How Great Leaders Help Their Teams Nurture A Growth Mindset Of Change

There is a lot of talk in the business world at the moment about adopting a growth mindset and rightly so, because it’s a growth mindset that helps us grow as individuals. It’s where we see our skills, talents, and abilities, not as things that are fixed, but as things we can expand upon. It helps us see challenges, not as obstacles, but as opportunities and see change, not as something to push against, but as something to embrace. However, one of the biggest challenges for leaders is how to help their people adopt a growth mindset?

Back in 2007 Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychologist wrote a book called ‘Mindset’ and sparked a revolution in how we think about and nurture the right mindset. The premise being that we all adopt one of two types of mindsets: either fixed or growth.

If you adopt a fixed mindset you tend to believe your skills talents and abilities are fixed and that you are born with a certain level of smarts. You tend to see things as very black-and-white, and focus on outcomes where you either win or you lose; you make your KPI’s or you don’t and that’s where it ends. As a result, you see challenges as insurmountable and tend not to step outside your comfort zone.

If you adopt a growth mindset you believe your skills talents and abilities can be expanded upon and you can learn new things and continually grow. You focus on progress and effort and if you don’t make your KPI’s you ask what did you miss, what can you improve, what can you learn, who can help you? As a result, you see challenges as opportunities, and you tend to be curious and hanker to learn new things.

And here’s the thing, Carol Dweck suggests you are not born with one or the other, you adopt either a fixed or growth mindset. She adds that once you understand the difference most people tend to gravitate towards growth.

Great leaders understand that it’s not just about nurturing their own mindset, it’s about finding ways to help their people also adopt and nurture a growth mindset. So how do you start to help your people nurture a growth mindset? From my experience there are three really simple things you can do.

Firstly, nurture your own growth mindset. And the best way I know to do that is to go directly to the source and grab a copy, or dust off your old one, of Carols Dweck’s work ‘Mindset’. (Sidenote, I reckon this should be compulsory on any executive leader’s bookshelf).

The second thing we can do is to help our teams understand shifting their thinking and adopting a growth mindset isn’t a once-off project. It’s not a matter of just doing a short course; it’s a continual process. And like anything, it’s the little things you do that make the biggest difference. That takes the overwhelm away and makes shifting mindset accessible to everyone.

Finally, let’s watch our language. Not just our self-talk, but how we talk to others. For example, using the words yes and, instead of yes but. For example, rather than saying something like ‘yes but that’ll never work’ try ‘yes and, tell me a little bit more about your thought process’. Also, as Dweck suggests, try adding other words like ‘yet’, or ‘not yet’ to the end of a sentence. For example, rather than saying ‘we didn’t make our budget’ try ‘we didn’t make our budget yet’, which opens the door to further exploration.

Over the years I’ve had the opportunity of interviewing and working with hundreds of successful individuals and leaders, and one thing that stands out is the importance of nurturing the right mindset. Can you imagine the impact if we try and help our people develop a growth mindset? Not just in terms of the benefits of performance and productivity, but the impact it would have on the human side of our organisations and the benefit to each and every individual.

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