Dweck's Growth Mindset for Individuals

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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.

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		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 positive action. Numerous authors call for getting out of a sleeping, negative or useless state and reconfiguring to the world of positive mental self-awareness. No one denies that we need to think positively. But in my subjective opinion, everything is not so simple with the restructuring of human mindset. First, everyone is given different initial conditions of birth. And before arriving at a happy life, a person must first overcome these negative preconditions. (In esotericism, this is called a period of "closed karma". These are old sins that we brought from a past life and must work out in the present). For those who do not believe in reincarnation, I will simply call this the initial conditions given to us by birth. If a person manages to overcome negative conditions from birth (a "self-made man") then she can unfold her life at her own will (a period of open karma). And this is just the beginning of building our happy or unhappy life. Thus, everyone has two periods of life: a predetermined fate and the freedom to build a fate of their own free will. To be continued...

		1 Paramathmuni srinivas Kumar India
	Growth Mindset and Tendencies When you have a tendency to consider yourself as old or as having a disease you need to get rid off that for having a growth mindset. Even if one is aged, that does not mean one is old. A child-like mindset can be maintained by having appropriate suggestions available to the daily context at various layers of individual being such as physical, intellectual, negative emotions etc. A knowledge body which enables such a process is considered the best form of knowledge in this part of the world (India) .

		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 negative condition in a life situation. As a defense mechanism, an individual's mindset changes in order to not feel badly about such negative situation (experience). For example: A student who failed to pass a math test, shall tend to dress up this wound by looking at maths as a complicated subject. While if he/she passes the test, she will be motivated to accept the fact that learning is the growing process of life. Through these two examples, you see that when the we fail to achieve in a situation, we tend to remain fixed in our mind by looking at the situation as impossible. Whereas if we excel in life, we tend to accept that we are learning, which is a growth mindset.

		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, it strikes me that in order for a Growth Mindset to be activated and have the chance to flourish, some or all of the following conditions must be met: 1. An individual ought to be encouraged to learn from mistakes, not punished unnecessarily for making them (the family unit is key to permit this to take place to a greater degree in a relatively 'safe' setting), 2. Recognition of the advantages of seeking / receiving feedback, both positive and negative, 3. In a corporate environment, create a culture where personal growth is valued and an appetite prevails for making mistakes and behavioural modification (i.e. shaping & testing hypotheses) in order for individuals (teams) to embrace risk, learn through experimentation and potentially continuously improve (very similar to kids learning & adapting through playful interaction). All easier said than done... when most people tend to become more risk-averse and inhibited the older they become (which seems a great pity).

		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 negative mindset findings? If we consider the many ways in which childrens' potential for growth is stunt...

		5 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 to growth and learning. But we have to be careful about misconceptions of the growth mindset. Dweck ...

		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 a growing consciousness, but a higher quality consciousness. The term constantly evolving conscious...

		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 if the person in that position wants to prove the naysayers wrong and believes the person who is crit...

		2 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 play and throws up paradoxes and hijacking. Implicit theory of intelligence aka growth mindset theor...