Finding a Growth Mindset and Acting On Your Values
We’ve had a lot of discussions and presentations lately across Dropbox with a focus on having a growth mindset. We have spent a bit less time on what it means to really develop this style of thinking and how to develop it within yourself.
As a reminder, growth mindset can be summarized as:
Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies, and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts). This is because they worry less about looking smart and put more energy into learning. When entire companies embrace a growth mindset, their employees report feeling far more empowered and committed; they also receive greater organizational support for collaboration and innovation. In contrast, people at primarily fixed-mindset companies report more cheating and deception among employees, presumably to gain an advantage in the talent race.
— What Having a “Growth Mindset” Actually Means by Carol Dweck
I’m fully aligned with the idea that leaning into learning and developing together will lead to better outcomes not only for individuals but for our teams and business as well. But how does one as an individual change their actual mindset? I don’t know the answer for everyone, but I’ll share my personal experience and recommend a next step to try.
Several years ago I started to work with a leadership coach who specialized in Ontological coaching. The primary characteristic of this style of coaching is about ‘Way of Being.’ The belief is that if you coach on how the person is aware and acting on their emotions, body, and language it will effect overall behavior.
Way of Being is a regarded as a dynamic interrelationship between three areas of human existence – language, emotions and body.
In our first meeting she explained this process and approach to me. I WAS SKEPTICAL. I consider myself a bit overly rational, I am skeptical of turning inwards, I am skeptical of personality tests. You get the point.
However, my coach made the case and asked me to try it. I leaned in and committed to the idea that I needed to figure out myself at a deeper level before I could really change how I was behaving to ultimately have more impact as a leader.
Going into the coaching sessions I had two impressions of what I needed to solve:
How to better manage my time - I was stressed between home and work and couldn’t find the hours to have the impact I thought I was capable of.
How to better communicate and influence leaders - I thought my craft and work was great but people weren’t listening to me because I didn’t know how to get in front of them in the right ways.
We dove deep, therapy-deep into my life, the way I spent my time, the things I enjoyed, the stresses I had at work and at home, etc. All throughout the process she was bringing the language I used to the surface and getting more specific. She called out my body language, when I was excited, when I crunched my shoulders, and so on. Over the weeks she convinced me that there was more for me to unpack around how I was looking at my growth.
We went through a number of exercises (I’ll share more in the future), but one that left me with a deeper feeling about who I was, how I wanted to work and live, and why was a ‘Values’ exercise (more below). She challenged me to get crisp on what was really important to me and how I was prioritizing my life to align with those values. I spent weeks on this exercise, racking my brain, thinking about what ultimately became a numbered list of 9 words that helped change my approach to life (seriously).
My coach helped me realize through this list that I was not taking care of myself, I was focused so directly on using all of my time to get to more influence. She said it simply:
If you aren’t taking care of yourself, how can you be the best parent, partner, and leader?
I realized there was a lot to learn about myself, about my way of living, and about how to look at every person around me, their lives, and their values. I more or less had an epiphany about what having a growth mindset really felt like.
I have an endless opportunity to learn and grow as a person, and that is part of what makes life worth living for me now. As a result of this new outlook on life I’ve made a few changes:
I began to make time to exercise a part of my daily ritual. Being a strong, able person calms my mind every morning and makes me more productive. It makes me proud to see a future where my body will keep working alongside my mind.
I brought my work and life into ‘harmony.’ My coach stressed that we talk about work-life balance, but how do we bring them into harmony so they support our overall happiness and satisfaction. My perspective changed on hours worked vs. the value I contribute and how I prioritize my value to Dropbox. I’m home for dinner, I never miss a school activity, I am watching my kids grow up, and able to deliver at work fully.
I learned to build trust and connect better. I used to see people for the work they were capable of delivering. Looking back I’m ashamed I missed the individual potential and lives of everyone around me. I spend much more time trying to get to know people, hear their ideas, understand them, and so on and it has enriched my life and my ability to lead.
Developing a growth mindset can be an incredibly personal experience if you allow space for it. I think it’s too easy to throw it around as a term or piece of jargon. It’s a way of operating in life if you allow it and I can claim personally it’s been quite impactful.
Developing and acting on your values
As mentioned in the story above, finding and sharing your values can be a very helpful way of developing how you think and may open the door towards developing a growth mindset. Here is my recommendation for how to approach creating your own list of values:
Think about what is most important in your life and how you tend to make decisions
Review this list of values (or source/develop your own)
Collect a list of 10-15 values the stand out in terms of how you ACTUALLY live.
Be critical, this should be truthful, not a list of what you’d like to value.
Order that list in terms of what feels most important to you.
Share and discuss with someone you trust (a manager or close peer)
When you feel good about your current values, challenge yourself to what you’d like to be different in 1-3 years. What ordering would change? What is missing?
Narrow the list down, keep it under 10. 5 is even better.
Use this list to shape how you might prioritize your time, learning, or growth and discuss how that might effect how you want to have impact with your manager.
I’ve shared my list of values below with a snippet about why they are important to me as an example.
My personal values
Belonging
Maintaining and investing in deep connections with my partner, family, friends, and communities. Feeling connected with authentic trust with a close circle of connections. My partner and kids light me up. I think it’s the experience that most shapes me as a person.Personal health
To care for my body and my mind. I cannot achieve any ultimate satisfaction if I am not in my core doing well and putting energy into my being.Growth mindset
Curiosity and learning are the engine that keep me motivated. Both my inner self and my outer self, not just about my hard skills and knowledge. Education is the foundation to overcome ignorance. To open ourselves to the diversity of the world, to new ideas we must learn to understand it.Creative Expression
At my core I am a maker and only feel fulfilled when I have enough time in my life dedicated to creation in any way, be it design, art, gardening, building, etc. What is the point of living if not to add value to the world in a way that is uniquely human with the power of our creative brains?Impact
Contributing to something meaningful at all levels of my life. To foster innovation and bring impact to anyone using the products or software I help to make. To teach anything I might know that is valuable to someone else. To coach people on my team to reach levels beyond their imagination. To help my community in a way that benefits the whole.Excellence
Things are rarely easy. I reach and push for better, despite the journey to reach it. To care for the craft, essence, or feeling of the things I help create for the world. Some things should be done well just because they can be. Perfection is not achievable.Excellence is a habit — it is a mode of creating. It is fluid and it is malleable in its expression, but it is consistent in its intention. If you establish the habit of excellence in your work, it will always be there, no matter how distant you feel from that work or how flawed it felt in the act of creation. — Kent Nerburn, Dancing With The Gods
Authenticity
To be truthful and forth-coming with the best intentions is the best way to build a healthy relationship. To be candid, even when it is difficult, but in the most thoughtful, caring way I possibly can.Freedom
Autonomy and sovereignty in my ability to make decisions. When this is challenged it becomes a major heart-brain driver. Competitive nature comes forward in my ways of being. I get distrustful when my freedom is on the line.Humor
Life is too short to not being laughing your way through the day. Difficulty should be faced thoughtfully, but there are many things to be happy about, to laugh about, and aiming for fun the majority of the time.
I’ll share again, I walked into all of this with pure skepticism. I am still a skeptic at heart, but I have really embraced the idea of inner change as a key variable in life to experience as an unlock in potential success and happiness. Give the kool-aid a taste and see what you experience.
