Are you developing a growth mindset team? Start with our ten tips and tricks to develop a growth mindset culture.
1. Promote problem solving through failure
A growth mindset team problem solves by analysing failures. Help your team understand that taking reasonable risks and experiencing a few failures along the way is an essential part of the process that leads to increased creativity and innovation. Encourage your team to anticipate setbacks and ask..how will you overcome them?
2. Encourage your growth mindset team to talk about how they overcome challenges and setbacks
The culture you create within your business is reflected in everything you do and say. Encourage your team to understand the value and benefits of talking about their professional challenges and setbacks and sharing the tools and techniques they’ve used to overcome difficulties.
3. Encourage the process
Avoid the fixed mindset trap of only focusing on successful outcomes. A purely results driven business risks losing the fertile learning ground that’s contained within both successes and failures. Results matter but learning from the process that your team is constantly engaged in is just as important if you want to create an innovative, agile and resilient culture. Ask your team, what did you learn from the process?
4. Ask your team …where is the challenge?
Invite people out of their comfort zones by asking them to constantly choose and immerse themselves in new challenge. A fixed mindset approach encourages us to stick with that which we’re confident we can achieve and a fear of failure prevents us from breaking free from this limiting approach. In contrast, a growth mindset enables us to take on new challenges wholeheartedly, taking failures in our stride as we relish the new opportunities that a challenge can bring.
5. Encourage a culture of development rather than genius
Carol Dweck’s research has shown that organisation’s who worship a culture of genius rather than development can become places where the majority of employees feel undervalued, disengaged and unsupported. When you encourage a development culture research shows your team is more likely to feel committed, engaged, supported and more able to take on innovative and challenging tasks.
6. Make sure you don’t just talk the growth mindset
At PCG we sometimes hear people in organisations complaining that although leaders talk about growth mindset they do little to embody it. Let your people know that you’re serious about developing as a growth mindset team by talking and walking a growth mindset. Lead by example and talk your team through how you’ve overcome setbacks, dealt with failures and challenged yourself to develop skills and abilities.
7. Encourage reasonable risk
In fixed mindset organisations innovation can be stifled because people resist taking risks for fear of being blamed when things go wrong. Encourage your team to take on acceptable risk in order to support them in developing new strengths and skills.
8. Emphasise that errors are the route to mastery
A growth mindset team understands the need to embrace failure as part of the route to success. When a team member talks about their failures and tells you, “I can’t do this” encourage them to add “yet.” Encourage your team to embrace failure and learn from it by explaining that real mastery is impossible without encountering and surmounting failures.
9. Growth mindset teams ask…who are you collaborating with, who are you mentoring?
In growth mindset teams people share information across teams and networks and support each other to achieve the organisation’s goals. Mentoring and collaboration can spark innovation, improve performance and increase organisational resilience when the going gets tough. Regularly ask your team to share who they are mentoring or collaborating with and how this has benefited them, the team and the organisation.
10. Look for your fixed mindset triggers and encourage others to do the same
The first step to develop a growth mindset team is to recognise what triggers our fixed mindset responses. Learn to listen out for your own fixed mindset triggers and encourage others to do the same by monitoring your inner dialogue and emotional responses.
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