09 Dec Encouraging a Growth Mindset in Executive Leadership
A growth mindset—the belief that skills and abilities can be developed through effort, strategy, and input from others—is one of the most valuable perspectives a leader can bring to a team. Research by psychologist Carol Dweck shows that organizations fostering a growth mindset see greater innovation, resilience, and productivity.
Studies indicate that employees in growth-mindset organizations feel 47% likelier to see their company as supportive of risk-taking, and they are 34% likelier to feel a stronger sense of commitment to the company’s goals. But encouraging a growth mindset involves more than simply promoting learning. It requires a deep commitment from leaders to model a growth-oriented perspective, share authentic experiences, and consistently recognize the growth they see in others.
In this post, we’ll explore actionable ways for executives to instill a growth mindset in their organizations by modeling, sharing, and celebrating growth-oriented behaviors.
Having a Growth Mindset as an Executive Leader
Encouraging a growth mindset starts with the leader. Leaders who actively embrace a growth mindset are more willing to take risks, learn from setbacks, and approach challenges as opportunities to grow. Here’s what this might look like for an executive:
- Model Learning: Share your learning journey with your team, openly discussing skills you’re developing or ideas you’re exploring.
- Practice Boundaried Openness: Show vulnerability by sharing when things don’t go as planned, but keep the openness within healthy boundaries, focusing on learning rather than self-critique.
- Celebrate Fail Forward: Emphasize that setbacks are part of progress. Phrases like “fail forward” or “first attempts in learning” (FAIL) help normalize learning from mistakes as valuable growth.
Sharing Stories of Learning, Success, and Setbacks
An effective way to embed a growth mindset in your team is to make it real through storytelling. Stories resonate deeply, showing that growth isn’t only about wins but also about learning from challenges:
- Tell Your Own Stories: Share experiences where you learned something new, even if it didn’t initially lead to success. For example, talk about a time when a project didn’t go as planned, what you learned from it, and how it contributed to future successes.
- Encourage Team Leaders to Share: Empower leaders at every level to share similar stories. When team leaders openly discuss both their wins and challenges, it reinforces the message that growth is a journey.
- Showcase Resilience Stories in Meetings: Dedicate time in meetings to highlight examples of resilience or adaptability, using them as teachable moments that normalize the growth mindset across the team.
Recognizing Growth-Oriented Actions and Modeling Recognition
To encourage a growth mindset, it’s essential to recognize and celebrate behaviors that align with growth values. This helps reinforce the importance of continuous learning, courage, and resilience:
- Recognize Effort, Not Just Outcomes: Celebrate when team members show commitment to learning, even if the results aren’t perfect. Recognizing effort reinforces that improvement and adaptability matter.
- Publicly Acknowledge Vulnerability: Praise team members who demonstrate courage by sharing their challenges in a meaningful and productive way that shares the learning from the challenge and supports learning, growth and courage in others. This shows that openness is valued and supported and that we can learn from each other.
- Create Recognition Opportunities for Growth Actions: Use newsletters, all-hands meetings, or internal communication platforms to highlight team members who model a growth mindset. Recognize actions like taking on new responsibilities, seeking feedback, or sharing lessons from a failed attempt or from working through new ideas.
Tips for Being in a Growth Mindset
In addition to modeling growth, it’s useful to provide your team with actionable ways to cultivate a growth mindset in themselves. Share these tips to help your team stay in a growth-oriented mindset:
- Focus on ‘Yet’: Encourage the team to use the word “yet” when they feel they haven’t mastered something (“I haven’t learned this skill yet”). It’s a small but powerful reminder that growth is ongoing.
- Practice Reflection: Ask team members to reflect on what they’ve learned from each project, particularly from the challenges they’ve encountered, as well as what they’ve learned from each other.
- Seek Feedback: Reinforce the idea that feedback is a valuable growth tool, not criticism. Encourage leaders to request and act on feedback to set an example.
Conclusion
Encouraging a growth mindset within executive leadership transcends simply nurturing a love for learning; it’s about fostering a resilient and adaptive organizational culture. Psychologist Carol Dweck’s seminal work on growth mindset provides compelling evidence of its impact in the workplace. In her article published in the Harvard Business Review (Dweck, 2014), she notes that employees in organizations that promote a growth mindset are:
- More empowered and committed: They feel a stronger sense of ownership and are more invested in the company’s success.
- More likely to embrace challenges: They view obstacles as opportunities to learn and grow, leading to increased innovation.
- More collaborative: They are more willing to share information and work together to achieve common goals.
Dweck explains, “When entire companies embrace a growth mindset, their employees report feeling far more empowered and committed; they also receive far greater organizational support for collaboration and innovation.” This research underscores how a growth mindset can lead to a more engaged, innovative, and resilient workforce.
By modeling growth, sharing stories of both successes and setbacks, and recognizing actions that embody learning and resilience, executives can inspire their teams to view challenges as opportunities for development. Leaders who adopt this approach not only enhance their personal leadership but also lay the groundwork for a stronger, more adaptable organization.
The journey toward cultivating a growth-oriented culture may begin with these key steps, but the positive impact on team morale, productivity, and innovation can be substantial.
Ready to lead with a growth mindset? Let’s work together to strengthen your leadership approach, equipping you with the tools to model, share, and recognize growth in ways that inspire your team and foster lasting cultural change. Book an exploration call with me using the button below to get started.
Reference: Dweck, C. S. (2014). How Companies Can Profit from a “Growth Mindset”. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from Harvard Business Review website