From the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
con·trar·i·an |  \ kən-ˈtrer-ē-ən:: a person who takes a contrary position or attitude.

Today I would like to share my thoughts about how challenging the status quo can make you a key player in your team. 

When you think about it, many of us who have gone through the traditional school system (in Western society) have been taught to follow the rules, learn the same curriculum as everybody else our age, and at the same rate. And we were often called out whenever we veered slightly off the path of common principles and common thinking. Going against the grain is rarely accepted and often punished. 

So we enter adulthood with the engrained belief that we must follow the roadmap that was established for us. We loose our curiosity, because it’s been shaped out of us. We loose our creativity, because it’s been drained out of us. We loose our free-spirit, because it’s been shamed out of us.

Today, I take a stand to free us all! …ok, not so literally but there is a way to use our curiosity, creativity, and free-spirit that can serve us. For those of us who have lost those important attributes, thinking like a contrarian can trigger them back and put us on the road to success.

Think like a contrarian

In thinking like a contrarian, the emphasis is on thinking. I don’t advocate acting like a contrarian. At least not as a permanent behaviour. It would be the sure way to isolate yourself. In thinking like a contrarian, you allow yourself to exercise your critical muscle. I have now developed that habit and it comes naturally. I do it mainly by asking why, playing devil’s advocate, thinking negative, and when I am really stuck, writing out of the box. 
Ask why. Asking why is the most effective way of exposing our pre-conceptions and bias. When you ask others or yourself why, you force a chain of thought that opens a stream of new ideas. 
Play devil’s advocate. When there is absolute consensus on a topic, look at the opposite perspective. Determine how things look like from the opposite angle. Think of arguments that will defend the indefensible. There will certainly be a right and a wrong at the end of your analysis, but your growth comes from reviewing both aspects. 
Put your negative cap on. Take an affirmative statement, and then turn it into a negative. For example, “our proposal is the best, our client will love it” turned into “our proposal is the worst, our client will hate it”. You end up fact checking. You increase your knowledge and expertise. You become better prepared for any situation.
Think Write out of the box*. Literally draw a box on a sheet of paper.  Inside the box, write down everything that you are certain of about a challenging topic. Outside of the box, write down everything that you are not absolutely sure about that topic. You may find that they are more things that you are not sure about than what you are sure about. This means that the solution may very well be somewhere outside the box. Ding! Ding! Ding!

Act like a rising star

When you do your homework as a contrarian-thinker, you become resourceful. You inevitably develop the qualities of a rising star. You possess a solid chest full of ideas, creative proposals, and innovative concepts, and your contribution to your team becomes immensely valuable. While thinking like a contrarian requires you to think, and think hard, acting like a rising star doesn’t require any acting at all. In fact, you should never act like a rising star. Being a rising star is just a consequence of your growth, your thought process, and your personal development skills. It is also very much defined by the environment within which you operate.

Ultimately, thinking like a contrarian has gifted me a creative problem-solving toolbox. And, it was never about going against the consensus for the sake of it, but rather a way of challenging myself and expanding my thinking process to get unstuck when faced with complex challenges. It may be argued that independent thinking is a more noble avenue to explore, however it is very difficult to master. To me, contrarian thinking is more pragmatic.

*This can be a precursor to full-fledged mind mapping which is a lot more work.