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One day, my students sat me down and ordered me to write this book. They wanted people to be able to use our work to make their lives better. It was something I’d wanted to do for a long time, but it became my number one priority.
What?
This idea—that personal success is when you work your hardest to become your best—was central to John Wooden’s life. In fact, he says, “there were many, many games that gave me as much pleasure as any of the ten national championship games we won, simply because we prepared fully and played near our highest level of ability.”
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
I was excited to learn recently that Haim Ginott, through his lifelong work with children, came to the same conclusion. “Praise should deal, not with the child’s personality attributes, but with his efforts and achievements.”
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. Nonetheless,
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?
