“Having the right mindset can literally change your life”.
How does this differing mindset affect how a leader or leadership team runs his or her business?
I have worked with multiple business owners, many who have solid foundations in place, a strong team, agreat idea, good processes to execute, yet struggle to move forward. Why is this? In my experience, it’s very much due to the mindset they carry when walking into the office every day. Hitting obstacles in the pursuit of growth hinders their minds from pushing through to go the extra mile. The language used sets the tone “we can’t…., the team won’t…., we haven’t got time for….,” that can have a deep impact on company morale. The tone and rigor used to address the team, sets a precedent across the entire business, from the leadership teams to the rest of the business. Conversely, I have encountered business owners that have a strong growth mindset. They consistently look for the silver lining, they see the lessons, they learn from mistakes and take on every challenge with the expectation that they will ultimately be better for it. The language here is different; they rally the team together and the language used translates along “we can…., as a team we can…. let’s make this a priority, let’s create time to….”. The output and the overall feeling across the business here is completely different, despite the problem being exactly the same. So, what is a Fixed Mindset and what is a Growth Mindset?
Fixed Mindset
Intelligence is static – this leads to a desire to look smart and therefore a tendency to;
- Avoid challenges
- Give up easily when obstacles occur
- See effort as fruitless
- Avoid criticism, instead seeing it as useless negative feedback
- Feel threatened or even belittle the success of others
As a result, they may plateau early and achieve less than their full potential. All this just confirms a detrimental view of the world. This is a limiting mindset.
Growth Mindset
Intelligence can be developed which leads to a desire to learn and therefore a tendency to;
- Embrace challenges
- Persist in the face of setbacks and obstacles
- See effort as the path to mastery
- Learn from criticism
- Find lessons and inspiration in the success of others
As a result, they reach ever higher levels of achievement and this gives them a greater sense of free will. This is a freedom mindset. My experience has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value.
Your view of yourself can determine everything. If you believe that your qualities are unchangeable — the fixed mindset — you will want to prove yourself correct over and over rather than learning from your mistakes.”
Carol S Dweck PHD
So, how do we shift to a path of learning and growth?
Our mind is a very powerful tool and plays a huge part in how our lives unfold as well as how we feel about ourselves and our abilities. When you look at the successes of other people or other businesses, you can choose to believe that they are more gifted, more talented or luck played a part or you can choose to believe that they got there through hard work, investment in learning, coaching, mentoring. and constant improvement.
“What You Think and Believe, You Can Achieve”
Napoleon Hill
How you choose to interpret your experiences, your setbacks, and your path can set the boundaries on what you can accomplish.
To move from a fixed to a growth mindset we need to;
★Find inspiration in other people’s success, even reverse engineer some of those successes and decide to make small changes.
★ Engage with setbacks, accept them and look at the learning, focus on making improvements moving forward.
★ Accept any negative feedback as highly valuable learnings, again focus on making improvements
★ Consistently strive to increase your knowledge and that of your team; knowledge sparks creativityand new ideas, and improves engagement
★ Look to collaborate and innovate with others instead of focusing on the competition aspect.
I’ll leave you with five simple changes that I’m personally doing and you can too, to improve your mindset and become more growth orientated in your thinking.
1. Read more books, listen to more podcasts and/or watch short videos. My favourite is TedX. I aim to watch one short 10-20 minute video every day while I travel, workout on my peloton, walk my dog or eat lunch. I like to take notes and find that most days these videos give me great ideas for improvement.
2. Brainstorm with your team or other peers when you have setbacks. You don’t have to choose to deal with issues or make decisions about them alone. A problem shared is a problem halved. I often have a new, more positive perspective once I’ve talked things through.
3. Seek out groups, other business owners or peers that are succeeding at something you’d like to improve on. There are so many networking groups available, for example. I just set up a small accountability group and I’m heads and shoulders ahead in terms of smashing my most recent goals as I learnt some valuable skills within it.
4. Commit to being more mindful of the language you use when talking to your team/colleagues/ peers (I’m not referring to effing and jeffing here!). I just wrote down a few things that I know I say more often than I should and am trying to replace them with more growth orientated ones. I’ll write another blog on the power of language and its effects on your team.
5. Do a little research on successes in your area of business interest. Who is doing it best? Who do you aspire to be like? Reverse engineer their results, read their blogs, read their books, look at their journey, and ask yourself if you can do something different.