Growth mindset is dominating leadership discussions around the world, and now it’s taking over the NeuroLeadership Institute blog.
Every Thursday for the next 12 weeks, Your Brain At Work will deliver fresh insights straight from “Growth Mindset Culture,” a new white paper (link below) featuring original research drawn from in-depth interviews with 20 organizations from three continents.
The data contained in the Idea Report shows how leaders put growth mindset to use and reveal which factors most often determine their success. It’s the empirical follow-up to our organizational growth mindset journal article.
We’re calling the resulting series Growth Mindset: The Master Class, because we want to make the case that growth mindset is more than a personal shift. It’s a high-level organizational change, and for the sake of sustained progress, leaders should be focused on creating what we call a Growth Mindset Culture (GMC).
Growth Mindset: The Master Class will offer a range of related ideas to help build such a culture.
It will…
- Showcase the science behind GMC
- Identify the most common misconceptions about growth mindset
- Walk through the steps leaders can take to create a GMC in their own organization.
… and much more.
Table of contents:
Week 2: We Talked to 20 Orgs About Growth Mindset — Here Are Our 7 Biggest Findings
Week 3: The 6 Business Reasons Organizations Look to Adopt Growth Mindset
Week 4: The Truth Is, No One ‘Has’ a Fixed or Growth Mindset
Week 5: So You Have a Fixed Mindset — Here’s What to Do About It
Week 6: Growth Mindset Doesn’t Mean Anyone Can Get to Carnegie Hall
Week 7: How Microsoft Overhauled Its Approach to Growth Mindset
Week 8: 4 Steps for Embracing the Discomfort of Developing a Growth Mindset
Week 9: The 2 Biggest Obstacles to Organizational Growth Mindset — and How to Overcome Them
Week 10: How to Use Growth Mindset So Progress and Results Can Co-Exist
Week 11: The Surprising Power of Growth Mindset in Reducing Stress
Week 12: Why Growth Mindset Is Crucial to Inclusion
Building on what’s worked
Decades ago, “growth mindset” was a specialist term of art for a concept studied solely by psychologists. They saw certain kids embracing challenges and others shying away from them, and they wondered what might distinguish the two groups.
Soon, they discovered the big difference, and not just among children: People with a so-called fixed mindset see their traits as set in stone, and view failures as indictments of their value. People with a growth mindset believe they can improve, and bounce back from defeat.
By our definition, growth mindset reflects the dual belief that improvement is both possible and the purpose of the work employees do. In a GMC, most — if not all — employees hold those two beliefs simultaneously. They uplift one another, welcome new ideas, and strive to get better. They do not point fingers, shut people down, or assert themselves as geniuses.
Growth Mindset: The Master Class will enable leaders to more effectively use the tools already in their possession, along with providing new tools drawn from our research. Consider class officially in session.
