Do you have a Poverty or Prosperity Consciousness?

Organisations of every size all have a collective personality that drives their thinking, behaviours and actions and can affect their performance for good or bad. These collective personalities may or may not align with an organisation’s publicly stated values and principles; they can change over time, and are usually defined, influenced and/or condoned by the senior leadership team.

Much of an organisation’s success, or lack of it, is influenced by its corporate attitude. It attracts, hires, and reinforces the behaviours, values and attitudes that the leaders exhibit.

Whilst these collective personalities are often made up of many complex facets, one way to get a quick handle on an organisation’s approach is to see how they deal with the area of opportunity. Often the pursuit of opportunity can be seen through the lenses of either a poverty or prosperity consciousness.

A prosperity consciousness is characterised by such attitudes and traits as:

1. Optimism
2. Hope
3. Benevolence
4. Unselfishness
5. Liking and accepting people
6. Being value focused
7. Viewing success as understanding and fulfilling people’s needs
8. Liking ourselves
9. Accepting our own strengths and weaknesses
10. Accepting the strengths and weaknesses of others

A poverty consciousness is characterised by these traits:

1. Selfishness
2. Pay me more for less work
3. That’s not my department
4. That’s not my job
5. Negative conversation
6. Critical of others
7. Not feeling worthy of success
8. Doing as little as they have to do to get by
9. Can’t emotionally give to other people
10. Seek out other poverty conscious people to reinforce and be reinforced

Working your way through these checklists you can already see that a prosperity consciousness allows for more opportunity, more flow, more success.

If you find yourself in a poverty consciousness organisation, you can start making changes right now. A good way to start is changing your conversations by changing your use of words – shift from using pessimistic language (why it can’t be done) to using more optimistic language (what can be done? What is possible?). Look for ways to be more proactive and co-operative. Start looking for ways to create more opportunities by inviting people to look at possibilities. By shifting your focus to modelling a prosperity consciousness you will help create a more pleasant and healthier environment for everyone involved.

Remember everybody lives by selling something.

Author: Sue Barrett, www.barrett.com.au