What Having a "Growth Mindset" Actually Means

Research shows that people who believe they can develop their talents through hard work, good strategies and input from others have a growth mindset. They often achieve more than people who believe their talents are innate gifts.

Employees feel more empowered and committed when their companies embrace a growth mindset and give organisational support for innovation and collaboration. Companies with a fixed mindset report more cheating and deception. This is most likely to gain an advantage.

• You believe you have a growth mindset. In truth, people tend to confuse a growth mindset with being open-minded or having a positive outlook. Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets.
• A growth mindset is about praising and rewarding effort. However, it's vital to reward effort, learning and progress.
• People think just desiring a growth mindset is enough to make things happen. For example, organisations believe they have a growth mindset by creating mission statements that include innovation or growth empowerment, but they fail to implement policies to make them happen.

• Encourage appropriate risk-taking.
• Reward employees for useful lessons learned even if the project does not meet its goals.
• Support collaboration across organizational boundaries rather than competing among employees.
• Commit to the growth of every member.
• Reinforce growth mindset values with policies.

If we correct these misconceptions, it's still difficult to get a growth mindset, partly because we all have fixed mindset triggers, such as criticism, facing challenges, being compared with others that can push us into defensiveness.

It's hard for people to stay in a growth mindset. However, organisation and people can increase their understanding of growth mindset concepts and the processes to put them in place.