'Mindset' is a book authored by Carol S. Dweck and it's a psychological examination of two different mindsets; the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Dweck discusses how these two come into play and how they affect our lives. The book goes into detail on how mindsets can be applied to all areas of life, from school, work, sports and leadership. This book is for individuals who want to get past their fixed mindset and change towards a growth mindset. It can also be applied to cultures of groups, organisations that want to thrive and produce emerging leaders.
Carol S. Dweck is a Professor of Psychology at Standford University and is one of the world's leading researchers in the field of motivation. Her research has focused on why people succeed and how to foster success. Her work has been featured in publications such as The New Yorker, The Washington Post and is the book Mindset is highly recommended by Bill Gates.
Summary & Key Learnings
The Mindsets
This is the opening chapter that introduces the foundational concept which is that of two mindsets.
Fixed mindset - is a mindset that accepts the idea of predetermined abilities, aptitudes, and talents that can only be proven or not. Fixed mindset leads to behaviour traits such as avoiding new challenges and being quick to give up when an individual fails. These people feel a great need to prove themselves as capable and worthy over and over again.
Growth mindset - is one that believes that traits like these are not fixed but can be cultivated, learned and changed. The growth mindset is persistent, tenacious, and views criticism constructively.
The defining characteristic of the growth mindset is a "passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it's not going well." People with growth mindsets don't have a passion for success or praise. They have a passion for learning.
It's possible to have contrasting mindsets, such as a fixed mindset about abilities and a growth mindset about personality, or vice versa. No matter what types of mindsets people have, Dweck assures they can be changed.
Tip – Your abilities, aptitudes and talents are not set in stone. Your individual traits are not fixed and can be cultivated, learned and changed. Be persistent, tenacious and view criticism as an opportunity to learn to improve.
Inside the Mindsets
In this chapter the premise is that both mindsets are choices that people make. These choices can affect every aspect of their lives.
Fixed Mindset
For example, those with a fixed mindset tend to only care about passing a test rather than whether they actually understood the knowledge that would help with future growth. Failure is viewed by a fixed mindset as a definition of how they are a failure as a person.
Those with fixed mindsets think their intelligence and abilities are preprogrammed. They have no interest in learning anything new because to do so would risk exposing deficiencies and possibly being perceived as dumb or talentless. To ensure they succeed, they engage only in "safe" activities and avoid challenges. They expect themselves to be flawless at all times.
People with fixed mindsets define themselves by their failures. Instead of using a failure as a learning experience, people with fixed mindsets typically blame others or compare their own failures to individuals who have done even worse. People with fixed mindsets have higher levels of depression than those with growth mindsets. They are more likely to let schoolwork, commitments, and relationships slide. Conversely, depressed people with growth mindsets work harder to ensure that their lives don't fall apart.
Growth Mindset
However, those with a growth mindset are more likely to to see failure as an opportunity to learn. They equate success with stretching themselves to learn more. They welcome challenging activities and situations. To them, a failure is when they aren't growing, learning, or pursuing a challenging goal.
To Note
Dweck tells readers mindsets can be changed and they can differ by area, such as art, sports, and intelligence. She also cautions that having the growth mindset does not necessarily mean someone will rise to the very top of their field. While that can happen, most people with growth mindsets simply "value what they're doing regardless of the outcome." They are happier and more fulfilled.
This chapter also serves up a chilling warning about aptitude tests. When a fixed mindset person fails on a single aptitude test, they very often view that failure as unchangeable for the rest of their lives. Thus potentially missing out on future opportunities.
Tip – You can choose what mindset to take on. View failure as an opportunity to learn.
The Truth about Ability and Accomplishment
This chapter focuses on how the two mindsets impact modes of thinking that lead to success and failure. The main theme in this chapter is how these mindsets can become traps that can set the stage for future success or failure.
Those with fixed mindsets become fearful of trying after failing and therefore putting that failure down to an inherent lacking on their part. This limits the possibility of new accomplishments but also created a protective veneer around existing ability so that they remain in flux. People with fixed mindsets have two goals: look smart and exert as little effort as possible. Dweck calls this 'low-effort syndrome'.
In contrast, those with a growth mindset are more open to untried challenges and are more willing to challenge the limits of proven talents and skills. Those with growth mindsets study to learn. They connect ideas across topics. People with fixed mindsets study just to do well on the test. They tend to focus on rote memorisation.
The chapter goes into detail about the "The Danger of Praise and Positive Labels". Dweck cautions against praising a person's talent to instill confidence. Instead, parents and other mentors should praise a child's effort, not their skills. Children who are praised only for their talents lose confidence if they fail and then do even worse next time. People with fixed mindsets don't just lose confidence and perform poorly after failure. They also tend to lie about their accomplishments to make themselves look good.
In the section "Negative Labels and How They Work," focuses on how stereotypes harm people with fixed mindsets. For example, minorities asked to identify their gender or race before taking a test may perform worse than they usually would if those questions had not been asked. The mere reminder of their identity and how others think about it diverts attention from the task at hand. Dweck says women are exceptionally susceptible to defining themselves by other people's opinions of them and their gender. She attributes it to the differences in how society treats children. Girls are praised for being perfect, attractive, and "good," while boys are scolded so often that criticism barely penetrates their consciousness after a while. Dweck lays out her beliefs regarding the gender gap in math and science. She believes responsibility lies in the combination of a societal fixed mindset, stereotypes of what women can and can't do, and women's trust in other people's assessments of them.
People with growth mindsets are also bothered when people in positions of authority— such as teachers and employers—accept stereotypes as fact. Instead of giving up or believing in the stereotypes, however, people with growth mindsets find support in others facing similar challenges. They push forward to "use and develop their minds fully."
Tip – Be open to untried challenges and be willing to challenge the limits of your already proven talents and skills. With children, students or people who you are mentoring avoid praising someone's talent, instead praise their effort.
Sports: The Mindset of a Champion
People with the growth mindset are actually motivated by setbacks. They use failure as a learning experience and inspiration to further develop their skills. People with fixed mindsets, on the other hand, don't deal with failure well. They see losing or not doing well as permanent personal labels, and therefore they avoid failure at all costs. Top athletes with growth mindsets continually learn and adjust their craft to deal with different challenges. Athletes with fixed mindsets, like McEnroe, are "always a victim of outside forces." Losing is seen as someone else's fault. People with fixed mindsets think of themselves as separate from the team. They rely solely on their own performance. People with growth mindsets see themselves as part of a larger whole. They do what is good for the team, not their own ego. Athletes with the growth mindset have the right idea. As Dweck says, "A superstar's talent can win games, but it's teamwork that wins championships."
Studies and research show that most successful athletes possess a growth mindset and that mindset contributes to performance in three distinct ways:
1 - Their expectation for success leads to placing greater emphasis on preparation than those with fixed mindsets.
2- They develop their ability to turn failure into motivation
3- Since they do not view future situations as predetermined, each new change to perform is attacked with a positive attitude and drive to win.
Tip – Put greater emphasis on preparation, turn failure into motivation, your future is not predetermined, try to maintain a positive attitude and drive to win.
Business: Mindset and Leadership
Great companies are led by people able to "look failures in the face" and still believe "they would succeed in the end." This is indicative of the growth mindset. The best negotiators have a growth mindset. Those with a growth mindset are also more likely to create agreements that have both parties' best interest in mind. People who work in companies with growth mindsets trust their employer and feel a strong sense of "empowerment, ownership, and commitment." Researchers discovered that group members who all had growth mindsets were willing to share their ideas and opinions honestly and openly.
Those who work in fixed-mindset companies report secretive, cutthroat environments. People who had fixed mindsets were too worried about being judged to have productive discussions. They veered more toward groupthink. "Groupthink versus We Think," groupthink is a phenomenon that finds group members conforming to group values. As Dweck says, "everyone in a group starts thinking alike." Nobody disagrees with the leader. Groupthink also happens when people are afraid of retribution for disagreeing with a leader.
Most lackluster companies are led by someone with a "gargantuan personal ego." Because these leaders prefer to be the center of attention and praise, they don't surround themselves with good managers or people willing to honestly critique their ideas. They don't learn from their mistakes, so they keep making them over and over again.
Dweck says leaders with fixed mindsets are terrible bosses. They don't listen to others, and they go out of their way to make subordinates feel bad. Instead of trying to make good products or services, employees are concerned only about pleasing the boss. The whole company takes on a fixed mindset, which makes it "hard for courage and innovation to survive."
Having a fixed mindset can actually lead to success but that success comes with the mindset that the world can be divided into superior and inferior people. Since those individuals have become successful this leads them to believe they are superior and their business model becomes one in which preserving that reputation often trumps everything else. This leadership style is responsible for those corporations where both great success and great failure have resulted from a rigidly bureaucratic structure.
Tip – Businesses with the fixed mindset can lead to great failure resulting from a rigidly bureaucratic structure. Fixed mindset companies are secretive, cutthroat and veered more toward groupthink. This type of working environment does not foster courage and innovation.
Relationships: Mindsets in Love (or not)
This chapter explains how the mindset plans a role in romantic and platonic relationships. In many cases, people with a fixed mindset have a thirst for revenge when a relationship ends. When something goes wrong in a relationship, people with fixed mindsets blame their partner out of a desire to protect their own ego and perfect self-image.
In contrast, people with growth mindsets do not place the blame wholly on the other person, nor do they obsess over their own failings. In a relationship where both partners have a growth mindset, no partner is assigned full blame in a dispute. Both parties can work together to solve the conflict. Growth mindset allows romantic partners to develop "an atmosphere of trust" within the relationship. They gently push their partners to reach goals.
The traits of individuals with fixed mindsets may cause problems in regards to a partner's or relationship's abilities to change.
- The first issue is that people with a fixed mindset generally don't think good relationships take work. The think partners should inherently know that other's needs and wants and that partners should agree on everything.
- The second problem is that those with fixed mindsets view relationship conflicts as the result of "character flaws". The main tenet of the fixed mindset is that personality traits cannot be changed. By that logic, character flaws are permanent and conflicts cannot be solved. This leads to resentment and anger for the conflicted party.
In friendships, people with fixed mindsets may not make great friends because of their innate desire to prove themselves superior, they often take pleasure in other's misfortune and are unsupportive when others succeed. The best measure of friendship is not necessarily who is supportive in a person's time of need, but who is supportive when things are going well.
Tip – Work together to solve conflict, develop an atmosphere of trust and gently push each other to reach goals. The best measure of friendship is who is supportive when things are going well.
Parents, Teachers, and Coaches: Where do Mindsets come from?
This chapter focuses on people who contribute to the creation of the two mindsets in others even if done unwittingly, unknowingly and without intent. Special attention is give to the way that teachers can actually foster a fixed mindset even when the intent is simply to give praise. Constant repetition of praise from teachers and parents can produce results associated to the fixed mindset by creating in the child's mind the idea that things that's aren't picked up fast is an indication of lack of skill. This reinforced the fixed mindset habits and leads to shying away from learning new things. Mistakes should not be addressed with judgement of failure but instead and environment should be fostered where failure is seen as another opportunity to learn something new.
Tip – Constant repetition of praise can foster a fixed mindset. Foster an environment where failure is seen as an opportunity to improve.
Changing Mindsets
This chapter concludes the book and becomes a workshop in steps to change a fixed mindset into a growth mindset. The first step is to educate people about the theory. The next step becomes cognitive therapy whereby people are stimulated to change negative behaviour and habits by becoming more actively aware of them. This self awareness leads to the realisation of the extent to which their behaviour produces judgements of themselves. This then leads to the important step of learning how to transform that judgement of worth into viewing failure as an opportunity to learn and improve.
Tip – Embrace having a fixed mindset, be aware of what triggers a fixed mindset, acknowledge its fears and make a plan to move forward.
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