Developing a growth mindset

I was recently asked by a client to run a session on the growth mindset. What an interesting challenge, I thought, as I set about reflecting on the subject.

I first defined what a mindset is: a set of beliefs that influence how we think, feel and act. OK, that’s a mindset. So what is a growth mindset?

Whether at the individual or other levels, it assumes the possibility of learning and growing, through being bold enough to seek challenges and accepting that we won’t always succeed.

We’ll benefit not only from our own journey but also from the experiences of others. We’ll make mistakes, we’ll sometimes fail, but that’s all part of the learning.

It is our mindset that determines the extent to which we succeed in life, and the more we nurture a growth mindset the more likely we are to succeed.

Not everyone is of that view – of that mindset. Many are convinced that their beliefs, attitudes, their mindsets, are what they are and that’s it.

These may be more or less helpful as we proceed through life, and some that once were a good idea may no longer be so.

The fixed mindset brigade is less open to feedback, never mind critical feedback, and too often envies rather than admires those who are doing well.

We read about just such a character in the book Out of the Maze, the follow-up to Who Moved My Cheese, where the little man at the centre of the story was trapped in the maze thanks to his rigid beliefs…until he let go of them.

Another significant book on this subject is Mindset: the New Psychology of Success – How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential, by Dr Carol Dweck, and for my session I sprinkled the participants with a few quotes from it, including “Teaching is a wonderful way to learn”; “A company that cannot self-correct cannot thrive”; “I don’t mind losing as long as I can see improvement or I feel I’ve done as well as I possibly could” and “This is hard. This is fun”.

I also came across this quote from Robin Sharma: “Greatness begins beyond your comfort zone”. However, I’m not keen on the idea of exceeding one’s comfort zone. Surely the expectation should be to expand that zone.

Yes, initially perhaps by exceeding it, not yet inhabiting the zone of easy competence but — as with the Kaizen mindset — going for continuous improvement.

Here each more ambitious level becomes the new normal, yet still just another step on one’s journey.

I next considered the growth mindset in the context of emotional intelligence – which readers of this column know is a subject dear to me.

Unlike intellectual intelligence, which pretty much is what it is, our emotional intelligence can benefit far more from the growth mindset.

We can treat historic constraints that have prevented us from navigating through life so that good things happened to all concerned as unwanted baggage that we can shed.

Sure, a growth mindset can help us apply our intellectual intelligence more effectively, but far greater growth is possible with our emotional intelligence.

All this is at the personal level. Let me now turn to the organisational level – whether in the family, the community, the country or beyond; and for any scale of business, from a micro-enterprise to a giant multinational.

How ambitious are you? Do you expect to just about hold steady? To grow incrementally? Or to reach much greater heights, with transformations — often risk-laden, disruptive and uncomfortable — along the way?

The company for which I was running the session is planning a mix of product diversification and geographical expansion, designed to provoke what’s called “hockey-stick growth” — that is, at a significantly higher rate than their current expansion.

This of course is why I was invited to present on the topic of mindset growth.

It’s not that every organisation should go for hockey-stick growth. But at the individual level, surely to be truly alive we should continue learning and growing whatever our age.

I’m no spring chicken myself, but I smiled at my reaction to the invitation to talk about this subject, one I’d never explicitly thought or spoken about before.

The growth mindset within me was aroused, and I was provoked to learn because I was challenged to teach.

Finally, here’s a hero of ours with a great mindset: Nelson Mandela, who found that “it always seems impossible until it’s done”.

Eldon is chairman of management consultancy The DEPOT, co-founder of the Institute for Responsible Leadership and member of the Kepsa Advisory Council. [email protected]

www.mike-eldon.com