Want to develop your business into a growth mindset company that inspires and drives success? Follow PCG’s 10 tips to build a growth mindset business.
1. Be a failure friendly growth mindset business
Avoid the fixed mindset trap of regarding business failures as evidence of an innate inability to succeed at the task in hand. Instead, learn to approach each failure as a temporary setback rather than an all defining, confidence shaking blow. When you adopt a growth mindset towards your business, failure and setbacks will still occur but a growth mindset provides you with increasing resilience to persevere with your business goals.
When things don’t go as planned take a growth mindset approach and focus on immersing yourself deeper in the process by asking yourself what different strategies are available, who can provide help and expertise and establish what you’ve learned from this failure that will enable you to improve future performance.
2. Be a growth mindset business that isn’t deterred by the fixed mindset of others
It’s always great to have feedback and learn from the constructive input of others but how do you know when someone else is exposing you to their own fixed mindset approach? Businesses with a growth mindset have a strong sense of their own goals and learning process, their people understand that just because progress and success doesn’t occur overnight, it doesn’t mean that it’s time to throw in the towel, setbacks are just part of the road to success. Refuse to allow your business dreams and goals to be derailed by the negativity and pessimism of others. Be open to new ideas, experiences and processes but frame them within a growth mindset approach.
3) Take a growth mindset approach to the parts of your business that challenge you
It’s easy to avoid the areas of your business that feel more challenging. Stretch yourself and develop your skills to encompass all aspects of your business role and encourage others in the team to do the same. Making a commitment to wholeheartedly engage with challenging tasks allows individuals and teams to develop new skills and abilities. New or difficult tasks are an opportunity to develop new skills and ways of thinking and at the same time you’ll be building new synaptic connections, with perseverance and practice both will strengthen and improve performance.
4) Be a growth mindset business that welcomes new ideas and experiences
Organisations can sometimes stifle experimentation and new ways of working because of fear of failure. It can be tempting to remain in an organisational comfort zone where you stick to the same old processes because that’s what’s always been done. But it’s a changing world and even when you decide to take an ‘it ain’t broke so don’t fix it’ approach who’s to say that you won’t be missing out on new opportunities to expand and develop your business? Be open to new ideas and experiences and ensure that resources and encouragement are available for your team to continuously learn and develop.
5) Celebrate the effort that leads to business success
Process, process, process! Encourage your team to take a deep dive into the process behind successes and failures to maximise learning and improve performance. We work in such fast paced environments that it’s easy to finish one project and move straight onto the next one without pausing to ask:
- what worked really well there?
- what could we do differently next time?
- what can we learn from the last project?
- what strengths and deficits were highlighted and how can we utilise this information?
Analysing and learning from the process will support your team to embed successful ways of working and increase performance for future success.
6) Promote and reinforce growth mindset practices
To have a truly growth mindset business culture an organisation needs to constantly highlight and reinforce growth mindset practices. Encourage your team to share their favourite examples of a growth mindset in action and promote growth mindset success stories at every opportunity, across the whole organisation.
7) Recall previous growth mindset approaches when faced with a new challenge
Ambitious new projects can sometimes feel daunting. When you and your team embark on increasingly ambitious plans to grow your business, remember previous achievements that involved learning and working in new ways and remind yourself and others of all the ways that having a growth mindset helped you to achieve success.
8) Embed the growth mindset approach into policies and procedures
For a any change in organisational culture to be an effective and lasting change, it’s important to ensure that it’s firmly included in policies and procedures. Make sure that all of your processes reflect a growth mindset approach and pay special attention to processes that recognise and reward achievement.
10) Monitor fixed mindset triggers
Even the most forward thinking organisations that work exceptionally hard to develop a growth mindset culture will still have areas of their approach that lean more towards a fixed mindset. Commit to honestly assessing the fixed mindset triggers that prevail in your business. A fixed mindset trigger might occur when the organisation faces a challenge, experiences a setback or is less successful than a leading competitor, if we fall into defensiveness behaviour or insecurity then a growth mindset will be inhibited.
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