How to Quickly Shift from a Fixed to a Growth Mindset
I think we’d all like to believe that we practice a growth mindset most, if not all of the time. However, even Dr. Carol Dweck, who coined the term in her research, admits that no one is fully one or the other. We are a combination of fixed and growth, depending on the topic.
Love at First Sight
Let’s consider the topic of love and relationships. At least in the United States, we tend to be a love-at-first-sight culture. Just look at the movies Hollywood produces. The stories are very similar. There’s a magic moment when two people meet, a funny exchange, a sweet look, or maybe someone needs a little rescuing and suddenly two characters have fallen in love. Watch enough TV and movies and it’s not hard to believe in love at first sight.
Love at first sight is a fixed mindset because it’s grounded in the belief that either there’s magic there or not. If you’ve ever been on a first date and an hour later arrived at the conclusion that this person is not right for you, that too could be a fixed mindset at work. That doesn’t mean they are right for you either, however, a growth mindset would suggest that even if the first attempt doesn’t work out, with more opportunities the connection could develop into a beautiful relationship. This of course requires the other person to also share a growth mindset and be interested in even trying.
Learning New Skills
Let’s consider another example – learning something new. Another way a fixed mindset shows up is if you go to your first ever dance class and you look like you have two left feet. It would be understandable to conclude, “I am simply not meant to be a dancer.” The same goes for any sport or perhaps in school, with subjects. Maybe your first few attempts at literature left you thinking you aren’t meant for literature. Or perhaps a few bad math experiences had you conclude that “I’m just not a math person.”
Unfortunately, the school environment is a really good breeding ground for fixed mindsets. Even though it is presumed you don’t know how to do something and you are there to learn, you get measured and labeled on your first attempts. If schools were growth mindset sort of places, we’d measure students much later in the year with a greater emphasis on their final exams. We wouldn’t average grades or count any of your earliest attempts. Alternatively, we could measure effort and attempts earlier on and as the year progresses, shift the weight to performance.
The good news is that there are places that embrace more of a growth mindset. For instance, Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, didn’t really get good until high school. He could have been written off much earlier if sports was more fixed in their mindset. However, we know that in sports, you can commit to practice in order to improve.
The Not-so-Subtle Power of Questions to Shift Mindset
So all this said about environments that support fixed or growth mindset, how can we take matters into our own hands and shift our own mindset, irrespective of the environment?
How can we tune and adjust our minds so that we can be intentional about our mindset and not just a passive participant dependent on the culture or environment.
The key is in the questions we ask ourselves. How we word our questions drive how we think about our ability to do or not do something. And how we think about ourselves drives how we perform.
Questions like…
- Can I do this?
- Do I have the time to…?
- Will I succeed…?
- Do I have what it takes?
Are grounded in a fixed mindset. These are also closed questions. Yes or no. Either you have it or you don’t. Either this first date is full of fireworks or it’s a complete dud.
Closed questions are the fertile ground for a fixed mindset. The more closed questions you ask, the easier it is for your mind to effortlessly and unknowingly wander into a fixed mindset.
On the other hand, questions like…
- How will I…?
- Who can help me with…?
- Where can I go for help or guidance…?
- What can I do to learn…?
- When can I book time for…?
These questions force your mind to come up with solutions or at the very least ideas for possible solutions. These are also known as open-ended questions.
The problem is that in moments of high pressure or intensity, we tend to quickly lean on closed questions.
Growth Mindset Questions that Can Save Your Life
Fortunately, there are some great examples of people who have been trained to ask solution and innovation-oriented questions, in moments of incredible stress (i.e. matters of life and death).
Navy Seals are trained to trained to ask the following questions when they find themselves in combat or high stress situations:
- What is the immediate threat?
- What is my next move based on the situation?
- How can I best support my team?
- Am I following the mission plan?
- What is the best way to neutralize the threat while minimizing risk to my team?
- What is my teammate’s status?
Five of these questions are forward-looking, solution-oriented, and ultimately grounded in a growth mindset because chances are they have never been in the exact circumstances with all of the exact same variables more than once. This means, they don’t technically know the answer to this very particular challenge or moment.
The same goes for us at work. We work in industries that are constantly and QUICKLY evolving. Any project we might work on in the next 3-12 months will likely be VERY different from anything we’ve worked on before. Factor in the rapid rise of AI, the most unknown variable of all, and it’s almost impossible to expect to face the same challenge twice.
Now imagine a soldier in a combat situation asking themselves…
- Do I have what it takes to survive this attack?
- Will I make it out of here alive?
- Can I actually overcome the enemy?
None of those questions lead to any chance of finding a solution. These are backward facing questions. And to survive and thrive, we need forward-looking questions.
The same goes for us at work.
What got us here, won’t get us there
I am Catholic and currently observing Lent (at the time of this writing). That’s 40 days and nights of abstaining from things that hold me back from reaching a high level of faith and spirituality.
Lent is an opportunity to rid myself of something holding me back from growing in my life and faith.
What it suggests is that to grow or to move forward, I need to leave some things behind.
This reminds me of a quote by Marshall Goldsmith, a world-renowned executive coach.
He often says, “what got you here, won’t get you there.”
This statement suggests that to grow or become the next iteration of ourselves, we have to leave something behind. What we leave behind, is likely what got us to where we are today.
Another great quote on this topic comes from Albert Einstein…
“We cannot solve our problems using the same thinking we used when we created them.”
The problem is that we are raised to assess our past as a way to determine our future. We are brought up to look at past patterns as a way to determine future outcomes.
While this serves us in some ways, this can hold us back when it comes to growing past our boundaries or practicing a growth mindset in moments of uncertainty (where it most counts).
Open-ended, forward-looking, solution-oriented questions can help us develop new thinking that can solve a problem.
Beware of Conditional Thinking
If this, then that.
- If I have the funding, then…
- If I have the support, then…
- If I get the team I want, then…
- If I had the time, then…
Another form this can take that’s backwards looking is…
- Do I have permission to…
- Do I have the funding to…
- Do I have the title or responsibility to…
Questions like this can only go one of two ways. Depending on the answer, either you do or don’t have permission or funding or responsibility to do the thing you want to do.
A close relative of this is “when I…then I…”
- When I have more time, then I’ll visit my family more.
- When I have more financial security, then I’ll start thinking about finding a partner…
- When this busy season of my life is over, then I’ll figure out these nagging health issues…
Conditional thinking like this means that your future is totally dependent on some external force that is likely not operating in alignment with your goals. Companies don’t suddenly decide, we no longer need to grow, everyone can relax for the next few years. Companies are always under pressure to grow…
Open ended questions can shift you into a growth mindset…
- How can I get this done with $XX?
- What are all the things I could get done with $XX? (or fill-in-the-blank resource)
- How can I leverage my current position and resources to bring this initiative to life?
- Who’s support can I recruit to help me move faster?
Nothing extraordinary was ever done by anyone with the appropriate title, resources, permission. The extraordinary comes from persevering in spite of not having the title, resources, or permission.
Open-Ended Questions Drive Growth Mindset & Innovation
Open-ended questions explore the possibilities for innovation.
These questions will help you figure out how to break through limits to get there.
The answers are not always ideal or easy or obvious or nicely packaged.
But they are usually original, never-been-done, and innovative.
The right questions will force your mind to shift into a growth mindset to figure out how to move forward no matter what’s behind you.