What Is A Growth Mindset?
We often have grown up with an idea that some people are “smart” or “intelligent” and we see these terms as binary giving ourselves labels. The truth is these can be incredibly limiting to our development and performance.
Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, is one of the world’s leading researchers on motivation and mindsets. Her work focuses on why people succeed and how it is possible to foster their success. She says it’s not intelligence, talent or education that sets successful people apart it’s the way that they approach life's challenges.
A growth mindset is where you believe that you can improve, learn and get better. A fixed mindset is where you see your performance is based on your natural and innate abilities.
As a former teacher and senior leader in the education space our CEO Ruth Kudzi found this concept was starting to be embedded into the school curriculum with a shift away from attainment and one towards praising effort and progress. It's a concept that she has brought into Optimus underpinning what we do as a team and our approach to development.
It equally explains how coaching works through the concept of neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to change and grow. As a coach you're supporting your clients to effectively build and strengthen neural pathways to change the way they think, feel and act : it’s that age old adage that practice and repetition lead to success. Your role as a coach is to support your clients to get new and novel insights and then to choose what they're motivated to do as a result of this encouraging them to embed the new ways of thinking, feeling and acting outside sessions.
Adopting this approach to life means that you can focus on incremental gains and the path towards mastery rather than believing you can’t do something. Of course, our environment and context can equally play a role here and is why it’s so important to always work with the individual in front of you supporting their progress and enabling them to find solutions which work for them (and this is why context is part of our holistic coaching framework)
We model a growth mindset within Optimus as we’re huge fans of feedback both within the organisation and with our students: we reflect and implement based on this and have a learning approach. All of the team are committed to their own development and we invest in their training and development (as well as coaching) to ensure we’re always in the best place to support students.
If you join the academy we’ll support you with developing this mindset too as you’ll be getting regular feedback from us on how to improve as well as being in an environment where we welcome challenge and encourage dialogue and discussion. We believe that with the right mindset you can become a great coach and it’s why we have some of the highest completion rates in the industry (over 97%) as well as a reputation for developing confident and competent coaches.
So many of us cognitively understand the growth mindset, yet we struggle to fully adopt one. In a culture obsessed with ‘doing’ and measuring, it’s not easy to stop the fixed mindset from creeping back in and taking over!
Janis Chan shares how she developed her growth mindset and the change it brought to her life. She discusses how she views herself now and how letting go of expectations liberates her.
If you want to free yourself from comparisons and the urge to do more, this is the episode for you.
[0:55] Janis on introducing herself and detaching from labels
[3:48] How training as a coach helped her embody the growth mindset
[6:20] How people cognitively understand growth mindset, yet fall into fixed mindset traps
[8:56] Learning to stop doing 20 things a minute
[12:35] Focusing on ‘being’ instead of doing
[16:10] The relief from letting go of expectations
[18:19] We cannot be all that we are all of the time
[22:04] Everything doesn’t have to be tangible
[23:44] Living in a culture that celebrates ‘doing’
Did you know the growth mindset makes up a key part of the coaching mindset?
Janis became a coach through our extensive ICF-accredited programme. Want to be an effective coach?
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I’m honestly shocked by how useful this training has been. I really didn't think I needed it, but I’ve totally changed my mind on that now. It was exactly what I need and I highly recommend it for anyone looking to maximise their coaching potential.”
I'd say, yes, it's an investment. And you know, everyone has to think long and hard about where you put your time and your money, but the me. If you want something comprehensive, well rounded, you want an experience to be able to grow as a person, to grow as a coach, to be more business minded, and to have a community of people around you and great trainers and mentors. This for me, hands down is the best training out there. And I think just three months down the line, I don't regret it at all, if anything, I'm happy to sort of encourage other people to jump on it and do it, it's really worth it is more than worth it.”
I think if you want to be a coach, work as a coach, be successful as a coach, be confident as a coach, then this is the course for you. It's unlike any training that I've ever done before, it's just great. I never worry about coaching someone now. I feel like I always know where to go. I can respond and I don't go in thinking what I am going to ask them. I can be completely curious and open to what they want to do in the session and it works: it is so much better for them and I just love it. I'm so happy to take the full joy out of it.”
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