Category: Workplace Investigations

The ‘growth mindset’ all workers need to cultivate

By Joanna York (Source BBC ) 31st October 2022

Bosses have long said workers need a growth mindset. Now, this skill is more important than ever – and it’s possible to master it.

Among daily changes within the world of work, there’s never been a better time for employees to cultivate skills to help them better manage workplace challenges. This is where the idea of the ‘growth mindset’ comes roaring in – the belief that workers are capable of actively improving their abilities, rather than being innately able or unable to complete certain tasks.

Yet, this ‘can do’ mindset can be more difficult to harness than it seems. Doing so means getting comfortable with embracing hurdles, learning from criticism and persisting when things get difficult.

Even if we believe that such tenacity is worth developing, in practise, doubts and fears can dominate. “We’re wired to believe our emotions,” says Elaine Elliott-Moskwa, psychologist and author of The Growth Mindset Workbook, based in Princeton, New Jersey, US. “When a person says ‘I feel I’m not good enough’, that feeling is very powerful, even though that is a belief about their abilities.”

At the heart of the growth mindset is learning to overcome such feelings of inability or inadequacy in the face of obstacles, and instead recognise an opportunity to learn. And there can be profound benefits to cultivating this approach. Employees with a growth mindset can tap into a useful skillset to manage stress, build supportive relationships with colleagues, cope with failure and develop attributes to help further their careers.

What is growth mindset?

Growth mindset first emerged in 1988 as a theory relating to education. “It had to do with why smart kids fail in the face of difficulty despite their actual abilities,” says Elliott-Moskwa. The idea was that the students’ attitude towards taking on a challenge, rather than their innate ability, was a key determiner for success. In other words, our ideas about how able we are to do something can have a significant impact on the outcome of a task.

Approaching a challenge with a growth mindset over a fixed mindset is a choice anyone can take

Stanford professor and psychologist Carol Dweck narrowed this concept down to two approaches that can determine results: ‘fixed mindset’ and ‘growth mindset’. “Fixed mindset is the idea that your abilities are high or low, and there’s not too much you can do to change it,” says Elliott-Moskwa, “whereas the growth mindset is the view that your abilities are malleable or changeable.”

While some people may naturally lean more one way than the other, people don’t outright have either a fixed or growth mindset to all problems, full stop – instead, approaching a challenge with a growth mindset over a fixed mindset is a choice anyone can take.

For many people, though, moments of difficulty often spur fixed mindsets. For example, says Elliott-Moskwa, when people take in criticism from a boss, or struggle with a new task, they might feel a sense of inadequacy. In these situations, a fixed-mindset response might be “I’m not good enough”, or “I can’t do it”, she says.

By contrast, a growth mindset approach takes a different tack on the same situation. People with growth mindsets don’t interpret such moments as personal failings, but instead recognise a need to improve. Crucially, people working with a growth mindset believe they are capable of such improvement, and are able to break down challenges into achievable steps.

This means getting out of the comfort zone and accepting a certain level of risk, uncertainty and the potential for failure that comes with trying something new. “It feels a little bit uncomfortable, and also a little bit exciting,” says Isabella Venour, a London-based mindset coach, who helps professionals understand the role their beliefs, values and patterns of thinking play in the workplace. “You’ve got a bit of risk that it might go wrong, but you’ve also got the potential to learn something and to grow as an individual.”

 

A growth mindset means believing you can actively improve your abilities, rather than simply being ‘bad’ at some tasks.

Why is growth mindset important in the workplace right now?

A can-do approach is always a plus in the workplace – it demonstrates that workers are adaptable and willing to evolve within their jobs and organisations. But fostering a growth mindset plays an important role in helping workers navigate turbulence as well as improve resilience as they feel more confident and capable handling difficulties.

This is essential at a time when many employees are struggling with wellbeing in the wake of the pandemic. Gallup’s 2022 State of the Workforce Report showed that stress among global workers has risen consistently since the pandemic began in 2020. A similar global survey by the Wellbeing Project showed that in 2022 resilience is particularly low,  and the risk of burnout remains, especially among non-managers. “People are being pulled in all directions and stretched thin as pressures of work and life are spilling into one another,” says Venour. “Business leaders are noticing that their employees are struggling to cope with everyday challenges.”

Growth mindset not only provides a framework for dealing with challenges, but a way to break those challenges down in to manageable steps. “Often, if we’re feeling pressure when we’re not in a growth mindset, we tend to focus on what we can’t control,” says Venour. “It’s a lot more useful to focus on what we can influence.” This starts with workers identifying personal strengths that they can utilise, then making a plan to improve areas of weakness.

Taking a pragmatic approach can help cut through overwhelm and also help workers lay down boundaries – something many remote workers are struggling to do. For example, “if your boss gives you a task that you feel is unrealistic, it’s easier to say you’re not sure about the timing or you need an extra meeting to give you more clarity”, says Venour. “Because you are confident in your abilities and you don’t see weaknesses as something to beat yourself up about it. You’re able to say, I need some support here.”

[A growth mindset] encourages people to focus on feedback rather than failure – Isabella Venour

It is possible to practice growth mindset individually, but if a business encourages the whole workforce to adopt a growth mindset, the results can be even more powerful. “It encourages people to focus on feedback rather than failure,” says Venour. This can help motivate employees to tackle challenging projects, and create an in-built culture of learning. Studies suggest this is something that workers overwhelmingly want: in a 2022 McKinsey & Company study, 41% of workers said the foremost reason they would quit a job is lack of career development and advancement.

How can you improve growth mindset? 

The first step towards encouraging a growth mindset is personal awareness: the ability to identify fixed-mindset thinking when it occurs, which often manifests as feelings of discomfort or inadequacy in the face of a challenge.

First, Elliott-Moskwa advises recognising and accepting such feelings – instead of beating yourself up about them. “Then, mindfully make another choice to take an action step in keeping with what you would be doing if you had growth mindset – the belief that you could increase your abilities,” she says.

To help clients approach obstacles with a growth mindset, Venour often breaks down challenges that feel overwhelming into smaller pieces. For example, if a worker feels unable to give a presentation in front of colleagues, “how much of that is emotional and how much of that is factual?”, she asks. “Can they talk? Yes. Have they spoken in front of more than one person before? Yes. Have they done presentation slides before? Yes. So, if there are elements that they can do, [what] is the bit that they’re not comfortable with?”

Narrowing down an overwhelming challenge to a specific point of difficulty helps workers focus, and reduces the element of learning required to an achievable level.

Often, the learning itself requires asking for help. One of the key concepts of growth mindset is seeing others as inspiration rather than competition, an approach that can help foster collaborative teams. “If workers view others as resources and not as competitors, they’re open to sharing other people’s skills and abilities and learning from fellow employees,” says Elliott-Moskwa.

Over time, recognising fixed mindset and practicing a growth mindset can become easier, and the prospect of taking on challenges less daunting. “Growth mindset is an empowering attitude,” says Venour. “You can really develop and grow over time as a person.”

 

 

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Are Shadows stopping your organisation reaching it’s goals?

  • We can all be a jerk sometimes, but the key is to understand how and why you and others get triggered into negative or Shadow Behaviour.
  • Imagine how much more effective and productive your organisation could be if your managers did not have to address Shadow Behaviour.
  • Research has identified that managers spend 42% of their time addressing Shadow Behaviour each day. Shadow Behaviour not only costs time but is a large drain on the bottom line as it usually spreads. 50% of people voluntarily leave their job because of Shadow Behaviour in their boss.
  • A disengaged employee (in Shadow-self) will damage relationships, erode communication, destroy morale and undermine the culture.

USING PRINT TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE AND BUILD A HIGH PERFORMANCE CULTURE?

PRINT® is a unique profiling and development tool that helps improve individual behaviour and whole team performance, as well as create sustainable change to build the organisational culture. PRINT® helps us understand why we do things, rather than just labelling our behaviour. It goes much deeper to expose personal drivers and motivators to identify and understand our “Best Self” – when we are positive, productive and behaving and performing at our optimum level and “Shadow” behaviours -the negative behaviour that we engage in once Triggered. It explores individual Triggers that push us into our Shadow selves, and it gets to the root cause of persistent behavioural issues that reduce team and organisational effectiveness.

PRINT® delivers proven and measurable improvements for organisations.

PRINT® was developed and designed in the US, and has been utilised successfully by major corporations there for more than 15 years.
WHY USE PRINT?

  • To support personal transformation through greater self-awareness and strategies to change.
  • To build high performance teams, through a greater understanding of the motivations of others and a language to heighten awareness and power constructive change.
  • To select exceptional talent.
  • To create an engaged workforce.
  • To provide a platform for sustainable change to build the organisational culture.

INTERESTED IN FINDING MORE ABOUT PRINT®?

Call us on (08) 93226633.

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Making hard “people” decisions and giving honest feedback – is essential for business and team/individual growth. We need to be reminded!

Kerry Neill

MD at The Futures Group | PRINT Coach| Change Management/Organisational Dev | Strategic HR

Letting Good People Go When It’s Time

PAT WADORS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pat Wadors is the senior vice president of global talent organization at LinkedIn.

Let’s say you’re a manager in a company that’s scaling up or gearing up for some other kind of transformation. Your biggest job right now is to lead your team through it all and help everyone adapt. You soon realize that some people are well-suited to the changes that must be made, but some aren’t — and you’ll have to let several good employees go.

Sound familiar? It’s happened to me — many times. This is especially common in high tech, where the market is constantly evolving. But really, all companies need different kinds of talent at different points in their life cycles. In order to grow, they may have to part ways with collegial, talented employees who just aren’t the right fit anymore.

Like frogs in hot water, people often don’t know how much they are struggling until it’s too late. But as their manager, here’s how you can help ease their transition out of your organization and into something new.

Don’t wait until the end to say what’s been working and what hasn’t. Give everyone on your team honest feedback along the way — and get feedback about people from key partners inside the company to calibrate your thinking. When you have criticism, start by thanking people for their work and contributions, and highlighting what you do like. That makes it easier for them to absorb what you’re saying and to ask probing questions when you point to areas for further development. And ask them questions: Do they see the gaps that you see? What are they experiencing? Get them discussing stretch areas in a constructive way, so they won’t just shut down. You can give tough messages while being respectful and compassionate. At the end, thank them again for their hard work. Hearing that they have real gaps, and that you see them, will be difficult enough. You don’t want them to walk away demoralized while there’s still a chance to help them adapt.

If employees continue to struggle, ask them how they feel about their progress. If you set the right tone, folks will open up and express their fears and frustrations. No one wants to fail. Seek to understand how people have evolved in their roles and what gets them motivated. It may be that you haven’t tapped their full potential yet because you haven’t provided the right kind of support or meaningful incentives.

Offset your positional power by going for walks with employees instead of having formal sit-down meetings, or try finding a location with more balanced seating than your office. You want to figure out if they see themselves clearly and get them to share what motivates them. Show you care. Be authentic. They will sense that and relax.

Once you’ve decided that some people aren’t the right fit for the long term, tell them. That doesn’t mean you fire them on the spot, but give people as much time as you can to sort out where they are headed next. If there’s a specific performance issue, many companies use a 60- or 90-day performance improvement plan that outlines what success looks like, how the manager can assist the employee, and what milestones must be hit. (But this should be reserved for problems that can actually be solved in two or three months. And it should come after you’ve had many conversations about development, so no one is in the position of having to acquire brand-new skills with very little warning.) If the employee is successful on the plan, she remains employed. If not, it’s time to part ways.

Keep this conversation as constructive as possible, and help people focus on the future. Talk about what works for them. What are their strengths? Where do they get their joy? Help them be more self-aware while not crushing their confidence. It’s not the time to point out every flaw. You are preparing them for their next play.

Encourage them look outside themselves, too — they’ll need to scan the horizon for their next gig. What stage companies should they explore? In what kinds of organizations are they likely to do their best work? Where will they be happiest? Ask these sorts of questions as prompts, and provide guidance where you can. Remember, they are leaving your company with a foundation of skills and successes. They just weren’t a fit for the stage the company is in and where it’s going.

Allow them to exit with grace. Partner with HR to learn best practices. In most cases the employee still adds value, so it benefits both the person and the company to offer a few weeks of transition time at the end. Severance packages extend that grace period, of course — they’re pretty common protocol. When doing several job reductions, organizations often provide outplacement services as well to get people engaged with their new job search. Anything you can do to help them land on their feet will further increase the team’s trust in you as a leader and enhance the company’s overall talent brand.

Don’t forget the survivors. When explaining layoffs or the termination of a peer to the team members who are staying on, be clear about what’s happened. Sending mixed signals will make the rest of the team jumpy — and it’s essential to maintain their trust, especially in a time of transition. For instance, if you know that you’ll be appointing an interim leader or that you may have to make future cuts, say so. Don’t promise a future of stability if you can’t deliver it. Be honest. Also spell out what success looks like going forward so people don’t have to guess. If the ability to scale is key, what does that look like for your team?

It’s never easy to let an employee go. However, once you have made your decision, your goal is to treat employees beautifully — those who are leaving and those who are staying. It’s best for them, and it’s best for the company.

LETTING GOOD PEOPLE GO WHEN IT’S TIME | PAT WADORS

In most cases the employee still adds value, so it benefits both the person and the company to offer a few weeks of transition time at the end

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The psychology behind better workplace feedback (15 surprising facts)

1. There’s no such thing as valuable feedback from someone you don’t trust

When receiving feedback, employees don’t separate the content of feedback from the person delivering it. In other words, there’s no such thing as valuable feedback from someone that you don’t trust.

Before any feedback will be effective, the recipient must see you as a credible source of development advice. Critically, the person you’re giving feedback to must believe you have their interests at heart. If not, your feedback won’t be effective in driving behavioral change – no matter how well-intentioned.

Read more: American Psychological Association

2. Struggling employees already realise that they have a problem

It’s easy to think that the role of negative feedback is to educate your employees on issues that haven’t come to their attention. But most of the time, that’s just not the case. In a study of nearly 4000 people who had just received constructive feedback, 74% of respondents indicated that they already knew about the problem and were not surprised to get negative feedback.

Most often, it’s not that employees aren’t aware of the issue – it’s that they don’t know how to respond. So just pointing out that they have a problem isn’t enough to be helpful. To improve performance, constructive feedback must go one step further and provide specific feedback around potential causes and solutions.

Read more: Harvard Business Review

3. The more you listen, the better employees think you are at giving feedback

If you want to give great feedback, the most important thing you can do is listen.

This is somewhat counter-intuitive: Many people typically about the feedback conversation as an almost one-way discussion where the manager provides advice and guidance.

But as the data shows (see below), more time spent listening has a strong payoff. The more you listen to employee views before giving feedback, the better the employee experiences and understands the feedback. It’s all about making sure employees understand and agree with the basis of the feedback, and buy into the course of action.

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Read more: Harvard Business Review

4. Most employees prefer corrective feedback to praise and recognition

A majority of employees prefer corrective feedback to praise and recognition. In this survey of 900 global employees, 57% of respondents stated that they prefer corrective (negative/constructive) feedback, whilst only 43% stated that they prefer praise or recognition.

Read more: Harvard Business Review

5. The more confident you are, the more likely it is you prefer negative feedback

Interestingly, the more confident you are, the more likely it is that you prefer corrective feedback. As clearly shown in the graphic below, confident individuals are more likely to prefer corrective feedback relative to positive praise or recognition.

No alt text provided for this image

Read more: Harvard Business Review

6. Almost everyone loves receiving feedback but hates giving it

It turns out that most people like getting feedback a lot more than they like giving it.

As shown in the visual below, most employees love receiving feedback (especially of the constructive variety). However, the same employees tend to dislike giving feedback (again, more specifically negative feedback).

No alt text provided for this image

Read more: Harvard Business Review

7. Older workers want more feedback than younger generations

Older workers have a preference for both more positive and negative feedback than younger generations. As shown below, older generations were also much more likely to give positive feedback.

Whilst this is interesting and provides a strong counterpoint to the millennial feedback myth, it’s worth noting that the research didn’t control for rank or role – so some of this effect is likely to be explained by seniority.

No alt text provided for this image

Read more: Harvard Business Review

8. Star performers need extra affirmation after setbacks

Recent research from London Business School shows that star performers need more positive affirmation after setbacks.

Researchers looked at the performance of top talent after they’ve had a major setback that involves loss of status. The findings show that when previously high performers lose status, their performance suffers. And the very best performers suffer the most. The mediocre performers, by contrast, barely suffer at all.

The research also shows that it was possible to mitigate the effects of this performance drop with targeted affirmation. The academics suggest that this reinforces just how important it is to give your star a break after they’ve bungled something or lost face. As a manager, you have a critical role here in helping your star performer regain status by letting them know how you value their work.

Read more: Harvard Business Review

9. Positive feedback should praise effort, not ability

When giving positive feedback, it’s important to praise effort rather than ability.

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has shown that focusing individual praise on talent rather than effort leads to poor performance. In a number of studies, Dweck has shown that praising individuals for their natural talent leads to increased risk aversion, and those individuals exhibiting being more disturbed by setbacks.

This contrasts with individuals who are consistently praised for their effort (rather than ability). These individuals are more likely to build determination and resilience, leading to better performance over the long term.

Read more: Harvard Business Review

10. Strong team engagement is built on a culture of honest feedback

This recent study of over twenty thousand leaders showed that strong team engagement is built on honest feedback.

In the study, leaders ranking in the bottom 10% of feedback givers saw team engagement scores that averaged just 25 percent.

In contrast, those leaders in the top 10% for feedback giving saw team engagement scores average 77 percent.

No alt text provided for this image

Read more: Forbes

11. Improving performance requires both specific goals and specific feedback

Most of us know from our own work experience that specific feedback is significantly more helpful in improving long-term performance (compared to general platitudes).

But it turns out that specific feedback isn’t helpful unless you have specific goals as a frame of reference (see the visual below for easy explanation).

No alt text provided for this image

Read more: Journal of Applied Psychology

12. To improve effort, focus on relative feedback

Fascinatingly, the most motivating kind of feedback is finding out you’re just behind someone else. It’s most motivating knowing that you have the chance to ‘win’ (but aren’t currently doing so).

As the researchers in this study stated: “Managers trying to encourage employees to work harder, for example, might provide feedback about how a person is doing relative to a slightly better performer,’ they said. ‘Strategically scheduling breaks when someone is behind should also help focus people on the deficit and subsequently increase effort. This should lead to stronger performance and ultimately success.’”

Read more: BPS Digest

13. Following-up feedback is critical for improving performance

This research study showed the power of following up feedback in improving long-term performance.

With 252 managers over 5 years, researchers found that: “Managers who met with direct reports to discuss their upward feedback improved more than other managers, and managers improved more in years when they discussed the previous year’s feedback with direct reports than in years when they did not discuss the previous year’s feedback with direct reports. “

Significantly, it seems that the more action you take to follow up and truly understand feedback, the larger the performance improvement.

Read more: Personnel Psychology

14. Withholding negative feedback is really about protecting yourself (not the recipient)

The reason you withhold feedback isn’t to protect the recipient, it’s to protect yourself.

In this research study led by Carla Jeffries, researchers tested how the content of feedback changed based on the medium of delivery (face to face or anonymous) and the self-esteem of the person giving feedback.

As the researchers described: “The findings provided strong evidence that we mostly withhold negative feedback to protect ourselves, not to protect the person we’re judging. If people’s motives were selfless then arguably the feedback provided should have been just as positive regardless of how it was delivered. In fact, students in the face-to-face condition provided the most positive feedback”

Read more: BPS Digest

15. The more you ask for feedback, the more effective you are as a leader

Leaders who ask for feedback are significantly more effective. In this study of leadership effectiveness across 51,896 managers, there was a strong correlation between the tendency to seek feedback and leadership effectiveness.

The survey results showed:

· Leaders in the bottom 10% of asking for feedback were also rated in the lowest 15th percentile in overall leadership effectiveness.

· Leaders in the top 10% in asking for feedback were rated average in the top 14% for leadership effectiveness.

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CULTURE SHOCK – Linking key strategic and operational strategies and defining behaviours that support a company’s values are critical to success.

Kerry Neill

MD at The Futures Group | PRINT Coach| Change Management/Organisational Dev | Strategic HR

Crafting a positive corporate culture is the ‘holy grail’ of firms, but many lawyers lack an understanding of what culture really means. Felicity Nelson reports.

Workplace Culture’ has become the latest catchphrase around firms, plastered across recruitment materials and corporate websites. Yet for many lawyers the true meaning of culture remains a mystery, according to consultant Joel Barolsky, a managing director at Barolsky Advisors.

“Culture is quite hard to get your head around,” he said. “There is a complexity and fluidity about it that makes it challenging.”

Culture has both “visible and invisible elements” that manifest in innumerable ways. “The visible elements are how people behave and relate to each other and clients day to day,” said Mr Barolsky.

These are “simple things”, such as how work gets done, how long people take to return emails, whether staff turn up to meetings on time, or how lawyers treat administrative staff, he explained.

These behaviours are largely produced by the invisible elements of culture – the belief systems and values that operate within a firm.

As an example, he suggested employees at a workplace where quality and excellence were valued were likely to emphasise attention to detail.

In a standardised workplace, such as McDonalds, many of these behaviours will be codified through manuals and scripts, he continued

“In a professional environment […] you can’t codify everything, so it is much more reliant on a sense of values.”

Culture as a strategy

The legal market is “flat in many respects” and law firms face increasing pressures from clients and competitors, according to Mr Barolsky.

In this context, just having a strong collegiate culture is not going to cut it. “[Culture] needs to be taken on a slightly harder commercial edge an service edge […] if it is going to be a source of competitive advantage,” he said.

Cultural change starts with leadership from the top, but also hinges on reform of remuneration and reward structures.

Creating productive politics that reduces infighting, resource hoarding and client ‘ownership’ is a positive step, according to Mr Barolsky.

Firms should also focus on promoting collaboration, consistent high standards, diversity, continuity, alignment of values, self-sufficiency, busyness, agility and the ability to execute strategy.

Firms that are perceived to genuinely care about their staff do better, Mr Barolsky explained. Toxic cultures lower productivity and make staff less willing to go that “extra mile”.

Re-engineering culture is a difficult task because so much about a firm’s culture is embedded in narratives, myths, symbols and rituals.

“Cultures are shaped by the stories that get told in and around the firm,’ said Mr Barolsky. “Who are the heroes and heroines of the firm? Even things like who gets corner offices and who gets certain privileges, who gets ‘car parks’ [matter],” he said.

He compared culture to a dot diagram: “Each one of the dots in its own is not important but, when you look at it as a whole, it forms a picture.”

Sincerity and success

Many lawyers take a sceptical approach to value statements, viewing it as “management jargon” and pure “puff puffery” according at Mr Barolsky.  “In some firms, people’s scepticism is justified – it is just a decoration.”

On the other hand, a lot of lawyers are “quite proud” of their culture and view it as a core part of their business

“When you see [culture] operate in some firms – you can just walk into a firm and you can smell it, you can see it, you can feel it.”

Expressing values and promoting culture can only unleash commercial potential when it is authentic.

“It has to reflect the truth, or else people will be quite dismissive of it. Lawyers, by nature or by training, are sceptics.”

Recruiters often use the term ‘cultural fit’ when describing the qualities they are looking for in a lawyer.

However, the search for a ‘cultural fit’ rarely goes deeper than whether a candidate is likeable and presentable, according to Neal Ashkanasy, a professor of management at the University of Queensland.

“People do recruit for cultural fit, but they don’t quite know what that is,” he said.

Mr Barolsky said the term ‘cultural fit’ was used “very generally” by law firms. Many firms screen candidates to ensure they are not offensive, egotistical or disruptive but do not go beyond that, he said.

“They look at that aspect rather than seeing if they fit with the prevailing culture,” he said. “It is not so much cultural fits as cultural misfits.”

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