Is criticism bad or an opportunity for you to improve? Does failure stop you from trying further or encourage you to do better? Does competition make you feel intimated and threatened or inspired?
Your answers to these questions will determine your mindset at work. Before we start elaborating this chapter further, we should understand the meaning of these two terms: Growth Mindset and a Fixed mindset.
Growth Mindset and Fixed Mindset:
These terms are coined by Carol Dweck, a Stanford University psychologist and author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. These two terms will define the belief of the people in their talents and abilities.
As the name suggests, a fixed mindset is a belief that our knowledge, character, and creativity are innate and unchangeable. A person with a fixed mindset lives with this belief that our skills and intelligence cannot be improved. On the other hand, a person with a growth mindset considers gaps in skills and look for the chances of growth.
It is a belief that with determination, training, and dedication, we can increase our abilities, we can improve our skills, we can learn new skills.
Do You Have A Growth Mindset? While you guys figure out which mindset you believe you have, letâs understand how a growth mindset will help you. Why does it matter to have a growth mindset at work?
How A Growth Mindset will help you succeed at work
A growth mindset keeps you open for new learnings, new skills, new improvements to become smarter in the workplace. A person with a growth mindset will always challenge himself/herself to do better.
A manager with a growth mindset always challenges them to do better, having complete trust in them. On the other hand, a manager with a fixed mindset, find it hard to manage a team. With a fixed mindset, the manager will doubt on the performance of the team that they will never do a better job.
How to determine which mindset we have?
Undoubtedly, we all fall into one mindset or another. The best way to find which mindset we have is to understand how we react and respond to situations.
Do you feel intimated whenever you get competition from your colleagues? Do you want to stick in your comfort zone or want to come out to grow?
Now, you need to figure out how you respond to these types of situations in your life. Here are more some other points to understand the difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset:
A person with a Growth Mindset believes Feedback/Criticism as an opportunity to improve
A person with a Fixed Mindset considers Feedback/Criticism as a threat or failure
A person with a Growth Mindset, Failure means learnings from mistakes
A person with a Fixed Mindset, Failure means he/she is incapable
A person with a growth mindset embraces the new challenges and come out from the comfort zones
A person with a Fixed Mindset tries to avoid new challenges
A person with a growth mindset considers competition a way to get inspired, learn and grow
A person with a fixed mindset considers competition as an intimidation
A person with Growth Mindset learning new skills is essential.
A person with a fixed mindset, skills are unchangeable
