Episode 36 - Developing a Growth Mindset
Lou Quinto:
Hi, welcome to Q&A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Lou Quinto.
Craig Anderson:
And I'm Craig Anderson.
Lou Quinto
Our topic that we're going to cover today, really is part of the times that we're talking about, and it's called developing a growth mindset. We're going through lots of change right now, and when we go through change, one of the things that we have to do is we have to not only in ourselves, as a leader, but with the people that we work with, we have to begin to develop a growth mindset. Now, the growth mindset is different from the other side of the coin, which is a fixed mindset. A fixed mindset tells an individual that this is the skills that they were born with and this is how far that they can go, and they just hit a wall, or that's the way we've always done things.
Lou Quinto:
Where a growth mindset, on the other hand, is one that is open to new ideas, exploring new opportunities for learning, being able to take feedback very well. And so what we're going to do is we're going to take and talk about developing a growth mindset. And a lot of this is based on the studies of a professor at the Stanford University. Her name is Carol Dweck, and she did a whole bunch of studies with school children on growth mindset. There are a few of the things that she found was that you can motivate and learn and improve people more with feedback. She also said that the ability to change and to adapt to skills and behaviors and attitudes can be a lot faster when you have that growth mindset. So in order to cover this particular topic and to take a little bit of a deep dive, we're going to cover three areas.
Lou Quinto:
The first area is, how do we cultivate a growth mindset? The second area that we're going to cover is, providing formative feedback. And Craig, the key word here is formative feedback, not just feedback. And the last area that we're going to talk about is creating space for new ideas. So Craig, why don't you kick it off, using a little bit of the experience that you have with coaching executives, who obviously when a client comes to you, that hopefully they have that growth mindset in mind, because they want to be able to develop themselves and learn new skills and improve themselves. So talk to me about how you cultivate a growth mindset.
Craig Anderson:
Yeah. I think cultivating a growth mindset, it's a tricky place to be. You need to be open to ideas. One of the things that I always, when I was leading the national sales team at Chase was, [inaudible 00:02:39] salespeople in front of the room and we could be up there pronouncing all the right ways to do things and, "Use this tactic to do this," but one of the things I really started to focus on is eliciting from the group, what are the things that are working for you? So we turned it around, so we're not the prescriptive people telling you what to do. We're actually pulling from the staff. Help us what the best ideas are out there, which I think helps them to think they're actually a part of the process and helps them to be part of the growth for the organization.
Craig Anderson:
And then, as that starts to go... And I think the other piece of that, that's important is, as you alluded to at the beginning, things can move pretty fast. So if you're kind of sitting at the top of the organization, pronouncing all kinds of things, when your frontline people are the ones who are seeing things changing, getting the ideas from them and encouraging them to be part of your process of improving and your process of getting better every day at what you're doing, actually does encourage them to have the growth mindset and actually makes your organization a lot more well-placed to take advantage of market changes and market trends.
Lou Quinto:
Right. And we're going through lots of market changes and market trends these days, and we're going at it at a fast rate. One of the things in cultivating a growth mindset, using a lot of my background in the over the last 30 years, is education. And developing that growth mindset, as far as instilling that into your team, one of the things I always tell people, it's so important that you place as much emphasis on development goals as you do productivity goals, when it comes time for those annual or quarterly reviews, or whenever you may sit down with an employee.
Lou Quinto:
And when I'm talking about education, I'm not just talking about classroom and online education, although that's good, I'm also talking about on the job type training, where you're putting people in charge of a situation they may never have been put in charge for, and they may not have the mental fortitude that, "Oh, I can do this," but, you know based upon their skills and talents, that you need to push them out a little bit, to get them to explore the abilities that they do have.
Lou Quinto:
As part of cultivating that growth mindset, one of the things is you've got to spend as much time prioritizing those development goals as well as the productivity goals. And once you do that, you're showing your employees that you are really focusing in on them developing as an individual, as an employee, to be able to expand and grow and to try new things. So it's almost like we all have learning curves. Beginning of a task, we're down at the bottom of the learning curve. And as we learn, we go up the learning curve, but many people plateau at a certain level.
Lou Quinto:
And it's at that point that you need to come in as a manager or as a leader, and really kick people in the tail by getting them to develop a new learning curve, by giving them new challenges, as opposed to having people stuck in the same, what they may believe, the same rut in the same job that they've done for the last 10 or 15 years, where I can do it with my eyes closed. And you've got to push people out to experience those new things. So I truly believe part of cultivating that mindset has a lot to do with growth as far as development skills.
Craig Anderson:
Yeah. And I think I can think of a great example back at my last business, [inaudible 00:06:04] a call center business and they were taking a lot of inbound calls. We had a few people in there that I kept my eye on, who really showed the ability to do a lot more. And as we were building out kind of an outbound sales call center, I remember the conversation I had with a guy. I said, "Are you applying for one of those jobs?" He's like, "No, why would I apply for one of those jobs? I'm not good enough to do that job."
Craig Anderson:
I said, "You'd be great at that job." I think he obviously didn't have that growth mindset to see what his possibilities were, but I think it's incumbent upon us as leaders and managers to say, here's what I see in you, and help, Lou, as you said before, push them down the road a little further than they're willing to go. He went in there and did a great job. And so it's really seeing the possibilities and, if they don't see it in themselves, how can you help them see it as a leader?
Lou Quinto:
Right. And part of that, going into the next topic that we're going to talk about is when you do push them down the road, you need to provide them formative feedback. And that means you just can't push them down the road and then stand at the end of the road and watch them go and go, "Okay, bye." You've got to be there with them, coaching, giving them good formative feedback. And that means recognizing things that people are doing, particularly that they're doing well, so that you can build that confidence in them that they may not have had at the very beginning, because they're trying something new.
Lou Quinto:
But through that formative feedback, being able to get them to acknowledge or what I like to refer to become consciously competent, as opposed to unconsciously competent, and then when they do make a mistake, part of your formative feedback is not to push them down and go, "Oh, well, you did that wrong." It's, "Okay. Let's sit back. Let's take a look at what happened." Do a good debrief and get them to acknowledge those things that they could have done better to be able to do that. And that's part of that formative feedback. I know when you coach as well as when I coach, that's what we do a lot of. We do a lot of formative feedback, not just feedback based upon the goal, but it's based upon the work that people have done to try to get to that goal.
Craig Anderson:
Right. And I think that's actually, as I've kind of shifted my role to coaching, that's probably the most rewarding thing you have in a coaching experience, is when you see them kind of break through that wall and see the light on the other side to see, "Oh, wow. I didn't even see that possibility. All I saw was a wall." And when you can help them see what's beyond it, that becomes a great opportunity. Something you mentioned before about annual or quarterly review process, reviews as they stand are just terrible processes in so many organizations.
Craig Anderson:
Quarterly at least helps you get a little more focused on these kinds of topics. But really, this is something that's kind of an ongoing feedback you need to be taking with your team all the time, right? It's every week, whether it's on a one on one or just a casual encounter, or an intentional outreach, it's getting in front of people, letting them know where you see them kind of make the mistake or where you see them executing well, and either helping them course correct, or helping them, say, do more of that because that's where you're really headed in the right direction.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah. And we've talked about that in previous episodes about not dropping... I think you used the term dropping Scud missiles that are at the wrong time when no one was prepared for it. But the more recent events that you can give formative feedback on, the better it is. It's almost the difference between a coach who stands on the sideline like this and watches everything develop, and then at the end of the game, tells everybody how they could have done it better. No good coach does that.
Lou Quinto:
Every good coach is running up and down the sideline, and every play they're giving formative feedback. "You needed to look at the receiver on the other side. That's why he got past you. You needed to look at the defense in the formation." When that player comes off on the sideline, that's when they're given that formative feedback. In order to develop that growth mindset, that's the way, as a leader, we need to provide formative feedback to develop that growth mindset that we're talking about here, which leads us into the next part, creating space for new ideas.
Lou Quinto:
One of the things that leaders make a big mistake on is that they don't take the input and advice from the people that are on the front lines. They believe, most leaders, "I've got the idea," or, "I've got the solution in my head," and they plow ahead. You know as well as I do, Craig, that in many instances, when you are the leader, you aren't in the weeds to really see what those issues are that people are dealing with on a daily basis. And particularly in these times that we're going through right now, where everything is changing so fast, it's almost impossible for a leader to know everything that's going on.
Lou Quinto:
And so the leader needs to provide that space for creativity on... "Okay, this is going on right now, this is our product. This is our service. How can we develop it more conveniently, more efficiently, more effectively, more economically?" And get the input from those people who are on the front lines. You'll find that many people, when you start taking those suggestions of theirs, it develops that growth mindset, because they're seeing that they are actually part of the solution and not just preventing or trying to hold back the problem that's going on.
Craig Anderson:
Right. I think it's one of the things that not many people realize is, they're kind of looking up to say, "I want to be a leader someday." And I think that's what sets apart great leaders is that ability to check your ego at the door. The less you make it all about you, and the more you make it about, "My job is to kind of set a vision and my job is to bring the people along to help get to that vision and help those people grow." The leader who just thinks they have all the answers is doomed to fail, and the leader who can actually pull from their team is who is really going to succeed and see their whole business grow as long-term, because now you've got a group of people behind you who are comfortable with ideas.
Craig Anderson:
I was actually listening to something the other day where she said her audience is all corporate people. And she says, corporate people don't like to ask questions. Corporations don't encourage people to ask questions cause you don't want to look stupid. So how do you create that environment for this kind of mindset growth by making sure people feel like they don't look stupid. But people say, "Oh, there's no stupid questions." There's actually a lot of stupid question, but you need to encourage...
Lou Quinto:
Two questions. Two questions that are never stupid, though, are how and why.
Craig Anderson:
Right.
Lou Quinto:
No matter where you ask those questions, those are not stupid questions. But as you just said, many people don't ask how or why questions because they have that ego that they believe people believe that they should have the answer to those questions.
Craig Anderson:
Right.
Lou Quinto:
And so we don't ask enough of the how and the why. And when you ask the how and the why, it really starts to develop that growth mindset, not only in you, but in the individual that you're asking that question of.
Craig Anderson:
Absolutely. Yeah, no, you're dead on. And I think that's really where, like with so many things we talk about, it starts with the leader. The leader sets the tone and the growth mindset organization is going to start from the leader and work its way through the organization. That's a real tough rock to shove up Hill. But if the leader's there, you can get there a lot faster.
Lou Quinto:
Okay. So what are your key takeaways from today?
Craig Anderson:
Well, I think my key takeaways today are kind of this ongoing shift that we always talk about, Lou, in leadership, right? Kind of these moves towards servant leadership or just this idea, this kind of autocratic leadership style that some people are still holding on to desperately with their claws, is not what is going to move companies forward in the future. And you can get a lot more out of people when you do things like encourage growth mindset. So I think really, this whole topic speaks to the evolution of leadership and where we really need to see leaders move to, and quit moving away from, or at least stopping from being dragged into.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah. And obviously any leader, following up on what you just said, any leader that develops a growth mindset within their people and lets them know that, that's what they want, then they are going to have more productive and more efficient and effective teams. My key takeaway on all of this is, going back to the priority on productivity goals versus development goals, and I truly believe that to instill, to give an example, to be visible to your people, that you want them to have that growth mindset and not just come in and plow through things the way that they normally did and just get their job done, because that's what you're going to evaluate them on at the end of the year, on a quarterly review of some sort.
Lou Quinto:
It's really putting emphasis on that development goal, because in many instances, and you know as well as I do, a lot of those development goals are sometimes just check marks in a box. You know, "Did you take XYZ training?"
Lou Quinto:
"Yes I did." Okay. Boom. Good. All right. And then they move on from there, but it's not just going through the training. It's cultivating that training and getting them to implement it with the followup, and sticking with them and saying, "Okay, what did you learn? How can we use this? How can you use this in order to accomplish our task, to make sure that we're being productive and we're meeting our deadlines and meeting our goals?" So those development goals really need to have more of a high priority than they just check the box. "I went to diversity training. I went to critical thinking training."
Lou Quinto:
Okay, good. All right, fine. Now, "How are you doing on this? How's this project coming? Where are we on that?" That's usually what it turns into. Leaders really need to focus more on those development goals, as much as they do on the productivity goals, and to continue to give that formative feedback that goes throughout.
Craig Anderson:
Absolutely.
Lou Quinto:
All right.
Craig Anderson:
Great. This is a good episode. I think if you pulled something out of this episode that you think was value to you, please like it. If you know somebody who'd benefit from it, make sure you send it to them and share it with them. And if you found that this is helpful for you and maybe some of the folks you work with, we'd appreciate you subscribing. You can subscribe to us on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook. You can even go out to QAleadership.com, our website, and check out all our past videos there as well as Q&A Breakthrough Leadership is now available on all your favorite podcasting platforms.
Craig Anderson:
So if you prefer the audio, now that a lot of us are starting to maybe go back to work and getting out in our cars a little more...
Lou Quinto:
Or exercising again.
Craig Anderson:
Or exercising again, and you'd rather listen to the podcast, you can find us on all your favorite platforms. So until next time, I'm Craig Anderson.
Lou Quinto:
And always keep your hands washed and keep your distance. I'm Lou Quinto.