Latest / Women Who Ship / 12. Proving vs. Improving: How Carol Dweck's 'Mindset' Transforms Your Tech Career
Transcript
- Sarah Williams: Welcome to Women Who Ship, the podcast for women in tech who are tired of proving themselves in rooms they've already earned a place in and are ready to lead like they know it. I'm your host, Sarah Williams. Let's dive in. Sarah: Hey friends. I have always been a reader. Anytime someone asks, What are your hobbies? or you have those questionnaires where you're asked what your hobbies are, the top one that comes to mind for me is reading. And I was in a book club for a long time as well. And I loved it. It was really fun. What we would do is we would meet once a month. The person who picked the book would pick a place to eat. And it was really fun to read things that had been picked by someone else because oftentimes I would read something that is outside of a genre that I would normally pick. So it was a great way to expand the types of books that I would read. And it was also really fun to engage in discussions with other readers, you know, about. book and what we liked about it, what we didn't like about it, the themes, and all of those things. So I really did enjoy being a part of that. I did find, I discovered over that time about myself that I was pretty easy to please when it came to the books. So most of the time on Goodreads, I'm reading a book three out of five stars because I can typically find something I enjoy about any book. That I finish. That is the catch. If I do not find a book interesting, I will just not finish it because I'd rather move on and read something that I will actually enjoy. Now, one thing about me though is that it is pretty rare for me to pick a five-star rating. Also, by the way, did you know Goodreads now has half-star ratings? I'm very excited about this because I do think. That every now and then you just need to give something a half star. Last year I did have a five-star read, and it was the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Dr. Carol S. Dweck. And let me tell you, this book completely reshaped how I view growth, performance, and self-trust, especially in the tech industry. So today we're talking about why shifting from proving yourself to Improving yourself will change everything for you. So first, I want to start by talking through Dr. Dweck's two mindsets that she covers in the book. So the first is the fixed mindset. And with the fixed mindset, you believe that your intelligence, your personality, and even your talent are things that are fixed at birth. So you received a certain allocation of characteristics, and there's nothing you can do to change them. That's the way that you move through the world. That's the way you think about yourself and your skills and your abilities. And then the other side of that is the growth mindset. So the growth mindset is the belief that your intelligence, your personality, and character can be developed through effort, effective strategies, and through feedback. And let me say, at least for myself, I can observe that I wouldn't say I'm like definitely always in the fixed mindset way of thinking. Sometimes I'll move into the growth mindset way of thinking. Sometimes I'm really strong. There's certain areas of my life where I'm really strong on the growth mindset, but then there may be areas of my life, and we'll talk more about them, where I kind of tend to just fall more into that fixed mindset. So what we want to try to get to by the end of today's episode is identifying where that's maybe showing up for you as well. Because I do think sometimes in the fast-paced and high-stakes tech environments, it can be easy to fall into a fixed mindset, maybe treating presentations or code reviews or even projects as a test of our innate talent, where we have to prove that we are skilled at something instead of believing that it is a skill that we're building. Now thinking about the fixed mindset and what it can look like when you're falling into this mindset. Some of the scripts or things that you may be thinking in your mind are things like, I'm just not good with numbers. That's just something I'm not that great at. Or I'm an introvert. So I'm not good at small talk. Or this one is particular for me. Like I wasn't born with artistic talent. I'm not an artist. When that thinking comes up, there are also certain behaviors that tend to come along with it. And these are behaviors that we really want to avoid when we're working in the tech industry. So it's things like you're more likely to avoid challenging situations. The reason that you do that is because you're thinking. this shouldn't be challenging for me. If I were good at it, it wouldn't be a challenge. Or you're nervous to go into something new, like you're not willing to put your hand up for a new challenge or for a difficult project because you're concerned that you may not be able to prove your fixed capability. Another way it can show up, another behavior is giving up easily whenever. Difficulties come around. So what you'll tend to do is think, this is just proof. Like I had a challenge come up, I made a mistake, and now it's proof that you're just not good at this thing that you're trying. And so you just want to give up instead of persevering and pushing through the challenge. The fixed mindset can also make you more sensitive to feedback. So when you receive critical feedback, you may reject it and diminish the value of it because it's seen as threatening to you. In addition to being threatened by critical feedback, you may also feel yourself being threatened by the success of others when you're falling into that fixed mindset. Because in that mindset, you know, that person is probably just gifted with more innate ability or natural talent than what you are. And so it's easy to feel threatened by them or feel jealous of their accomplishments. So the core belief that we're coming up against with that fixed mindset, according to Dr. Dweck, is that our abilities are set in stone. And if you have to effort at something, it's viewed as proof that you lack that natural talent. If you could do this well if you were naturally talented, the thought is that it would just come easy. And you can't tolerate mistakes because the failure feels like proof. That you've hit your limit. And I'm gonna give you an example of where this shows up for me a lot. It's not a work example. I'm sorry, it's a personal example. But oftentimes when I'm in a yoga class, for example, in my mind, I just think like my body's style is a certain way, my body shape is a certain way, and that I just wasn't born flexible. So some yoga positions are gonna be more of a challenge for me. This is despite me being a yoga practitioner for many years. And I do know in my mind that when I practice and when I move with intention and when I keep going several times a week, that I can change my body, that I can work within my body shape to it, you know, achieve the best that is possible. But I'll still end up falling into that fixed mindset. And an interesting story from the book was actually. When you let yourself think that, so when I'm sitting in a yoga class thinking, yeah, I'm just not that flexible, it actually shows up in your body and you're not able to achieve as much as you could if you thought to yourself, Hey, I'm getting better every time I come to yoga, I'm getting more and more flexible all the time. So let's talk about what the internal scripts look like for the growth mindset. So when you're thinking in a growth mindset way, you'll be thinking things like, if I need to get better at numbers, I can just take a course in that. Or small talk is a skill that I can develop with practice, even though I am somewhat introverted. And you may think things like, well, I can pursue art just because I enjoy it and I can get better through practice. Practice. And the interesting thing is when you are thinking in this way, when you have these growth mindset thoughts, you are going to see different behaviors. So you're going to embrace challenges because you're thinking that this difficult thing is a way that you can improve, that you can get better. You know that you haven't like reached a limit or there's nothing fixed about it. This is a skill. That with learning, you can practice, you can get better at. You're more apt when you have this growth mindset to persist through obstacles. So when a difficult situation comes about, you don't view it as a reason to stop or a reason to give up. You think through, okay, how could I approach this in a different way to be successful? also when you have this growth mindset, you will welcome feedback as valuable data. So feedback is no longer threatening. It's data that you can take in and accept or reject if possible. But oftentimes you'll be more welcoming of it. You're not going to automatically reject it because it feels threatening to you. You're going to take a look at the feedback and decide how you might implement that. What you think about it, and whether you're willing to make those changes and improve in the way that someone else has suggested. And lastly, you will be inspired by the success of colleagues. So when you see someone doing something well, you get excited for them and you also think, okay, that person succeeding is proof that I can do it too. So you no longer feel threatened by someone else's success. You can genuinely celebrate it and see it as a possibility for you as well. When you're falling into that fixed mindset, you're also falling into this trap of constantly needing to prove your skills and abilities and actually needing validation externally to help maintain your self-image. So when you make a mistake, when something difficult comes up, you tend to feel that it is an existential threat to your ego and also to your self-worth. Whereas with the growth mindset, we just have a lot more flexibility, not tying a certain level of performance to your own internal value as a person. And really, when you have that fixed mindset, especially working in a male-dominated field like the tech industry, you can feel that making a mistake carries that extra anxiety. Under that fixed mindset, making an error feels like you're confirming a negative stereotype about women in tech. But just like we've talked about before, where we're separating our circumstances from our thoughts, your mindset is not an unchangeable identity. It is a choice. You can observe when your brain kind of drops into that fixed mindset thinking and intentionally choose a growth-oriented mindset instead. So now I'll walk you through my three main takeaways from the book. The first, you'll you'll already be familiar with is that you get to choose. You can choose your mindset. So a fixed mindset is just a thought habit. And just like any other thought habit we've talked about before, when you catch yourself thinking something like, I'm just not good at this, I want you to reframe that sentence to, I'm not good at this yet. Or I haven't mastered this yet. So we're not falling into that trap of thinking that there is a limitation that we can't overcome. We can believe that we can get better with growth, with practice, with good feedback, and with strategy. My second takeaway from the book is that growth mindset allows for effort. It allows for mistakes and feedback without threatening your ego. So when you shift from you're proving yourself to you're improving yourself, the feedback stops feeling like a personal attack. And effort becomes something that's just a part of the process. And same thing with mistakes. When you come across a challenge, you're able to think more strategically about how to overcome that challenge, how to keep moving and working harder to achieve what you want to succeed, instead of thinking that, okay, this is just like something I'm not going to do well at. And my last takeaway is that growth mindset can actually insulate you from negative stereotypes. So this was a really interesting story that Dr. Dweck shared from the book. So she researched women in math classes and she compared the women who had that growth mindset versus those who were in the fixed mindset. And these female students. In the class did experience some unfair gender stereotypes. You know, lots of women have experienced this in math classes where they were up against that. It wasn't that the female students didn't notice that that happened. The students knew that they had been victim of this unfair gender stereotype. But those who had a growth mindset were more resilient. They maintained their high level of performance. And most surprisingly to me, they also preserved a strong sense of belonging within that community. So even though they had experienced the stereotypes, they still felt like they belonged. And I think that's so important for women in tech. And one way that the growth mindset can really help you to succeed in a male-dominated industry. All right, so here is your assignment for this week. I would like for you to block 15 minutes and run a mindset audit on your own career. So I want you to think about and identify one area where you're believing more towards the fixed mindset end of the spectrum. So think about an area where you kind of believe your abilities are fixed. Maybe it's something like public speaking. Maybe it's executive presence or some type of data modeling. Just identify what that looks like for you. Then I want you to reframe that story. So consider what it would look like to shift your thinking even 10% about that area toward a growth mindset. So things that may help you are: effort is part of the learning process, or I can try something challenging. Or I'm not going to give up just because I hit a setback. And the last suggestion is to find a role model. So think of someone who does excel in this ability. If you know that person, ask them what it took for them to actually build that skill. Or if you don't know the person, if it's just a celebrity or someone famous that you know about, see if you can read about their journey to find out what the hidden effort was behind the talent that you see today. And last but not least, I would highly recommend picking up a copy of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Dr. Carol Dwick. Thanks so much for listening. Go audit your mindset. Choose growth over proving yourself. And let's go ship some good stuff together. Sarah Williams: The conversation doesn't have to end when the episode does. Audio is an amazing way to connect, but I actually want to hear your stories. Whether you want to tell me how your first recognition retro went, or you're navigating the messy reality of industry shifts right now, come say hi. You can follow me on Instagram or find me on LinkedIn at coach Sarah Williams. Shoot me a DM and let me know what you're shipping this week.