Dweck's Growth Mindset for Individuals

Dweck's Growth Mindset for Individuals

Psychologist Carol Dweck developed the concept of "growth mindset" and popularised it in her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. After that, the "growth mindset" has become a buzzword in the corporate world, even working its way into many big organisations' mission statements.

Definition

Dweck's work identified that people have 2 opposite types of mindset on talents and intelligence: fixed and growth. In a fixed mindset, people think their basic qualities are innate gifts. Whereas in a growth mindset, people believe their capabilities can be developed through arduous work, excellent strategies, and helps from others.

Fixed vs Growth Mindsets

When confronted with failure, people with a fixed mindset will convince themselves that they cannot do it or make excuses to rationalise their failure. They want to look smart and not look dumb to others, and that often makes them lose the opportunities of learning. Alternatively, people embracing a growth mindset worry less about looking smart, spend more time and energy on learning, and consequently achieve more than the fixed-mindset people.

FACTS ABOUT A GROWTH MINDSET

• A pure growth mindset does not exist, and everyone has a mixture of growth and fixed mindsets. Events such as challenges, criticism, or unjust treatments can trigger our fixed mindsets. To embrace a growth mindset, we need to recognise when and why our fixed-mindset "persona" shows up and persuade it to collaborate with us.
• Growth mindsets must be combined with productive efforts to achieving outcomes. These endeavours include seeking input from others, using new strategies, and capitalising on setbacks to move forward.
• Organisations that want to cultivate growth mindsets should take actions. They must encourage risk-taking, reward important lessons learnt, support internal collaboration rather than internal competition, and reinforce the values by having concrete policies in place.

Developing a growth mindset is a journey of challenges and setbacks. But with practice, we can learn to recognise our fixed mindset and shift our thinking back toward growth and learning.

Source:
Dweck, C. (2007). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Ballantine Books.
Dweck, C. (2019). What Having a "Growth Mindset" Actually Means. HBR, Winter 2019, 26-27.

		Comments Sort by date Sort by rating Rating
		3 Molokanova Professor, Ukraine
	Growth Mindset for Individuals and Open Karma There is a lot of literature on the internet now that encourages us to think positively and take pos... Sign up

		1 Paramathmuni srinivas Kumar India
	Growth Mindset and Tendencies Tendencies which makes someone consider himself as old or as having a disease need to get rid off fo... Sign up

		2 Otaka Moris Manager, Uganda
	Conditions that Motivate Individuals Towards a Growth or a Fixed Mindset In my opinion, growth and fixed mindsets are influenced by the ways an individual reacts towards a d... Sign up

		3 Rob Powys-Smith Analyst, United Kingdom
	Growth Mindset... Encouraging 3 Right Conditions Without being versed in Dweck's latest thinking, but mindful of 'Black Box Thinking' by Matthew Syed... Sign up

		3 Maurice Hogarth Consultant, United Kingdom
	Mind Over-programming No disagreement. Although, to what extent is this no more than a reworking of positive versus negati... Sign up

		2 Gandhi Heryanto Management Consultant, Indonesia
	False Growth Mindset I agree that with practice, we can learn to recognize our fixed mindset and shift our thinking back ... Sign up

		1 Molokanova Professor, Ukraine
	Growth Mindset It seems to me that there is a mistake in the very title of the book. It is important to develop not... Sign up

		2 Jaap de Jonge Editor, Netherlands
	When Underdogs Defy Expectations Being in an underdog position is reported in recent research by Nurmohamed to increase performance i... Sign up

		1 mark mccarthy Coach, United Kingdom
	What it is and Not @Rob Powys-Smith: this is where the simplicity of Dwecks research and the popularisation comes into ... Sign up