What is Growth Mindset?
I produce Afterglow with Tre Cabrera, a monthly podcast community that explores the significance of owning a tapestry of values to create stories that ignite unity and spark change. My growth mindset allowed me to step forward and start that journey.
Everyone has a voice; everyone has something to contribute. Everyone has something to add to the conversation. I am fostering this mindset, developing this mindset, evolving this mindset that I have a voice and can add substance and perspective to a variety of spaces and platforms.
Using your voice is a courageous act. It takes empowerment and self-love and determination and other values that make us who we are. Those things work together to build momentum around different tables. Owning that reality – for me - sparked change to navigate a new journey and share my voice with you – as a host!
As a speaker, founder, entrepreneur, and strategist - I inspire people to dream big. I help social impact leaders revolutionize their influence in organizational culture-building. People need tools to make good decisions; and when we’re thinking about leaders making decisions that directly impact their people and organization, understanding the interplay between growth mindset and the larger system – to build a strong and healthy culture – is critical. Leaders and organizations must possess this perspective.
Harvard Business School teaches us that, “Someone with a growth mindset views intelligence, abilities, and talents as learnable and capable of improvement through effort. On the other hand, someone with a fixed mindset views those same traits as inherently stable and unchangeable over time.”
This is true for an athlete trying out for a major league team, a child learning to balance and eventually walk, a social impact leader building a new team for the next phase of product development, and a teenager learning to drive a car for the first time. Growth mindset applies to life in the broadest sense of the word. We can find examples of applying skills to learn new things every day.
There are two mindsets, according to Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., a renowned scholar who studies human motivation. It is important to understand each mindset; and I understand growth mindset as playing a major role in success. Can I activate my intelligence to learn new things? Growth mindset is a cornerstone and underpinning of my life, my career, my relationships, the work that I do with clients, the work that I do with consulting partners, the work that I do with other stakeholders.
When I'm deciding on a project, accepting an engagement - I exercise growth mindset and self-advocacy. Can I learn and be successful along this journey? While I certainly cannot always answer that immediately, calculated risks are part of life. But I will always assess the conditions enough to understand the favorability of my being successful, with countless factors working cooperatively.
What do I need to be successful in this space? What is going to really drive me to be successful in this space? First, success is not the goal; success is a byproduct. Success happens when factors come together and work together in a way that starts to produce the outcome that is most desirable.
When you can see the system and understand the interplay between it and your leadership, then you can articulate how you as the leader can influence organizational culture-building. Leaders must know who they are to be able to lead with impact, and organizations must invest in their leaders to prepare them for this journey. Leaders need tools, resources, and continuous learning that will anchor their influence, ignite unity, and spark change.
