How To Develop A Growth Mindset For Your Business

A growth mindset is integral to a successful business.

The world of business is changing really fast and every day there is disruption.

In this type of environment, things that worked well yesterday, may not work well tomorrow.

What is more important is your ability to learn, take on information quickly, and adapt appropriately.

A growth mindset is the answer to helping you grow, learn and adapt an an entrepreneur.

A renown psychologist, Dr Carol Dweck developed this concept has confirmed that those who use a growth mindset tend to achieve more than those who have a fixed mindset.

This blog post explores the two different types of mindsets – growth and fixed – and how you can continue to develop a growth mindset to be successful in business.

 

 

What Is A Growth Mindset?

A growth mindset is an individual’s belief that they can learn and grow, and can improve their capability based on being focused and making an effort.

There are three areas that you can focus on to develop your growth mindset. These are:-

 

1 – Self-Awareness

This is all about spending time to understand yourself, know your strengths and your opportunities, so that you can be the very best person you can be.

The easiest way to do this is to take the time to reflect and seek feedback from people.

Be open and honest about your goals and aspirations, as well as your strengths and areas you want to work on.

 

2 – Challenging Yourself

Challenging yourself is all about believing that you can continuously grow to reach your goals and dreams.

To do this, you need to set yourself goals that are outside your comfort zone which will force you to develop new skills and behaviours.

As an entrepreneur, you will be faced with new and different situations, every single day.

 

3 – Developing Persistence + Resilience

This is about believing in overcoming setbacks and learning from your failures.

Starting a business is all about being persistent, and consistent as well as developing resilience.

Put strategies in place to help you to overcome setbacks and failures.

 

What Is A Fixed Mindset?

A fixed mindset is a belief that you do not have the ability to learn and grow.

That our skills and abilities do not change.

Understanding what our fixed mindset triggers are, is an important first step in understanding where you are at with your mindset.

 

What are fixed mindset triggers?

There are situations when tend to trigger people to into using a fixed mindset.

This is normal.

No one has a growth mindset or a fixed mindset  – most people can go between both of these.

The key is to understanding and managing your triggers so that you can focus on developing your growth mindset behaviours – self-awareness, challenging yourself and developing persistence/resilience more often.

There are five typical situations that will trigger fixed mindset behaviours, particularly when it comes to starting and running a small business.

We will talk through each of these situations below.

 

1 – Situations that require high effort to achieve a goal

This is one of the reasons why so many new businesses fail.

Starting a business is a big commitment and there are times when it will seem like it is a lot of hard work to achieve your goals.

Your fixed mindset may kick in when you see extra effort as being too much work.

You can see this when you avoid tasks, procrastinate in getting started on things.

Or you think that putting in all the extra effort is just way too hard.

Strategies to avoid this include:-

• Think of effort as an opportunity to learn and grow
• Make a plan to work out what you will gain from doing the work that will help you to achieve your goals

 

2 – Situations outside your comfort zone of that you find challenging

Sometimes, running a business will take you out of your comfort zone.

You will learn something new, every day.

Your fixed mindset will kick in when you prefer work that plays to your strengths and avoid tasks where you might make mistakes.

This response may also be highlighted if you feel you are being judged by others, or think you are dumb.

Strategies to avoid this include:-

• Deliberately take on problems that require unique solutions
• Make sure that you are stretching your ability

 

3 – Situations where you get given feedback

Being a business owner or entrepreneur exposes you to feedback or criticism by others.

Not everyone will love you and what you do.

And that’s OK.

It is about finding your tribe.

You will see your fixed mindset kick in when you avoid, dismiss or get angry when you receive feedback.

Strategies to avoid this include:-

• Seeking small amounts of feedback regularly
• Use the feedback as an opportunity to reflect, understand, tweak and improve.

 

4 – Situations where other people are better than you are

When starting out in business, there will always be people who do things better than you are.

It is just a fact.

Your fixed mindset triggers will kick in when you feel threatened when other’s are doing well or when you are not the “star” of the team.

Strategies to avoid this include:-

• Look at ways to learn from other people
• Practice telling others that their work is inspiring and look for ways to learn from and with other people.

 

5 – Situations when you experience a setback or make a mistake

There are always ups and downs when running a business.

Especially when you are trying to get your business off the ground, spending money, and not seeing a huge return on your investment.

Your fixed mindset triggers will kick in when you feel like losing motivation when you experience a setback or failure, and catch yourself thinking that successful people don’t ever make mistakes.

Strategies to avoid this include:-

• Thinking of failures or set backs as learning opportunities, no matter how hard it might be
• Take time to reflect about the situation, the impact and what you can learn from it

 

Things To Think About In Regards To Growth Mindset

 

There are things to keep an eye out for when thinking about mindsets.

 

1 – No-one is just one particular mindset

Everyone has the ability to have a fixed or a growth mindset.

We can be both.

It is dependent on the situation and our response to the situation.

 

2 – Opinions are not the same as mindsets

If someone has a fixed view or opinion on something, it does not mean that they have a fixed mindset.

Someone having a fixed opinion on a particular subject is different to believing that some one has the inability to learn new things.

 

3 – Growth Mindset isn’t just about rewarding effort

Some people believe that a growth mindset is about praising and rewarding effort.

That is not true.

Having a growth mindset is all about putting in effort towards achieving great outcomes.

 

Dr Carol Dweck  is renown across the world for her work on how to help people be successful by unlocking their mindsets.

Check out this TED talk where Dr Dweck talks about the power of believing that you can successful.