What’s a Mindset?

A mindset is an overarching thought pattern of how you view the world. This, in turn, influences how you interact with others. For example, if you believe people are basically good, you will interact with strangers very differently from someone who believes people are basically evil and want to harm you. A supportive environment requires a shift away from a culture of scarcity and competition to a mindset of abundance and cooperation.

What Does a Scarcity Mindset Look Like?

A scarcity mindset creates a culture of competition for limited resources. Scarcity is really another form of fear—fear of running out. If you have a scarcity mindset, you’re always afraid that you’re going to run out of money, time, jobs, awards, talent, ___ fill-in-the-blank. Doesn’t sound like a fun way to live, does it? With a scarcity mindset, we believe we must beat out others to secure what limited resources are available. Under a scarcity mindset, someone must lose in order for someone to win, because there is not enough for everyone. No wonder a scarcity mindset leads to competitive, cut-throat, dysfunctional communities: everyone is vying for the limited resources. In order to win, someone else must lose. Scarcity is a fear-based mindset.

What Does a Competition Mindset Look like?

A competitive mindset feeds into a scarcity mindset and together they create a dysfunctional and destructive culture. Competition fuels the fear that I’m not good enough. Yup—you guessed it. Another, sneakier form of fear. Underlying competitiveness is the belief that I have to win to prove my worth and silence the fear that I’m not good enough. In a competitive mindset, not only do I have to win, but others have to lose, so I can feel good about myself. First, let’s get real. What are the chances you’re always going win??? Yup. That’s what I thought. No way. Further, by comparing ourselves to others, we rob ourselves of the joy of our individual gifts and undermine our own confidence.

Comparison robs you of joy.

I would extend that quotation, frequently attributed to Teddy Roosevelt, and add “comparison robs you of joy and confidence” (italics mine). A cheap and easy way to feel good about yourself is to compare yourself to someone worse off. Aha! I make more money than she does, so I’m doing great. I lost more weight than she did so I (obviously) look better. While comparing yourself to others below you may temporarily build you up, the problem with this comparative and competitive approach is that there will always be someone better than you: and that doesn’t feel good. I compare myself to someone who makes less money than I do and I feel good; I compare myself to someone who makes more money than I do, and I feel bad. Comparison is a dead end. You may experience the temporary high of winning, but rest assured, you will also feel the despair of losing. Trying to survive in a culture of scarcity and competition is exhausting.

Creating a Culture of Abundance and Cooperation

While I tend to portray a scarcity and competition culture as negative, the scary thing is how prevalent it is. When I ask my college students to evaluate their educational experiences—do they view the American educational culture, the one they grew up in, as one of abundance and cooperation, or competition and scarcity—I can barely get the words out of my mouth before my students jump on the competition and scarcity classification. It’s hard to imagine learning in a culture where students feel pitted against each other.

I’ve had a front row seat to observe gender differences between a competition and cooperation mindset via the final sales role play assignment in my sales classes. At the end of each semester, to demonstrate what they’ve learned, students perform a mock sales call role-play with a professional buyer. The role-plays are graded, videotaped, and critiqued by professional salespeople. Sound scary? It is. And the fear is palpable as I watch students walk toward the room where the role-plays take place. But a funny thing happened as I started watching students as they walk out of their role-play, start breathing again, and be greeted by the students waiting their turn. In my traditional sales classes (predominately men), the men would come out of the role-play bragging about how they manipulated the buyer into acquiescing, how they brilliantly handled the buyer’s objectives, and how they masterfully closed the deal. Never mind that I was grading the role-play and that would not be the way I described their performance. It was a different story, however, with the women students from my Women in Sales course. The women would exit the role-play and immediately start helping their women classmates on what to expect the buyer to do. The women who completed the role-plays would share the buyer’s problems, what objectives the buyer raised, how the buyer reacted to product attributes, etc. In fact, the women shared so much information to help the other women in the class that I had to revise the buying instructions for each role-play. The women worked together; the men competed.

Sadly, I’ve worked in organizations where the leader created an environment of competition and scarcity with the misguided thinking that cut-throat competition would make everyone work harder. In fact, the only thing the competition and scarcity culture accomplished was create a distrustful and destructive culture. Departments and individuals found themselves pitted against each other as we all competed for the scarce resources dangled in front of us. Clearly not an environment conducive to team building, problem solving, or creative work, and when he left, the organization was in shambles.

An abundance mindset adopts the idea that there is plenty to go around and leads to a cooperation mindset. With plenty of opportunities for all—not the same opportunity, but opportunities nonetheless, competition disintegrates while we cooperate and help each other achieve our goals. Beats the heck out of fighting among ourselves to be the sole winner. Working together, we can each achieve more than we could achieve separately. (Note: You still don’t have to like everyone you support. I have a colleague who is self-promoting and it drives me nuts! But when jealous, self-serving, vindictive thoughts come into my mind, I remember that as she promotes herself, she brings positive attention to the department which makes us all look good.) When one of us wins, we all win. One woman becoming a head coach, or a business school dean, or a CEO, or a presidential candidate, creates opportunities for all of us. Ironically, women naturally tend to be cooperative as is evident in our innate ability to build relationships. Imagine a world where we focused on working together instead of trying to dominate each other. When one of us wins, we all win.

Even if you are surrounded by a competition and scarcity culture, you can practice a mindset of abundance and cooperation and help others choose the same. For example, in the midst of the scarcity and competition culture the misguided leader created, my department head, a woman, intentionally taught our department to practice an abundance and cooperation mindset. While a publication in a premier academic journal can spawn jealousy among colleagues, our department head proudly emailed all department colleagues announcing the successful publication. It was expected that we each send a congratulatory email to the author that the entire department could read. Full disclosure—I have written congratulatory emails while gritting my teeth. Remember: you don’t have to like the other person or agree with them, but you have to support them. Conversely, I am sure colleagues in my department have gritted their teeth while congratulating me. But through this exercise, we have learned to support and encourage each other, and adapted a mindset of abundance and cooperation instead of competing for accolades. There are plenty of wins to go around.