One of the most valuable lessons I learned from my sales coach, Tom Batchelder, is the importance of embracing an abundance mindset.
Adopting a perspective that the world is full of abundant opportunity was critical to my own success in sales and business development, and I’ve since coached and mentored others who have excelled in part due to this approach.
The success that I’ve seen salespeople have as a result of embracing an abundance mindset led me to question the extent to which this advice could improve performance in other areas. Are there limits to the power of positive thinking? Can this mentality work among a group? When and where is optimism beneficial and where might it be unfounded?
The longer, shorter way to address these questions involves exploring the mechanism through which an abundance mindset brings about positive outcomes. This discussion will require that we also delve into the concept of objective versus subjective thinking, and ultimately explore the difference between faith and reason. I’ll take you through my own journey of wrestling with these topics as I worked to reconcile seemingly contradictory ideas and arrived at a holistic framing.
At the end, I’ll share some general principles on where and how an abundance mindset should be ideally deployed as part of a company’s growth strategy. Feel free to take the shorter, longer way and jump to these practical tips and takeaways, otherwise make some coffee and let’s work through this together.
An abundance mindset explained
To start, let’s briefly summarize the idea of an abundance mindset. In a world in which one of the only things we can control is our perception, the idea is that choosing to view life as ripe with abundant opportunity tends to bring about more positive outcomes. Advocates of an abundance mindset link the power of positive thinking to growth in emotional resilience, acceptance of change, openness to collaboration, and a willingness to take bold risks.
An abundance mindset is typically contrasted with what is called a scarcity mindset. While abundance and scarcity generally map to optimism and pessimism, the framing is slightly different. Instead of debating “is the glass half full or half empty,” the question here is whether there’s plenty more water in the tap or if we’re in a desert and my survival depends on me getting the water instead of you. Scarcity thinking is often our default mode, and is the root of stress and worrying about the future. The biological reality of this makes intuitive sense: the animal in us is quick to protect resources and to be anxious about where and how it will get more.
The way to learn to embrace an abundance mindset instead of a scarcity mindset (you’ll find if you do a quick Google search of the term) is to practice gratitude and notice the abundance of good things already in our lives. Practitioners of abundance also advocate for more mindfulness to cultivate greater awareness of instinctual, fear driven, fight-or-flight reactions. Through noticing these default emotions and the scarcity-thinking from which they derive, we can eventually learn to diffuse our reflexive self-preservation instincts and instead choose to act from a place of trust in abundance instead of fear of scarcity. While practicing mindfulness and gratitude may seem more like personal than professional development, the idea here is that cultivating these traits improves performance and satisfaction holistically in all areas.
An abundance mindset is not a magical formula to get what you want
With the salespeople I’ve coached, I’ve found the process to generally work something like this: a belief in abundant opportunity decreases emotional attachment to the outcome of any given deal, which relieves stress, which in turn fosters better communication by calming unattractive neediness and desperation. Not chasing dead-end deals and focusing on delivering a more compelling pitch to qualified prospects ultimately leads to better sales outcomes. Those better outcomes then increase the seller’s confidence, which reinforces their belief in abundant opportunity. The abundance mindset seemingly generates the resulting abundance.
One possible implication of this is that the belief in abundance manifests the resulting positive outcomes. While there might be a causal process that is the means to that end (in the example above, the abundance thinking causes better communication and time management through reducing emotional attachment), the end result is still precipitated by initially adopting a rosier worldview. This then begs the question: can we simply will any desired outcome into being through a commitment to more positive thinking in general, and to a belief in abundance in particular?
Experience would seem to indicate otherwise; we all still sometimes deal with failure even when we have the best of intentions. An abundance mindset clearly cannot guarantee success in any given endeavor - it is not a secret weapon to achieve anything we want. Rather, truly embracing an abundance mindset means being receptive to the idea that whatever the outcome is, it is ultimately positive even if we cannot see how in the moment. Indeed, many entrepreneurs will attest to the fact that failure can be the best teacher and lessons learned from falling short of expectations can lead to even greater success.
An abundance mindset therefore requires a degree of openness. Trusting in the abundant nature of the universe means trusting that everything will work out as it should, even if the outcome is a hard lesson or some discomfort now that catalyzes a change to prevent more pain in the future. Embracing an abundance mindset doesn’t just mean visualizing hitting your numbers, it means holding open to the possibility that what you really need might be different than what you think you need. The implication from this is that the embrace of an abundance mindset does not cause positive outcomes, it is what allows us to see that all outcomes are actually, ultimately positive.
This has quickly gotten quite mystical, so let’s bring it back to our example of the application of an abundance mindset to sales coaching. There are degrees to which one can embrace an abundance mindset, where the openness required increases in proportion to how overtly positive a given outcome ends up being. As we’ve seen, the most surface level application of an abundance mindset means a salesperson internalizing that they do not need to get overly attached to any particular lead or opportunity, because there are better prospects out there that are a more ideal fit. If that salesperson ends up not being as successful as they had hoped to be even while employing this approach, a deeper embrace of an abundance mindset means seeing the experience as a chance to learn and improve their performance moving forward.
Both of the above cases are more common for someone working in an established and scalable process at a company that has found product-market-sales fit. Let’s contrast this to a salesperson or founder doing founder-led sales who may be launching a new product or service that has not yet found fit. Embracing an abundance mindset takes the most work here and entails being receptive to the value of whatever feedback you might get on your offering- good, bad, or ugly.
Often, people in this situation confuse an abundance mindset for reckless optimism or toxic positivity and end up exaggerating prospective interest in their offering and inflating their pipeline estimates. In my experience, this tends to come from pressure to show results, either a founder to their investors, or a salesperson to their leadership team. Truly embracing an abundance mindset would mean committing to being thoughtful and diligent in executing a sales process and being receptive to the invaluable feedback that can shape commercial and product strategy.
No amount of wishful thinking will generate qualified leads or close deals that are not real opportunities.
The fullest embrace of an abundance mindset means doing the hard work of approaching every sales conversation with the perspective that it can be a beneficial learning experience. This can be scary, and again takes daily commitment to being disciplined in one’s thinking. In cases where it is not the founder doing this early sales motion, it is also critical that the founding team support them by similarly adopting an abundance mindset.
Incorporating abundance thinking into growth planning
For the salesperson, a belief in abundance is fairly limited to outcomes related to their selling. Leadership makes decisions around company strategy and growth planning that are based on a wider array of inputs and impact a much broader range of results. Even if we define an abundance mindset as a belief in outcomes that are ultimately positive, how could this thinking be incorporated into the process of making strategic decisions in the first place?
When forecasting, projecting, headcount planning, and formulating growth strategies, where and how would an abundance mindset come into play? Can leaders discount competition or macroeconomic conditions due to confidence in abundant opportunity? Perhaps an abundance mindset could empower a startup founder to pursue a path of hyper growth, trusting that although they’ll make mistakes along the way, they’ll rapidly learn from them and adapt to eventually achieve their ambitious goals.
While this could make sense given how we’ve defined an abundance mindset so far, I struggle with the idea that an abundance mindset justifies founders barreling forward with risky plans due to an unwavering belief in their own success. I have seen company leadership turn a blind eye to existential threats to their business while giving wholehearted assurances that “things will work out” or even excuses that “things are improving” when they demonstrably were not.
I have also been dismissed as being “overly negative” for repeatedly pointing out major challenges to which leadership had no plans or solutions other than “give it time.” Even worse, I have watched as entire high performing teams devolve into complacency when their valid concerns and sincere desires to understand leadership’s amorphous confidence have been consistently rebuffed.
Does focusing on serious threats and challenges come from a scarcity mindset? As someone who purports to embrace an abundance mindset, these experiences make me question whether it is hypocritical to believe in abundance in certain situations and to be skeptical in others (especially when someone else has an abundance mindset about that same situation).
To put the question differently, is there a place for abundance thinking in a group situation where some people in that group are expected or required to embrace it? In the examples above, leadership was expecting that employees adopt their view that everything would ultimately work out, despite evidence to the contrary. In effect, they were making claims about the truth of their convictions, seemingly using a belief in abundance as an argument to defend those claims.
For this to be a logically coherent argument (as opposed to just an exercise of managerial power), this would imply that leadership’s abundance view has a rational basis rather than it just being their subjective belief. In other words, to evaluate whether it is appropriate for leadership to expect employees to subscribe to their abundance mindset, we need to examine whether that mindset is one that can stand up to scrutiny.
Encouraging someone receiving coaching (who is generally open to change and new perspectives) to make a mindset shift is one thing. Expecting all employees at a company or on a team to embrace the same worldview to make sense of company strategy is something else entirely. To address this question of whether an abundance mindset can be expected of other people requires that we first delve into a deeper question of whether a perspective of abundant opportunity is a subjective choice or a logical decision.
Is an abundance mindset rational and objective, or personal and subjective?
A proponent of abundance-thinking could put forth plausible arguments claiming that reason and intellect point towards optimism. Hans Rosling’s book, Factfulness, presents compelling real-world evidence that global trends in health and economics are significantly improving over time despite our anxiety that everything is awful and the media hysteria that fuels it. There is a physical reality to the notion of ever-increasing space for growth that can be seen in our infinitely expanding universe. The Infinity Hotel Paradox offers a metaphor in mathematics for how new space and opportunity can emerge even when there was no reason to believe that to be possible.
Even if one were to accept such evidence in defense of abundance thinking at a macro level, who’s to say this applies to the specific instance of a given company’s circumstances? The fact that in aggregate, things tend to collectively improve over time for humanity in no way necessitates a positive outcome for any particular individual or organization.
Perhaps, more simply, a proponent of an abundance mindset could argue that if one has been successful in meeting their goals in the past even when odds seemed bleak, it is not illogical to infer that a present adversity would similarly be resolved better than could be expected. Logic doesn’t necessitate that everything goes well all the time, but it does imply that in the long-term things tend to work out for the best.
This view potentially lacks empathy for those for whom things haven’t worked out so well in the past. More critical to the question at hand, if each person must look to their own individual past to arrive at a conclusion of abundant opportunity, then this process is still deeply personal. Asking each employee to evaluate the ups and downs of their own life’s journey does not make a compelling case for why a company is rationally justified in committing to a risky course of action despite obvious warning signs.
Moreover, a skeptic of abundance thinking might continue after putting forth those refutations, isn’t it also pretty logical to see the world as limited or even scarce, where more people lose than win (especially when it comes to startups)?
Maybe trends are getting somewhat better over time, but there is always ample evidence pointing to how bad things are right now. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, right? We’re in the worst economy in years, no? Recognizing this and acting accordingly to mitigate risk and minimize downside potential may just be the most logical thing one can do.
Clearly there is no easy black and white answer to the question of whether an abundance mindset is rational and objective or personal and subjective. This conclusion, or more specifically this lack of a clear conclusion, would seemingly point to it being unreasonable (or at least unfair) to expect employees to adopt leadership’s abundance mindset underlying a company’s strategic plans. If an abundance mindset cannot explain how tangible obstacles will be overcome, then it cannot be the basis for making plans that are more than just the wishful thinking of a select few at the top of the chain of command.
Yet, as known from felt experience by those who practice it (or from some of the considerations detailed above), there is something compelling about an abundance mindset that makes it more true than just cognitive dissonance or willful delusion. The thinking behind embracing an abundance mindset is also not purely subjective and personal because it can be communicated and taught to a willing and receptive audience.
We cannot convince someone to embrace an abundance mindset, but we can encourage and show others how this thinking can resonate with them. At the same time, someone who does practice an abundance mindset with respect to their own individual performance can also be justified in questioning the abundance mindset of others when it puts expectations on them.
How can an abundance mindset make sense in some situations and in others it is appropriate to question, challenge, and scrutinize (seeming hallmarks of a scarcity mindset)? Whether an abundance mindset is a belief in the objective nature of reality, in the existence of some benevolent force in the universe, or just the idea that embracing positive thinking makes us better which leads to more positive outcomes, how could it apply only conditionally in some, subjective cases?
I’ve reconciled this tension for myself and have derived my own leadership perspective by reframing the seeming contradiction between an abundance and scarcity mindset in different terms. What’s actually at play here is a conversation around the role of reason and logic versus belief and faith.
A different framing – faith in abundance built on a foundation of reason
Reason and faith are distinct human faculties that, although often contrasted with one another, are ideally used together as complementary tools.
As rational animals, we seek answers and explanations and we leverage analysis of past events to prepare and plan for mitigating future uncertainty. Our capacity to reason is a tool, arguably the most powerful tool in the world, and is responsible for countless benefits and advancements to our collective human condition. Yet, like any tool, it has limits that make it a better fit in certain situations.
Faith, too, is a unique human capacity and a tool which can unify people and lift them up or divide and destroy them. Too often, faith is erroneously maligned as a foil to the virtue of reason and defined in contrast to it. Even the word faith in our culture often causes a visceral withdrawal – I wonder if you, the reader, became suddenly uncomfortable by my introducing the term into this discussion.
It is so ingrained in us that there’s no room for even a discussion of faith in polite conversation, let alone in a professional environment. Our modern world was built on the triumph of reason over faith, on our enlightenment principles and the resulting flourishing of science and technology. If there’s any role for faith, society would dictate (at least in the tech sector and Bay Area) it should be deeply personal and confined to an individual’s inner life.
Faith and reason are each distinct tools that are in no more contrast to one another than a hammer is in conflict with a hacksaw. Just as one brings different tools to a project and employs each for its specific purpose, belief and logic serve different ends. A skilled craftsperson knows how and when to use their different tools. If you only have the hammer of reason, everything looks like a nail. It is up to us to understand the faculties of faith and reason and when and where they’re optimally deployed.
Reason and logic should be our go-to tools when there are facts to evaluate, data to analyze, and inferences to be made.
The more data we have or can collect, the more likely we are to make better decisions based on that data. The realm of reason is empirical and objective, where we can engage others through a discussion of a shared set of facts and make arguments that appeal to an understanding of those facts. In the context of commercial strategy specifically, reason typically is, and should be, our default way of interpreting and understanding our past and our present because it enables collective participation in a shared, objective reality.
Faith is the realm of the unknowable. When there are facts to be measured or evidence to be gathered, faith should give way to reason. If you have a hypothesis that can be tested and the time to test it, you should experiment and learn, but not every situation lends itself to measurement and analysis. Of course, we can extrapolate, forecast, and project what we know onto what we don’t know, and we should do whatever we can to give us the most clarity that can be achieved. The question is, how much uncertainty remains after our projections and hypotheses?
The precise, predictive science used to calculate launch trajectories for space missions is very different from the art of forecasting next year’s, or even next quarter’s, revenue growth. The actuarial science that informs insurance risk assessments is not the same as a market sizing analysis for a radically new product or service.
Whenever we attempt to predict the future, we are relying on faith to fill in the gaps left by reason. To the extent possible, it is our job to minimize those gaps through robust strategic analysis and planning. Yet even the best plans can, and often do, fail to produce the desired results due to previously unknown circumstances. It takes humility to acknowledge how much we don’t know, and to recognize when and where we’re relying on faith or trusting our beliefs.
The ideal way to use faith is as a keystone to a sound foundational structure built of reason.
We should first make every attempt to engage with others by making reasonable requests and putting forth logical arguments. Then, once we all arrive together at a shared understanding of what’s still unknown, faith is the tool we use to move forward together.
The best leaders make the most compelling case for their agenda with the information they have, and then inspire their teams to have faith in taking an uncertain path. The tools of reason and logic are sound analysis, effective data visualization, and convincing arguments. The instruments of faith are story-telling and emotion, painting a moving portrait of a potential future that is within reach just beyond the limits of reason. Learning to harness both energies – to tell a story of the past and give a view of the present based on reason as a launching point for creating faith in a vision of a possible future- is one of the hardest challenges for leaders to learn.
When faith in abundance is a reasonable part of company strategy (and when it’s not)
To recap, the choice between an abundance mindset and a scarcity mindset ideally happens beyond the limit of what you can know or control. Probing analysis and thoughtful scrutiny do not derive from scarcity thinking or being negative, but from reason. Whether we embrace an abundance or scarcity mindset depends on how we interpret the information we can know and what we then go and do with it.
Going back to our initial example of a salesperson, their faith in abundant opportunity is an acceptance of the fact that no one knows where their next deal will materialize. It would not be prudent to sit back and wait for abundant opportunities to fall in their lap. Rather, they should diligently pursue their ideal client profile and avoid distractions, hone their value proposition statements, and prospect and network thoughtfully. An abundance mindset in this case means having faith that by taking those reasonable and rational steps, they’ll end up where they want to be even if they can’t see right now how they’ll get there.
Back to our original question then – are there limits to where and how an abundance mindset should be applied, especially as it relates to determining a company’s growth strategy?
From this discussion it should be clear that faith has to be inspired, not required.
Trust is earned, and teams should not be expected to blindly follow leadership’s belief in abundant opportunity. Rather, it is leadership’s responsibility to foster an environment conducive to the embrace of an abundance mindset, ideally giving teams sufficient reason to be optimistic.
Embracing an abundance mindset is about being open, and in the case of leadership this requires being open to questions and challenges to their plans. By engaging their teams in terms of reason, leadership can show how they arrived at their decisions and invite others to share in their belief that it is the best path forward. Building this trust necessitates using both reason and faith as complementary tools - reason to provide compelling evidence and to engage with questions and faith to encourage a team to follow their lead.
In terms of practical examples and outcomes of this exploration, I’ve identified four general principles, two positive and two negative, on when faith in abundance is a reasonable aspect of a company’s growth strategy.
Additionally, I have shared three specific examples of where an abundance mindset and faith are ideally applied in commercial and go-to-market strategy.
Positive Principle #1: Use faith to inspire taking bold risks.
Appealing to faith or encouraging others to believe in abundance should only be done when there is insufficient data to accurately predict a given result. Encouraging belief in positive outcomes without concrete evidence is advantageous to the company and the individual when it motivates and inspires. If a company is taking bold risks and investing in moon-shot projects, it is likely that no one is clear on exactly how things will unfold. It is in fact quite reasonable to acknowledge that there will be failures and setbacks. After making a data-driven case for why the work is important and how an eventual solution could be impactful, leadership should work to build up their team’s belief in themselves and faith in each other as they embark on their aspirational work journey.
Positive Principle #2: Have faith in the process of learning when trying something new.
When trying something new, especially for early-stage companies testing different go-to-market channels and tactics, the goal should be to hope for the best outcomes and to just learn. If you’ve never run a digital ad campaign before, for example, you should first educate yourself or seek expert advice on best practices. When you actually then do it for the first time for your company in your target market, it’s arguably more reasonable to make the goal of that campaign to learn how to make the next one better than to meet a specific ROI target. Try not to stress out or get into analysis paralysis about allocating your marketing budget to different channels before you’ve discovered what works. Do the best with what you can and have faith that all the good work and your openness to learning will lead you to where you want to go.
Negative Principle #3: Never let your belief in abundant opportunity negatively impact your team.
Company goals should never be based on faith when outcomes could adversely affect an individual’s performance or compensation. When setting targets or specific quotas which people will be measured against, data should be used to make a compelling case for why these targets are reasonable (or realistically ambitious). There is no better way to demoralize a sales team than for leadership to hand down arbitrary goals of doubling or tripling revenue year over year without presenting the analysis in support of how they arrived at that goal. Even a top performer who typically embraces an abundance mindset will be hard pressed to maintain this positive thinking in the face of arbitrary and unrealistic top-down forecasts.
Negative Principle #4: Be wary of having too much faith in someone else to fix your problems.
The temptation to offload or delegate critical work to a senior hire or an outside provider is very tempting, especially for early-stage founders. Many workflows benefit from outsourcing or delegating, while others of critical strategic importance do not. If you’re struggling or stuck with your go-to-market planning, for example, overly relying on a new hire or an agency’s promises that they’ll figure it out for you can have serious consequences. When it comes to foundational questions of strategy, you are the best person to make those decisions, with help as needed. Leverage others’ expertise to supplement or complement your own, instead of putting faith in someone else to do it for you.
Faith is also ideally incorporated as part of a company’s commercial strategy when:
Defining a target market and ideal client profile.
When working with clients I almost always start with an exercise in defining their ideal client, and my clients almost always initially resist the specificity out of a fear that they’ll exclude too many potential prospects. “We won’t hit our numbers if we’re that picky,” they may claim. This fear isn’t rationally substantiated; they understand logically that they’ll do their best work for ideal clients and that this positive feedback will have a compounding effect on growth. Rather, it’s an absence of faith that staying true to who they are and what they do best is their most likely bet for sustained long-term growth.
Communicating your value proposition and positioning your solution against competitors.
If you have evidence that your offering is the best there is, by all means you should educate the market of that fact. Odds are, you either have some data of how you compare to some competitors in some cases or no data at all. Yet, marketing campaigns are routinely full of hyperbolic language while salespeople are trained in “objection handling” for how to look better than everyone else. Early-stage companies that have yet to accumulate case studies and testimonials demonstrating their value are especially guilty of this overinflated or boastful behavior. Lay out the facts you do have, and then make an appeal to your prospect’s faith in you, your company, your mission, your vision, and your plans. It’s about trust and connection, not convincing and cajoling.
Negotiating partnership and new business agreements.
Ever heard of negotiating “in good faith?” Any honest lawyer (jokes aside, I know a few great ones) will tell you that there’s no such thing as an ironclad contract. Once you’ve worked your way through a term-sheet and aligned on the most important elements to each party, there are going to be countless unknowns that are virtually impossible to account for in an agreement. Endless redlining won't guarantee anything but more legal fees, longer sales cycles, and a sub-optimal start to what should be a long-term relationship. That’s why you should operate in good faith – with trust and transparency and acknowledgement of the mutual risks and uncertainty involved. Recognizing that you’re taking a leap into the unknown together sets a much better tone for a productive partnership than game-theory, brinkmanship, zero-sum-game negotiating. Then once you’ve signed, maintain that spirit of partnership to navigate the inevitable issues that will arise without having to constantly amend documents.
The Tiferet Approach
Tiferet is the power to reconcile seeming contradictions through contextualization. By appealing to a broader perspective, we can make space for conflicting energies - in this case reason and faith – to exist in harmony. Through employing all of our faculties – intellect and emotion, faith and reason – we can create the ideal environment to nurture stable growth of businesses and their people.