An Amazingly Practical Approach to Practicing a Growth Mindset
Without exception, growth is a lifelong process for all successful leaders.
You may be mature in a few areas of leadership, but we’re all infants in many.
Community:
Growth requires community. We stagnate and die in isolation. Everyone needs seclusion to refresh and reflect. But growth requires connection.
- Who knowingly participates in your growth?
- Whose growth are you actively encouraging?
- Who knows your growth goals? Whose goals do you know?
- How might you establish and nurture growth-connections between team members?
Confrontation:
Growth is a myth in environments that tolerate deceit, backstabbing, malevolence, and hypocrisy. Leaders who tolerate offenses against community – in the name of delivering results – destroy growth and limit results.
- Never tolerate a high performer who destroys community.
- Eliminate hypocrisy by practicing transparency regarding strengths, weaknesses, and development. Teams can’t pull for each other if they don’t know each other’s growth-goals.
- Remove people who work to undermine others.
Building an environment of growth is one of leadership’s greatest challenges and opportunities.
Learning:
Learn to grow, not to know.
The assimilation of head-knowledge results in arrogance. Practice and application keep us humble.
- How are you putting new leadership principles into practice?
- How are you learning from failure?
Motivation:
An environment of growth emerges from seeking the best interest of others.
- How are you encouraging growth?
- How are you forgiving failure?
- How are you providing timely feedback?
- How are you expressing commitment to each other’s growth?
Purposeful practice:
You don’t get better at playing golf by playing golf. You get better by purposefully practicing various elements of the game.
We don’t grow as leaders by playing at leadership. We grow when we purposefully practice one component of leadership. You might develop your skill at delivering timely feedback, leading meetings, or stretching people, for example.
What kills a growth mindset?
How might leaders practice a growth mindset?
Resource: “Mindset,” by Carol Dweck
Curiosity is key …
any environment that quashes query and genuine dialogue (2-way “exploration”)
& instead promotes only criticism and top down monologue (1-way “conversation”)
cannot give/sustain
(only take/extract, w/ constant turnover w/ no growth)…
How do I/you/we all win at the same time? It’s a continual dialogue, constantly progressing …
Not … I win, therefore you lose … sucker.
Great inspirapiece. Thx.
Thanks Rurbane. “Curiosity” is one of my favorite things. 🙂 Curiosity rather than criticism. I’m going to remember that.
Curiosity can feel like criticism when it focuses on the past. But when it focuses on what we can do, rather than what we did, it’s hopeful, even energizing.
“You don’t get better at playing golf by playing golf. You get better by purposefully practicing various elements of the game.” Nice one!
Thanks Derrick. Have a great week.
So much is missed when Purposeful Practice is not included in the equation. I have seen so many good intentions wasted away when “leadership resources” are used as the basis and strategy for support and growth. A book, an article, an assessment, a graph, a process model. “Here, read this. Apply this. Assess this.”
Without that Purposeful Practice and reflection/discussion (Community?) all these things that might become useful and valuable often get set in a stack, placed on a shelf and forgotten. S-t-r-e-t-c-h is needed.
Thanks Dan!
“Teams can’t pull for each other if they don’t know each other’s growth-goals.” So true. That’s going on the white board today so we can talk about it in team meeting. Thanks, Dan.
“Learn to grow, not to know.” The resonates deeply with me, as I believe effective leaders need to be about genuine transformation over mere information and knowledge. There’s no shortage of information in the world today, with much of it immediately accessible at our fingertips by typing a few strokes on a computer keyboard. But there’s a huge difference between data, information, knowledge and wisdom. Making that climb requires more than simple change, which often can be quick and short-lived. True and lasting transformation starts with self-awareness and humility (recognition that I have not “arrived” yet and really never will), coupled with commitment and perseverance. Think metamorphosis, much like the caterpillar who changes fundamentally and permanently, such that it never can “go back” once it transforms into the butterfly. I love and greatly appreciate your posts.