Positive psychology has turned traditional leadership metrics upside down. This new science of success examines strengths rather than weakness, celebrates failure as the path to mastery and encourages a culture of learning rather than competition. We dive into three tried and tested, evidence based kick ass positive psychology practices that will positively impact upon your leadership.
Discover How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome Podcast_003
Hi Friends,
Welcome to the third episode of The Positive Change Guru Podcast, the podcast for a positive community. We want you to be inspired, achieve your dreams and take action. Our mission is to help you achieve your goals and unleash your awesomeness by providing you with practical, actionable tools for positive change. So what better place to start than with the subject of our third episode, the imposter syndrome podcast all about feeling like a fake and how to overcome it. Let’s go! [Read more…]
Growth Mindset: Building your Mindset Muscle
Growth mindset is one of the key differentiators between people who achieve their goals and those who don’t. Recognising a Growth mindset (and using it) dramatically impacts upon your performance whatever you do in life. Achieving your goals with a growth mindset is a lifelong habit worth investing your time in. But what is it and how exactly can you build your mindset muscle? We give you the lowdown.
10 tips and tricks for a growth mindset team
Are you developing a growth mindset team? Start with our ten tips and tricks to develop a growth mindset culture.
1. Promote problem solving through failure
A growth mindset team problem solves by analysing failures. Help your team understand that taking reasonable risks and experiencing a few failures along the way is an essential part of the process that leads to increased creativity and innovation. Encourage your team to anticipate setbacks and ask..how will you overcome them?
2. Encourage your growth mindset team to talk about how they overcome challenges and setbacks
The culture you create within your business is reflected in everything you do and say. Encourage your team to understand the value and benefits of talking about their professional challenges and setbacks and sharing the tools and techniques they’ve used to overcome difficulties.
3. Encourage the process
Avoid the fixed mindset trap of only focusing on successful outcomes. A purely results driven business risks losing the fertile learning ground that’s contained within both successes and failures. Results matter but learning from the process that your team is constantly engaged in is just as important if you want to create an innovative, agile and resilient culture. Ask your team, what did you learn from the process?
4. Ask your team …where is the challenge?
Invite people out of their comfort zones by asking them to constantly choose and immerse themselves in new challenge. A fixed mindset approach encourages us to stick with that which we’re confident we can achieve and a fear of failure prevents us from breaking free from this limiting approach. In contrast, a growth mindset enables us to take on new challenges wholeheartedly, taking failures in our stride as we relish the new opportunities that a challenge can bring.
5. Encourage a culture of development rather than genius
Carol Dweck’s research has shown that organisation’s who worship a culture of genius rather than development can become places where the majority of employees feel undervalued, disengaged and unsupported. When you encourage a development culture research shows your team is more likely to feel committed, engaged, supported and more able to take on innovative and challenging tasks.
6. Make sure you don’t just talk the growth mindset
At PCG we sometimes hear people in organisations complaining that although leaders talk about growth mindset they do little to embody it. Let your people know that you’re serious about developing as a growth mindset team by talking and walking a growth mindset. Lead by example and talk your team through how you’ve overcome setbacks, dealt with failures and challenged yourself to develop skills and abilities.
7. Encourage reasonable risk
In fixed mindset organisations innovation can be stifled because people resist taking risks for fear of being blamed when things go wrong. Encourage your team to take on acceptable risk in order to support them in developing new strengths and skills.
8. Emphasise that errors are the route to mastery
A growth mindset team understands the need to embrace failure as part of the route to success. When a team member talks about their failures and tells you, “I can’t do this” encourage them to add “yet.” Encourage your team to embrace failure and learn from it by explaining that real mastery is impossible without encountering and surmounting failures.
9. Growth mindset teams ask…who are you collaborating with, who are you mentoring?
In growth mindset teams people share information across teams and networks and support each other to achieve the organisation’s goals. Mentoring and collaboration can spark innovation, improve performance and increase organisational resilience when the going gets tough. Regularly ask your team to share who they are mentoring or collaborating with and how this has benefited them, the team and the organisation.
10. Look for your fixed mindset triggers and encourage others to do the same
The first step to develop a growth mindset team is to recognise what triggers our fixed mindset responses. Learn to listen out for your own fixed mindset triggers and encourage others to do the same by monitoring your inner dialogue and emotional responses.
We love to talk about all things growth mindset at Positive Change Guru. Check out our forthcoming events or get in touch to find out more about our suite of courses and discuss bespoke growth mindset training for your organisation.
10 Ways to Manage a Fixed Mindset Manager
How do you manage a fixed mindset manager?
At PCG we’re often asked to speak to businesses about how they can develop into a growth mindset organisation, during these sessions the PCG team is invariably asked “But how can you implement a growth mindset effectively when your manager has a fixed mindset?” It’s a question that will resonate with many professionals. To help you navigate professional relationships with a growth mindset approach we’ve put together a toolkit of ten ways you can manage a fixed mindset manager.
- Be strategic. In many organisations, it’s often the case that people are promoted to management positions without any training on how to develop effective leadership and management techniques. It may be the case that your manager knows little about growth mindset and the benefits that it can have for not only themselves, but also the team and organisational performance but how do you enlighten them without appearing critical? Be strategic and think about what really ignites your manager’s passions, are they a sports fan, fanatical about racing cars or a science junky? Look for examples of a growth mindset approach that will resonate with them. Maybe they’re a David Beckham fan? Tell them how his family describes how he practised for thousands of hours as a child, kicking the ball at a goal painted on a wall and as his skills improved he would move his striking position further and further away from the goal. Perhaps your manager is a basketball fan? Weave the words of Michael Jordan’s coach into the conversation and explain how he always describes Jordan as not the most talented player on the team but what did make him stand out from the crowd was his dedication, when the rest of the team had finished practising for the day, Jordan would stay behind and persevere with practice for hours after his team mates had left.
- Talk about growth mindset culture in other organisations.Use conversations about the success of other organisations as an opportunity to include snippets of information on the growth mindset approach and how these organisations have used a growth mindset to their competitive advantage. Talk about companies like Google and Quest and the programs they implement to encourage a growth mindset.
- Link a growth mindset to the bottom line. You’re manager tells you, “this growth mindset fad is fine but it’s the bottom line that counts.” Tell your manager how astute they are and then point out that Carol Dweck, the Stanford professor responsible for the international bestseller ‘Mindset: the new psychology of Success’, has addressed this very question, Dweck explains that whenever we apply a growth mindset approach outcomes undoubtedly matter. If effort is unproductive we need to examine how we can more deeply engage in the process perhaps by seeking help from others, trying new strategies or capitalising on setbacks to propel us forwards. Dweck recommends paying equal attention to learning and progress, as well as rewarding effort, which people often more readily associate with encouraging a growth mindset. As Dweck says, growth mindset is indeed linked to the bottom line.
- Explain mindset is a spectrum and discuss your own fixed mindset triggers. You’re manager explains “I’ve always had a 100% growth mindset, that’s why I’m so successful.” The next time growth mindset comes up in conversation, tell your manager that you’ve recently read an interesting article on false growth mindset. Without reminding your manager abut their claim to possess a 100% growth mindset, explain how mindset is a spectrum and although we might make a conscious effort to adopt a growth mindset approach, there will always be certain triggers, that can elicit a fixed mindset approach. Explain how you monitor your own thoughts to try and capture what triggers a fixed mindset for you at work and mention what you’ve done to successfully overcome your fixed mindset triggers.
- Describe how a growth mindset has contributed to team success. Take a growth mindset approach to the situation and focus on highlighting all the effective ways in which your team tackles challenges with a growth mindset. Whenever you’re talking to your manager about the great work your team has been doing, make sure that you frame your comments to include the positive effects a growth mindset approach has had on motivation, perseverance and positive results in your team.
- Inspire your team to work across the organisation, sharing their skills and expertise for organisational success. Encourage your team to promote the benefits of a growth mindset approach when working with others, when there are more workers enthusiastically applying a growth mindset to the organisation’s vision and goals it becomes harder for those with a fixed mindset approach towards their work to ignore the message.
- Encourage others to share growth mindset strategies and success stories. Foster wider growth mindset habits within the organisation by encouraging other teams to swap growth mindset strategies, ideas, information and success stories. Make sure that your manager is kept in the loop of this growth mindset exercise.
- Emphasise perseverance. When your manager compliments you on the great results and outcomes that your team has achieved make sure you highlight the effort, hard work and perseverance that contributed to the team’s fantastic outcomes.
- Expose your manager to a growth mindset at every opportunity. Whenever you watch a video, read a great article, or hear of another business that is working towards becoming a growth mindset organisation, share the information with your manager and if you have time, summarise the contents to expose them to more and more growth mindset information. When your manager realises that so many other businesses see the benefits of a growth mindset, they may start to shift their position and approach.
- Maintain a growth mindset towards your manager. Finally, it may sound obvious, but maintain a growth mindset towards your fixed mindset manager! Just because they hold a predominantly fixed mindset towards their role it doesn’t mean that this will always be the case. There are plenty of examples of people who once approached their job, their education, their beliefs about intelligence (including Carol Dweck) or their relationships in a fixed mindset way, only to realise that they could improve their approach and their outcomes by adopting a growth mindset.
We love to talk about all things growth mindset at Positive Change Guru. Check out our forthcoming events or get in touch to find out more about our suite of courses and discuss bespoke growth mindset training for your organisation.
10 Positive Psychology Videos to Inspire Change
If you’ve been asking yourself recently “What is positive psychology?” or you’ve been trawling the internet seeking out You Tube or Ted Talks on positive psychology we’ve got you covered. In these fab videos from the world’s leading experts on positive psychology you’ll learn;
- a positive psychology definition
- Martin Seligman talking about flourishing
- The amazing Professor Carol Dweck talking all about Growth Mindset
- Barbara Fredrickson on the positivity ratio
- Dr Sonja Lyubomirsky discussing the science of happiness
- Rick Hanson talking about how to hardwire happiness
- Daniel Siegal on Mindsight and personal transformation
- Ed Diener cooking up a recipe for happiness
- Dan Gilbert on the surprising science of happiness
- Tal Ben Sahara leading you through his happiness 101
- And last but by no means least, one of our favourites, Matthieu Ricard on how to develop the habits of happiness
So whether you’re looking to for a positive psychology definition, or you’re interested in the history of positive psychology or maybe you want to develop positive self talk, learn authentic happiness, dabble in learned optimism or you want to develop an attitude of gratitude we’ve taken the best of positive psychology from you tube, Ted Talks, Harvard and more to get you started. Welcome to 10 Positive Psychology Videos to Inspire Change.
