The Wheel of Modern Leadership Part 8: Mindset

Welcome back to The Wheel of Modern Leadership, our ongoing series on the timeless aspects of leadership that stay in fashion, no matter what.

Last time we discussed the importance of mentorship in growing and developing leaders. Previous installments of this series have also covered professional development, consistency, accountability, and more. But all these elements of leadership are for naught if you approach them with the wrong mindset.

One of my favorite sayings, where your mind goes, everything follows, is startling true. In this article, we’ll talk about how great leaders approach their own mindset, and what professionals can do to shift theirs to become a more successful business leader.

Fixed Mindset vs. Growth Mindset

The foundational text for anyone seeking to understand the relationship between mindset and leadership is Carol S. Dweck’s book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. A Stanford professor and renowned psychologist, Dweck consolidates decades of research into a fundamental premise: success in virtually every aspect of life is dramatically influenced by one’s mindset.

Dweck distinguishes between two types of mindsets: fixed mindset and growth mindset.

• Fixed mindset assumes that everyone has a predetermined, set amount of talent and intelligence—you’re stuck with the hand you’re dealt.
• Growth mindset assumes that talent and intelligence can be acquired through hard work—even if you’re dealt a bad hand, you can draw more cards.

One key element of a fixed mindset is the constant fear of judgment. This fear is based on the assumption that you only have a fixed amount of intelligence and that mistakes reveal this lack of intelligence. This, in turn, encourages people to avoid challenges, lose interest, and stop trying.

On the other hand, people with a growth mindset don’t fear mistakes. Mistakes don’t reveal a lack of fixed intelligence, but present opportunities to grow their intelligence. Over time, the fear of being labeled stupid becomes less and less.

Here are some examples of a fixed vs. growth mindset in practice:

Decades ago, it was believed people’s talents and intelligence were static. Today, scientists say you can grow your cognitive abilities. Adopting a growth mindset is not only scientifically sound but is critical for you to reach your full potential.

The Mindset of Leaders Who Lead Great Companies

Another great book that tackles this idea of mindset and leadership is James C. Collins’ book Good to Great. The book surveyed companies who make the leap from moderate success to what he dubs as “defying gravity”: generating cumulative stock returns that beat the market seven out of fifteen consecutive years.

What Collins found was that the leaders in these companies didn’t ooze ego and self-proclaimed talent. Rather, they were self-effacing people who constantly asked questions. More importantly, they were able to look failures in the face, especially their own, and still maintain the faith that they would succeed in the end.

Good to Great provides some tangible examples of how people with a growth mindset are continually learning. They’re not worried about measuring or protecting their fixed abilities. They look directly at mistakes, use feedback, and alter their strategies. By adopting a growth mindset themselves, they’re able to lead organizations that grow.

As a leader, you owe it to your team to have a growth mindset. Not only does this enable you to delegate and trust people, but it enables you to invest in your people’s own growth.

True confidence is the courage to be open to change and new ideas. You can’t do this if you’re constantly playing the blame game, making excuses, and are unwilling to confront your own deficiencies.

How to Understand and Shift Your Own Mindset

So here’s the million-dollar question: can you change your mindset? The answer is yes!

Granted, people generally default to one or the other. It’s somewhat baked into your personality. But once you know which side you tend toward, you can start intentionally changing how you think and react in new ways.

For example, you may find yourself passing up a situation that requires a great deal of effort for fear of failure. In that moment, you can make the intentional decision to push past the discomfort and put yourself in a situation that will force you to grow. And good news: this gets easier over time.

How Mindset Impacts the Other Aspects of The Wheel of Modern Leadership

At the start of this article, I made the bold claim that without mindset, the other aspects of the Wheel of Modern Leadership are for naught. Here’s why a growth mindset is critical for success in the other six aspects of leadership:

• Communication. If you have a fixed mindset, you’re more likely to see communication failures (either yours or others) as threats, rather than opportunities to grow and improve.
• Relationship building. It’s hard to build relationships when you have a fixed mindset. You’re constantly threatened by others rather than inspired by them, and you’re constantly comparing the hand you’ve been dealt to theirs. This is a recipe for resentment, not mutually beneficial relationships.
• Consistency. To show up every day, you must first believe that showing up every day will make a difference and change your life. This is hard to do if you don’t believe change and growth are even possible.
• Accountability. If you’re constantly threatened by accountability or think your mistakes indicate a lack of intelligence or talent, you won’t grow. Accountability only works if you see mistakes as welcome learning opportunities.
• Professional & personal development. If you want your professional and personal development efforts to actually help you grow, you have to start with the assumption that growth is possible. This is impossible with a fixed mindset.
• Mentorship. Likewise, if you want to glean knowledge from your mentors, you have to first be inspired by the success of others vs. threatened by it, then you have to overcome the fear of judgment to let your mentors coach and correct you.

Mindset: A Self-Assessment

My best advice for assessing your own mindset is to look at that comparison table listed above. Run down the list and put a checkmark next to the column that best describes you (don’t worry, no one but you will see this, so be honest).

If you found yourself checking a bunch of boxes on the right, well done! Now ask yourself: how can I better enable my team to adopt a growth mindset that I’ve already mastered?

And if you have more checks on the left side than the right, that means you have some work to do. Maybe you don’t feel as though you can improve your mindset—but you absolutely can! The first step is to surround yourself with people who have a growth mindset and will encourage you to improve yours.

You deserve recruiters in your corner who will encourage you to adopt a growth mindset. Get in touch with FORTIS Resource Partners today.