Last week Ali wrote about getting below the stand and left off promising you reflections on great questions and how to understand the mindset of your clients and colleagues.
Mindsets are complex and understanding them is critical to the work we do – both as REALTORS® and as coaches. (As parents, partners and friends as well but that is beyond our scope). A mindset is the way we see the world. A big picture view – how we believe the world to be and a smaller picture view – how we are seeing the world right now. Some people see the world as big, beautiful, positive and abundant. Others see it in a more limited way, finding it competitive, scarce, negative and threatening. Most of us move around between different mindsets at different times depending on our circumstances. Understanding and managing our own mindset is the most effective way to become successful. Understanding and managing the mindset of the people we interact with is the most effective way to help them become successful.
The idea that most people have no awareness of mindsets, theirs or others, means that this can be a pretty tricky thing to do. Telling them that their mindset is getting in their way will backfire 9 times out of 10. It will likely make them feel judged which increases their defensiveness and strengthens their negative mindset. So, what to do? The magic portal to understanding people, to gaining their trust and to inviting them to have a more successful mindset is asking questions. Not just any questions, but powerful questions that are designed to reduce defensiveness, invite them to reflect, empower them and open the door to more options and better outcomes. To master the art of asking powerful questions, you will need to understand and manage your mindset. This gives you the power to choose a mindset of curiosity and deep authentic curiosity will produce the right questions, empowering your client or colleague to make better decisions and produce better results. Easy? Not so much, but critical if you want to serve your clients at the highest possible level.