ITB December 2024/January 2025 - Magazine - Page 55
GROWTH
MINDSET
A fixed mindset could be holding
back your career, but experts
agree it is possible to spot the
triggers and take small steps
to switch into a growth zone.
WORDS EMMA FOSTER
“growth mindset” trumps a “fixed
mindset” in the corporate credos of
most Australian workplaces. Yet many
researchers, including Stanford University
professor Carol Dweck, who is credited with
developing the theory back in the 1980s,
are concerned that the wild popularity of this
framing has led to distortions and misunderstandings,
putting the theory at risk of losing its intended benefit
as it becomes another corporate buzz phrase.
“The emergence of this broadbrush workplace
aim to ‘have a growth mindset’ is flawed,” says
Susan Mackie, co-founder of the Melbourne-based
Growth Mindset Institute.
“That’s because we all have a mixture of both
fixed and growth mindsets. A fixed mindset is not
‘bad’, it is simply a lens we look through due to past
experiences and to make sense of the world,
and this could frame your future choices,” she says.
“The question then becomes, how do we enact
a growth mindset when a fixed mindset is holding
us back?”
CAREERS intheblack.cpaaustralia.com.au 55
