Cultures of Growth: How the New Science of Mindset Can Transform Individuals, Teams, and Organizations - Hardcover

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Mary C. Murphy is an endowed professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University, founding director of the Summer Institute on Diversity at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and founder and CEO of the Equity Accelerator, a research and consulting organization that works with schools and companies to create more equitable learning and working environments through social and behavioral science. Murphy is the author of more than 100 publications and in 2019, was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, the highest award bestowed on early career scholars by the US government. She is also an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, she earned her BA from the University of Texas at Austin and her PhD in social psychology from Stanford University in 2007, mentored by Claude Steele and Carol Dweck. She splits her time between Bloomington, Indiana, and Palo Alto, California.

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Chapter 1: The Mindset Continuum

CHAPTER 1 The Mindset Continuum

We’ve gotten mindset all wrong. Well, not all wrong, but we’ve oversimplified it drastically, and to our detriment.

Mindset seems like an easy concept to grasp: Either you believe that intelligence and ability are largely set and can’t change much, or you think that we can grow and develop them over time. Yet when you reflect on your own personal experiences, you might sense something more complex than an either/or dichotomy.

Think of a time in the past when you were met with a challenge. How did you respond? Let’s say your boss asked you to come up with some fund-raising ideas to help address a projected shortfall. Perhaps you played it safe, suggesting only initiatives that were in line with what the organization had done in the past. Or, maybe you saw in that request an opportunity to try something new, and you stretched yourself to offer unique solutions that went beyond traditional outreach and events. Or, maybe you started by listing the usual ideas, but then decided to push yourself a little.

The reality is that no one has either a fixed or a growth mindset. Although we may favor a fixed or a growth mindset, we all have both—and shifting between them is something each one of us does. Moreover, when we shift from fixed to growth, it isn’t always like flipping a switch; sometimes it’s more like adjusting a dimmer.

Mindset exists on a continuum. And where we fall on that continuum at any given moment often has to do with the situation we’re in and the people around us.

However, the way we’ve come to think about mindset doesn’t reflect this complexity. Since Carol Dweck first introduced the concept, we’ve seen the following illustration displayed frequently in classrooms and on social media:



What’s wrong with this image? Yes, people can differ in the mindset they typically endorse, but by focusing on our brains, this image implies that mindset is located entirely in the head. And it puts it in either/or terms. It asks us to identify what kind of mindset we have, implying that it’s one or the other. Can you see the irony here? Thinking we always embody either the fixed or the growth mindset is a very fixed way of viewing mindset!

This image also shows a clear preference for one mindset over the other: Growth is good and fixed is bad. Although, as we will see, people and cultures with more of a growth mindset may have many admirable qualities, these misunderstandings have led to the moralization of mindset, especially in the American educational system and in corporations that have taken up the idea. When we view mindset as a fixed trait that resides inside an individual’s head, and when we believe that a person with one mindset is a better person than someone with the other mindset, it’s easy to use mindset to sort and label people. It also means that we put the onus of change on the individual, instead of considering the context and culture that creates and maintains mindset.

Mindset culture as it exists outside of us is an active, collaborative creation. Still, organizational leaders often focus on individual mindset, as if identifying and retaining “growth mindset” employees will create a growth-minded organization. Many school systems have asked my colleagues and me if there are assessments to rate teachers on their fixed or growth mindsets; and investment firms have requested that I help them create assessments so they can identify which entrepreneurs to invest in. Often, organizations want to use such assessments for selection and hiring. The underlying assumptions behind these inquiries are that: (a) mindset is static; (b) it’s entirely individual; and (c) such assessments will reveal the “truth” about someone’s mindset—whether they have a growth (or fixed) mindset, and therefore whether they’ll be a good employee (or not). And when we affix these beliefs on individuals, they turn around and affix them on others.

In the teacher training institute that my colleagues and I created, we see teachers who endorse this false dichotomy view of mindset labeling students who struggle with motivation or performance by saying things like, “I’m sorry, this kid just has a fixed mindset and there’s nothing much I can do about it” or “This generation of students has really fixed mindsets.” When we ask teachers what they’re doing to help students move toward their growth mindset, they sometimes say, “That’s not my job. Students just need to have a growth mindset, or their parents need to be working with them to develop one.” But labeling kids as unable to change is the definition of a fixed mindset—on the part of the teacher. And because some teachers may want learning to come easily and quickly (another fixed-minded attitude), they may short-circuit students’ struggles—and thereby their learning—by immediately offering the correct answers or reassuring them that, “It’s okay, not everyone can be a math person.”

All of this misconstrues what mindset is, as well as the factors that determine our mindset in any given moment. And it turns mindset into a blame game, which doesn’t help anyone.

Ask someone what their mindset is, and the accurate answer is: It depends. Even among those of us who study mindset, no one leans toward growth all of the time. Depending on the situation, our fixed or growth mindset can become activated.

Meet the Mindset Continuum.

THE MINDSET CONTINUUM

Instead of simply having a fixed or growth mindset, we are nudged along a continuum either more toward our fixed or more toward our growth mindset, depending on the circumstance. But on this continuum, we also have a default set point. Perhaps you tend to hang out on the growth end of the continuum, or your initial response to challenge is more fixed. (Don’t hold too tightly to that idea either, because our set point can change over time and in different situations.)



Understanding our mindset set point can be a helpful starting point, as Carol Dweck’s classic work shows, yet none of us lives in a vacuum. In fact, one of the most surprising findings of our research is how people move along the continuum based on predictable, discernable cues around them, which is why mindset assessments aimed at targeting our “one true mindset” often miss the mark.

MINDSET CULTURE

The culture surrounding us is one of the biggest influences on our beliefs, motivations, and behavior. This mindset culture exists at the group and organizational level.

Mindset culture is so powerful that it can actually block an individual’s growth mindset. But when leaders focus on developing individuals, they almost always overlook the impact of the mindset culture they’ve created. In many cases, they’re not even aware of it! For example, Barre3 CEO Sadie Lincoln had built a fitness business that she thought had growth mindset at its core until an anonymous company-wide survey shattered the image she’d worked hard to develop—that of the perfect leader who made it all look easy. “I really tried to play that part, even though it wasn’t always true,” says Lincoln. “I...