Mindset: Scarcity vs. Abundance Mentality

The abundance vs scarcity mindset was outlined in Stephen Covey’s, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It helps us make the most out of our teams and the people who work with us to enable us to achieve our goals as leaders and business owners.

“Most people are deeply scripted in what I call the Scarcity Mentality. They see life as having only so much, as though there were only one pie out there….The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life…The Abundance Mentality, on the other hand, flows out of a deep inner sense of personal worth and security. It is the paradigm that there us plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody”.

Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

The Scarcity mentality starts off with distrust (“my team can’t deliver better than I can”), which leads to scepticism – causing frustration, criticism, and stress to grow throughout the business. This is in turn can lead to distraction – not being able to do the work because we can’t delegate effectively. And finally, this generates mediocrity and poor results. Which ultimately creates more work for both ourselves and our teams.

Key traits of a leader with a Scarcity Mentality: Poor performance, micromanagement, rod for your own back, negativity.

On the other hand, an Abundance Mentality starts with trust – appreciating what our team can do and respecting their abilities. This in turn fosters confidence – clarity over expectations enables both team and leader to have confidence in themselves and each other. They can be trusted to do a good job. This enables everyone in the business to be focused – effective delegation enables good quality decisions throughout. And finally, this all leads to success, with efficient and positive outcomes.

Key traits of a leader with an Abundance Mindset: Expect high performance, sharing of knowledge, empower others, enable the team to be the best version of themselves.

Ultimately, the Scarcity Mentality asks the questions “How can I give less?” whereas an Abundance Mentality would be asking “How can I give more to enable my team to succeed, to help me succeed?”

If you enjoyed reading this short blog on the Scarcity vs Abundance Mentality, why not take a look at our other Mindset blogs. You can see them here.