Team Building With The Growth Mindset

YouTube Product Lead on Team Building (Part 2)

One of the terms that I am passionate about is “growth mindset.” This is a concept has a lot of applications in team building. Created by Dr. Carol Dweck, its basic principle is about creating lifelong learners. Said differently, it’s about learning how to turn errors or mistakes into learning opportunities.

By contrast, the fixed mindset assumes that any failure is directly related to your quality as a person or that these mistakes are linked to your fundamentals. The truth is that we are never fully in one mindset or the other, and Dr. Dweck writes about trying to cultivate the growth mindset as best we can.

Some of you may be familiar with Strengths Finder, which tells us to go all-in on our strengths and to ignore our weaknesses in order to be most effective. The growth mindset is the direct opposite of this approach. Instead, the focus is about building resilience to overcome your weaknesses through constant improvement.

For example, one of my colleagues was a great analyst but was not a good presenter early in her career. Her management team told her to focus on being a great analyst and not to worry about becoming a good presenter. At first, she took their advice but then realized that this approach was a barrier to advance her career.

She eventually embraced the growth mindset and took it upon herself to become a better presenter. That said, none of us arrives on the earth as a good presenter or analyst. We all have to work at personal development and commit to learning new skills over time.

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