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Is Growth Mindset Dead? · Humanity Working

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: So this episode title is a little provocative.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is growth mindset dead?
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're right.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_01: It is it is provocative.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: I sh we should have thought of that before we before we came up with the idea.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean I think the answer is is not exactly dead, but it's certainly uh inside some organizations going through a bit of a rough patch right now.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: And part of that is because it's getting misapplied or misunderstood.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I my understanding of it is pretty science-based, though.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: So so let's, you know, what what's the problem?
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Why why do you think it's uh on its way to or struggling, irrelevant struggling?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think there's a couple of issues um that are related not necessarily to the the theory per se, but the way in which it's applied.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk very briefly about the theory.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um the book is that goes into a whole bunch of concepts.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it the book is by Carol Dweck called Mindset.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and as I say, it provides quite a lot of examples, but it really breaks down to a couple of related concepts.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so the first part of it is really centered around this idea of there being two types of mindset, fixed mindset and growth mindset.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it's actually easy to understand what growth mindset is if you start from the principle of what fixed mindset is.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: So fixed mindset, very traditional.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's the idea that um, let's say you're going after a particular type of career or something like that, and you're pushing towards it.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: There's a body of knowledge that you need to get.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: If you have that body of knowledge, then you are um uh then you're capable and you are now, in quotes, an expert, and you can start passing that information on to uh on to other people.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the world is sort of made up of like non-experts and experts, and um and experts tell non-experts what's what.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: By contrast, um the growth mindset is really centered around this idea that almost like nobody's an expert, and you can become uh and you can continue to learn and grow in in every opportunity, and every opportunity is an opportunity to learn and grow.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so fixed and growth are connected to these other two concepts, uh, know it all, which is associated with a fixed mindset, and then learn it all, which is the um which is the idea of a growth mindset.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: You have the ability to learn from other people in every interaction and everything that you do.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um you see it inside uh inside companies uh all the time.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: You see examples of both of both of those people all the time.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then related to that, and the bit where it's probably a little bit less sciencey, uh, is the sort of idea that there are no real limits or barriers as to how much we can grow, and that we put those limits and barriers on ourselves.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: To a certain extent that's true, but obviously there are other ways in which we are restricted by our biology or certain other things that can prevent us from doing certain things.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: I am never going to be an MBA player as a 54-year-old five foot-7 guy who's, you know, no matter what, uh, no matter what I do.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: So there are some uh there are some nuances to that, which she does cover in the book, but there are some uh but there are some nuances to that.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um you see this you've seen this applied inside companies uh um quite a bit.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um some CEOs have really got on board.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Great example of that is Satya Nadella.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um and somebody like Satya has really lived that lives that personally.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: I met Satya myself um when I was uh um working at Microsoft and I did an executive briefing.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Satya was the uh was the opening act, and I came immediately after him.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so Satya uh walked up to me uh at the executive briefing center, said, introduced himself to me, said, Hi, I'm Satya.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I said, I know.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh um and then he asked me a series of questions that was very clear that he was looking to learn from me.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: And yet here I was talking to the you know CEO of the largest company in the world.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So um so he kind of lives and breathes that.
• 4:22
  unknown: Yeah.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And you've seen inside companies them looking to really kind of deploy this at a company-wide level as a form of cultural transformation.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's those efforts that have uh run into some challenges inside some companies.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe go a little more on that because it, you know, it seems like a good idea if everybody can get on board.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it sounds good to always be learning, et cetera.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: But uh how does it how does it uh manifest as being a tough one to stay with?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: So this is something that we where we really decided to try to figure out why organizations were uh were having problems with it.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: And the really interesting thing about it, Matt, we were talking before about me versus we.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um it kind of it kind of fits here as well.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's like what happens at an individual level versus what happens at a team level versus what happens at an organizational level.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: So to be super clear, right, as an individual, um, the idea of using every opportunity to learn and grow is very powerful.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can do it, you will gain uh you'll gain enormous benefits from it, right?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: Every thing you do, every interaction you have is an opportunity to learn and grow.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really important.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's really important that people do that.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: The challenge is that at an organizational level, you've got a whole bunch of people inside an organization who are in that organization already that have a fixed mindset, a growth mindset, or something in between.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: So, what do you think would happen if I were to talk to you uh or hand you a book on growth mindset and you yourself had a strong fixed mindset?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: What would you do with it?
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Either if I did read it, I'd be like, ah, I don't agree, you know, or I already knew that.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Dismiss it, right?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, dismiss it.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: So this is the whole point, right?
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So you're not gonna change somebody from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset by handing them a book on on growth mindset because they've got a fixed mindset.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: By nature of definition, yeah.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so it doesn't really do anything at that lower level.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got a if if you have a strong growth mindset, if you love learning and you love growing and all this kind of stuff, um you're gonna be doing it anyway.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna just be finding other ways, whether you know the terms or the tools or anything like that.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the per it's like when you open a gym in a local, uh, in a local area and all the fit people are already out running and turning over tires anyway.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it doesn't really matter whether the gym is there for them.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: And all the people that are sitting on the couch are gonna carry on sitting on the couch.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: So it doesn't really do anything at the extremes.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: We're in the middle on the margins, you might actually give people something that they can uh that they can work with, but it's never gonna really have that strong impact.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other thing that happens, which is probably more damaging, is that um because these organizations have these different uh these different layers within them, you'll have uh managers in particular who start to use this as a tool, right?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and actually almost as a weapon.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Whereby they're asking somebody to do something, and then when the person in question uh the person questions it or pushes back against it, then that becomes you're not exhibiting a growth mindset.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so it relia for it to be successful, it relies on the idea that the people who are judging it themselves have a strong growth mindset.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's a classic example of that phrase, you know, middle management is where a culture goes to die.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so it can, oh, in aggregate, if it's not done really, really carefully, it can actually have a negative effect versus a positive effect because of these complex dynamics.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like two black and white, right?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: So what what is the uh what is the alternative that maybe would be more useful to think about this?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we've thought about this a lot, and we think that um the concept of growth mindset itself maybe is a little bit out of date.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what really needs to be what we need to be thinking about is an adaptability mindset combined with an adaptability skill set.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: So the theory here is not I'm gonna grow and grow and grow and grow and grow as a human, as an individual.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: You can do that if you want.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: But the theory is the world of work is changing, changing rapidly.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: For me to thrive, I need to be adaptable enough to be able to adjust to all of the changes that are happening here.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so you are growing, but you're growing with a focus on adaptability.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's really interesting.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like the idea of like uh, you know, a take a tree or something, uh, in you put a really nice tree in the middle of your lobby of your beautiful business that has a growth mindset.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: You want the tree to grow, but it's going to hit the ceiling eventually.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: It should actually adapt and fill the room and go sideways and and you know, that that type of thing.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So it almost strikes me that the idea completely of not just growth mindset, but infinite growth in the business world is also, as we can see, not always the best.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's it's almost impossible.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: You you have to cut things that maybe aren't the best thing to cut just to continue to show growth.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes it's it's artificial.
• 9:40
  unknown: Yeah.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: Saying, well, we didn't really grow, we just laid off a bunch of people.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: You got it.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's exactly right.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: We'll definitely talk about that more, I think, in future episodes.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced and edited for Billion Minds by Matt Neal.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Our interviewer is Paul Slater.
• 9:54
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• 9:58
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• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to learn more about how Billion Minds gets companies ready for the future of work by building adaptable, resilient employees, look for them on LinkedIn or visit their website at billionminds.com.