Mindset

My work is part of a tradition in psychology that shows the power of people’s beliefs. These may be beliefs we’re aware of or unaware of, but they strongly affect what we want and whether we succeed in getting it. This tradition also shows how changing people’s beliefs - even the simplest beliefs - can have profound effects.

What did they know? They knew that human qualities, such as intellectual skills, could be cultivated. And that’s what they were doing—getting smarter. Not only weren’t they discouraged by failure, they didn’t even think they were failing. They thought they were learning.

Wasn’t the IQ test meant to summarize children’s unchangeable intelligence? In fact, no. Binet, a Frenchman working in Paris in the early twentieth century, designed this test to identify children who were not profiting from the Paris public schools, so that new educational programs could be designed to get them back on track. Without denying individual differences in children’s intellects, he believed that education and practice could bring about fundamental changes in intelligence. Here is a quote from one of his major books, Modern Ideas About Children, in which he summarizes his work with hundreds of children with learning difficulties:

A few modern philosophers . . . assert that an individual’s intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism. . . . With practice, training, and above all, method, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgment and literally to become more intelligent than we were before.

Who’s right? Today most experts agree that it’s not either-or. It’s not nature or nurture, genes or environment. From conception on, there’s a constant give-and-take between the two. In fact, as Gilbert Gottlieb, an eminent neuroscientist, put it, not only do genes and environment cooperate as we develop, but genes require input from the environment to work properly.

Robert Sternberg, the present-day guru of intelligence, writes that the major factor in whether people achieve expertise “is not some fixed prior ability, but purposeful engagement.” Or, as his forerunner Binet recognized, it’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.

For thirty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value.

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone - the fixed mindset -creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character - well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.

In this mindset, the hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others. Although people may differ in every which way—in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments—everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.

The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

Instead, as you begin to understand the fixed and growth mindsets, you will see exactly how one thing leads to another - how a belief that your qualities are carved in stone leads to a host of thoughts and actions, and how a belief that your qualities can be cultivated leads to a host of different thoughts and actions, taking you down an entirely different road.

Howard Gardner, in his book Extraordinary Minds, concluded that exceptional individuals have “a special talent for identifying their own strengths and weaknesses.” It’s interesting that those with the growth mindset seem to have that talent.

The other thing exceptional people seem to have is a special talent for converting life’s setbacks into future successes. Creativity researchers concur. In a poll of 143 creativity researchers, there was wide agreement about the number one ingredient in creative achievement. And it was exactly the kind of perseverance and resilience produced by the growth mindset.

When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world - the world of fixed traits - success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other - the world of changing qualities - it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.

In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you’re not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn’t need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented.

So children with the fixed mindset want to make sure they succeed. Smart people should always succeed. But for children with the growth mindset, success is about stretching themselves. It’s about becoming smarter.

Clearly, people with the growth mindset thrive when they’re stretching themselves. When do people with the fixed mindset thrive? When things are safely within their grasp. If things get too challenging - when they’re not feeling smart or talented - they lose interest.

Not long ago I was interested to read about Marina Semyonova, a great Russian dancer and teacher, who devised a novel way of selecting her students. It was a clever test for mindset. As a former student tells it, “Her students first have to survive a trial period while she watches to see how you react to praise and to correction. Those more responsive to the correction are deemed worthy.”

In other words, she separates the ones who get their thrill from what’s easy - what they’ve already mastered - from those who get their thrill from what’s hard.

Is there another way to judge potential? NASA thought so. When they were soliciting applications for astronauts, they rejected people with pure histories of success and instead selected people who had had significant failures and bounced back from them. Jack Welch, the celebrated CEO of General Electric, chose executives on the basis of “runway,” their capacity for growth. And remember Marina Semyonova, the famed ballet teacher, who chose the students who were energized by criticism. They were all rejecting the idea of fixed ability and selecting instead for mindset.

However, lurking behind that self-esteem of the fixed mindset is a simple question: If you’re somebody when you’re successful, what are you when you’re unsuccessful?

Although students with the fixed mindset showed more depression, there were still plenty of people with the growth mindset who felt pretty miserable, this being peak season for depression. And here we saw something really amazing. The more depressed people with the growth mindset felt (short of severe depression), the more they took action to confront their problems, the more they made sure to keep up with their schoolwork, and the more they kept up with their lives. The worse they felt, the more determined they became!

In fact, from the way they acted, it might have been hard to know how despondent they were.

When we taught people the growth mindset, it changed the way they reacted to their depressed mood. The worse they felt, the more motivated they became and the more they confronted the problems that faced them.

In short, when people believe in fixed traits, they are always in danger of being measured by a failure. It can define them in a permanent way. Smart or talented as they may be, this mindset seems to rob them of their coping resources.

A report from researchers at Duke University sounds an alarm about the anxiety and depression among female undergraduates who aspire to “effortless perfection.” They believe they should display perfect beauty, perfect womanhood, and perfect scholarship all without trying (or at least without appearing to try).

Billie Jean King says it’s all about what you want to look back and say. I agree with her. You can look back and say, “I could have been . . . ,” polishing your unused endowments like trophies. Or you can look back and say, “I gave my all for the things I valued.” Think about what you want to look back and say. Then choose your mindset.

It’s also important to realize that even if people have a fixed mindset, they’re not always in that mindset. In fact, in many of our studies, we put people into a growth mindset. We tell them that an ability can be learned and that the task will give them a chance to do that. Or we have them read a scientific article that teaches them the growth mindset. The article describes people who did not have natural ability, but who developed exceptional skills. These experiences make our research participants into growth-minded thinkers, at least for the moment - and they act like growth-minded thinkers, too.

The growth mindset does allow people to love what they’re doing—and to continue to love it in the face of difficulties. The growth-minded athletes, CEOs, musicians, or scientists all loved what they did, whereas many of the fixed-minded ones did not.

In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you’re not the best—it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome. They’re tackling problems, charting new courses, working on important issues. Maybe they haven’t found the cure for cancer, but the search was deeply meaningful.

The growth mindset also doesn’t mean everything that can be changed should be changed. We all need to accept some of our imperfections, especially the ones that don’t really harm our lives or the lives of others.

But Wie disagreed. She wasn’t going there to groom her confidence. “Once you win junior tournaments, it’s easy to win multiple times. What I’m doing now is to prepare for the future.” It’s the learning experience she was after—what it was like to play with the world’s best players in the atmosphere of a tournament.

After the event, Wie’s confidence had not suffered one bit. She had exactly what she wanted. “I think I learned that I can play here.” It would be a long road to the winner’s circle, but she now had a sense of what she was shooting for.

A remarkable thing I’ve learned from my research is that in the growth mindset, you don’t always need confidence.

What I mean is that even when you think you’re not good at something, you can still plunge into it wholeheartedly and stick to it. Actually, sometimes you plunge into something because you’re not good at it. This is a wonderful feature of the growth mindset. You don’t have to think you’re already great at something to want to do it and to enjoy doing it.

Focus on that thing [failure]. Feel all the emotions that go with it. Now put it in a growth-mindset perspective. Look honestly at your role in it, but understand that it doesn’t define your intelligence or personality. Instead, ask: What did I (or can I) learn from that experience? How can I use it as a basis for growth? Carry that with you instead.

Yes, he [Thomas Edison] was a genius. But he was not always one. His biographer, Paul Israel, sifting through all the available information, thinks he was more or less a regular boy of his time and place. Young Tom was taken with experiments and mechanical things (perhaps more avidly than most), but machines and technology were part of the ordinary midwestern boy’s experience.

It’s no wonder that many adolescents mobilize their resources, not for learning, but to protect their egos. And one of the main ways they do this (aside from providing vivid portraits of their teachers) is by not trying. This is when some of the brightest students, just like Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, simply stop working. In fact, students with the fixed mindset tell us that their main goal in school—aside from looking smart—is to exert as little effort as possible.

The students with growth mindset completely took charge of their learning and motivation. Instead of plunging into unthinking memorization of the course material, they said: “I looked for themes and underlying principles across lectures,” and “I went over mistakes until I was certain I understood them.” They were studying to learn, not just to ace the test. And, actually, this was why they got higher grades—not because they were smarter or had a better background in science.

Instead of losing their motivation when the course got dry or difficult, they said: “I maintained my interest in the material.” “I stayed positive about taking chemistry.” “I kept myself motivated to study.” Even if they thought the textbook was boring or the instructor was a stiff, they didn’t let their motivation evaporate. That just made it all the more important to motivate themselves.

In her book Gifted Children, Ellen Winner offers incredible descriptions of prodigies. These are children who seem to be born with heightened abilities and obsessive interests, and who, through relentless pursuit of these interests, become amazingly accomplished.

With his growth mindset, he asked, “How can I teach them?” not “Can I teach them?” and “How will they learn best?” not “Can they learn?

I tell this story as a prelude to the astonishment and joy I felt when I read Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. On the opposite page are the before-and-after self-portraits of people who took a short course in drawing from the author, Betty Edwards. That is, they are the self-portraits drawn by the students when they entered her course and five days later when they had completed it.

It would have been a real shame if people discouraged Jackson Pollock for that reason. Experts agree that Pollock had little native talent for art, and when you look at his early products, it showed. They also agree that he became one of the greatest American painters of the twentieth century and that he revolutionized modern art. How did he go from point A to point B?

Twyla Tharp, the world-famous choreographer and dancer, wrote a book called The Creative Habit. As you can guess from the title, she argues that creativity is not a magical act of inspiration. It’s the result of hard work and dedication. Even for Mozart. Remember the movie Amadeus? Remember how it showed Mozart easily churning out one masterpiece after another while Salieri, his rival, is dying of envy? Well, Tharp worked on that movie and she says: Hogwash! Nonsense! “There are no ‘natural’ geniuses.

So telling children they’re smart, in the end, made them feel dumber and act dumber, but claim they were smarter. I don’t think this is what we’re aiming for when we put positive labels - “gifted,” “talented,” “brilliant” - on people. We don’t mean to rob them of their zest for challenge and their recipes for success. But that’s the danger.

Then I got a Mr. Hellman, a teacher who didn’t believe girls could do math. My grades declined, and I never took math again.

I actually agreed with Mr. Hellman, but I didn’t think it applied to me. Other girls couldn’t do math. Mr. Hellman thought it applied to me, too, and I succumbed.

When stereotypes are evoked, they fill people’s minds with distracting thoughts—with secret worries about confirming the stereotype. People usually aren’t even aware of it, but they don’t have enough mental power left to do their best on the test.

This doesn’t happen to everybody, however. It mainly happens to people who are in a fixed mindset. It’s when people are thinking in terms of fixed traits that the stereotypes get to them. Negative stereotypes say: “You and your group are permanently inferior.” Only people in the fixed mindset resonate to this message.

The stereotype of low ability was able to invade them - to define them - and take away their comfort and confidence. I’m not saying it’s their fault by any means. Prejudice is a deeply ingrained societal problem, and I do not want to blame the victims of it. I am simply saying that a growth mindset helps people to see prejudice for what it is - someone else’s view of them - and to confront it with their confidence and abilities intact.

Michael Jordan embraced his failures. In fact, in one of his favorite ads for Nike, he says: “I’ve missed more than nine thousand shots. I’ve lost almost three hundred games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot, and missed.” You can be sure that each time, he went back and practiced the shot a hundred times.

Blame Iacocca. According to James Surowiecki, writing in Slate, Iacocca’s rise to prominence was a turning point for American business. Before him, the days of tycoons and moguls seemed long past. In the public’s mind, CEO meant “a buttoned-down organization man, well-treated and well-paid, but essentially bland and characterless.” With Iacocca, all of that changed. Business journalists began dubbing executives “the next J. P. Morgan” or “the next Henry Ford.” And fixed-mindset executives started vying for those labels.

The minute a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse.” - Collins, Good to Great.

When bosses become controlling and abusive, they put everyone into a fixed mindset. This means that instead of learning, growing, and moving the company forward, everyone starts worrying about being judged. It starts with the bosses’ worry about being judged, but it winds up being everybody’s fear about being judged. It’s hard for courage and innovation to survive a companywide fixed mindset.

From his experiences, Welch learned more and more about the kind of manager he wanted to be: a growth-minded manager—a guide, not a judge. When Welch was a young engineer at GE, he caused a chemical explosion that blew the roof off the building he worked in. Emotionally shaken by what happened, he nervously drove the hundred miles to company headquarters to face the music and explain himself to the boss. But when he got there, the treatment he received was understanding and supportive. He never forgot it. “Charlie’s reaction made a huge impression on me. . . . If we’re managing good people who are clearly eating themselves up over an error, our job is to help them through it.

”In front of five hundred managers, “I explained why four corporate officers were asked to leave during the prior year—even though they delivered good financial performance. . . . [They] were asked to go because they didn’t practice our values.” The approved way to foster productivity was now through mentoring, not through terror.

Alfred P. Sloan, the former CEO of General Motors, presents a nice contrast. He was leading a group of high-level policy makers who seemed to have reached a consensus. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I take it we are all in complete agreement on the decision here. . . . Then I propose we postpone further discussion of this matter until our next meeting to give ourselves time to develop disagreement and perhaps gain some understanding of what the decision is all about.”

Herodotus, writing in the fifth century b.c., reported that the ancient Persians used a version of Sloan’s techniques to prevent groupthink. Whenever a group reached a decision while sober, they later reconsidered it while intoxicated.

Managers with a growth mindset think it’s nice to have talent, but that’s just the starting point. These managers are more committed to their employees’ development, and to their own. They give a great deal more developmental coaching, they notice improvement in employees’ performance, and they welcome critiques from their employees.

The workshop then takes managers through a series of exercises in which a) they consider why it’s important to understand that people can develop their abilities, b) they think of areas in which they once had low ability but now perform well, c) they write to a struggling protégé about how his or her abilities can be developed, and d) they recall times they have seen people learn to do things they never thought these people could do. In each case, they reflect upon why and how change takes place.

After the workshop, there was a rapid change in how readily the participating managers detected improvement in employee performance, in how willing they were to coach a poor performer, and in the quantity and quality of their coaching suggestions. What’s more, these changes persisted over the six-week period in which they were followed up.

Finally, it means creating a growth-mindset environment in which people can thrive. This involves:

• Presenting skills as learnable

• Conveying that the organization values learning and perseverance, not just ready-made genius or talent

• Giving feedback in a way that promotes learning and future success

• Presenting managers as resources for learning

Create an organization that prizes the development of ability—and watch the leaders emerge.

A growth mindset is about believing people can develop their abilities. It’s that simple. It can have many repercussions, but that’s what it is at its core.

Many people believe that a growth mindset is only about effort, especially praising effort. I talked earlier about how praising the process children engage in—their hard work, strategies, focus, perseverance—can foster a growth mindset. In this way, children learn that the process they engage in brings about progress and learning, and that their learning does not just magically flow from some innate ability.

The first important thing to remember here is that the process includes more than just effort. Certainly, we want children to appreciate the fruits of hard work. But we also want them to understand the importance of trying new strategies when the one they’re using isn’t working. (We don’t want them to just try harder with the same ineffective strategy.) And we want them to ask for help or input from others when it’s needed. This is the process we want them to appreciate: hard work, trying new strategies, and seeking input from others.

In all of our research on praise, we indeed praise the process, but we tie it to the outcome, that is, to children’s learning, progress, or achievements. Children need to understand that engaging in that process helped them learn.

You don’t get a growth mindset by proclamation. You move toward it by taking a journey.

Although for simplicity I’ve talked as though some people have a growth mindset and some people have a fixed mindset, in truth we’re all a mixture of the two. There’s no point denying it. Sometimes we’re in one mindset and sometimes we’re in the other. Our task then becomes to understand what triggers our fixed mindset. What are the events or situations that take us to a place where we feel our (or other people’s) abilities are fixed? What are the events or situations that take us to a place of judgment rather than to a place of development?

What happens when our fixed-mindset “persona” shows up—the character within who warns us to avoid challenges and beats us up when we fail at something? How does that persona make us feel? What does it make us think and how does it make us act? How do those thoughts, feelings, and actions affect us and those around us? And, most important, what can we do over time to keep that persona from interfering with our growth and that of our children? How can we persuade that fixed-mindset persona to get on board with the goals that spring from our growth mindset?

Even parents who hold a growth mindset can find themselves praising their child’s ability—and neglecting to focus on their child’s learning process. It can be hard to shake the idea that telling kids they’re smart will build their confidence.

It’s the parents who respond to their children’s setbacks with interest and treat them as opportunities for learning who are transmitting a growth mindset to their children. These parents think setbacks are good things that should be embraced, and that setbacks should be used as a platform for learning. They address the setback head-on and talk to their children about the next steps for learning.

People with a growth mindset are also constantly monitoring what’s going on, but their internal monologue is not about judging themselves and others in this way. Certainly they’re sensitive to positive and negative information, but they’re attuned to its implications for learning and constructive action: What can I learn from this? How can I improve? How can I help my partner do this better?

These concrete plans—plans you can visualize—about when, where, and how you are going to do something lead to really high levels of follow-through, which, of course, ups the chances of success.

So the idea is not only to make a growth-mindset plan, but also to visualize, in a concrete way, how you’re going to carry it out.

Every lapse doesn’t spell doom. It’s like anything else in the growth mindset. It’s a reminder that you’re an unfinished human being and a clue to how to do it better next time.

Mindset change is not about picking up a few pointers here and there. It’s about seeing things in a new way. When people—couples, coaches and athletes, managers and workers, parents and children, teachers and students—change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. Their commitment is to growth, and growth takes plenty of time, effort, and mutual support to achieve and maintain.

You’ll be surprised to hear me say this. The first step is to embrace your fixed mindset. Let’s face it, we all have some of it. We’re all a mixture of growth and fixed mindsets and we need to acknowledge that. It’s not a shameful admission. It’s more like, welcome to the human race. But even though we have to accept that some fixed mindset dwells within, we do not have to accept how often it shows up and how much havoc it can wreak when it does.

The second step is to become aware of your fixed-mindset triggers. When does your fixed-mindset “persona” come home to roost?

• It could be when you’re thinking about taking on a big, new challenge. Your fixed-mindset persona might appear and whisper, “Maybe you don’t have what it takes, and everyone will find out.”

• It could be when you’re struggling with something and you keep hitting dead ends. Your fixed-mindset persona might fly in and offer its advice: “Give it up. It’s just making you feel frustrated and ashamed. Do something easier.”

• How about when you feel like you’ve failed decisively? Lost your job. Lost a cherished relationship. Messed up in a very big way. It’s a rare person who doesn’t have a fixed-mindset episode. And we all know very well what that fixed mindset says to us: “You’re not the person you thought you were—and you never will be.”

• What about when you encounter someone who’s a lot better than you in the very area you pride yourself on? What does that fixed-mindset voice say to you? Does it tell you that you’ll never be as good? Does it make you hate that person just a little?

• What about our fixed mindset toward others? If we’re educators, what happens after a high-stakes test? Do we judge who’s smart and who isn’t? If we’re managers, what happens during and after a big project? Do we judge our employees’ talent? If we’re parents, do we pressure our kids to prove they’re smarter than others and make them feel judged based on their grades and test scores?

Now give your fixed-mindset persona a name.

You heard me correctly.

I watched as Susan Mackie worked with financial executives who had given their fixed-mindset personas names. They were talking about what triggers their personas, and the top guy said, “When we’re in a crunch, Duane shows up. He makes me supercritical of everyone, and I get bossy and demanding rather than supportive.” A female team member quickly responded: “Yes, and when your Duane shows up, my Ianni comes roaring out. Ianni is the macho guy who makes me feel incompetent. So your Duane brings out my Ianni and I become cowering and anxious, which infuriates Duane.” And on went this amazing conversation. These sophisticated professionals talked about when their named persona showed up, how it made them feel and act, and how it affected others around them. By the way, once they were able to understand each other’s triggers and personas, they could move their interactions to another level and the morale in this unit went up by leaps and bounds.

You’re in touch with your triggers and you’re excruciatingly aware of your fixed-mindset persona and what it does to you. It has a name. What happens now? Educate it. Take it on the journey with you.

The more you become aware of your fixed-mindset triggers, the more you can be on the lookout for the arrival of your persona. If you’re on the verge of stepping out of your comfort zone, be ready to greet it when it shows up and warns you to stop. Thank it for its input, but then tell it why you want to take this step and ask it to come along with you: “Look, I know this may not work out, but I’d really like to take a stab at it. Can I count on you to bear with me?”

When you hit a setback, the chances are excellent it’s going to show up again. Don’t suppress it or ban it. Just let it do its thing. Let it do its song and dance, and when it settles down a bit, talk to it about how you plan to learn from the setback and go forward: “Yes, yes, it’s possible that I’m not so good at this (yet), but I think I have an idea of what to do next. Let’s just try it.

Every one of us has a journey to take.

• It starts by accepting that we all have both mindsets.

• Then we learn to recognize what triggers our fixed mindset. Failures? Criticism? Deadlines? Disagreements?

• And we come to understand what happens to us when our fixed-mindset “persona” is triggered. Who is this persona? What’s its name? What does it make us think, feel, and do? How does it affect those around us?

• Importantly, we can gradually learn to remain in a growth-mindset place despite the triggers, as we educate our persona and invite it to join us on our growth-mindset journey.

• Ideally, we will learn more and more about how we can help others on their journey, too.

Let’s say you’ve named and tamed your fixed-mindset persona. That’s great, but please don’t think your journey is complete. For your growth mindset to bear fruit, you need to keep setting goals—goals for growth. Every day presents you with ways to grow and to help the people you care about grow. How can you remember to look for these chances?

Then, as you contemplate the day in front of you, try to ask yourself these questions. If you have room on your mirror, copy them over and tape them there, too.

What are the opportunities for learning and growth today? For myself? For the people around me?

As you think of opportunities, form a plan, and ask:

When, where, and how will I embark on my plan?

When, where, and how make the plan concrete. How asks you to think of all the ways to bring your plan to life and make it work.

As you encounter the inevitable obstacles and setbacks, form a new plan and ask yourself the question again:

When, where, and how will I act on my new plan?

Regardless of how bad you may feel, chat with your fixed-mindset persona and then do it! And when you succeed, don’t forget to ask yourself:

What do I have to do to maintain and continue the growth?