Growth mindset tips to elevate your career

By Emma Foster

A “growth mindset” trumps a “fixed mindset” in the corporate credos of most Australian workplaces.

Yet many researchers, including Stanford University professor Carol Dweck, who is credited with developing the theory back in the 1980s, are concerned that the wild popularity of this framing has led to distortions and misunderstandings, putting the theory at risk of losing its intended benefit as it becomes another corporate buzz phrase.

“The emergence of this broadbrush workplace aim to ‘have a growth mindset’ is flawed,” says Susan Mackie, co-founder of the Melbourne-based Growth Mindset Institute.

“That’s because we all have a mixture of both fixed and growth mindsets. A fixed mindset is not ‘bad’, it is simply a lens we look through due to past experiences and to make sense of the world, and this could frame your future choices,” she says. “The question then becomes 'how do we enact a growth mindset when a fixed mindset is holding us back?'”

Growth versus fixed mindset

Put simply, a person’s mindset is the assumptions they hold about how much they can change and cultivate their personal attributes, such as capability and personality, explains UNSW Business School’s professor Peter Heslin, who pioneered research on mindsets in organisations.

“The hallmarks of a growth mindset are basically setting goals and persistently trying to achieve them,” says Heslin, who has co-authored numerous mindsets-related research papers and hosts regular one-day growth mindset workshops.

 

"Enacting a growth mindset can take a lot of work when applied to deliberately developing a skill or asking lots of questions about your assumptions. The trick is to work out where a fixed mindset is holding you back – one or two areas that would really enrich your life and your career – and try to be more growth-minded in those."

 

Statements such as, “In negotiations, experience is a great teacher” and “People can always turn over a new leaf” reflect a growth mindset, he says.

“On the other hand, the hallmarks of a fixed mindset are trying to direct yourself to areas where you think you have inherent capabilities and avoiding areas where you don’t think you’ve really got talent,” says Heslin, adding it is reflected in statements such as “I’m just too old for this”.

“For example, some people might say, ‘Look, I’m not cut out for socialising’, as opposed to, ‘Well, networking is important for my future career prospects, so I might try going to one networking event each month’. A fixed mindset focuses on the kind of person you are, whereas a growth mindset focuses on the strategies or actions you could take.”

Heslin flags the career-limiting nature of having a fixed mindset to some areas at work, such as building social capital and goal setting, but he emphasises that it is not feasible to be “growth-minded about everything”.

“Enacting a growth mindset can take a lot of work when applied to deliberately developing a skill or asking lots of questions about your assumptions,” he says. “The trick is to work out where a fixed mindset is holding you back – one or two areas that would really enrich your life and your career – and try to be more growth-minded in those.”

Mackie believes that while it is not always easy to spot when a fixed mindset kicks in, once you notice that your comfort zone is causing you to miss out on new opportunities or experiences, it is possible to change the narrative.

“It’s often like a switch that turns on without you knowing,” says Mackie, who has undertaken collaborative research with professor Dweck and advises organisations on growth mindset strategies.

 

"A fixed mindset is not ‘bad’, it is simply a lens we look through due to past experiences and to make sense of the world, and this could frame your future choices. The question then becomes ‘how do we enact a growth mindset when a fixed mindset is holding us back?’"

 

“Imagine, for example, the boss leaves you a message, saying ‘Come and see me at 8am tomorrow – I have some feedback’,” she says.

“If you immediately start negative rumination, become defensive and insecure, it’s a signal of a fixed mindset. 'Have I done something wrong? What have I forgotten?'

“That internal voice becomes very noisy, hijacking your executive function and inhibiting growth, so by the time you get to the meeting your brain is no longer thinking clearly, you’re not calm, you’re fearful. As it turns out, the boss just wants to congratulate you on a project,” she says.

“To get back into a growth zone, we must identify these triggers, then talk back to the inner voice.

Tell the rumination to stop and take steps to address the dynamic, like simply asking the boss for an agenda. We all have the capacity to rewire and turn that fixed mindset response from debilitating to enhancing.”

Achieving a growth mindset

Heslin recommends taking a deliberate, systematic approach to being growth-minded.

“Get into learning mode and start by asking yourself, ‘What small step could I take to make progress in this area? Who could be my role model? How am I going to manage my emotions through this? How am I going to track my progress?’”

People who are good at something were not born good at it, he says.

“They had a pathway that almost always involved doing it badly before they did it well, but they got help, resources, inspiration, guidance, training or coaching.

“Being systematic about improving in one area can be incredible, because you give it more focus than you would have otherwise and achieve more than you imagined possible, and that builds the foundation for doing so in other areas.”