Key Principles of the Growth Mindset
The growth mindset principles in Dr. Carol Dweck’s 2007 book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success fit into these four impact areas - Identity, Personal Habits, Team Dynamics, Work Culture. Starting with the individual, the first area is Identity - who you say you are. Your attitude, behavior, mannerisms, ways of communicating, and actions demonstrate your choices in life, including what setbacks and difficulties mean to you. Team Dynamics refers to your interpersonal relationships with others in personal, professional, and recreational settings. Work Culture applies the growth mindset principle to a business environment that expands the effect of mindset to what the members of the organization say and do as a collective.
Let’s review each area of impact.
Identity
Your innate abilities, skills, and thought patterns are malleable and can change over time. In other words, you are a work in progress. Other people are work in progress, also. The transformation happens with effort, applied learning, awareness of life experiences, and through feedback from others. Furthermore, failures and setbacks do not define you. Rather, these are moments that’s a natural part of growing.
Personal Habits
With a growth mindset, attention and time are given to improving kills and abilities instead of convincing yourself and others how good you are. You are aware that accomplishments arise from effort. The focus is on the discoveries along the way, or addressing deficiencies. You can learn to change areas of your life that have a fixed mindset. You can find satisfaction in working with more experienced individuals - those who are better than you - as a way to get motivated.
Team Dynamics
You believe that relationships can develop and change over time, and you get to decide the level of focus and effort to nurture your connections. Every interaction creates a choice to either encourage effort or judge another’s ability. The former encourages growth mindset and the latter reinforces fixed mindset. It’s okay to share your worries with people who have been where you are, and in the process, you get to know how they overcame their own worries.
Work Culture
To nurture a growth mindset as a team takes a collective commitment to commit to a new definition of success. Success is not an either-or equation. Success takes continuous learning, consistent effort, taking on new challenges, and learning how to maximize potential. Feedback is welcome because this is valuable input to learn from. Encourage critical discussions, brainstorming, and unconventional out-of-the-box thinking. If there’s a mistake, use this experience as an opportunity for exploration and gleaning new insights towards future effort.
Changing Mindsets
Dweck claimed that a person can become aware of his/her mindset and choose to change. It’s about opening up to personal development and realizing that it takes practice to get from fixed to growth mindset. She offered pointers on starting the transformation journey.
Dweck says, “The first step is to embrace your fixed mindset. Let’s face it, we all have some of it. We’re all a mixture of growth and fixed mindsets and we need to acknowledge that. It’s not a shameful admission. It’s more like, welcome to the human race. But even though we have to accept that some fixed mindset dwells within, we do not have to accept how often it shows up and how much havoc it can wreak when it does.” (Chapter 8, Changing Mindsets)
Take a careful look at your core values, beliefs and habits. An honest self evaluation can be humbling and nerve racking all at once. Yet, it is an important step to know where you’re at.
Commit to making a change. Starting with one thing.
Learn to identify what triggers your fixed mindset. Perhaps, negative feedback, deadlines, conflict, disappointment? Understand what’s at stake, or the consequences, by continuing to be in a fixed mindset.
Choose to practice growth mindset principles. Give yourself permission to make mistakes. It’s about progress not perfection.
Repeat these steps over and over because it’s a lifelong endeavor.
Positive Impact on Stagnant Teams
There are experiential and practical ways to introduce the growth mindset that goes beyond doing a book study and discussion. And, I also have a book study and discussion outline, in case you’re wondering.
Let’s talk when you’re serious about making a positive impact on your team’s bottom line. Growth mindset isn’t just a modern management fad. It’s here for the taking for those who dare to challenge status quo.
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