Advancing Yourself Through the Growth Mindset

Tom Bilyeu, a co-founder of Quest Nutrition and co-founder of the media company Impact Theory, has a reading list on his website that contains the books he considers most foundational to obtaining a skillset that leads to a successful career. The first book on his list is Mindset , by Carol Dweck, Ph.D. Dr. Dweck, a Stanford psychologist, has performed decades of research that indicate that the biggest predictor of a person’s success is whether they possess a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. If you want to achieve professional success, it is important to learn about and adopt the growth mindset.

Growth Mindset vs. Fixed Mindset

To have a growth mindset is to believe that any skill or trait can be trained and improved through deliberate practice. To have a fixed mindset is to believe that skills and traits are inherently fixed, and that there is not much one can do to improve upon their weaknesses. People with the growth mindset view challenges as opportunities to learn and improve themselves, whereas fixed mindset people see challenges as opportunities to impress others with how talented or intelligent they are.

Growth Mindset For You

If one wants to advance professionally, it is important to possess a growth mindset toward work. The key is to think about all the skills, processes, and traits you utilize in your job, and instead of thinking about how adept you are in each, consider ways you could work toward improving them. Instead of worrying about whether you are the most talented developer on your team, focus on ways to write code more cleanly than you wrote yesterday. Rather than trying to deliver a flawless presentation, try to improve upon the weakest aspect of your last presentation. Instead of trying to write the perfect blog article, focus on communicating your ideas in a simple and clear way that your readers will understand.

A growth mindset also means choosing to view setbacks as opportunities for improvement instead of letting temporary failures define you. A person with a fixed mindset will interpret a negative performance review to mean that they are a failure as an employee and will probably always be a poor performer. A growth-minded individual will walk out of the same performance review with the knowledge of their weak areas so that they can get to work on improving them.

Growth Mindset For Your Team

If you are a leader in your organization, having a growth mindset is doubly important. In addition to adopting this way of thinking for your own benefit, you should model the behavior and foster it in your team members. To get the most out of your team members, focus on realistic improvements that each contributor can make. Compare each individual’s current performance and progress to how they were doing at a previous time instead of comparing them with their team members now or an unrealistic standard of perfection. While a competitive environment can bring out strong performances for some people, it can lead to a toxic and cutthroat environment if team members believe their job security depends on how they compare to their peers.

Summing Up the Growth Mindset

Having a growth mindset is a prerequisite to deliberate professional development. A growth mindset alone does not guarantee that a person will have wild success, let alone not face major setbacks. However, being armed with this mindset means that people will be able to put a positive spin on setbacks in order to improve themselves and will always strive to shore up their weakest areas. Now that you are aware of the growth mindset, how will you use it to improve yourself and your team?