12.2: Creating Success Through Growth Mindset

Growth Mindset

You might wonder why we are taking time to discuss a growth mindset in a communication class.  The reason is that a growing body of educational research shows that individuals who are most successful in the classroom, at work, and in their personal lives have a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset.

Carol Dweck, a cognitive psychologist and leading expert on mindset research, defines fixed and growth mindset in the following way:

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.

Students with a growth mindset believe that with effort, practice, perseverance, resilience, and persistence they can “grow” or build their intelligence or strength in a certain skill, whether that skill is improving their pronunciation, building their vocabulary, writing an outline, giving a speech, or interviewing for a job.

People with a growth mindset do not avoid meeting a challenge, nor do they quit when test results in a college class or a performance review at work are disappointing. Instead, a growth-minded person is open to feedback or well-intended criticism because he or she is eager to grow and improve. Growth-minded people seek out resources and people that can help them and are willing to put in the work that improvement takes. This does not mean that the student with a growth mindset will earn an “A” on every assignment, just as it does not mean that every basketball player, with practice, will become as skilled as a professional player such as Stephen Curry or Michael Jordan. What it does mean is that a person with a growth mindset is willing to put in the effort and practice to become stronger or more accomplished.

We will examine a visual representation of the two mindsets (Figure 12.2.1: A Comparison of Fixed and Growth Mindsets) and discuss important aspects of both. A long description of Figure 12.2.1 can be found just below the figure.

A Comparison of Fixed and Growth Mindsets

Long Description of Figure 12.2.1: A fixed mindset is one where intelligence is static. This leads to a desire to look smart and therefore a tendency to avoid challenges, give up easily, see effort as fruitless or worse, ignore useful negative feedback, and feel threatened by the success of others. As a result, they may plateau early and achieve less than their full potential. All this confirms a deterministic view of the world. A growth mindset is one where intelligence can be developed. This leads to a desire to learn and therefore a tendency to embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, see effort as the path to mastery, learn from criticism, and find lessons and inspiration in the success of others. As a result, they reach ever-higher levels of achievement. All this gives them a greater sense of free will.

Applying a Growth Mindset to Your Sociological Communication Class

Some students approach this class with the mindset that they are already good enough communicators and therefore won’t have to put forth much effort. As a result, they do the bare minimum to get a passing grade.  Other students might approach the class with the mindset that because they have terrible communication anxiety, they are just going to have to suffer through the class and get it out of the way. Neither attitude leads to doing their best work.

Eduardo Briceno explains more about Growth Mindset in a presentation he gave at a TEDx event. In the video, he gives helpful tips for applying Growth Mindset to our lives.