Why does our mindset matter?

Have you ever had the experience where you see a word in your mind's eye that you've used hundreds of times, and all of a sudden it seems a bit strange? You look at it and think, hmm, this is an interesting new shiny word, what is it really all about? Well, that happened to me the other week when I was talking to a coach about the idea of fixed and growth mindsets.

What are mindsets?

The word mindset is really shorthand for what we might call our invisible scripts, that we run in our heads. In NLP, we might call them limiting beliefs. They are working assumptions that we make about the world, so that we don't have to make sense in every moment of the incredible amount of information that comes to us constantly through our senses. We simply can't process that much stuff consciously, so we have a shorthand.

Fixed and growth mindsets

The psychologist Carol Dweck looked into the idea of mindsets, and she identified two different types: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset.

If a person has a fixed mindset, they tend to think that they've got the intelligence they're born with, and there isn't much they can do about it, rather like your eye colour or your height. They'll say things like, "Well, it's just the way I am. I've always been like this. I'm not very good at X, Y and Z". This kind of mindset is usually not very accurate, and it can hold people back from learning new things, making an effort, and taking up the opportunities that are presented to them. Failure is only evidence of their flaws. They think that life is just the way it is, and there isn't much we can do about it.

On the other hand, if you have a growth mindset, you tend to believe that you are capable of learning new things, that you can learn how to do things and improve, you can make changes, and life is full of opportunities. Carol Dweck made the interesting comment that if you praise a child for how clever they are, this tends to produce a fixed mindset, whereas if you praise a child for the effort they've made, even if they haven't particularly succeeded well at what they were trying to do, this does instil in them confidence that if they try harder next time, they will actually succeed.

How it was for me

I speak as the recovering owner of a fixed mindset, which I feel was inculcated in me, paradoxically, by the excellent education I had at school, where exams and marks were important. I tended to do quite well in school, and yet I had a nagging feeling that there were things I couldn't do and that I couldn't ever know enough and become an expert in anything. 

In adult life, I felt I should really examine this and do something about it. So I took on a coaching session myself (coaches have coaches, too!) and I looked at what the evidence is in me for having a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. I asked myself, "Do I really have a fixed mindset? Do I expect not to improve or to change? Or do I just think this is the case?" My coach led me to be quite forensic about this. I realised that if I observe what goes on in myself, the way I am and how I do things, the evidence points far more to a growth mindset. 

For example, even though I went to university and passed all my exams, I completed my education by training as a nurse. I later went into the management of older people's homes, and whilst I didn't have a lot of hands-on work in that role, it went underground, and I never forgot it. And it came to the fore again when a member of our family had a really serious illness and required care. I knew what to do, and I did it.

I also noticed in discussion with my coach that one of my qualities is persistence – definitely an indicator of a growth mindset! I don't give up on things. I was going to say, I pushed through obstacles, but that sounds too, well, pushy! It's more a question of having faith that things will work out, and giving up doesn't really help.

What does a growth mindset look like?

My coach and I looked at what are the components of a growth mindset. We worked out together that it is things like:

• confidence that we can improve
• having a sense of agency, that we can do something and make a difference
• knowing that failure isn't in the vast majority of cases a disaster, nor a sign of personal flaws, rather, it's how we learn

The famous educator Geoff Petty said that one of the best ways for people to learn is by what he calls ‘corrected practice’. This is practising over and over, seeing where your mistakes are and then getting it right, for example, in learning a new language. In NLP, it is said, there is no failure, only feedback. Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb, tried about a thousand times before he found the right combination of metals. He didn't give up until he found a solution. 

Mistakes aren't necessarily punishable. An organisation that is open about mistakes, treating them as opportunities to learn, rather than covering them up, will do better. It’s not about expecting perfection, only progress. That progress is best measured against ourselves, not some other person whose life we only imagine inaccurately.

What does this mean for you?

So what does all this mean practically? Basically, although we do all face various constraints in our lives, where we were born, what our environment is like, and how tall we are, it is almost always possible to change something about our situation, be it ever so small. Often, it's the small things that have the most leverage. 

We can change our minds, we can change our scripts, we can do things differently. And that's what coaching’s all about. This is why coaches have coaches, too, because we know how effective and enlightening it can be.