Growth Mindset - Not

Someone was telling me the other day that they were sick of mindset.  I’ve been a fan of Carol Dweck’s work for 10 years, so I asked her why.  She said that in her experience the way it was being used was as a bit of a putdown by managers:

• “I’m not sure this is going to work” gets “you need a growth mindset” from the manager

• “I don’t think I can do this” gets “you’ve got a fixed mindset”

• “We’ve got real problems here” gets “you need a growth mindset”

It’s entirely possible that the first speaker might have a fixed mindset, but that’s not evident from the comment.  The second speaker is using mindset as way of avoiding a deeper conversation.

“Not sure it’s going to work” and “we’ve got real problems here” are not even mindset issues: it’s a risk management problem that needs to be addressed in terms of probabilities. Having a growth mindset doesn’t mean a bad idea is going to work. In fact, a growth mindset would admit to the possibility of failure and look to learn early.

Now it may be that those perspectives speak to a skeptical or cynical attitude or an overly negative belief set, but they aren’t a mindset issue as Dweck uses it, in the sense of either fixed or growth. In fact, Dweck has written a whole book on how people are using the concept wrongly.

“I don’t think I can do this” is a genuine mindset issue, and being told you’ve got a fixed mindset is the best way to lock it in. That suggests failure, and if you’ve got a fixed mindset, failure will tell you to stop trying.  The way to invoke a growth mindset is these simple words “these are skills that can be learned”. This removes the emotional cost of failure, which is fundamental to learning.

A growth mindset is one that sees improvement as the objective, sees mistakes as opportunities to learn, and is inspired to work harder when there are setbacks.  A fixed mindset sees success as the ultimate objective, mistakes as failures, and is inclined to give up when there are setbacks.

The manager in our conversations above may well be saying “don’t give up”, but using mindset as a shorthand is counter-productive.  It closes down a growth and learning conversation.

The Active Leader would pause for a couple of seconds before reaching for the quick fix, and ask themselves “what’s really going on here?”. Then they can break out of whatever mental track they’re on, be present in this moment, and reach for more durable and powerful tools like an open-ended question such as “why do you say that?” More work, but better results in every way.