Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
Dweck's bio: Ms. Dweck earned
her PhD in social and developmental psychology from Yale University
in 1974. She has been a professor at Columbia University and is
currently on the faculty at Stanford University.
Key point: Our skills and
abilities are not written in stone. They can be improved and
expanded throughout life.
Ms. Dweck's area of expertise is on
self-theories and the role they play in our development. She informs
us, “For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you
adopt for yourself profoundly
affects the way you lead your life.”
This
book is about the self-theory we have pertaining to our belief about
what's possible in our lives. That is to say, what we're capable of
accomplishing. Here Dweck tells us there are two basic mindsets:
fixed and growth. The fixed mindset involves
believing that your skills and talents are carved in stone. That
they're set and unchangeable. The growth mindset
is believing that your basic talents and skills are things you can
cultivate through your own efforts.
One way to
establish your mindset is the following. If you had to choose, which
would it be? Loads of success and validation or lots of challenge?
People with a fixed mindset pick the validation and those with the
growth mindset go for the challenges. In a way, people with the
fixed mindset believe we born with native talents and they don't
really change over a lifetime, at least not after adolescence.
Growth oriented people believe in the possibility of learning and
improving our current skills. They also believe in the possibility of
developing new skills. If you think you're in one group but wish you
were in another, I have good news for you. Research shows that we can change our mindsets.
The
standard IQ test was created by a Frenchman named Alfred Binet in
1903. The purpose of the test was to, as Dweck says, “Identify
children who were not profiting from the Paris public schools, so
that new educational programs could be designed to get them back on
track. Without denying
individual differences in children's intellects, he believed that
education and practice could bring about fundamental changes in
intelligence.”
Benjamin
Bloom, an eminent educational researcher said it like this, “After
forty years of intensive research on school learning in the United
States as well as abroad, my major conclusion is: What any person in
the world can learn, almost
all persons can learn, if
provided with the appropriate prior and current conditions of
learning.”
Neither mindset,
fixed or growth, is better than the other in any sort of moral sense.
However, the most accomplished people in the world tend to have a
growth mindset. As clear evidence to the power of the growth mindset
Dweck tells us, “Many of the most accomplished people of our era
were considered by experts to have no future. Jackson Pollock,
Marcel Proust, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, and Charles Darwin were
all thought to have little potential for their chosen fields.”
On the flip side,
the author almost seems to be picking on tennis great John McEnroe.
She repeatedly holds him up as a poster child for the fixed mindset.
In the fixed mindset, “If you're successful, you're better than
other people. You get to abuse them and have them grovel. In the
fixed mindset, this is what can pass for self-esteem. Instead of
trying to learn from and repair their failures, people with the fixed
mindset may simply try to repair their self-esteem. For example,
they may go looking for people who are even worse off than they are.”
The
authors points out, “Malcolm Gladwell, the author and New
Yorker writer, has suggested
that as a society we value natural, effortless accomplishment over
achievement through effort.” From the point of view of the fixed
mindset, effort is only for people with deficiencies. “In the
fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. The growth mindset
allows people to value what they're doing regardless of the
outcome.”
The
author writes, “A remarkable thing that I've learned from my
research is that in the growth mindset, you don't always need
confidence.” Faith in your ability to improve can stand, as a
place holder, while your confidence develops.
So, just by virtue
of knowing the two mindsets, you can start thinking and reacting in
new ways. First, Carol addresses young people and schooling. She
says, “Students with the fixed mindset tell us that their main goal
in school – aside from looking smart – is to exert as little
effort as possible.”
Dweck ran a
research study of hundreds of students, most of whom were early
adolescents. She gave the students a set of problems to solve and
then scored the results. With half of the students they praised
their ability saying things like, “Wow, you got [say] eight right.
That's a really good score, You must be smart at this.” The half
other of the students were praised for their efforts, in ways such
as, “Wow, you got [say] eight right. That's a really good score.
You must have worked really hard.” Any guess on the the results of
the study?
The children that
were praised for their abilities quickly adopted a fixed mindset.
“They rejected a challenging new task that they could learn from.
They didn't want to do anything that could expose their flaws and
call into question their talents.” In contrast, the students that
were praised for their efforts moved right into a growth mindset, “90
percent of them wanted the challenging new task that they could learn
from.”
Dweck
says, “Then we gave students some hard new problems, which they
didn't do so well on. The ability kids now thought they were not
smart after all. If success had meant they were intelligent, then
less-than-success meant they were deficient. The effort kids simply
thought the difficulty meant, 'Apply more effort.' They didn't see
it as a failure, and they didn't think it reflected on their
intellect.” In somewhat surprising results, the students who had
been praised for their abilities in the previous test did worse on
the second test and the students praised for their efforts actually
improved their performance. Dweck writes,
“You might say that
praising abilities lowered the students' IQs. And that praising
their efforts raised them.” This is truly monumental information.
What this clearly demonstrates is the importance of EFFORT OVER
OUTCOME.
In further research
Carol found that a mindset can create liars. When asked to report
the score they received, 40 percent of the students with a fixed
mindset lied. Dweck reports, “In the fixed mindset, imperfections
are shameful – especially if you're talented – so they lied them
away. What's so alarming is we took ordinary children and made them
into liars, simply by telling them they were smart ... Telling
children they're smart, in the end, made them feel dumber and act
dumber, but claim they were smarter.”
This speaks a lot
to the importance and power of labels. Once a person with a fixed
mindset accepts a label, it is very hard to shake. “Almost
anything that reminds you that you're black or female before taking a
test in the subject you're supposed to be bad at will lower your test
score – a lot.” Conversely, having students check about a box
about their ethnicity can cause Asians to improve their math test
scores. Stereotypes are very powerful things.
Here's
more from Dweck , “Praising children's intelligence harms their
motivation and it harms their performance ... We should keep away
from a certain kind of
praise – praise that judges their intelligence or talent … We can
praise them as much as we want for the growth-oriented process –
what they accomplished through practice, study, persistence, and good
strategies. And we can ask them about their work in a way that
admires and appreciates their efforts and choices … Don't judge.
Teach. It's a learning process.” What's more, “Next time you're
in a position to discipline, ask yourself, What is the message I'm
sending here: I will judge and punish you? Or
I will help you think and learn.”
In the
world of business, Dweck points to Enron as a shining example of the
fixed mindset. Carol first mentions the management consulting firm
McKinsey & Company and how they insist that corporate success
today requires the
“talent mind-set.” Dweck writes, “Enron recruited big talent,
mostly people with fancy degrees, which is not in itself so bad. It
paid them big money, which is not that terrible. But by putting
complete faith in talent, Enron did a fatal thing: It created a
culture that worshiped talent, thereby forcing its employees to look
and act extraordinarily talented.” And, we all know how that ended
up.
One of
the most celebrated CEO's of the 20th
Century was Jack Welch. The youngest CEO in GE's history, Welch held
the top spot for twenty years. While General Electric has a long, and
storied, history of developing great leaders, Jack made lots of great
decisions himself. Let me give you just one, because it relates to
this book Mindset.
When Welch chose executives, he usually did do on the basis of what
he called their “runway.” For Jack runway meant the person's
capacity for growth. In essence, Welch understood the growth-mindset
and looked for it in ohers.
Dweck
also references Jim Collins and his book Good to Great.
In his book Collins searched to discover what separates thriving
(great) companies from the ones (good) that just putter along. There
were several qualities that facilitated the transition from good to
great, and one of them was the type of leader at the helm. Carol
writes, “These were not larger-than-life, charismatic types who
oozed ego and self-proclaimed talent. They were self-effacing people
who constantly asked questions and had the ability to confront the
most brutal answers – that is, to look failures in the face, even
their own, while maintaining faith that they would succeed in the
end.” Dweck says this is the very definition of the growth
mindset.
The flip side, the
companies that never become great, are often run by leaders with the
fixed mindset. Dweck says, “Collins's comparison leaders were
typically concerned with their 'reputation for personal greatness' –
so much so that they often set the company up to fail when their
regime ended.” As Collins puts it, “After all, what better
testament to your own personal greatness than that the place falls
apart after you leave?”
Carol reports on
the very words of these various leaders, ”Fixed-mindset people want
to be the only big fish so that when they compare themselves to those
around them, they can feel a cut above the rest. In not one
autobiography of a fixed-mindset CEO did I read much about mentoring
or employee development programs. In every growth-mindset
autobiography, there was deep concern with personal development and
extensive discussion of it.”
Some
examples of fixed-mindset leaders, that are given in Mindset,
are Lee Iacocca, Albert “Chainsaw” Dunlap, and David Rockefeller
(Chase Manhattan Bank) among others. On the opposite end of the
spectrum Andrew Carnegie, the steel tycoon, once said, “I wish to
have as my epitaph: 'Here lies a man who was wise enough to bring
into his service men who knew more than he.'” And, summing up the
growth-mindset, Dweck writes, “Leadership is about growth and
passion, not about brilliance.”
There's a chapter
in the book about relationships. When it comes to love Dweck says,
“People with the fixed mindset expect everything good to happen
automatically.” She continues, “Aaron Beck, noted marriage
authority, says that one of the most destructive beliefs for a
relationship is 'If we need to work at it, there's something
seriously wrong with the relationship.' Says John Gottman, a
foremost relationship researcher: 'Every marriage demands an effort
to keep it on the right track; there is a constant tension...between
the forces that hold you together and those that can tear you
apart.'”
Dweck
writes, “A no-effort relationship is a doomed relationship, not a
great relationship ... Aaron Beck tells couples in counseling never
to think these fixed-thoughts: My partner is incapable of
change. Nothing can
improve our relationship. These
ideas, he says, are almost always wrong.” Some people think that
if things are meant to be, they'll just be. To this Carol writes,
“If you looked only for perfect people, your social circle would be
impoverished.”
The last chapter of
the book is titled “Changing mindsets: A workshop.” As the name
suggests it is intended to provide specific examples, as models, that we
can comprehend and use. Dweck gives seven examples in all and I will
transcribe one of them, verbatim, in a minute. But first we need to
talk about a man named Aaron Beck.
Beck
is a psychiatrist by training (Yale) who is currently a professor at
the University of Pennsylvania. Aaron is widely considered the father
of something called “cognitive therapy.” Beck first developed
cognitive therapy in the 1960s and it has been scientifically proven
to be one of the (if not the) most effective therapies to date.
Without getting too much into it, what Beck discovered, while working
with his clients, was that their beliefs
were causing their problems. The problems were often emotional
disorders such as anxiety, depression, anger, etc. Realizing it was
the persons' beliefs (thoughts) that were causing the problem might
sound trite but it revolutionized psychology.
Quoting Dweck,
“They weren't beliefs people were usually conscious of. Yet Beck
found he could teach people to pay attention and hear them. And then
he discovered he could teach them how to work with and change these
beliefs.” Anxiety and depression are at epidemic levels in the
United States and cognitive therapy has been of tremendous help in
alleviating the suffering.
Dweck writes,
“Cognitive therapy helps people make more realistic and optimistic
judgments. But it does not take them out of the fixed mindset and
its world of judgment.” To do this Carol provides this last
chapter in the form of a workshop of various dilemmas.
Now for the
transcription of Dweck's example. This section is called “Denial:
My life is perfect”:
People
in a fixed mindset often run away from their problems. If their life
is flawed, then they're
flawed. It's easier to make believe everything's alright. Try this
dilemma.
The Dilemma.
You seem to have everything. You have a fulfilling career, a loving
marriage, wonderful children, and devoted friends. But one of those
things isn't true. Unbeknownst to you, your marriage is ending.
It's not that there haven't been signs, but you chose to misinterpret
them. You were fulfilling your idea of the “man's role” or the
“woman's role,” and you couldn't hear your partner's desire for
more communication and more sharing of your lives. By the time you
wake up and take notice, it's too late. Your spouse has disengaged
emotionally from the relationship.
The Fixed-Mindset Reaction.
You've always felt sorry for divorced people, abandoned people. And
now you're one of them. You lose all sense of worth. Your partner,
who knew you intimately, doesn't want you anymore. For months, you
don't feel like going on, convinced that even your children would be
better off without you. It takes you a while to get to the point
where you feel at all useful or competent. Or hopeful. Now comes
the hard part because, even though you now feel a little better about
yourself, you're still in the fixed mindset. You're embarking on a
lifetime of judging. With everything good that happens, your
internal voice says, Maybe
I'm okay after all.
But with everything bad that happens, the voice says, My
spouse was right.
Every new person you meet is judged too – as a potential betrayer.
How could you rethink your marriage, yourself, and your life from a
growth-mindset perspective? Why were you afraid to listen to your
spouse? What could you have done? What should you do now?
The Growth-Mindset Step.
First, it's not that the marriage, which you used to think of as
inherently good, suddenly turned out to have been all bad or always
bad. It was an evolving thing that had stopped developing for lack
of nourishment. You need to think about how both you and your spouse
contributed to this, and especially about why you weren't able to
hear the request for greater closeness and sharing. As you probe, you
realize that, in your fixed mindset, you saw your partner's request
as a criticism of you that you didn't want to hear. You also realize
that at some level, you were afraid you weren't capable of the
intimacy your partner was requesting. So instead of exploring these
issues with your spouse, you turned a deaf ear, hoping they would go
away. When a relationship goes sour, these are the issues we all need
to explore in depth, not to judge ourselves for what went wrong, but
to overcome our fears and learn the communication skills we'll need
to build and maintain better relationships in the future.
Ultimately, a growth mindset allows people to carry forth not
judgments and bitterness, but new understanding and skills.
This is the end of the transcription from the book.
I'll end with one
of my favorite quotes from the book, “Beware of success. It can
knock you into a fixed mindset: I won because I have talent.
Therefore I will keep winning.” It's exactly like that old saying
about how pride goes before the fall. Success can make each of us lazy and dumb. Steve Jobs had a great quote, which he borrowed from
The Whole Earth Catalog, that he uses to combat this problem of pride
and complacency. In a commencement speech he gave, at Stanford
University in 2005, he quotes the farewell message on the back cover
of the last edition of the WEC (1974) as saying, “Stay hungry, stay
foolish.” To say it in a slightly different way I'll quote Ray Kroc would have said, “When you're green you're growing,
when you're ripe you rot.”
