Thankfully, much of your potential is in your hands, although people with a fixed mindset might disagree.
If you wish to develop a growth mindset in your personal life or within your workplace, there are certain things you can do to accomplish this…
Personal Mindset
First things first, you need to be aware of your own mindset. Many people think they are growth-minded when they actually have a fixed mindset. Be aware of what your mindset actually is.
Pay attention to how you approach situations and how you react to change. Are you open to opportunities, or are you overly cautious?
Allow yourself to receive feedback about your role. Both positive and negative feedback. Try not to be defensive about mistakes and instead learn and grow from them.
Seek out more experiences where you can learn. Learn about more than your work and current interests.
Aim for discomfort. This is where you grow. Fall and fail and challenge yourself as often as you can.
Step outside yourself. Seek knowledge and experiences that you otherwise would avoid. Read new books, attend interesting workshops, seek opposing viewpoints.
Pay attention to your habits. Are they assets or liabilities for you? Get rid of the habits that weigh you down and make room for the ones that are beneficial.
Business Mindset
To encourage sustainability, it is important the organizations and businesses seek a growth mindset.
Assess where your organization stands. Allow your employees to anonymously answer whether they believe your organization operates with a fixed mindset, or a growth mindset. Once you have your answer, you can move forward.
One of the first and most important things a business can do to encourage a growth mindset is to adjust their hiring practices. Instead of seeking out the most talented person in a pool of applicants (like looking for “genius”), look for the applicant who has the most promise, the most potential (looking at “development” instead).
Consider hiring from within instead of looking externally, too. This reiterates to your employees that you believe in them and their abilities to grow within your organization.
Foster a culture that empowers perseverance. Not everyone is a born genius, and failure is vital to growth and success. Encourage (managed) risk taking, provide a safe space for your employees to be creative and innovative and cheer their efforts when they fail.
Make sure you are giving your team the opportunities they need to grow and develop. Encourage participation in seminars, workshops, apprenticeships, coaching, and other learning opportunities. We went over professional development in an earlier chapter, are you allowing this opportunity for your employees?
Make sure your feedback is constructive. It’s important the people know what went wrong, but they sometimes need help in figuring out how to avoid the problems in the future. Even in failure, encourage learning from the mistakes.
Conclusion
In order to grow personally and within your organization, you must consistently encourage a growth mindset.
It can be so easy to fall into a fixed mindset, to listen to the negative voices and to stay down when you fall. Keep dusting yourself off and getting back up to try again.
Don’t be afraid to fail, continually seek knowledge, don’t give up, seek challenges, and keep pushing on.
Endeavor to be the best you can be in your personal life as well as in your business life but know that there is no cap on learning and growing. It isn’t fixed in place.
