ONE of the things we hated doing in high school was the composition class where we had to write and rewrite essays after our teacher had already corrected them. We became painfully aware that we were only given one chance to redo our essays and we had to do it perfectly the second time around. While it was challenging, our teachers would always find something really good with what we wrote, and what used to be a tedious chore became an exciting challenge.
I never would have loved writing if it were not for my teachers who tirelessly corrected my essays and insightfully recommended suggestions which significantly improved my compositions. But what really struck me was their insistence that everything can be learned if you put your mind into it and give it your best effort. And just like what was once said by Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.” I am not saying I have already achieved what I want to achieve in my writing, but I do believe that attaining your desired goals require a growth mindset—the belief that success will depend on time and effort. This concept was first proposed by Carol Dweck in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
To develop a growth mindset, you need to understand that talent and brains can only get you so far. It is your effort and your determination to succeed which will keep you moving forward. A cursory glance of the people we call geniuses are actually people who had not only the brains but also persevered and failed several times until they succeeded. Take the case of Thomas Edison, who famously said, “I didn’t fail. I just found 2,000 ways not to make a light bulb.” Every failure is an opportunity to learn, and a growth mindset is important if you want to develop yourself further.
One thing you need to understand is that people have different learning curves. Just because it was easy for someone to learn something does not mean that everybody will learn the same way. It takes time and effort for you to learn a new skill, let alone
master it. Do not compare your growth to others because they may be a fast learner in one skill but extremely slow in another. Focus on yourself and how you are learning the new skill so you can think of better and creative ways of doing it. For all you know, you just might discover a new way of using the skill for another problem.
Look for the gems in criticisms and feedback. It is difficult accepting criticism, especially when you have invested so much time and effort on your work. But like gems, you need to cut away the dirt and rock to expose the nugget of wisdom. You will be thankful later on for their criticism because in the end, you would have benefited because their feedback could only have improved your work. Do not be afraid to ask for specifics on how to improve your work better because they can offer another perspective which you may not have thought of before.
Accept stretch assignments from your manager, or ask for one. One of the ways you can challenge your limitations and develop a growth mindset is by taking on new tasks. A person who wants to grow is willing to improve their craft so they can develop new skill sets or even develop the ones which will help them in their professional development. You have to be clear about your career goals so you can also filter which assignments would be more beneficial to you later on. And even if an assignment proves to have been not all that beneficial, you would still have learned new ways of doing things from another’s perspective. Did you know that fail stands for first attempt in learning? Stop thinking of failure as an end in itself. Use the lessons from the experience to improve your ways of working and thinking of new ways to move forward.
Teach others because this will help you solidify your understanding of the skill. Teaching others is learning twice and helps you uncover opportunities for improvement. This also opens opportunities to learn from others because people are able to see it from their own perspective and possibly offer a better way of doing it. This will help not only you but the entire team, as well.
To cultivate a growth mindset in the workplace, praise the effort rather than the natural ability of people. This avoids the mentality that some people are just born with it, or the thinking that whatever they do, they can never keep up with the model employee. People need to understand that it is possible for them to excel with their effort.
And when you do give feedback, make it specific and constructive. Specific in the sense that the recipient of the feedback understands what is needed to improve in their work. Constructive in the sense that what you say and how you say it is geared toward making people want to change because they want to and not out of fear or repercussions later on.
In Ken Blanchard’s book One Minute Manager, he advises managers to catch people doing good. I recently watched an episode of 100 Humans on Netflix and one episode tackled the issue of whether praise actually helped people do better. The experiment showed that it did. People are more willing to try again and improve their skill when they are praised for their efforts.
Pearls are formed when a grain of sand inadvertently goes inside an oyster and irritates it. The oyster defends itself by covering the speck of sand with nacre over and over again until it forms the pearl. Similarly, when we remain in our comfort zones and do not take risks because we do not want to feel aggrieved, we miss out on opportunities for developing something wonderful within ourselves. But when we do discover we can do so much better, we need to pay it forward and help others find their own pearls.