There are some ideas so simple, even obvious, that a twelve-year-old can readily understand them. Yet, when you try to implement these same ideas, they are profoundly difficult to execute. Politically, the notion of a nuke-free world is one of those ideas: we only need to freeze arsenals and weapons development. The nuclear constraints, however, are nearly impossible to bridge. The smaller and less powerful the country, the more beneficial the nuclear material.
At the individual level, Carol Dweck's well-researched notion that if you have a fixed mindset, believing your talents and abilities are set in stone, you have set yourself up for stagnation and limited achievement. If on the contrary, your mindset is one of growth, you can achieve true success and fulfillment even through immense failure. The mindset is not a minor personality quirk. Rather, it explains our whole mental world, shaping our attitudes toward work and relationships.
That may well be why some of the reviewers of her book were nearly irate at the seeming simplicity of her notion. That simplicity can be so disarming that a reader projecting his/her own experience, can be very likely to identify with stuff that’s not there.
Understanding is simple; it’s the unfreezing that’s tough.
As an executive coach for more than 25 years, I am very familiar with implementing these beliefs. But their execution poses immense difficulties. What makes it so damned difficult is that you have to unfreeze the old behaviors and thought processes. Old dogma dies hard. Once concepts are deeply embedded, a superstructure of assumptions and ideas grows around it. Rejecting a dogma means that many ideas and behaviors are now questionable.
It’s easy to ignore new information when the conditioning, socializing and training you received as a kid has to be overcome. Making the change will often create defensiveness, anxiety and even some denial.
In addition, as Chris Argyris of Harvard has found, smart people don’t learn very easily. Learning to reason about personal change can be emotional for them, even painful. Inevitably, many successful professionals with acknowledged insecurities often have an easier time of learning. They ask better questions, and don’t presume they know all the answers or processes.
But the new world created by Dweck’s research on mindsets is very important.
Mindset explains why a large proportion of students and professionals underperform. When personal limitations are defined as the only reality, that prophecy becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, constricting career opportunities.
At a personal level, the new mindset provides a major key to the development of higher performance and fulfillment. As one of my Gen-Y acquaintances put it, “I like this idea. It means there is hope for the rest of us.”
At an organizational level, it is a major answer to the burgeoning talent shortage. A client of mine tells me that the competition for talent has become so serious that her firm is identifying and working with high school students, focusing them on college education, and planning ultimately to bring them into their own organization.
As schools and business organizations begin to use this data, it can provide an opportunity for the development of a larger segment of the population. Indeed, as training and development people begin to indoctrinate their employees with the growth mindset, it can make it possible for employees to better themselves and their career. My development business is one small way of dealing with these issues, but smart HR organizations can Blitzkrieg their employees with this information, providing their company with a larger talent base.
Finally, Mindset is another chink in the armor of traditionalists, or Luddites, who believe in innate intelligence, and dismiss the findings of deliberate practice in the development of expertise. The more modern science and psychology can challenge the notions of Charles Murray of the Bell Curve, the better.
In sum, the growth mindset confirms the new research which reveals that intelligence can be developed, and expertise can be built by means of deliberate practice.