To take the test, read through the following statements and decide whether each statement is a true or false representation of your leadership style.
I encourage my team to analyse and understand errors when failures occur.
I encourage my team to be innovative and accept that this will entail a certain amount of appropriate risk.
I praise sharing information as it results in effective teamwork
I regularly compare underperforming employees to the members of my team who excel.
I believe that every member of my team has the potential to grow and develop their skills and abilities.
I praise my team when they successfully complete a project or task, to praise them at other times takes the emphasis away from outcomes.
When the team fails, it's important to find out who is responsible.
It's important to commit resources to improve individual and team performance.
I focus my praise on a handful of star employees.
When discussing individual performance, I often compare current and past performance of the people I manage.
I focus on adopting a coaching role for the highest performing members of my team as they are the ones who will maximise the benefits of a coaching approach.
I facilitate collaboration between my team and the rest of the organisation.
I regularly commit time to recognising and working on the triggers that close me down to learning and developing my abilities.
I believe that some members of my team have a limited ability improve their skills and abilities.
I take a punitive approach when my team fails to achieve a key goal or objective.
I believe that learning and progress in developing skills are just as important as outcomes.
I often tell my team that I have always had a 100% growth mindset
It's important to give praise when team members seek help and knowledge from others in order to improve their own performance.
I accept that my team will need to take reasonable risks to stretch themselves and sometimes this may fail to result in them achieving the goal they have been set
It's important to emphasise success and the bottom line, I'm not here to give people false hope if they can't cut it.
I regularly seek out opportunities to help individuals objectively assess their performance and work with them to identify opportunities for development.
I reward my team for the important and useful lessons they learn, even when a project failed to reach the desired outcome.
When other managers compliment me on my team, I emphasise the growth mindset approach as a factor in our success.
I discourage my team from sharing knowledge and expertise with other teams and departments in our organisation - I don't want others taking credit for our work.
When it comes to professional performance, you've either got it or you haven't.
I think it's important that my reports stick with the tried and tested ways of working. I discourage the use of new strategies that could impact on our output.
I encourage the team to support each other, be collaborative and work together on organisational goals.
When faced with a new challenge I talk to the team about previous failures and how they need to avoid repeating them.
When I recruit new team members I believe the smartest candidate is always the best person for the job.
I put a lot of effort into modelling the principles that hard work, perseverance and the willingness to ask others for help in order to achieve a goal will create results.
Show Result
You agreed with the majority of growth mindset statements.
You're right on track to be a great growth mindset leader. You're self aware and understand how to motivate and develop others by encouraging them to accept new challenges and embrace appropriate risks. You appreciate the importance of walking the growth mindset talk by sharing your own experiences of overcoming challenges and setbacks and modeling a growth mindset approach.
Want to take your leadership skills to the next level?
You agreed with the majority of fixed mindset statements.
We've got some great tips and tools to support you in your quest to become a growth mindset leader, starting with these ten tips to help you build a growth mindset team. Want to take your leadership skills to the next level? Begin your growth mindset journey now with our free Growth Mindset Toolkit.
10 tips to get your team on track
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
Make sure you don't just talk the growth mindset.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
