Do you have a Growth Mindset?
What is a growth mindset?
Your mindset determines your beliefs about yourself, your life and the world. It is the lens through which you process life’s events and it influences your actions and therefore the results you get. Research by Dr Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychologist, identified that there are two types of mindset — a fixed mindset and a growth mindset.
A “fixed mindset” assumes that character, intelligence, and creative ability are set in stone and determine how successful we are in life. Someone with a fixed mindset often sees failure as a sign that they’ll never be good at something and can avoid challenges in order to feel successful.
A “growth” mindset assumes that character, intelligence and creative ability can be developed and that hard work and learning from failure will determine how successful we are in life. Someone with a growth mindset sees failure as feedback, is more resilient and seeks out challenges.
Many successful entrepreneurs, such as Richard Branson, have a growth mindset, which has allowed them to bounce back from failure and take more risks.
“Ultimately I think that people must learn from the times that things don’t work out for them. Those can be the best lessons of your life.”
Richard Branson
“We all have some wins, we all have some losses. It’s a clichéd point, but the trick is to celebrate the wins and learn from the losses. The thing about failure is that it’s temporary and imagined, it’s not really real, it’s what you choose to tell yourself in your head. The great thing is you can choose to tell yourself something different. Tell yourself. ‘Okay, that didn’t work out, why not? Now I understand, bank that learning and move on.’”
Richard Reed, co-founder at Innocent
We all err towards one of these mindsets, although there may be areas of our lives that have different mindsets. For example, at work I have a growth mindset — I value challenges, I don’t take failure personally and I want to constantly learn. However if you try and teach me to ski you’ll find I have a fixed mindset — I’m terrified and think I’ll never be any good at it because my first few attempts went badly and were no fun. The good news is that once you are aware of your mindset you can take steps to consciously develop a growth mindset.
Mindset & leadership
Have a think about which mindset you err towards at work. Do you feel like your career is full of potential and is what you make it and or do you feel stuck? Do you find failure hard to accept and bounce back from? Are you convinced that there are some things you’re just not good at, or is the world your oyster?
If you have a fixed mindset about work or some areas of work why not commit to developing more of a growth mindset?
Embedding growth mindset for your organisation
As a CEO it’s really helpful to have a growth mindset. You’ll be more open to innovation, more resilient and can lead by positive example. A leader with a growth mindset sees the potential in their team. Rather than seeing ability as fixed, they take a coaching approach to developing their team.
Imagine if all of your leadership team were constantly improving, learning and developing themselves and their knowledge. If they could take setbacks in their stride and could always see the potential in a situation. You would never hear “we tried that and it didn’t work”.
Here are some ways to embed a growth mindset in your team…
· Evaluate key activities regularly, making it clear that things which went “wrong” provide valuable information
· Encourage the team to look for ways to incrementally improve the way you deal with donors
· Embrace tough times as part of the journey towards success rather than
· Make it okay to fail. It’s one thing to say it, another to not look disappointed when a new initiative gets a poor response.
· Lead by example and admit your own struggles and failures, past and present.
· Praise people for effort as well as achievement
I’m a coach who specialises in working with new CEOs and their teams. If you’d like more tips relevant to new CEOs you can download my pack for new CEOs on my website.
