How "Mindset" Can Drive a Company Culture

Just finished reading "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success" by Carol Dweck.  The implications of this research and perspective are broadly applicable - as individual contributors, as parents, as partners and as leaders.  The essential idea of the book is that a growth mindset is one that is open to challenges, to learning, to struggling to attain skills - it is the belief that there is no fixed state of being that growth and improvement can always be achieved with focused effort.  That is compared to a "fixed" mindset which believes that talent and capability are essentially immutable.  You are either a natural athlete or inherently smart or a gifted artist or you just aren't and no amount of work and effort can change that.  In fact, if you have to work at something; it means you will never be good at it.

"People may start with different temperaments and different aptitudes, but it is clear that experience, training, and personal effort take them the rest of the way. Robert Sternberg, the present-day guru of intelligence, writes that the major factor in whether people achieve expertise “is not some fixed prior ability, but purposeful engagement.” Or ..... it’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest."

Or more simply stated, it isn't necessarily the people with the most "natural" talent who succeed but the people with the courage to take on big goals that may in fact lead to failure, people open to learning and people with perseverance and grit to do the hard work necessary to succeed. Not the show horses who grow frustrated at obstacles that are not supposed to be in their way but the work horses who see those obstacles as opportunities to prove themselves and learn.


Being told you are a "natural talent" and the "smartest in the room" may in fact lead one to avoid the stretch assignment or the risky goal because you become afraid of losing that aura of invincibility - that sense of being able to achieve effortlessly.  Being told that success is assured because everything "comes easy to them" may lead to a crumbling at the first inevitable struggle - a loss of identity.  

These concepts are as relevant for business leaders who want to cultivate talent as for parents who want to raise their kids to thrive on challenge and develop the resilience to succeed in the face of setbacks.

With a "fixed mindset," you believe that you have a fixed ability that needs to be proven again and again.  You either have it or you don't - and you need to keep proving that you have it by making it seem easy, by not appearing to struggle, by not ever failing.  So you don't take on things you aren't very sure that you can do.  Alternatively, people with a growth mindset do not lable themselves as immutable winners or losers and don't throw up their hands at the first sign of struggle believing that if it isn't easy, it is beyond their natural talents.  They believe that they can develop, can learn and although they feel distressed at failure; they are ready to take the risks, confront the challenges, and keep working at them.

The willingness (even passion) for stretching yourself and sticking to it, "even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset." The growth mindset is one that enables people to thrive during the most challenging times in their lives.

This concept - fixed versus growth mindset - has many implications for the leader of an organization. Firstly, do you hire only the "natural athletes" the ones who have glided through their career seemingly never faltering or do you hire those who have obviously had to struggle at times, had to presevere through challenges both personal and professional?   Do you hire the sort who wears his/her ego on their sleeve - one whose self worth is contingent on never breaking a sweat and always proving that they are the smartest in the room?  Or do you hire the person who knows that they will have to work hard at times to overcome obstacles, that their lot is to struggle and strive through challenges and persevere through setbacks?  Who see failure as not a challenge to their core being but as a call to action to double down on their efforts?

And then there is the question of how you deal with a failure of those in the organization.  Do you reward or punish those who take on risks and sometimes fail? Are people willing to take on the stretch assignments or do they play it safe by staying well within their base talents - padding timelines and budgets to ensure they don't mar their perfect record as a winner?  

And as a mentor and a coach - do you believe that people can grow and learn and improve through challenges and struggle or do you believe that people either have "it" or not.   Are you willing to give people stretch assignments that are likely to lead to stress and struggle?  Or only give people assignments and roles once they are "ready."

If people can have a fixed or a growth mindset, so can organizations.  Building an organization that celebrates grit and growth through hard work and effort may lead to more sustainable success through the inevitable ups and downs of a company's life cycle. An organization that accepts the occassional failure in the reach for the exceptional is more likely to achieve that quantum leap in performance or great innovation over time than the one who continually plays it safe - setting realistic timelines and projections.  And a company that encourages people to take on assignments and tasks that seem initially beyond them but that will lead to true growth and deepening of skills even in the face of painful uncertainty, will be a far more interesting place to be.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success