Effects & Benefits of Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset on your career and workplace & How can you develop a Growth Mindset?
Your mindset can make or break you, as it affects how you behave and influence the people around you, It’s also an indicator of your belief system and attitude towards your own abilities and how you perceive them. Research demonstrates that your mindset can have a significant impact on your future success.
In a Fixed Mindset, you have certain views about your and others' talents and abilities, considering whether you’re naturally good at something, or not, and believe this is not changeable.
On the other hand, in a Growth Mindset, you believe that your talents aren’t fixed but fluid. You think of your abilities as something that can be developed through dedication and hard work. If you are constantly developing your skills and improving your performance, then you definitely have a Growth Mindset!
The Growth Mindset is the key to your successful career and brings great value to your business, especially in the current times, where the ability to adapt and respond to changing work conditions is more crucial than ever before. Talent alone doesn’t create success, but experience and applied practice do!
The study of fixed mindset vs. growth mindsets in individuals is pioneered by Stanford professor Dr. Carol Dweck, which provides us with fascinating insights into a wide range of individual behaviours. Her studies demonstrate how our belief systems determine our behaviour, level of effort, ability to manage setbacks, and ultimately, our success or failure.
Based on Dr. Dweck findings, there are implications also for team behaviours. Workplaces can highly benefit from this, by identifying their teams’ dominant mindset and shifting it to a growth-minded perspective. Applying these concepts to teams can help create a culture of creativity and expansion in the workplace.
It’s great to know that anyone can learn how to shift into a growth mindset. And this is true also for teams that are stuck in a fixed-mindset mentality. You can help your team develop a growth mindset, by focusing more on learning, and worrying less about looking smart.
When it comes to mindset, there are two different kinds of leaders and managers in the workplace:
1- Fixed Mindset Leaders who believe in fixed abilities and promote a fixed mindset: “Those who don’t perform well can never do better”
2- Growth Mindset Leaders who believe in growing people’s abilities thereby promoting a growth mindset: “People can be coached into improving their skills.”
The fixed mindset type of leaders tend to engage with the workplace in a way to boost their own self-esteem, establish their superiority and prove their smartness. They usually focus on their employees’ weaknesses, refuse to coach them, and blame others for failures. They usually don’t look for any feedback and divide people into competent or incompetent groups. When it comes to building teams and hiring, they tend to look for natural talent, instead of looking for ways to grow talent inside their organization. They praise people for their intelligence but fail to notice the employees who show improvement through their effort and hard work. After all, their fixed mindset leads them to the belief that people can’t get any better than what they already are, and that makes them stick with their initial impression of each person.
Leaders with a growth mindset on the other hand, focus on how to build a successful team that can grow in time. Teams with a Growth mindset are permanently improving their knowledge and ability to learn new skills, through hard work, training, and perseverance. High-performing teams embrace challenges and welcome ambitious goals, as they see it as a chance to grow and expand their skill set. They see failure as a means to move forward. They aren’t tightly bound to legacy ways of working but instead are eager to try new processes, tools, or methodologies.
The benefits of the Growth Mindset approach for teams are substantial. It improves relationships among colleagues, as they all work as a team with the knowledge they are all learning together to resolve any issues or face any challenges. This reduces the chances of quick judgments and helps the team thrive on constructive criticism, which creates less stress in the workplace.
Fixed mindsets have the tendency to tackle the easy stuff first. They usually start projects where the least resistance is expected. On the other hand, teams with a growth mindset, focus their attention on the hardest parts first. They also tend to see the end goal and consider the bigger picture and do not get knocked off their feet by some initial setbacks or failures. They persist until they reach their objectives.
The core elements to develop a growth mindset is the open-mindedness, the ability to embrace challenges, tackle difficult questions first and adapt to new conditions. A growth mindset is imperative in a world where uncertainty is the new normal, where your past experiences and knowledge are less reliable guides for growth.
Adaptability has always been essential to workplace success. According to a new report by workplace consultancy McKinsey, up to 375 million workers worldwide will need to change their roles or learn new skills by 2030. It seems like now more than ever, we are required to constantly evolve to maintain or develop our careers. Increased automation, AI, and economic trends have made it imperative for successful professionals to update their skills, and develop new ones.
Whenever you feel stuck at your current ability level, using “not yet” instead of shying away from the difficulties, puts you on a trajectory towards success until you progress and grow your abilities, and can face the challenges that seemed impossible to resolve beforehand.
Your mindset can influence the way you set goals at work. The type of goal you set often reflects on whether you work with a growth or fixed mindset. We usually tend to set performance goals based on our current abilities. Instead challenge yourself to set learning goals, so that you can achieve more tomorrow than what you did yesterday.
What are your thoughts? Do you believe you can grow? Or are you limited by a fixed mentality? Are you ready to take a step to change your mindset?
I hope yes! I will be very happy if you find this article inspiring, and make some small changes to your mindset that affect your career, your team and your company in better ways!
