Do you have a growth or fixed mindset?
The world has changed dramatically in the last few months and so has the way we work and do business. Successfully navigating all this change requires the right mindset.
Growth vs. fixed mindset
Dr. Carol Dweck, a psychologist at Stanford University, studied the concept of mindset, focusing on how people approach challenges. Her research identified two core sets of mindsets: fixed and growth.
People with a fixed mindset believe that ability and intelligence are innate and unchangeable. You might have a fixed mindset if you:
- Believe intelligence and talent are fixed
- Believe effort is fruitless
- Believe failures define who you are
- Hide flaws
- Avoid challenges
- Ignore feedback
- View feedback as personal criticism
- Feel threatened by other people’s success
Individuals with a growth mindset believe that intelligence and ability can be developed through time and experience. You might have a growth mindset if you:
- Believe intelligence and talent can be developed
- Believe effort is the path to mastery
- Believe mistakes are part of learning
- View failure as an opportunity
- Believe failures are temporary
- Welcome feedback
- View other people’s success as inspirational
For our people and our company to thrive and succeed, especially during these uncertain times, we have to adopt a growth mindset.
Fostering a growth mindset
Here are a few ways you can cultivate a growth-mindset approach within your team:
1. FOCUS ON EFFORT, NOT JUST WINS
If you praise your people for their wins but never praise them for making progress, you could be perpetuating a fixed mindset within your team. Instead, recognize the wins and reward their learning and willingness to try different strategies.
2. RECOGNIZE THAT FAILURE’S NOT ONLY AN OPTION, BUT ALSO A VALUABLE LEARNING OPPORTUNITY
Failure is an inevitable part of growth. And adopting a growth mindset means accepting the chance that, in the end, you might fail. But innovation, creativity, and moving a business forward wouldn’t be possible if people weren’t willing to take risks.
3. ENCOURAGE YOUR PEOPLE TO STEP OUT OF THEIR DAILY WORK
Creating a growth mindset means enabling your people to explore more than their job description. Encourage your people to develop new skills — even if those skills are outside of their current daily work. (I am incredibly impressed by all of our people who are doing this right now to help us get through this tough time.) Understanding and learning other roles outside of your own can also help promote empathy, collaboration, and encourage new ways of approaching things.
4. EMBRACE FEEDBACK
As a company, we use feedback to make meaningful change for our people. Help your people embrace and value feedback by modeling the behavior. Ask for their feedback — both formal and informal — and then show them that their feedback matters by making changes based on their input.
5. TAKE ACCOUNTABILITY
None of us are perfect. We all make mistakes. The important part of making those mistakes is taking accountability for them and then learning from them. That’s the true path to growth and success.
When an entire company embraces a growth mindset, their people report feeling more empowered and committed, and there’s more support for collaboration and innovation. This means every employee within our company needs to have the ability to develop, grow, fail, and learn. Now more than ever, for our teams to be successful, we must embrace change and a growth mindset and see failure as a learning opportunity and pathway to innovation instead of a roadblock to our success.
Boost your growth-mindset knowledge with these great resources:
