Growth mindset

Hello friends! This week we dive into the power of a growth mindset. If you find it interesting, let me know. Better yet, forward it onto a friend or colleague!

These newsletters focus on strategies to improve resilience to succeed personally and professionally. To put these ideas into practice in your day to day work, I offer keynotes and team sessions to help your team thrive in challenging moments.

“It’s not over until I win.”

I saw a video recently - a dad was telling the story of him playing ‘Connect 4’ with his 9-year old son. The kid couldn’t win a game. And after 10 straight games of beating his son, the dad wanted to call it a night and head to bed.

But his son’s response stopped him: “No dad. It’s not over until I win.”

After several more games (apparently 11), his son finally won a match. And then the kid promptly stood up, announced that he was tired, and went to bed.

The dad tells this story with pride. He wasn’t frustrated that he had to stay up for the extra time it took to play 11 more games. He wasn’t disappointed that his son took over 20 matches to finally beat him. He was beaming at the fact that his son had this fantastic mentality. He finishes the story by asking us all: what if each of us had the same mentality as his son? What if we all believed that it’s not over… until we win?

There are a few fantastic ideas worth exploring in this short story.

1. Firstly, we can always learn something. This is the idea of a growth mindset - our belief that, even if we don’t know how to do something today, we can do it one day. The term ‘growth mindset’ became popular through American psychologist, Carol Dweck, who wrote a whole book on the subject (definitely worth a read!). The idea is that we can either have a ‘fixed’ or ‘growth’ mindset. The quick summary is that a fixed mindset is the belief that nothing can change and we’re stuck with our circumstances. A growth mindset is that things can always change with belief and effort.

2. The second idea from the ‘Connect 4’ story is that it’s OK to fail. This idea is also connected to the concept of a growth mindset, but it takes it a little further. Each time we fail, what happens is that we learn a little bit more information that gets us closer to success. We try, adjust, try again, adjust again….and so on, until we succeed. Or, in the case of ‘Connect 4’, until we win. There’s a wonderful example of this with Thomas Edison. In the 1920s, the inventor was asked by a reporter about his invention of the lightbulb. He was asked how it felt to fail 1000 times before finding success. His response summed up the idea above: “I didn’t fail 1000 times. The lightbulb was an invention with 1000 steps.”

Growth mindset + accepting failure is part of the process = RESILIENCE.

Putting into practice.

One of the simplest and most effective ways to get into the habit of a growth mindset is to use the word “yet” in our vocabulary. It works in both a professional and personal sense for anything that we want to achieve.

1. “I don’t know how to meditate.”

2. “My colleague can’t get the data reporting done properly.”

3. “My boss doesn’t know how to run effective meetings.”

4. “The client hasn’t given me a good brief.“

5. “I don’t know how to deal with this.”

Read them all again and then add the word “yet” to the end of each statement. That simple word adds a whole new context to the situation and suddenly we find ourselves starting to think about how we can move forward.

Additionally, we can start to praise the process instead of focusing only on the result. This opens our mind to a bunch of additional outcomes outside of the simple binary results of success vs failure. This can work individually or as a team.

And, when we focus on what went well and what can be improved, we put emphasis on effort, strategy, focus, determination etc, all of which can ultimately lead to better long-term results.

Perhaps the product launch didn’t quite land perfectly? What went well and what can be improved for next time? Collaborating as a team and reflecting on the pros and cons is a brilliant way to keep moving forward to get closer to success. A postmortem analysis that emphasizes the process is a great way to improve our individual and team resilience.

Ok that’s it for this week folks. As always, it’s one thing to know something, and another to put it into practice. So our challenge today is to ask ourselves what we are going to do today to build up that growth mindset?

Until next time friends, stay resilient.

Carre @ Resilient Marketing Minds