The Fallacy of Mindset Blaming: Embracing a Holistic Approach to Failure

It was a usual conversation with fellow Agile leaders a few years back. The ritual of talking about ‘why isn’t the transformation working’ over a cup of tea was not new for me, but there was something fresh in it. The freshness of realization that we probably end up saying, it is the mindset of people that is stopping us from reaching our goals. Well, it hit me hard.

What am I doing? The word ‘mindset’ has always been very popular in leadership. Carol Dweck probably made it even more popular. We spoke about the growth mindset at least twice a day and then we were blaming the mindset of others for the failure of the transformation journey.

Well, it didn’t mean we were responsible for that mess either, but we just found an escape. Carol Dweck talks about finding a third person to blame, an imaginary one, to tackle the legacy of a fixed mindset. Were we doing that? Well, if I think now, probably yes. But there were so many dynamics associated with it. But one thing has been pretty clear to me since then blaming the mindset won’t help us with anything, doing something about it might.

We generally meet people at different stages, with different experiences, and with different interests, and creating a common template for them is unnecessary and a waste of time. So, every situation and every person, and every team is different. But how do I build the mindset? How do I change it? Can I change it?

Well of course I can, if I put effort, if I learn from failures, in other words, if I start transforming my fixed mindset to a growth mindset. So, the first thing that I had to change was to see the world differently. Instead of saying that the mindset needs to be changed, I said, we have to work on an environment where people can start working on changing their mindset. I didn’t control the outcome, but I controlled the effort. I knew that to change them, I have to change. I am still in the process of learning and changing. There are so many ‘fixed’ parts that I want to grow, and help others to see that.

But the crucial question was how? It was not only about the individual, it was about the entire environment. It was about society, the workplace culture, and the leaders, many around us stared at us to judge whether we had the potential to do anything. Am I intelligent enough to pull it off? Am I good enough to coach others? No one questioned whether I was ready enough to learn, or put enough effort to understand how am I going to go about it.

When I started working with my teams, and people and started following the known formulas of growth mindset, it didn’t work everywhere. Sometimes, it socially facilitated the situation, but sometimes, it caused disruption. I learned about different leadership, different people, and different business chemistry, but every time I was up against a new challenge.

I am still facing a new challenge. The personalities and the experience of people are different, thus it is not always easy to get the outcome we want. Sometimes, we do not get the outcome, and that is fine. We learn new things from it, we learn how not to attempt, how not to help. Sometimes, helping others can backfire too. Edgar Schein in his book, ‘Helping’ helped us understand it could make someone else feel we are making ourselves socially elevated by helping.

The point is we do not have all the answers, and we need not know to start something. We need to put effort, learn, try new things, acknowledge our mistakes, and do it again. However, we must stop blaming the mindset of others for the disorders that we observe. It does not make us part of the solution at least.

#mindset #growthmindset #agile #agilemindset #leadership #TheLeadershipCompass #YourPersonalCoach