5,200 Lessons: Unleashing Your Growth Mindset in Professional Development

Earlier this week, I was fortunate to facilitate a workshop session for first-year construction management (CM) students at an AGC MA Power Skills Training workshop in Boston. The workshop hosted speakers from different CMs, each presenting topics to a group of students from the Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology on skills they would need to be successful in their professional careers. I was honored to be a presenter.

Unlike these participants beginning their careers in construction management, I've spent more than two decades in learning and development, focusing primarily on improving the customer experience, not building a structure. I've been a learner, a corporate trainer, an instructional designer, and a program manager for a Fortune 50 organization, and I've held similar roles for different large global organizations. At each stop, I've had hundreds, if not thousands, of students attend my classes. At each, I was fortunate to have people in my classes who would become successful in their organizations, developing into great leaders, many of whom, at the time, were beginning their careers, just like these young minds at the workshop.??

While the corporate and global organizations I worked at offered services much different than those in the construction industry, two traits set these people apart from the others I've met. The people with a growth mindset and the ability to self-advocate were the people who would be the most successful.

These young people at the workshop are at a very unnerving yet exciting point in their professional lives, the infancy stages, and they'll learn much throughout their careers. One of the first things they're going to learn (or at least on this day) is that they have a choice about which mindset they want and how successful they want to be in their career, and that's where choosing a growth mindset comes in. Now, you don't have to be new to the workforce to choose a growth mindset; you only need to be open to having one.??

At a high level, a growth mindset is the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort, learning, and persistence. It is also the belief that learning happens from making mistakes. The opposite of a growth mindset is a fixed mindset, which is the belief that intelligence and abilities are static and cannot be changed significantly. People with a growth mindset are more likely to seek new challenges and opportunities for development, whereas those with a fixed mindset have either become complacent or are becoming complacent. They've stopped looking to grow and develop.??

It's probably a good time to mention that it's OK for people not to want to advance their positions in their careers and remain successful as long as they continue to have a growth mindset. For example, they can do this by embracing feedback as an opportunity to improve rather than seeing feedback as a critique of their abilities.??

During the presentation, I showed these learners a pre-recorded video of one of our senior superintendents sharing a story at a recent company meeting: we'll call him 'Jim.' Jim's been with the company for a long time and in construction even longer. In this video, Jim shared a story about a hard lesson he learned early in his career: a major failure at a construction site that could've been avoided. Jim shared his story because he recognized failure was part of the learning process, and sharing this story in front of 200+ employees takes a certain amount of humility. If you had seen that video or were at the meeting when he initially told it, you'd see Jim smiling at different points, most notably when he said, 'I took ownership of the situation, and here's what I learned.' By sharing his story initially, Jim was demonstrating his commitment to doing whatever he could to ensure others didn't experience what he had, and, at that time, he didn't realize his story would be shared with a group of young go-getters, eager to learn, just like everyone in that room.??

We debriefed the video, and I asked these students if they thought 20 years was a long time. Since many of these people in the room were between 18 and 20, it was no surprise that they said 'yes.' I asked them to think about what type of story they might share when they've been in the industry for 20 years, and they just paused. I asked them to consider if it was reasonable for them to learn just one thing a day over the next 20 years, and their heads began to nod up and down as if to say, 'One thing a day for 20 years? Yeah, I can do that.'

I then reminded the students that there are 365 days a year, and if you subtract weekends and holidays, two weeks of vacation, and factor in five leap year days, you're looking at about 260 annual workdays. 260 annual workdays X 20 years = 5,200 total workdays, and if they are open to learning only one thing a day, they will have experienced 5,200 more lessons than they know right now. At that point, the lightbulbs above their heads lit up. These young people were starting to realize what a growth mindset is all about: the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort, learning, and persistence, and also the belief that learning happens from making mistakes. A growth mindset involves taking the initiative to learn and apply those lessons (or new skills) because learning alone is not enough for growth; applying what has been learned is crucial. And while completing a required e-learning module or attending a workshop is a learning event, it's essential to use those skills to solve problems in real work scenarios, leading to career success.? ? ??

Earlier in the story, I mentioned that I spent most of my career in learning and development, with a passion for improving the customer experience. I'm still working in learning and development, only now in the construction industry. On this particular day, a learner asked me, 'How did you end up in construction?'??I replied without hesitation, 'Simple. Having a growth mindset,' and then I elaborated. 'I know learning and development; I know adult learning theory; I know how to improve the customer experience.'??It was the pandemic, and I knew I needed a change; I was looking for new challenges and didn't want to be the smartest in the room. Not knowing anything about construction was a barrier I would need to overcome, so when I began, I'd get to the sites early, meet with the safety managers, walk the sites with them, and learn what was getting documented in their reports and why. As others would arrive, I would meet the APMs, PMs, and PXs. I'd talk with the superintendents. I'd go to sites and ask questions about geothermal wells and fracking tanks and found myself immersed in as much as possible. The long-term impact was that while I was learning, I was building trusting relationships with so many great colleagues and partners who, at the time, didn't know who I was, what I was doing, or even understand my role. Still, they knew I was thirsty for knowledge, and like so many of the other great leaders I met in my career, they were willing to share their knowledge with me.??

And if you want more, I knew nothing about telecommunications before working for Comcast. I knew nothing about printing or marketing before working for Vistaprint. I knew nothing about restaurant POS terminals before working for Toast, and I knew nothing about robotics before working for iRobot. I made my share of mistakes at each stop, though I learned from them each time. Nearly four years into my career in construction, I'm still learning every day, and I'm never the smartest person in the room, nor do I want to be.??

Now, if you have a fixed mindset, you're in luck because you can develop a growth mindset by making a few changes, such as embracing challenges. Instead of seeing a challenge as a difficult task, see it as a growth opportunity. Learn from criticism. Always view feedback as a gift, and who doesn't like gifts? I love 'em, and I'm always looking for more. If there's something you do well, you want people to tell you so you can keep doing it. Similarly, if there is something that you could do differently to get better results, why wouldn't you want to know? People won't always give you feedback, so seek it out. Always give a consistent effort since consistency will lead to progress, and celebrate others' success. Instead of feeling threatened, view the success of others as inspiration and work with them.

I let these students know that as they grow and gain more clarity on their strengths and the unique value they'll bring to their organization, having the ability to self-advocate is another necessary skill for their professional toolkit; that if they're not advocating for themselves, very few people, if any, will advocate for them. They were unsure why; they felt self-advocacy was boasting. Self-advocacy means actively promoting your skills, accomplishments, and career aspirations to ensure you're recognized for growth. 'Shouldn't my work speak for itself?' someone asked. Not always. I let them know that in many organizations, hard work may not lead to recognition or advancement; they must communicate their values and that self-advocacy is a critical skill for ensuring career progression, gaining visibility, and positioning themselves for promotions or new opportunities. With self-advocacy comes the promise of overcoming challenges, which, coupled with a growth mindset, will build trusting relationships that will help them (and anyone) advance their career.??

What do you think?