In our first minisode, we discuss the foundational idea of a Growth Mindset.
🌿Strong leadership is rooted in curiosity and empathy.
What do legendary basketball coaches like John Wooden, Phil Jackson, and Dawn Staley, and players like Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant have in common?
They all use growth mindset principles to develop hard work and good habits over innate talent in their teams. They embrace mistakes as a way to learn, as well as build the mental mindset to create resilience through continuous improvement.
Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychology professor work is widely discussed among coaches, specifically those related to building a team culture that values passion, effort, and improvement where mistakes create learning opportunities.
Today’s minisode talks about growth mindset.
Carol Dweck is a social and developmental psychology rockstar, in my opinion. Her research on mindset growth detailed in her book called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential is core to many aspects of life. According to Dr. Dweck, everyone can change and grow through experience and application.
It’s the idea that intelligence and practical knowledge can be learned through experience. Her work is one of the key foundations of individual and organizational learning, and she’s one of my favorite psychologists. When we are learning and growing, it’s normal to be uncomfortable.
That specific discomfort is a sign of doing something new.
Hint. When it feels tough, remember, you are learning, so don’t give up. You are growing new skills and it will be uncomfortable for a while.
She reminds us that we don’t just arrive with that mindset. It’s a journey. It includes accepting our mistakes as part of learning.
It’s the idea of reflecting on mistakes or lost opportunity to say, what did I learn from this and what could I do differently next time?
🌿This also works really well with parenting.
As leaders, we can help foster growth mindsets for our teams and our employees by building in a group reflection, such as after action review or lessons learned.
After key milestones, teams can reflect, learn, and iterate for future projects. It’s a safe space to identify where opportunities could be in the future. The process helps teams build confidence and collaborate to learn and innovate.
🌿It’s like a muscle. It helps them get stronger at doing this.
Dweck reminds us that we have both growth and fixed mindsets. The key is identifying the triggers that may keep us in the fixed mindset at the wrong time.
And the fixed mindset is one where we don’t want to think differently. We want to stay in what is comfortable and what is known. If we are in the fixed mindset, think:. Are we too concerned with meeting a deadline? Are we afraid of hearing a different point of view? Or are we just afraid to fail?
Dweck calls this our fixed mindset persona. Identify the triggers in your persona that could get you stuck at a fixed mindset when you might need to be considering change or growth.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft
Now, a real world example is, provided by Satya Nadella, the Microsoft Chairman and CEO, in an interview from the Worklife podcast with Adam Grant, where they discuss Microsoft’s culture building the future from May 24th, 2022.
In it Nadella speaks to how the internal culture of Microsoft changed from competition to collaboration. Satya brought in Carol Dweck’s growth mindset to help them build a culture to aspire to. By doing so, they assessed the internal systems, processes, and behaviors they wanted to reinforce.
Part of this was the model for management, including three key pillars. One was model, second was coach, and the third was care. The direct manager is key to this model.
The direct manager would model good behavior and practices and coach employees to deliver success, learn and care. These together created an environment of psychological safety, where people feel safe, to be vulnerable and admit mistakes. They called them safe zones.
Nadella calls psychological safety, a first class thing of successful companies. When we talk about first class organizations, rarely do we assume the organizational learning component.
I was cheering from my car when I was listening.
He acknowledges that not everyone feels represented to speak up safely in these cases.
Direct managers play a key role in creating that safety, which is the care to build those behaviors in safe zones. So this is so important for inclusion of diverse thoughts, and employees who don’t always see themselves in positions of power.
It’s hard to acknowledge a growth mindset all the time, as many of us work in productivity based environments. But [00:06:00] do take the time to reflect, listen, and consider other points of view.
In the long run, it may save time and is a real key behavior in innovation.
Three key takeaways.
1. Growth can feel uncomfortable when we try new behaviors or new skills. Recognize and name the discomfort and keep trying.
2. Growth mindset reminds us that making mistakes is an opportunity to grow and learn. And
3. Safe zones and psychological safety offer teams and individuals courage to try and discuss different ideas without fear.
As you navigate new projects, how might you build in a practice for shared learning?
How could you build something into your next team meeting or a one-on-one to ask the question:
* What did you learn this week
* Why is that important to you?
* Why is that important to us/the team/the business?
Reflect
Reflect on a time you or someone might have been acting in a fixed mindset.
* What might have been the cause?
* Was it a new challenge that was uncomfortable?
* Or could it have been a conflicting corporate goal or competing incentive that changed their motivation?
I hope these insights help you stay anchored in authenticity and rooted in purpose.🌿
Adapted from the August 1, 2022, newsletter of the Root, Volume 1, Issue 1.
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