What assumptions do you make about yourself and the business world and how do they influence the decisions you make in business? Mindsets are the beliefs and assumptions we hold about ourselves, others, and the world to include business. Mindsets determine the possibilities we see in the business world. Dr. Carol Dweck, in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, distinguishes fixed and growth mindsets. In a fixed mindset, you see your qualities as unchangeable. All talents you have are fixed and immutable. What you lack you will continue to lack. This applies to how you see others as well. In a growth mindset, you see your basic qualities as able to be cultivated. You can grow and improve through effort. Qualities are just a starting point.
One critical aspect of this work is that, according to Dr. Dweck, the greatest threat to success is avoiding failure. With a fixed mindset, you likely avoid challenging situations because success depends on promoting your fixed qualities and covering deficiencies. With a growth mindset, you will focus on learning and development and pursue challenges that can lead to either learning or failure.
Mindset affects and molds business activities as well. In human resources, we know that turnover and attrition are an ongoing problem in businesses. Too often, managers with fixed mindsets emphasize attracting and retaining talent rather than cultivating talent. Thus, managers focus resources on individuals with perceived knowledge and thus overlook and lose employees with limited talent base but great learning potential. Also, managers with fixed mindsets underestimate the values of learning and development and don't get as much out of those employees they value. Managers with a growth mindset, in contrast, understand that qualities can be developed. They focus on work environments that foster talent development and encourage employees to learn and develop new skills. This occurs often through working with others.
Regarding team building, managers with fixed mindsets see the world as having a fixed sum of talent and this fosters conflict and mistrust as well as relationships governed by power. Managers with growth mindsets view broader possibilities. These include the idea that by working together more value can be created than by working individually, often in conflict. In improving the performance of all employees, we can create more value for the business as well as foster greater levels of trust and team cohesion.
The good news is that mindsets are changeable. Particularly in a rapidly changing business environment, future success will come to those who can adopt a growth mindset, for themselves as well as for their perception of others and the business world. A good start is to examine your own basic assumptions as they play out in your business decisions. When you change your thoughts (beliefs/mindsets), you change your results.