When it happens (as it does)
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sh*t happens. Often. All the time, to varying degrees. We’re rolling along happily, and then avvompha! We get knocked off our stride.
Last year we were working on a big initiative. Great opportunity, wonderful relationship yadda yadda yadda. The great opportunity got smaller and smaller until it was whatever the opposite of opportunity is.
We spent a few days doing the “ain’t it awful” thing and generally crying into our beers. Then we went on holiday and all had a lovely time at our various holiday spots.
Now the emphasis is on taking what we learned and refining our thinking about these initiatives. We now know what sorts of prospects to avoid. We’ve had a closer look at some of the opportunities that we developed inside that initiative and have come to the view that while it might not be as easy, it’s likely to be more rewarding. We’ve reset our goals accordingly, and we’re underway again.
And things will go wrong. Because they do. What separates the successful from the unsuccessful in life is how they treat failure. We hear a lot about mindset, but the person who wrote the book on the subject, Carol Dweck, is pretty narrow in her definition: there is growth mindset and fixed mindset. Both can be successful, but the research shows that people with a growth mindset prevail and succeed in their chosen endeavours precisely because of how they deal with setback.
In our company we use growth mindset skills all the time to deal with setbacks. We use it when we’re recruiting people, we encourage it in our team and in each other. We use the growth mindset in our home lives as well.
The way to trigger a growth mindset is to say, in the face of failure, these are skills that can be learned.
To take a deep dive into the growth mindset, and to be challenged and inspired, join our Challenger workshop on Friday 23rd February in Auckland. Guest speaker Sir Ray Avery will be sharing his personal story and thoughts on Innovation and what it takes to have a can-do mindset.