Is your mindset holding your organisation back?

Growth vs Fixed Mindsets 

Reading Carol Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, I wished I’d become a psychologist. Perhaps I still will. And I wish I’d read the book years earlier. Dweck identifies two mindsets, fixed and growth, and discusses how they impact child development, sport, relationships and organisations. By teaching a growth mindset, motivation and productivity improve. People who believe that talent and intelligence will carry them through, without effort, spend their time trying to demonstrate how great they are rather than learning and developing.

I see Dweck’s findings constantly played out in business transformation. Those with a fixed mindset appear to have an underlying fear of being found to be less than perfect and these people again and again are the blockers of change.

There is a such a power to believing that you can improve, that you don’t have to suck up the hand that life dealt you. This belief propels you forward and gives you the confidence to ride the changes. I can identify many moments of my life where a fixed mindset held me back. Times when I didn’t try because I didn’t want to fail. Or times when I’ve felt fearful because of changes at work. But as I’ve become avidly focused on my own growth and development, I have shifted towards the growth continuum and keep pushing out of my comfort zone. I see times of change not as a frightening moment out of my control but as an opportunity to grow and learn.

Your mindset and the mindset of those you work with strongly impacts the ability of your organisation to transform. A fixed mindset doesn’t allow you to experiment, to change direction, to be open to new ideas. That directly impacts the ability of an organisation to innovate and that impacts the bottom line. While all individuals in an organisation need to take responsibility for their own mindset, it is leadership, as always, who have the power to steer the culture. When leaders are controlling and abusive, they can put most of their subordinates into a fixed mindset as those below develop a fear of being judged. A fear that they might get something wrong. And that prevents change.

So what can we take away for our organisations to tackle fixed mindsets? 

• Make it clear that people can develop new skills
• Reward effort and learning, not the people who ride the wave of success
• Allow people to experiment and fail
• Position feedback not as criticism but as an opportunity for growth
• Treat your team as your collaborators

Dweck asks some questions of us, how would you answer:

• What kind of workplace are you in? Fixed or growth
• How do YOU act towards others in the workplace? Is it possible that YOU are the problem?

Have you identified your fixed mindset triggers, and what are you doing to change / work on your responses?

Views are my own.