You Need A Growth Mindset!

How a simple dichotomy can do more harm than good.

We are told on every (digital) street corner that we need a Growth Mindset. Whether we like it or not! All subtlety is out the window when it comes to mindset. You don’t want to be found dead labeled “fixed mindset”. But is it really that bad to have a fixed mindset?

In 2006, Carol Dweck (1946) published her now famous book, “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success”. Her work on the attitude or belief of people towards the innateness or malleability of intelligence and other traits has caused quite a stir in the business world. Dweck maintains that people can roughly be divided into two groups, one with what she calls a fixed mindset, and one with a growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset mostly believe that we are born with certain abilities and that these stay basically the same throughout our lives. People with a growth mindset mostly believe that we can grow our intelligence and other traits by working hard, learning, and training. She makes a point of fixed mindset people having a strong dislike of failure and growth mindset people enjoying failure as a chance to learn and grow. In the eyes of Dweck, a growth mindset is highly favorable over a fixed mindset.

You might recognize this idea from the lean and Agile world, where the positive approach towards…