Developing as a Leader through a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck

Developing as a Leader Through a Growth Mindset with Carol Dweck

By Martin Moore

With his back up against the cage in a rare moment of rest, UFC Champion Conner McGregor said, “There is no talent here, this is hard work. This is an obsession. Talent does not exist; we are all equals as human beings. You can be anyone if you put in the time. You will reach the top, and that’s that. I am not talented. I am obsessed.” Is what it takes to be successful in athletics, academics, or your career only dependent on the mindset and grit that is put into your effort? This is what is at the heart of Dweck’s Growth Mindset.

The idea is that we are not just born with “it” or that we come from this fixed position in life and that our growth as a spouse, parent, employee, or leader is not up to us. Dweck’s theories pair very nicely with Angela Duckworth’s theories on Grit. Duckworth’s takes the idea that we can grow through our failures and our ability to get up after we have been knocked down. Duckworth conducted a study at the United States Military Academy with a class of incoming cadets. These cadets all come from different backgrounds across the United States, but one thing is certain with this group of test subjects, none are typical college kids headed off to the public university. All have had to not only get great grades and GPAs, but near-perfect SAT and ACT scores.

All have received a letter of recommendation from a member of their state’s congress representative, and most have some type of extracurricular activity, and the list goes on. Even with all of those requirements to get in, the freshman class still suffers a dropout rate of 4% in the first-year cadets. Duckworth’s goal was to identify cadets that might be at a higher risk for failure by identifying their grit score or, in terms that would align with Dweck, students with a growth mindset embrace the challenges before them.

Change is something that everyone will face. Being able to handle change in a position of leadership is essential to being an effective leader. One of the core principles of having a growth mindset is handling the change that your team can face and embracing the change as not a setback or a negative but something to be embraced and even find the positive in the change.

Having a growth mindset also means that there is an opportunity to grow in the face of failure. To learn from our mistakes as a leader is a principle that also involves swallowing are pride and putting our ego to the side, and taking the criticism from failure.

When the role of leadership is placed upon us, I believe that one has to be open to all possibilities. Our coworkers might not be the person we would pick to be on our team. you could find yourself in the role of peers and stepping up to take ownership of a project to help move the company forward. It's important in these situations to not turn on our blinders and look at those coworkers at a fixed point and give each other an opportunity to step up and take ownership. This will help them flourish in these situations.

A growth mindset needs to be something that is in constant motion or an ongoing project of yourself in leadership situations. Realizing that at any stage of leadership, we are growing, evolving organisms that will face highs and lows. That growing leadership takes practice. Malcom Gladwell has said ten thousand times that it takes ten thousand hours of deliberate practice to become a master at the skill. Leadership is no different. What a growth mindset can help me achieve through those ten thousand hours is being able to learn from my mistakes, and take criticism, not as a personal attack but as a guide to things that I can do better next time and personally, for me, to continue to persist. Pick myself up, dust myself off and go at it again.