What are the first words that come to you when someone mentions ‘mindset’?
Perhaps you think of growth, or fixed, positive, negative, open, closed, fragile, resilient.
What about feelings? Do you notice any particular emotions when thinking about these words?
Perhaps you feel excited, motivated, and energised, or perhaps you feel fatigued and jaded, cynical even. If not now, you’ve likely imagined and felt many of the above at some point in your life, and a great many more.
Whatever our background and experience, we realise our mindset lives with us, influencing and impacting our encounters and relationships everyday.
This being the case, is there a way to understand and harness the potential of mindset more than we might already be doing? At FCAT, we think there is. And to this end, we have partnered with the world-renowned Arbinger Institute to bring to staff what Arbinger calls the principles and tools of an outward mindset.
As the Arbinger Institute might say, the outward mindset is to understand the factors that shape the way we see–the way we see ourselves, the people around us, our challenges and opportunities–and how these ways of seeing influence and impact our response. Ultimately, it can show us ways to optimise and sustain our intent for and habit of collective success.
With offices and operations across the globe, Arbinger is a world leader in their field, and their ideas have been having an impact in many walks of life across the globe for more than forty years. In the
UK, their work has been felt from Nationwide to the NHS, from IBM to ASOS, from Channel 4 to the Ministry of Defence. In education, the outward mindset has been implemented in settings from India to America, from Singapore to Romania.
We’re excited to be bringing it now to FCAT.
(If you’d like to read more about the Arbinger approach, Mindset and the Basics of Arbinger’s Work may be a useful starting point. Or you can download a free sample from their most recent book The Outward Mindset by clicking here.)
FCAT Mindset & Culture
Seth Wilkins
Mindset and Culture Lead
Seth Wilkins joined the FCAT central team in autumn 2022. Originally from the south of England, he moved to the North West in 1999 (spending his first six months in South Shore, Blackpool) and later studied at Lancaster and Edge Hill. A qualified teacher of history, he is now a certified Arbinger facilitator and an executive coach. Since 2019, Seth has been delivering outward mindset training to education staff in various settings in Lancashire, Cheshire, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, and Dorset, and is currently supporting Arbinger UK as their national education lead.