A growth mindset is the fundamental idea that someone can accomplish anything if they put in enough work and dedication. It’s the alternative to a fixed mindset, in which challenges become stopping points rather than barriers to hurdle.
Creating a growth mindset in your business is an effective way to keep employees engaged and ensure your continued success. Here are some ways you can encourage a growth mindset in your company culture.
Work With Your People
Treating your people like humans who have an existence outside the office is one way to help them develop a growth mindset. You are effectively giving them the opportunities they need to reach their goals, by meeting them halfway. For example, offering flexible scheduling using Humanity or giving them the opportunity to work remotely helps them achieve a healthy work-life balance.
Offer opportunities for coaching and mentoring to help people identify and pursue their goals. Take the time to understand what drives your people, what motivates them, and what they value. By taking the time to learn about the whole person, you open new doors for both your employees and your business.
Model from the Top
For change in the workplace to be effective, it needs to have a trickle-down effect. In other words, change must happen at the top levels of the business before other levels will start to shift. In most cases, that means that the executive team has to embody the shift to a growth mindset before everyone else will follow.
It’s possible that an organization that is trying to make a shift from a fixed mindset culture to a growth mindset culture will have to make some changes at the top level. Consider hiring an outside consultant to help manage this change and identify if your business requires restructuring to be successful.
Don’t Oversell It
To create a company with a growth mindset, don’t oversell the idea. While a growth mindset does inspire a can-do attitude, it doesn’t mean that your employees are expected to be positive all the time. Even with a growth mindset, your business will face challenges and your employees will have to work to overcome them. This can cause stress and frustration, which is expected.
The difference in an organization with a growth mindset is that your people know that the challenge is temporary and that they’ll be able to overcome it as a team. A growth mindset means having a positive outlook for the big picture, not that you can’t experience human emotions during temporary mishaps.
Prioritize Honesty and Transparency
To cultivate a culture with a growth mindset, you need to promote teamwork and collaboration. Bringing your people together means having strong communication across the board, which stems from honesty and transparency. You can see from the many layers involved in shifting your company’s mindset that it’s a systemic change that will reshape your entire business.
Give your employees a platform so that they can share their ideas and frustrations. Communicate what’s happening “behind closed doors” in the business, candidly discussing wins and challenges the organization is facing. When your employees see you being honest with them, it creates a level of trust that contributes to empowerment and growth.
Don’t Hire Managers; Build Leaders
Start to look at how you can create leaders rather than hiring managers. This means giving people the opportunity to learn, develop, and grow within an organization rather than always looking for external hires. When you do hire, you need to find the right person for both the open position and your company culture.
To create a business with a growth mindset, you have to change how the business is run at its core. This means being open to new solutions and approaches to operating a business and having a growth mindset as a business owner.
