Conscious Business summary

When something goes wrong at work, do you blame someone else for what may have been your mistake?

If yes, then it’s high time you start taking responsibility for your actions.

Children do things just for the fun of it, without thinking too much about goals or what they want to accomplish.

This attitude changes once we become adults. Many of us become too focused on outcomes rather than on so-called process attributes.

Are you often frustrated because your colleagues don’t see things the way you do? While it might be hard to accept, everyone sees the world differently.

Developmental psychologist Jean Piaget came up with what is now a classic experiment about perspective. He gave children blocks of wood, with one side painted green, the other red.

It’s sad, but true. Many of our conversations aren’t really meaningful dialogues but overlapping monologues. We say one thing when we should say something else; and we really don’t listen to what our partner is saying.

This makes “conversation” extremely unproductive – and collaborative work near impossible.

Do you thrive on conflict? Ugh, who does? But the thing is, when conflict isn’t handled properly, it can have serious consequences.

The most common methods of dealing with conflict in business are, unfortunately, deeply flawed.

You can be emotional and rational – these two states are not independent of one another. In fact, our rational mind would break down without guidance from our emotional mind.

Still, as we all know, emotions can mess things up, which is why you need to master your feelings.

The first time the author lost a game of Scrabble to his son, he made an astounding realization: when you love your opponent, it’s impossible to suffer from a competitive loss.

And the author then wondered, what if business was based on such a principle?