Fixed and Growth Mindsets

There are two types of mindsets: fixed and growth mindsets. The fixed mindset makes you concerned with how you'll be judged whereas the growth mindset makes you concerned with improving. You can have a different mindset in different areas of your life, too. For instance, you could approach sports with a growth mindset whilst thinking you have a fixed musical talent that can't be improved.

The fixed mindset can be very dangerous as it does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be perfect. This makes them a lot more prone to judgement, because what they are is their identity, and when that is not perfect, they are at fault. When, in a fixed mindset, you take a big risk and fail, you will feel like a failure. Someone with the growth mindset will learn from their shortcomings and improve for the next time.

Therefore, it's quite natural to think that those with the growth mindset find success in doing their best, in learning and improving. They find setbacks to be motivating and use them as information for their growth.

This principle applies to absolutely all areas of life. From sports to the arts going through the corporate world as well as relationships.

In the corporate world, there's a great story about Enron that teaches a valuable lesson. Enron was focused on recruiting big talent, consisting mostly of people with fancy degrees and paid them top salaries. But the biggest flaw Enron did is they put all of their faith on talent rather than growth. This encouraged their employees to look and act talented, forcing them into a fixed mindset. People with a fixed mindset do not admit and correct their deficiencies, so when we have a bunch of people acting this way, things will quickly go downhill, as it happened with Enron.

This teaches us that it's vital to create a growth-mindset environment in our workplace, and stop putting the focus solely on talent. Sure, talent is important, but growth trumps talent. It's most important for people in management positions to embody the growth mindset, because they will be most involved with the growth of other employees and expanding the culture. The most successful companies of Silicon Valley from the last 20 years or so have a massive focus on constructive feedback and growth. Those first times when someone is giving you constructive feedback (and you're not used to it) it's very easy to feel at fault, like you did something wrong and like you are a failure. But once you understand this is just information you can use to become better at whatever it is you're doing, it feels like cracking a code.