Scout Mindset

Salam w.b.t and hello all,

Recently I watched a TED Talks video about Scout Mindset. You can watch the video here - Scout Mindset.

It is interesting information, I never heard of this before. So after watching this, it opens another dimension of how I should think. I will refer to myself as an example because I cannot talk for others. Most of the time, when I ask questions, I normally want to;

1. Know the answer as I genuinely don’t know
2. Double check my understanding
3. I know /don’t know the answer but I want to test the knowledge of the person I talk to, either the person knows what he/she is talking about or no idea at all and how far they know/don’t know
4. Implicitly say, I am right and I am not stupid as you think

In some circumstances, this can lead to zero knowledge of information exchange or worse, argument. Especially in point c and d.

I have a person who always start with the conversation, "I heard,…..(enter the information here)…". This is basically the start of gossiping and discussing about rumors as well as speculation. At the start, I was okay with it. Then, over time I kept hearing, "I heard…", I find that this is not good and useless conversation. So, I started asking more critical questions to the person, implementing Point C. Often times, I asked the second follow up questions the answer I commonly received is "this is what I heard".

Let me give you a short example that relevant to the current market situation.

A - I heard from my friend they lay off the people in Country XX.

ME - Yes, it is the news and it happens everywhere. Tough times now.

A - We will be lay off as well.

ME - Who told you?

A - It happened everywhere, we will also be lay off

ME - How do you know? Did you confirm with anyone? Our situation in the country is slightly different from others, and each market has their own way of tackling this tough situations.

A - No, this is what I heard.

ME - Fine.

This conversation has zero information exchange, and more towards speculation. I don’t like to engage in this kind dialogue when there is no support apart from "I heard…". I normally end it up with OK or Fine.

Point D, I always used to the managers who shows micromanage behavior. Yes, we have it. So, from time to time, micromanage can be such a pain when the person always highlight things I already know or keep chasing me to make sure I do my work. If you ever work with me, you know how I operate. I am not a kind of person requires babysitting to carry out my task. Whenever this happened, I utilise Point D to shut the personnel out and most of the time it works.

I think I have been deviated from the main point here. Scout Mindset, it is good start to retrain our way of think and manage ourselves, especially when managing our ego. Sometimes, when we are wrong, we always associated it with losing thus scratching our ego. This is unhealthy especially when we work in a group/team or interaction with any person.

I started to think consciously and asked myself this two questions; (1) I want to prove I am right or (2) I want to understand the truth? It is a small start to exercise my way of thinking, however it is better to start rather than staying at the same spot. 

That’s all for now. See you in the next entry. Take care and Salam w.b.t.

P/S - I felt the earthquake last week. It was originate from Iran, 5.7 Richter and the tremor felt in Doha. I did not know it was earthquake, because it only lasted less than 10sec. However i felt the floor, window, ceiling shook. I thought I was maintenance or imagining because i did not expect the quake. Alhamdullilah, no damages here in Qatar, but for Iran don't know the effects.