For the purpose of this article I would like to point out a great study done by Professor Carol Dweck a few years ago, analyzing how kids were behaving in front of problems. You may think that it’s not related to management, but keep reading, I’m sure you will see some analogies.

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Professor Dweck in a “The New Psychology of Success” pointed out that there were two forms of mindset:

The Fixed Mindset (FM) where intelligence is considered as a fixed trait. Kids believe that they have a certain fixed amount of intelligence or talent.

The Growth Mindset (GM) where intelligence can be developed. Kids believe that talent and abilities can be developed through practice, learning and mentorship from others.

These two ways of thinking imply different behaviors when facing a difficult problem and affect the kid’s capacity to grow and see the world differently.  Hence Pr. Dweck decided to confront the two different groups to the same problems and see how they react. And the conclusions are pretty awesome from a managerial point of view:

Kids with FM want to look smart and never look dumb. To achieve this, they usually avoid challenging activities and never study deeply (just enough to maintain a certain status). While kids with GM don’t overemphasis risk and crave for challenges.

Effort is also perceived very differently by the two groups. Kids with FM believe effort is a bad thing, because if you have the ability you shouldn’t need effort to achieve a result i.e. effort means you’re not smart (“Trying is the first step toward failing”). While the GM kids never feel dumb, so for them the feeling of learning is more essential than the rest.

Finally and it’s an important point (especially for those of you who are thinking about entrepreneurship), the FM kids see setbacks as a negative thing as it reveals to the face of the world that they are not smart, they thus get defensive and hide their mistakes. On the contrary GM kids perceive setbacks as a natural path of learning, and use these failures to confront their mistakes and deficiencies.

To sum up, FM doesn’t provide kids a way to handle problems. If it gets too difficult they will usually give up, get demotivated, blame the teacher or even try to hide or escape. While GM kids will embrace learning and growth, and maintain resilience in the face of setbacks.

But the good news is that GM can be taught by demonstrating that every time the kids are pushed outside of their comfort zone, they can learn something new and overtime get smarter.

How does it apply to managers?

In my opinion managers should have a growth mindset to constantly improve the processes they are facing and tackle new challenges with a positive attitude to help a company overpass any difficulties. But more than that, managers should transmit this growth mindset to their team. And when I say team I mean everyone, from the most senior member to the junior trainee or even to the personal assistant. This promotion of growth mindset is an efficient tool to make the team reflect the corporate culture and help the managers leverage each member ability to overcome setbacks.

If you are planning to launch a start-up soon, you will quickly understand that hiring the right people is crucial for the development of your business, and implementing a growth mindset internally will give more chance to your company to scale and succeed.

If you are planning to integrate an existent company at a manager level, keep in mind that employees with a fixed mindset will get easily demotivated when challenging times will arise. So try to teach them to think differently and praise the hard work instead of their intelligence or talent, you will reach better results over the long run and you will make your team embrace any new challenges with a positive attitude.