ITB December 2024/January 2025 - Magazine - Page 57
“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. The question then becomes ‘how do we
enact a growth mindset when a fixed mindset is holding us back?’”
SUSAN MACKIE, GROWTH MINDSET INSTITUTE
prospects, so I might try going to one networking
event each month’. A fixed mindset focuses on the
kind of person you are, whereas a growth mindset
focuses on the strategies or actions you could take.”
MAKING THE SWITCH
Heslin flags the career-limiting nature of having
a fixed mindset to some areas at work, such as
building social capital and goal setting, but he
emphasises that it is not feasible to be
“growth-minded about everything”.
“Enacting a growth mindset can take a lot of
work when applied to deliberately developing a skill
or asking lots of questions about your assumptions,”
he says. “The trick is to work out where a fixed
mindset is holding you back — one or two areas
that would really enrich your life and your career
— and try to be more growth-minded in those.”
Mackie believes that while it is not always easy
to spot when a fixed mindset kicks in, once you
notice that your comfort zone is causing you
to miss out on new opportunities or experiences,
it is possible to change the narrative.
“It’s often like a switch that turns on without
you knowing,” says Mackie, who has undertaken
collaborative research with professor Dweck and
advises organisations on growth mindset strategies.
“Imagine, for example, the boss leaves you a
message, saying ‘Come and see me at 8am
tomorrow — I have some feedback’,” she says.
“If you immediately start negative rumination,
become defensive and insecure, it’s a signal of
a fixed mindset. ‘Have I done something wrong?
What have I forgotten?’
“That internal voice becomes very noisy,
hijacking your executive function and inhibiting
growth, so by the time you get to the meeting your
brain is no longer thinking clearly, you’re not calm,
you’re fearful. As it turns out, the boss just wants to
congratulate you on a project,” she says.
“To get back into a growth zone, we must identify
these triggers, then talk back to the inner voice.
Tell the rumination to stop and take steps to
address the dynamic, like simply asking the boss
for an agenda. We all have the capacity to rewire
and turn that fixed mindset response from
debilitating to enhancing.”
ACHIEVING A GROWTH MINDSET
Heslin recommends taking a deliberate,
systematic approach to being growth-minded.
“Get into learning mode and start by asking
yourself, ‘What small step could I take to make
progress in this area? Who could be my role
model? How am I going to manage my emotions
through this? How am I going to track my progress?’”
People who are good at something were not born
good at it, he says.
“They had a
pathway that almost
always involved doing
it badly before they
did it well, but they
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CAREERS intheblack.cpaaustralia.com.au 57
