Why You Need a Growth Mindset for Your Business
My parents taught me that to be successful you have to follow this equation:
Education + Hard Work = Success
That’s a nice thought. And certainly you need knowledge and effort to be successful. But there is more to it than that. If this equation were 100% accurate, everyone who had these ingredients in equal amounts would achieve the same level of success. But, clearly they don’t.
So what’s missing here? Is it talent or intelligence? These things also matter. But there are plenty of people out there who succeed without being all that talented or intelligent. So what is it?
Mindset.
If you’ve been hearing a lot about mindset lately you aren’t alone. I see it everywhere. As a culture, we are tuning into the importance of how we perceive ourselves and the world around us.
When I googled “mindset” today I got over 150,000,000 results. Everywhere you look these days people are talking about mindset. You can find it in books, podcasts, Instagram posts, bog articles like this one, and more.
But what is mindset and why does it matter in your business? Let’s dig in and find out.
According to Merriam-Webster, mindset is “a mental attitude or inclination.” Our mindset affects everything in our lives, often without us even noticing. Thoughts like, “I’m a good parent”, or “I’m not great at writing” may seem like cold, hard facts. But they are actually steeped in mindset.
Our mindset colors how we view ourselves, the world, and the things that happen to us. And our mindset can be a major determining factor in how successful we become.
We all experience life’s ups and downs. We have our successes and we have our rejections. These things are universal. You get stuck in traffic, your daughter spills something sticky on the floor, that client you were sure was going to sign-up with you disappears. Things are going to happen in life. It’s inevitable. But mindset determines how we respond to both positive and negative events.
During my years as a teacher, the concept of a “growth mindset” became all the rage. This concept originated from a psychologist named Carol Dweck. She wrote about it in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
And she revolutionized current educational philosophy by identifying two major mindset types: fixed mindset and growth mindset.
I spent years as the proud owner of a fixed mindset. And looking back, I see how my fixed mindset permeated every area of my life without me even noticing.
For example, when I was in elementary school my teacher would turn on a program called “Draw Man” every Friday. This guy would walk you through how to draw something. And we would all sit at our desks with blank paper and a pencil doing our best to replicate what he was drawing.
Most of the kids loved Draw Man. But I hated it. It was during those Friday drawing lessons that I decided that I wasn’t good at art. I looked at all the other kids’ drawings and decided that mine looked stupid.
So I made a decision about myself: I can’t draw.
So I spent most of the rest of my life believing this. I “failed” at drawing when I was a kid. But my mindset didn’t limit this to a one-time event. Because I failed, I was destined never to be good at drawing. Because I didn’t have an obvious natural talent for drawing, I would forever suck at it.
This is what is now known as a “fixed mindset”. If you have a fixed mindset you believe that your success depends mostly on factors you can’t control:
Genetics
Talent
Intelligence
It’s black and white thinking. If you have a fixed mindset you believe that you are either inherently good at something or destined to stink at it.
When I sat there dreading Draw Man, it never occurred to me that I could learn to draw. It seems silly now. Of course I could (and still can) learn to draw if I wanted to. It’s not that I’m incapable of drawing beautiful things. It’s just that I’ve never learned the necessary skills or taken the time to practice.
This is a growth mindset. Someone with a growth mindset doesn’t put too much stock in talent or genetics. A growth mindset recognizes that it’s normal to suck at something when you first try it.
When you have a growth mindset, you have faith in your potential.
Have you figured yourself out yet? Do you have a fixed mindset or a growth mindset? Let’s dig in and find out. When you start something new, do you:
Worry you won’t be good at it?
Believe that success depends on natural talent?
Fear failure?
Avoid challenges?
Get derailed by setbacks?
If you answered yes to these questions, you are most likely operating from a fixed mindset. When you have a fixed mindset, trying new things can be scary. You may be so paralyzed by fear that you never even try the thing you long to do.
I used to be afraid to try new things because I feared failure so much. I believed if I failed at something once, it meant that I just wasn’t good at it. When the stakes are this high, it’s hard to try new things.
If this is true for you as well, don’t worry. Your mindset can change. You’ve already taken the first step: awareness. All those years I spent mired in a fixed mindset, I had no idea that I could be any different. I wasn’t even aware that I had a mindset. I assumed that how I saw things was reality.
Back when I was a public school teacher, my principal emphasized growth mindset with our staff. We read books, listened to guest speakers, and had meeting after meeting talking about developing a growth mindset.
My fixed mindset made it hard to admit that I had a fixed mindset. So it took time. But eventually I started to believe I could grow and learn in the areas where I didn’t seem to have talent.
Someone with a growth mindset may think things like this:
I can learn new things with hard work and practice
I can become smarter
Failure isn’t permanent and it offers me great insight
Challenges are worth embracing instead of avoiding because they help me grow
I can persevere through setbacks
My abilities are a result of my effort
The success of others motivates me
Criticism is helpful, not personal
So how can you transition from a fixed to a growth mindset? Recognition is huge. We don’t tend to notice our own mindset because it underlies everything. It’s one of those “can’t see the forest for the trees” things.
How to change from a fixed to a growth mindset
Words are powerful. Sometimes changing the words you think can change your mind as well.
Use the word ‘learning’ instead of ‘failing’. Failure doesn’t have to be the end of an endeavor. It can be the very spark that sets you on the path to success.
Add ‘yet’ to the end of your negative sentences. “I’m not good at drawing...yet.”
Reframe ‘challenge’ into a positive word.
Now you know about fixed and growth mindsets. But why do you need a growth mindset for your business? Simply this - people with a fixed mindset are far more likely to give up.
You are going to have setbacks in your business. Not everything will go the way you plan. There will be days where you may want to curl up in a ball under the covers and call it quits.
But a growth mindset can carry you through these days. If you believe that you can grow and learn, then you are unstoppable. I know it sounds cliche, but it’s true. The only way to fail is to quit.
